People who look through keyholes are apt to get the idea that most things are keyhole shaped.
Author unknown
Starting when I was in ninth grade, my parents and I went often to the Cinema Arts Society at the University of Charleston to watch foreign films with English subtitles. It was my father’s idea for all of us to go to these movies together. I loved the films because most were better and more realistic than their Hollywood counterparts. The English subtitles also made them more exciting for me since I didn’t have to depend on my parents to interpret. I liked watching without interruption and catching the subtleties. Whenever a movie was interpreted, I felt that my opinions were colored by the interpreter. I never knew how much of the film I had missed. Here I could form my own judgments and discuss the themes of the films from firsthand opinion.
One Sunday during my senior year, Carlos and I decided to go by ourselves to see a film at the Cinema Arts Society. I drove to pick him up at his church. When I got there, he was with two girls. He asked if I minded if they joined us at the film. The girls went to Charleston High School, which was Stonewall’s sports and academic archrival.
Carlos introduced us. Rachel sat in front with me while he and the other girl sat in the back. I was surprised at how well Rachel and I communicated. Rachel was friendly and I was strongly attracted to her. After the film, I asked her for a date and she accepted. We got along incredibly well. She seemed to be the ideal friend for me—just the person I had been looking for in all my restless searching. Besides being easy to talk with, Rachel was bright, ambitious, industrious, fun, and sophisticated. We talked about everything.
After a few dates, however, Rachel’s father, a highly respected, college-educated professional, put his foot down. He said Rachel couldn’t date the same boy more than once a month. He was old-fashioned and authoritarian. Rachel’s mother, who was fond of me, tried to change the rule but got nowhere with her husband. I saw a lot of Rachel at her home when her father wasn’t around, and we managed to sneak away on secret dates. I was attracted to Rachel’s personality. She was idealistic, a dreamer like myself.
Some of my friends couldn’t understand why I would go for Rachel. They considered Natalie more beautiful and charming. It was hard for me to explain that I felt like a protective big brother to Natalie. Our conversations were not as deep, intense, or electrifying as those I had with Rachel. I remained good friends with Natalie, who knew I was seeing Rachel and hoped it wouldn’t last. At that time, I was not very communicative about my feelings and didn’t know how to talk about the situation. When I look back at that time, I am appalled by my lack of communication and honesty.
I saw Rachel on dates, at the public library, and in other places so that her father wouldn’t know we were seeing each other. Every time we went out on our special once-a-month date, we made the most of it, starting with an early dinner and ending late at night. We always had fun.
It felt wonderful to play a bit that senior year, after three hard years of studies. My parents were always telling me not to work so hard. In fact, starting in the tenth grade, my father began offering a monetary reward if I got a B rather than an A. I took my father’s offers as jokes and never saw the reward, since I earned straight As for three years.
In the middle of the second semester of my senior year, when I was seeing a lot of Rachel, my English teacher warned me that my grade had slipped to a high B. I tried to look concerned but thought, Wow, that’s going to surprise my father, and maybe even please him! Yet when I told him about the B in English, he was upset, which I couldn’t understand. I thought he hadn’t been honest with me about the reward for Bs.
After supper, he revealed why he was upset. “Since you’ve maintained a perfect record for so long,” he said, “you might as well conclude your high school years with straight As. Why should you throw away such a brilliant accomplishment when you’re almost finished?”
After a pause, he went on: “There is a chance, Paul, a very, very good chance, for you to be the valedictorian of Stonewall Jackson High School. What a wonderful thing!” He explained that he’d heard I was one of three students in the running for the honor.
I could see that my father was moved. He had been class valedictorian at Davidson College in North Carolina. For me to achieve a similar honor would make him burst with pride.
This was the kind of challenge I loved. I would find a way to continue seeing Rachel and still work hard enough to make all As in English. With a little more effort, the role of valedictorian would be mine. (And it was; the school eventually named me, Carlos, and Marilyn as co-valedictorians.)
I soon faced a different type of challenge. When the time came for the Stonewall Jackson prom, I asked Rachel. I wanted to show her off to my friends. I couldn’t believe it when she said, “Paul, I can’t. I’m so sorry. My father won’t let me go to a prom outside of Charleston High.” I was naive and accepted her explanation. Trying to find some way to be with Rachel, I asked if I could take her to her prom. That was nixed by her father as well. I should have guessed the truth at that point.
I ended up going to the prom with Natalie. Rachel, I thought, went with a friend to her prom. It wasn’t until the next week that I found out from Angela, her close friend, that Rachel had refused to go to the prom as a silent protest to her father for not letting her go with me. Angela had been so upset about the situation that she’d nearly had Rachel ask me to take Angela instead.
Rachel and I managed to continue dating throughout our senior year, and we kept in touch through frequent letters when we went off to different colleges. As is often the case with long-distance relationships, ours evolved into a friendship. We stayed in contact but went our own ways. Fifteen years after our graduation, after she’d become a lawyer and I had been teaching for some time, we met again. It wasn’t until then that the truth about her father came out.
“It wasn’t just boys my father was worried about. It was deaf boys,” she said to me at our reunion. “It was you. He didn’t want me to go out with you because you were deaf.” I was amazed at myself for not having known. Of course. He was prejudiced against me despite all the evidence that I was capable of living productively.
More recently, Rachel revealed even more about her father’s feelings at the time, as well as her own. “Once I started spending time with you, he got alarmed,” she told me. “He agreed that you were very intelligent and a person of fine character with many wonderful traits. But you were deaf. He forbade me from dating you. He was afraid that I would fall in love with you and he did not want that. He told me that it would be ‘a hard life’ and that I was too young to choose such a difficult path when I would undoubtedly meet many other nice young men. He was very fatherly and kind when he told me this, but he was firm. He said, ‘We want one with all of his senses, honey.’
“I’ve never told you that last remark because it is so painful. I have only summoned the courage to tell you now because you are writing a book. I remember him saying that painful remark only once, but the underlying message seared itself into me as if Dad had used a branding iron: falling in love with you would be dishonoring my father. And it was unthinkable for me to ever do that.”
I realize now that a big writeup in our local newspaper about my accomplishments at school wasn’t enough to impress Rachel’s father. Nor was my status as a high school valedictorian. I would have been unacceptable to Rachel’s father no matter what great goals I achieved. His bias and desire to protect his daughter blinded him to the truth.
I’m glad to finally know the whole story. I have thought many times about what would have happened if Rachel had told me everything about her father’s feelings when we were still in high school. Would I have been able to overcome his prejudice? What would I have done differently in my relationship with Rachel? What if I had taken Angela, who was African American, to the prom? The 1960s was another era, though. Society did not tolerate interracial marriages and looked down on disabled and deaf people. My growing-up experience would have been entirely different had everyone accepted people for who they were or recognized American Sign Language as a bona fide language. Perspectives have changed to the point that today I often see hearing young people becoming friends with or dating deaf and hard of hearing peers. We have come a long way.
The episode with Rachel and her father was another example of my trusting nature. It may have had a negative effect on my life, but in the end, would I want to change my nature? I was brought up to be unsuspecting and, all things considered, I think I would rather not live a suspicious existence. Even so, I hope this book will make a difference for some other unsuspecting deaf boy—or for the family of his girlfriend. Perhaps after all these years, we can begin to view deaf people with new eyes.