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FROM THE ARCHIVES: Sally Slattery

Editor’s Note: In 2007, Sally Slattery won first prize in the prose category of the Peninsula Pulse’s Hal Grutzmacher’s Writers’ Exposé for the following short story. The summer after, she hopped on board as an intern to administer the Pulse’s annual literary contest; and now, as we begin the call for entries for the 2010 contest, she has returned to the Pulse staff as our Copy Editor. For details on how to enter the 2010 Peninsula Pulse Hal Grutzmacher’s Writers’ Exposé and Photography Jubilee visit http://www.ppulse.com.

You are the one who hears, the one who stands before your small-town community with a sweating brow, moisture skimming down between your nearly developed breasts. You are the one propped beside the pastor’s podium, Sunday after Sunday. Your hands work to translate for your twelve-year-old sister, bent over her purple nails, indifferent to Jesus’ miracles.

The pastor’s calm, monotone voice flows into your ears, travels down your neck, to your shoulders, sending your forearms, wrists, and fingers into a frenzy of intangible activity.

Your mother is insistent, hopelessly.

“It’s for your sister, it’s for the community, they will learn,” she tells you, she has told you for the past seven years.

A few tried. Your mother, mayor, and principle started a short-lived local movement titled Project Communication a few years ago. Pink posters and flyers were circulated, classes were offered. At thirteen, you were attempting to teach the basics of American Sign Language to individuals more interested in manipulating their hands gracefully to “Wind Beneath My Wings,” as they had seen in films or the annual 4-H talent contest, than communicating with a six-year-old Deaf girl, the only Deaf girl within the radius of two-hundred and fifty-eight miles.

A hymn brings the congregation to their feet, a white sea of waving bulletins rises with drawn-out sighs. Your fingers and hands respond to “How Great Thou Art” with little conscious effort.

You watch your sophomore algebra teacher wipe his gleaming scalp, as you cannot, and you remember his hot, peppery breath, the one you tasted when he bent to one of your healthy ears and said, “Fiona is lucky to have a sister like you.” Your eyes go to the Palm sisters, standing in a row, wearing coordinating cream-colored dresses dotted with crimson flowers. Their mother traces the lyrics in the hymnal with her finger, for the littlest of the daughters, singing with a wide open mouth, a few words behind the rest.

You feel a flash of guilt when your eyes fall on Mrs. Bronson, your classmate’s mother, fanning her fleshy neck. You remember the yellow Walkman tape-player resting at the edge of her kitchen counter. You took it. You pretended to be stacking the paper plates with scraps of white frosting and chocolate birthday cake. The smell of chlorine and cold pizza encompassed you as you hid the bulky Walkman in your overnight bag. The next night it rested beneath your pillow, replacing the pink and purple radio your mother tossed to the dumpster when Fiona was three. That night you fell asleep to Michael Bolton’s soothing voice. The voice you have since imagined your father possessing. You remember a few words he spoke, soft words, words of comfort to Fiona. He held her close when she cried. He whispered desperately, “it’s okay, it’s okay.”

“She can’t hear you!” your mother shouted, her face crumpling with despair, “she can’t hear you!”

Now you are seventeen, you eye the new boy from big-city St. Cloud, running his bronzed hands through his careless hair, Todd Aston. He stands straight and poised among the congregation, like a lighthouse over the fog. He shook your hand just last week, “Hi, I’m Todd,” he said. The three words run through your head like the closed-captioning that runs along the bottom of the television screen, but you can hear it, and it’s enchanting, the kind of voice that lulls girls off into their dreams. You crave more. You crave that voice, more voices. You crave sweet songs. But your sister takes to your side in her world of silence, and you should not enjoy what she can not enjoy, you should not want what she can not have.

Little changes when you leave the public’s eye. You feel on display, without a voice, without a space of your own.

Your sister follows you to your room, she lies on your bed gazing at your poster of Leonardo Dicaprio. She flips through your Seventeen magazine. She asks you if you have ever kissed a boy, and you want to scream, No, how could I when you are always with me! But you sign a subtle, no.

Todd calls. You giggle and flirt and laugh. When he asks you if you liked to go to Dairy Queen, your mother asks you if he knows American Sign Language. Todd’s waiting breath is alive, ready, while the phone rests at your shoulder. You assure her you will teach him if things get serious. She asks you if this is fair to Fiona, to abandon her for a hearing-boy. You do not know how to reply. You study her almost lifeless eyes, clouded over with ice and fog, the very eyes, you suspect, that are responsible for your sister’s continuous post at your side. She insists Fiona accompanies you and the boy to Dairy Queen.

You ask him if he minds, you take your voice down a step deeper, “are you sure?” At once, you are hot with fear, certain you have either offended him or pressured him.

“No, no way,” he replies.

Todd comes, shakes Fiona’s hand. You sit between your sister and the bronzed boy in his silver pickup. He passes you a foil-wrapped stick of gum, and another to Fiona. He works the pink substance over his tongue, and leans over you, blowing a bubble towards Fiona’s smiling face. She fumbles with a mood ring on her left-ring finger and attempts the same. Her bubble comes out like a deflated balloon. You proceed to blow a bubble as well, embraced by the scent of sweet sugar and the soft sounds of laughter.

