If a Tree Falls Read online

  I couldn’t shake a dream I had had the previous night. A lone girl was standing at the edge of a large field. Wild gusts of freezing air swept through the landscape and the ground froze in an instant. The girl fell upon the cold earth, blades of brittle grass snapping beneath her. She cupped her frost-bitten hands to her ears, as the lullabies that welled inside her memory went silent. Just when she began to shriek, I woke in a clammy sweat. Juliet was crying.

  As I stood before my class, I watched the chalk dust drift soundlessly onto the sill and I wondered: Did anyone ever perceive my mother? Did anyone perceive Nellie or Bayla? Did Pearl?

  Just days ago, I had received an e-mail message from my cousin Valerie. She still hadn’t been able to locate Bayla or Pearl in any available US Census Reports. Maybe they never got to the US, or maybe they changed their names at the gateway. That same day I received a CD Valerie prepared for me, with a picture of Pearl burned onto it. I viewed Pearl on my computer screen. Strength emanated from the sharp curve of her brow, the jut of her chin. Her dark irises settled in on me, bobbing in large pools of white. Eyes, I imagined, that wouldn’t hastily turn away.

  Still at the blackboard, goose-fleshed now with white powder dusting my arms and flecking my black pants, I feared for Sophia and Juliet. For me. How could I reflect back their existence, their meaning? I, who was more transparent than chalk dust, a child who grew up on the edge of a home before eyes that turned inevitably inward, unable to mark me in a spot for real.

  Massachusetts, October 2003

  THE DAY JULIET TURNED SIX WEEKS OLD, we headed to the audiology clinic at Boston Children’s Hospital. Sophia would spend the morning playing with her friend Ben. I climbed into the back of the car beside Juliet, with the diaper bag full of bottles, board books, finger puppets and rattles. I would entertain her for the two hours while Bill drove.

  I was still always paired with Juliet. Bill was slow to bond with her, and I took it personally. After the tumult of this pregnancy and Juliet’s vision scare, I was wholly identified with her. Why wasn’t he enamored with her, like I was? I felt rejected on Juliet’s behalf.

  The few times I spoke to Bill about it, he shrugged it off, saying everything would be fine. Bill had a faith in us, even in our disconnections and absences, that I couldn’t fathom. The slightest shake up and I imagined devastation at our roots. But Bill kept his gaze fixed on our foundations: we were solid and strong, our love for each other thick and true. His faith didn’t always translate into closeness, though. Steady and sure could be far away, remote.

  In the car, I focused my attention on Juliet. I fit a sleek purple butterfly puppet on my finger, then made it flutter around the back seat before landing with a tickle and a kiss upon Juliet’s cheek. Flutter, tickle kiss. Flutter, tickle kiss. Juliet’s squeals and laughter filled my ears until the moment we entered the sound booth to discover the degree of her deafness.

  “Profound.” According to the audiologist, Juliet could not hear anything—not a running lawn mower, not a revving jet engine. Most likely, the thousands of tiny hairs, the cilia, that normally line the inner ear and stimulate the auditory nerve, were in Juliet’s case broken, bent, or missing. Hearing aids, even the most powerful ones, wouldn’t enable her to hear spoken language.

  Bill and I didn’t speak. I crossed the room to where Juliet lay asleep on the examination table. I picked her up and held her tight to my chest.

  The audiologist suggested we schedule another test that would tell us exactly how profound Juliet’s hearing loss was. I wondered why we should bother. Did it really matter where, in the range of profound deafness, Juliet’s hearing loss lay? I resisted, on the grounds that another sedation would leave Juliet either inconsolably cranky or vomiting as she was earlier today. But my resistance was to the news itself. I was used to hearing impairment but not stone deafness.

  On the drive home, Juliet slept. After an hour in the car, silent, I looked through the materials the audiologist had handed us: information about cochlear implants, a surgical technology that could possibly give Juliet access to sound; pamphlets on sign language classes; the names of websites, of parents, of schools, both oral and manual. Here we were again, at the center of the Oral/Deaf divide. But this time, with the diagnosis of profound deafness, we couldn’t be sure that the oral approach was even an option. Juliet would need an MRI first, to determine if her cochlea was structurally intact for an implant. She couldn’t get that test until she was six months old. The implant surgery itself couldn’t be scheduled before her first birthday—the FDA doesn’t approve of it earlier—and then, who knew whether it would enable her, successfully, to hear and to speak?

