5

[I may, I need, I might]

Adeline Lark lived in one of the beetroot-red houses in Boston’s South End. It was called Little St. Clouds, by herself at least, after the hotel on Tremont Street, whose awnings could be glimpsed from the fifth-floor windows. The parlor was even longer than the one at Mr. Bell’s demonstration, and was filled with books, ferns and ornaments along with two stuffed weasels by the fireplace, and a stack of dirty teacups. This would be my new residence in the hearing world. I tried to assume a haughty dignity, as if I was perfectly serene despite Mama’s recent departure, but I could only achieve it by sitting rock-still and not touching a thing on the tea table.

My grandmother was talking so I tried to fix my eyes on her words. It was something about Rules. She paused and waited. After a moment it was evident she was waiting for me so I said, Yes, of course.

A twitch ghosted through her features. Pay attention, she said, nodding her head slowly with each syllable. I nodded and wondered how near my mother was to Boston Harbor. Less than an hour had elapsed since our farewells, but already it felt longer.

She gazed at me. You are tired, she decided.

I said, I have a new notebook, and fetched the one Mama had bought me the day before. But Adeline dropped her eyes on it as if I’d pulled a dirty handkerchief from my bag. Her mouth sagged to match the limp extension of her hand as she held it out for my notebook. Then she wrote, “I will show you to your room.”

Her writing was unnecessarily large as if she perceived me to have a problem with my sight or mental capacity. Thank you, I said, but she flinched.

I followed her up four flights of stairs. I couldn’t help but cast my eyes around the huge house. Japanese leather on the walls glinted under a series of glass-and-crystal sconces, which lit our way from one flight to the next. I tried to picture my father as a child running along the narrow hallways, skittering down the servants’ stairwell, but he seemed so wild and unrecognizable in my image of him that the thought was no comfort.

One object gave me pause. It was a bronze cast of the Roman god Mercury. I was remembering something Miss Roscoe had told us about Mercury being the God of Communication. Adeline saw me halt. She came over to me. You like it? she asked.

I dropped my eyes. Miss Roscoe told us that Mercury was also the God of Thieves since he was a trickster. We sensed a warning from her, but didn’t know what it was for, or about, or why it was needed. It was yet another sum that didn’t add up, but that we had to leave alone for lack of other options.

On the uppermost floor, Adeline bade me put down my case. She fanned a hand at the room that was to be mine. There was a brass bed, a washbasin, a single desk and a Boston rocker. Next to the sash windows hung a colored lithograph of some marigolds. The view was to the rear and revealed endless fire balconies being crisscrossed by stray cats. There was a string of servant bells in the landing outside my room. I hoped Adeline would remember to think that if those bells rang, I’d not hear them. That gave my stomach a twist. Was anyone else up here in case of a fire? I’d never been so high as a fifth floor before. I crossed to the window and was relieved to see a small drop onto the fire balcony below.

Now that we were stationary, Adeline jotted down the names of the other people resident at Little St. Clouds. The two lodgers were Mr. Dupont and Mrs. Baylis, and the latter’s great-nieces, Eva and Rhoda Day, were staying on vacation from Trenton. She handed me the paper. We dine at eight, she told me, and held up eight fingers. I nodded and wondered if I’d ever see the finger alphabet again.

I had several hours until the appointed dinnertime. My first in the hearing world without Mama or Miss Roscoe to guide me. I unpacked my notebooks and rearranged them on the desk several times. I studied the cheerless marigolds. I counted the cats on the fire balconies. I wished I’d brought more books and wondered where I could get some. I started a letter to the Oral School but hadn’t much to report yet, and I’d already written about Theresa and the demonstration from my lodging rooms with Mama. I was so relieved when eight o’clock finally arrived that I almost skipped down the stairs to the dining room.