You are surprised at your own ease when Todd’s fingers brush yours, handing you Fiona’s strawberry sundae. She sits close to him in the cherry red booth while he asks you questions. Your hands are busy with movement: Yes, I’ve lived here all my life, no, I will not live here for the rest of my life.

He tells you he is afraid all the farmer hicks will run him over with their John Deere tractors, you laugh. He laughs. Your hands stop. You take up your sundae, Fiona laughs. You feel hot. Annoyed. Awkward. But Todd only turns his smile to Fiona. She tells you with her swift moving hands, he’s cute.

He calls again, asks if you can go for a drive. His breath, once more is alive and waiting, like a strange lullaby, as your mother shakes her head.

“He doesn’t know sign language. This isn’t fair to Fiona.”

You plea, you beg. Your hands move while your lips stay closed and silent with screams and angry protests ready to fly from your tongue like caged birds.

“Your sister will be upset,” she tells you, and you tell Todd to come as quick as he can.

Your mother tells Fiona. You know this when you are in the bathroom examining your freckles and you hear Fiona’s wailing, agonizing, piercing cry, that untamed and true cry. You box your ears. You want to scream. You want to tell her to stop, to stop living in the horrible, confining silence, to stop looking into your eyes, to stop searching your hands. Instead, you flee to the porch. You let the screen door slam, you let it echo and push you farther from the cry. When you climb into the pickup, you ask to turn on the radio.

Todd says yes, and brings his arm along the length of the worn seat, his fingers occasionally grazing your straight, golden hair. You can smell his warm cologne, you can hear him humming to the mellow song emerging from the radio, and you are tempted to rest your head against his arm and drink in the pleasure of the song like other kids drink alcohol. You wonder if your mother will know. You wonder if she will ask you if you listened to music. You wonder how you will answer.

Todd parks along the edge of the river bank, you both lie over the long seat, ears grazing, legs bent over the sides of the open windows. He introduces you to fourteen new songs, fourteen new musicians, fourteen new sensations, and you wait until four minutes before your curfew to suggest watching television at your house.

You switch off the closed-captioning before Todd takes off his olive-green flip-flops. He sits at the couch. Your mother stands in her bedroom door, “come here,” she says to you, light illuminated around her. Her rooms smells like vanilla and cinnamon. You scan the bare walls, lavender bed spread, and then you see it. A spot of yellow rests on her nightstand. She knows.

Silence. It runs and wraps its way between you and your mother. Words flow through your head, like the closed captioning at the bottom of the screen, only three words for your mother, borne out of anger, out of resentment, out of confining, maddening silence, over and over, I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.

Her eyes are ice, thick and aged, “Don’t you think your poor sister wants to listen to music? It’s called sacrifice,” she tells you, “sacrifice.” You hear her words, then you hear Michael Bolton’s voice, deep and raspy, like he spent years of his life screaming for something. You imagine the voice with your father, your pink and purple radio player, all banished by your mother, to a land of soft noise and music.

She sends you back to your hearing boy, and you feel fresh with rage. You sit next to Todd, watching a rerun of Cheers. He takes up your hand for a moment, kissing it quickly. You rest your head against his shoulder, the heat of anger dissolving as you think of your new world of escape, away in a silver pickup, with sound, without Fiona or your mother’s icy, gray eyes.

A silhouette appears from around the corner. Fiona’s meek figure, can I watch with you? she signs. Your hands are up and ready, the rage whole again, coming down from your shoulders, to your forearms, your wrists and hands burning as you work to say: no! no! no! go to bed, go-.

“Is it okay if she watches?” Todd asks, waving Fiona over with an eager smile, taking up the remote, switching on the closed captioning.

She hesitates. She studies your hands, limp on your lap.

Bells ringing. “You going to turn this place into a church?” Laughter.” The words appear a moment before the words are spoken.

You nod your head to your sister. You watch her settle herself next to Todd, who playfully tousles her black hair. Your head steeps to Todd’s shoulder once more, and his gentle laughter and smooth breath sends you to a hazy dream of soft sounds and music, of Michael Bolton and your father and Todd Aston, humming and singing, of pink and purple radios and yellow Walkmans.

“I think she’s asleep,” Todd whispers. You study the black hair splayed over Todd’s khaki covered thighs and bare knees. You wonder what lulled her to sleep. You wonder if she hears in her dreams, or if you stand near, translating.

“She’s sweet,” Todd says.

You think of the sugary gum, the laughing smiles: the foundation of Todd and Fiona’s relationship, not you, busy translating. You wonder if Fiona hears in her dreams, or if they’re something else, something you can hardly perceive.

You follow as Todd carries Fiona to her bedroom. You watch as he gently lays her over her pink and purple comforter, and you see her eyes, busy with movement behind her closed lids, like your heart when Todd takes your hand and kisses you goodnight.

Copy Editor and former intern of the Peninsula Pulse, Sally Slattery spends the summer seasons working at Wilson’s Restaurant and Ice Cream Parlor, planning winter adventures to such places as New Zealand, Croatia, and Madison, Wisconsin. Though, as she has discovered, all roads lead back to Door County.