  If an oral framework turned out to be impossible for Juliet, how would we manage as a family? How were we to forge bonds with our baby? How would our extended families and our friends ever get to know Juliet?

  There wasn’t a large Deaf community in Northampton. Even if we gained fluency in Sign, Juliet would be isolated here. We would have to relocate to somewhere with a large Deaf community so that she could make Deaf friends, have Deaf teachers, Deaf role models.

  I knew firsthand the challenges of learning Sign. Despite consistent efforts, I still had a limited grasp of its grammar. But I was determined to learn it now, while we figured out our options.

  I fished out my cell phone and dialed the number on the “Family Sign Language Program” pamphlet. In a faltering voice, I explained that we had a profoundly deaf baby. We knew some signs, but not sign language, and we needed to learn. They arranged for a teacher to come to our house that weekend.

  A woman with short black hair and a narrow, ruddy face arrived at our door on Saturday morning. Her name was Cynthia. She waved hello and walked into the house. Bill carried Sophia down the stairs, still in her pajamas. I cradled Juliet in my arms. We stood awkwardly in the entryway for several minutes.

  The person on the phone had said that the Deaf teacher would be joined by an interpreter. The interpreter was late. Despite the Sign vocabulary I’d amassed, I was practically non-conversant. I motioned to the couch, and we all sat, waiting.

  The minutes ticked by. Cynthia smiled at Sophia, motioning for her to come closer. I pantomimed the offer of hot tea, which luckily Cynthia accepted. The relief of heading into the kitchen for the kettle mutated into worry as I walked back into the living room with the mugs. How was I going to communicate with this woman? How was I going to learn from her what I needed, in order to communicate with Juliet?

  The interpreter knocked just then, and for the next hour, she translated back and forth as Cynthia set a schedule for the next ten weeks. She explained that there would be no interpreter after this first meeting; we’d have to get along in Sign.

  The following Saturday we began again, sitting awkwardly on the living room couch. Cynthia signed and we watched. We imitated her hands, uncertainly. She pointed to our expressionless faces, then she modeled expressive-ness: eyebrows furrowed for questioning, cheeks buoyed for excitement, mouth and eyes scowling for anger, shoulders drooped for disappointment, and so on. It wasn’t just our hands we’d have to train.

  Juliet still arched backwards, despite our constant efforts to reposition her. Our audiologist wondered if she was trying to see behind herself. Juliet was doggedly persistent, undeterred, not to be redirected. We gave her a Sign name like a boomerang, formed with the hand shaped into the letter J, swooping out from her heart and landing back where it started. Sophia chose her own Sign name: her hand shaped into the letter S, moving in the arc of a rainbow.

  Week after week, I faltered but managed to learn some Sign. Bill sat through the weekly sessions barely moving. He told me his hands were not dexterous. I gave him sign language flashcards and a computer CD. I begged him to practice.

  At some point Bill’s hands became cracked and torn, and no amount of lotion, cream, or even prescribed medicine could heal them. It may have been the bottle washing, compounded by the New England dryness. Or it may have been my anger—
at the way his hands weren’t signing with Juliet—that had its way with them.

  For the next few months, I cornered the deaf people I met, strangers in the street, and I asked for the chance to try to sign with them. In the house, I signed alone, bitter at Bill for not trying harder, fearful that Juliet would not see a whole language if I was the only one using it.

  Whatever I had thought about our family being equipped to handle deafness was all wrong. At night, I began writing again—I hadn’t been able to write since before the breast surgeries and Juliet’s birth—and now I could see my fear and anger steering my stories. I imagined Nellie and Bayla entirely shut out from family conversations. Moshe’s ponderous utterances reeled out invisibly from his lips, obscured by his beard. When he pounded the table with dramatic flourish, the girls startled and shook. In my imagining, he never learned a single one of their signs. I wouldn’t let him.