The lodgers were already taking their seats. The fare looked simple but the table was set with huge decorations: candlesticks and tall platters arranged with moss and fruit. The fruit had been glazed but the skins were wrinkled and the sheen looked dusty. Adeline sat at one end of the table and Mrs. Baylis’s great-nieces on either side. Rhoda was a tall, sour-looking girl, with a ropy-looking plait pulled over her shoulder. Eva had bright eyes and an immovable smile, which was tiled with broad, healthy teeth. Both girls paused when I came in. Adeline waved a hand and introduction in my direction, then they said Good Evenings and continued their conversation.

At the other end was Mr. Dupont who I’d learn was spending a semester at Boston University. Mrs. Baylis, meanwhile, was visiting from New York. She had white hair plaited and smoothed into a bun, and spongy features. Everything was plain to see on her unadorned face, and I was relieved when Adeline indicated for me to sit next to her. Then there was a sixth gentleman-guest whom no one had introduced to me nor had Adeline written down his name. His extensive beard concealed his speech so I didn’t fancy my chances of ever finding it out.

As soon as I sat down the diners disappeared behind the ornamentation. The Day sisters flitted between the candlesticks while the beard of the gentleman-guest levitated above the silver platters. Here at least was something to write my friends at the Oral School: in the hearing world candlesticks the size of small trees are commonplace dining decor and plates are stacked threefold high to bear fruit, whether that fruit is fresh or not. One must have a strategy—every deaf-and-dumb person knew that—which I could advise them on as well. I carefully took out my notebook and pen and placed it alongside my place mat.

As she was next to me, Mrs. Baylis was the only person in clear sightline, so long as I turned my head. She noticed my book and smiled but did not reach for it. She said Evening and Welcome and Was I very tired?

A little, I said, and opened my notebook to ask her about herself but just then my plate of food arrived, and I had to sit back from the table, the notebook flipping closed again. Mrs. Baylis started on her food straightaway so it didn’t seem polite to request her attention. But after chewing a few mouthfuls of the hotchpotch, she said something. I slid the notebook to her so she could write it down.

“You don’t look deaf-and-dumb,” she wrote.

I looked up. Her smile was kind. I didn’t know what to say. Thank you? Her lips moved with words that seemed like Very Pretty. When I didn’t respond she took the pen again. “Do you know that hand-talk?” she asked. “I saw a performance at one of the Deaf Mute Asylums, it was a hymn I think, and it was astonishingly beautiful.”

I replied, “I attended Miss Roscoe’s Oral School so I don’t know much of the sign language.” It was truer to say I wasn’t supposed to know it, but this didn’t seem a distinction worth clarifying to Mrs. Baylis.

Ah, she said, and patted my hand when she finished reading. She took the pen. “Of course. You are not like them.” She continued, “After the performance I saw them talking on the hands in the corridors and it was quite different.” I looked up from her words and she grimaced to aid my understanding, while she flapped her hands in impression.

“It is an expressive system,” I wrote, “in the same way hearing people have the tones of the voice. That is how you get the finer meaning.”

Yes, she said, but looked unconvinced.

“Soon I will start with Mr. Bell at Boston University,” I continued, writing as fast as I could to keep her attention from drifting to her hotchpotch. “So I shall understand about tone of voice myself.” Then I wrote for a little while about Visible Speech.

Her face ignited with wonder. A miracle, she said.

If I felt a nub of guilt toward my friends at the Oral School, I let the feeling slip away. This was the hearing world and there was no place for the sign language within it. That was the entire point of Miss Roscoe’s teaching and if I didn’t learn how to get by here in Boston then how could I go to Mama and Mr. Holmwood in six months? I didn’t dare think of the cost of my sponsorship.

The cook came in and out with more dishes. She slipped me a piece of paper after the second course introducing herself as Joan, and asking if I would like trifle or blanc-mange? I was so happy to see some clear words I almost replied that I’d gladly help her bring them up. But I didn’t know how to explain my leave of the table and supposed that it wouldn’t fare me well in the eyes of Adeline, so I wrote my reply very formally—the trifle, please—although the smile I sent with it was a real one.

