Singing Hands Read Free

to talk.
    I couldn't keep quiet anymore. "She
said,
" I yelled across the table, "she wants some steak sauce!"
    All at once, the dining room fell completely silent.
    "Well, my Lord," the waitress muttered, rolling her eyes again. She spun on her heel, snatched up a bottle of the sauce from a nearby table, and brought it down in front of Mother with a loud thunk. None of us moved until she had sashayed off.
    "You shouldn't have yelled at her, Gussie," Margaret said under her breath. Two spots of red still flamed on her cheeks.
    "No. Gussie was right," Nell said. "We should complain to the manager."
    But Mother shook her head hard, which meant the subject was closed. For a while we sat quietly, trying to eat. Mother didn't touch the Worcestershire. She cut a small, perfect square of meat. Then, after forcing a bite into her mouth, she patted her lips with her napkin and signed that she was going to the ladies' restroom.
    Ordinarily I couldn't wait for dessert at Britling's. But now the thought of my usual slab of the chocolate cake with fudge sprinkles or the cherry cobbler topped with whipped cream turned my stomach. I felt as if people were still gawking, and, sure enough, when I glanced at the table where the waitress had fetched the steak sauce, a pair of plump twin girls sat calmly examining us.
    I kicked Nell under the table. When she looked up at me, I waggled my fingers and smiled. Nell knew immediately what I was planning.
    I signed slowly and elaborately to make sure she would get every word. "There are two girls behind you.... Twins.... They can't stop staring. Poor things. Not too smart. And they look just like their father. Same red hair. Same frog eyes.... But wait. Their brother is very handsome. Maybe sixteen or seventeen. Looks like he has his eye on Margaret."
    "Please stop, Gussie," Margaret whispered. "Haven't you embarrassed us enough for one day?"
    But of course I wouldn't stop. It wasn't so long ago that Margaret had played the game along with us. Actually, Margaret had been the one to invent the Poor Deaf Girl Game. Together we had spent hours at Morgan's corner drugstore, sitting at the soda fountain, signing dramatically to one another. The object was to see how many people we could fool, how many gullible folks we could trick into pitying us. "Look at those poor deaf-mutes," they would say, or, "See them just a-talking away on their fingers. Wonder what they're going on about."
    Then, if we were really feeling devious, we would stop signing and strike up a regular conversation in loud voices, jabbering away over our malted milk shakes, just to let all those people know we had heard every word they said.
    But now that she was in high school, Margaret felt as if she had outgrown our old game. "Should I go get Mother?" she threatened quietly.
    Nell ignored her. "Does the boy have red hair, too?" she signed back to me.
    I swooped my head back and forth. "Oh, no. Black as coal. And eyes as blue as big, fat blueberries." I didn't know the signs for coal and blueberries, so I made a big show of fingerspelling.
    Over Nell's shoulder, the girls were still staring, whispering about us behind their cupped hands. I was just getting ready to give Nell another report when I noticed a man at the next table watching me. My heart fluttered in my chest. I recognized him. He was the man from church, the tall one with the striped bow tie. I remembered him talking with Daddy and suddenly realized that, for the last five minutes, I had been signing about the frog-eyed twins and their cute brother, and he must have been reading my signs all along.
    "Oh, no," I croaked, reaching for my water glass.
    "What is it?" whispered Nell.
    "It's the man."
    "What man?" Margaret asked, craning her neck over her shoulder.
    "Don't look now," I ordered under my breath.
    But to my horror, the man was already rising to his feet and coming toward us. He reached our table just as Mother returned from the bathroom. She had powdered her face and