  During the day, I researched cochlear implants. Bill and I spoke to parents, audiologists, and teachers. We read articles and met with doctors. We scheduled the MRI and other preliminary tests. If Juliet was a candidate, the surgery could take place in September—seven silent, languageless months from now. Bill and I argued over the fact of his not signing.

  “Jennifer, I am just not good at signing.”

  “You need to practice. What if she’s not a candidate for the implant? Or what if it’s not successful? We need a language with her.”

  “Then I’ll work at it.”

  “Even if she can get the implant, don’t you want to be able to talk to her when it’s off: at bedtime, in the bath? In the middle of the night, when she wakes up from a dream, don’t you want her to be able to describe it to you, and not wait and forget her dream by morning?”

  More than anything, I wanted our family to embrace this language now, this language that required us to stay present to each other, to not turn away. A bridge to the silent world. How could I make him understand?

  My eyes blurry with tears, I looked across the room at Juliet. She was lying back on a blanket, her hands up close to her face. I wiped my eyes to see her better. Her fingers were weaving patterns in the air—threads of Sign. Juliet was babbling with her hands!

  At five months old, Juliet was signing words. A pulsating fist for milk. A knock in the air for yes. A finger peck to the thumb for chicken. Light on; duck; book; water; shoes. Sophia was signing too, and she was the first to notice when Juliet picked up a new sign. “Mama, Juliet is making the sign for cheese!” I looked at Juliet’s hands and saw that she had put the heels of her palms together and was making a twisting gesture: cheese.

  When I sat, holding Juliet, Sophia wedged her way onto my lap. “Let me in!” she’d say, and I’d wiggle and rearrange Juliet to make room for Sophia. Then Sophia would pet Juliet on her fuzzy head, and say in baby talk, “Are you hungry, honey? Want a bottle?” Or she’d pick up a familiar book and recite it to Juliet from memory. “Chrysanthemum didn’t think her name was perfect, She knew it.” Other times, Sophia would act out her displacement, fretting and whacking her doll against the wood edge of the window-seat. At still other times, Sophia would look into my eyes and say, “Right now, I wish it were just you, me, and daddy.” Often, I’d hug her tightly and say, “I understand how you feel, Sophia,” swallowing my fears that Sophia and Juliet might not grow close.

  But there were times when I’d lose my composure and resent Sophia’s rejection of Juliet. “She’s part of our family, Soph,” I’d bark, full of intolerance. I’d find myself making demands on Sophia, demands too big for a three year old: “You’ll just have to wait,” or “Go look at books by yourself until I’m ready,” or “You are a big girl now—you’re crying over this?” I’d speak in a harsh tone, the displeasure in my face seeping into her skin. What scared me the most was how erratic I could be—full of sweet patience and generosity one minute, a biting sharpness the next. Shuddering, I’d rehearse consistent, empathetic responses: “This must be hard for you,” or “It’s frustrating, isn’t it, to have to wait,” or “I see how sad you feel.”

  I treated the girls differently, despite myself. Partly because Juliet was just a baby, and she was my second, I found her easier to handle. If she turned over the cereal box, I’d see it as developmental: “she’s dumping.” If Sophia did it, I’d see it as an awful mess, one I didn’t need on top of everything else. I apologized to Sophia. But even if she could forgive me, I found it difficult to forgive myself.

  Around the time Juliet was six months old, we were invited to a children’s music concert. A friend was playing a guitar part, so even though Juliet wouldn’t be able to hear it, we decided to go. Sophia stood at the edge of the stage with her friends, Ben and Katie, and danced. Bill and I sat in chairs. I held Juliet in my lap, bouncing her to the beat of the music. Juliet seemed bored and tired. Then, suddenly, she wriggled out of my grip, maneuvered off my lap and laid herself flat on the concrete floor by my feet. She pressed her whole body and the side of her face against the cold, dirty, concrete floor. A few minutes later she jerked up to her knees, turned to face us, and smiled broadly before flopping back down. She felt the whole concert from down on the floor.

  Afterwards, we bought the concert CD, and for the first time since we swayed to foreign lullabies with Sophia cradled in our arms, we played music in our house. Bill and I took turns swinging Sophia around and then Juliet. From “Possum in the Kitchen,” we switched to other CDs. We listened to old songs—“Locomotion”—and songs from our courtship—“Every Little Kiss” and “How Sweet It Is To Be Loved By You.” Lucca barked excitedly, her tail and even her low hips swaying to the rhythm of “Brown Eyed Girl.”

  We had stopped listening to music because background sound of any kind interfered with Sophia’s access to language. But now Sophia’s language pickup was unstoppable, and music could be added into the auditory mix. Sophia herself asked for “lassical” music. When Bill put on Handel’s Messiah, Sophia sat on the couch and attentively listened to it.

  I hadn’t realized my own deprivation until the loss was restored. Now I wanted to blare music at top volume: “C ’MON BABY DRIVE SOUTH. WITH THE ONE YOU LOVE.” I wanted it to reverberate in my body like an electrical current. Of course, this caused Juliet to jump three feet off the floor because of the vibrations. So I held her up, way up in my arms, and she felt the music off the floor, up high in my pounding, pumped up, drowned out heart.

  I found a new kind of trust after that concert. Juliet was flourishing; she was developing and learning through all her other senses. She alerted to our footfall and expected us at her bedroom door from the vibrations of our steps. She received my songs, even without hearing a sound, when I sang with her draped across my chest. Sophia, too, was compensating for her hearing loss in incredible ways, through sight and smell. Do hearing children know who stopped by the house while they were out, just by olfactory cues? Sophia could smell who came over while she was off at school! We hesitated to tell this to people, because it made them feel smelly.

  I used to puzzle, as a philosopher, over the question of how one could know for certain what another person was thinking, or sensing, or experiencing. With my girls snuggled around me, I wondered: could I know, by analogy to my own experience, what they were experiencing? Some of their sensory faculties were heightened, and some lessened, in comparison to mine.

  Except in Juliet’s case. Her sense of hearing was altogether absent: she heard nothing at all.

  Though my life was still entwined with philosophy, I stopped teaching it. I was spending too much time with students each week rather than with my own family. I wanted to be home as Sophia and Juliet grew. And I wanted to continue to explore my family ancestry. I was no longer searching for relatives by database, or soaking up the flavors of shtetl life in books. My deaf ancestry was alive inside me, captured, conjured, by my imagination. I wasn’t sure where it was taking me. But I had faith in it—a faith I hadn’t had in any philosophical argument I’d ever constructed. I was
groping my way back, my finger running along a last tattered string. To lengthen. Find strength in.

  My far-flung relatives, blankened by distance in time and space, readily absorbed the dyes of my mind, and filled the white pages of my black, leather-bound journal. My imaginings pumped my writing as I pushed swings, peeled bananas, and read board books. As I spoke and I signed and I waited and I hoped for news that Juliet would be a candidate for the cochlear implant.

  I answered a phone call one morning from an ear surgeon we had met at Boston Children’s Hospital. She was calling to report that Juliet’s MRI showed her cochlea to be structurally intact; this meant that implant surgery was an option for Juliet! Electrodes could be strung along the curvature of Juliet’s inner ear, to do the work of her broken or bent or missing cilia. She could be made to “hear” through an electronic process; she could have access to language and sound.

  The surgeon also had some results from Juliet’s blood work. “Juliet’s hearing loss is genetic,” she said. “She has two deletions at the Connexin 26 gene site—35 del G and 167 del T.” I scribbled it down. “Recessive gene mutations, one each from your husband and you. In all likelihood, Sophia has these too.”

  That afternoon, I went to my computer to look up Connexin 26. I found an online article about how, ordinarily, there are pairs at the gene site. Genetic mutations can cause deletions, with the result that there are singletons where pairs should be.

  I gathered up the still-curling pages of my family chart, scattered across my desk amidst mugs of now cold tea. I stared at all the names, running this way and that, scribbled crosswise, scampering up and down family branches in desperate search of their other halves. The halves that make them whole. Make them hear. Make them heard.