Then Mrs. Baylis was tapping my shoulder. Eva Day wanted my attention. She was waving a hand. I smiled at her although my heart set up a quick patter: she was still behind a candlestick, and I couldn’t send my notebook easily across the table. There was a mountain range of plates, dishes and tureens between us.

Mrs. Baylis wrote it for me: “Eva says that your grandmother has told her you are very good at reading lips!”

I looked across the table at Eva’s lips again, which were moving only slightly within the frame of her smile. She shifted so the candlestick was to the left of her face but it was still distracting. I didn’t know if the candlestick or the smile was the greater problem.

You are smiling, I blurted out in explanation, but all that did was bring down her brow in a degree no less severe than that shown by Adeline.

The smile flickered with words that I knew too well to miss. Never Mind, she said.

---

The School of Oratory was located in the University buildings on Beacon Street, just along from the Athenaeum. Its facade was tall and narrow, the doors were black, and in spite of the large number of windows, it looked like a place that did not have much association with daylight. If I was impressed by its spindly grandeur, I was unsettled by its austerity. Adeline liked it better. The sight almost cheered her. Perhaps she thought it suited the task I was about to begin. Come on, she said, taking my elbow.

It was not Mr. Bell who opened the door but a woman. She had a triangular face pinned in the middle by her puckered lips, giving her a look of abiding consternation. After a few words with my grandmother, she whisked a notebook from her skirt pockets. Her name was Miss Lance, she told us, and she was Mr. Bell’s assistant. I saw her lips say Oh dear, dear, as she glanced over her shoulders, into the hallway. “Mr. Bell has not arrived yet,” she wrote. “Usually he is very prompt but come upstairs anyway.” We followed her through the dim corridors and up the stairs. There were windows on each level, looking over the Granary Burial Ground. I was relieved to see some trees, even if they had their roots among the dead.

I looked around for other pupils but apart from a few teacherly types there didn’t seem to be anyone else in the building. Surely I wasn’t the only pupil here. Nerves crunched through me: I’d not been taught alone once at the Oral School. We stopped outside a room, and she raised a finger—one moment—and knocked twice, her ear held to the door. No, I saw her lips say. Not there. Let’s go in. She waved a hand.

The room was sparsely furnished with green flocked walls and two chairs placed opposite each other. If it hadn’t been for the mess of papers on the desk, and the blackboard smudgy with a previous lesson, I would have thought of a dentist’s waiting room. I struggled to contain my disappointment. Was this really the place where the three finely attired girls at Mr. Bell’s demonstration had studied?

The door flew open and in came Mr. Bell. He said, This terrible mess!

Hastily he gathered the papers. When he finished, his eyes rested on us. His words were clearly shaped. I saw him say something about his suspicions, followed by a second utterance of Terrible, and two opposites Early and Late, each which came with a tap of his finger; the first one on his chest, the next one toward us.

I suspected he was saying, I’m terribly late but I hope it is you who are terribly early.

His lips took a blade’s edge care with each word and leaned toward me in a very exact degree to show me where his attention was focused as he put his words between us, like arranging items on a table, although there was no force or strain on his face. I was flushed with relief to understand him.

Adeline was not impressed. She said, I’m afraid we are right on time!

Mr. Bell extended his hand to one of the two chairs. Please, he said.

I took a seat as Adeline left with Miss Lance. He reached for a notebook and spread it across his knee, but didn’t write anything. Nor did he say anything although it seemed at any moment he might. There was a barely contained restlessness in the way he sat. His eyes settled on me, and I couldn’t help smiling at the warmth and bustle of his consideration. It was as if a tuning fork had been struck within my being and he was listening without me needing to say anything at all. I thought I might break into laughter if he didn’t say something soon, and that might even be his intention.

After a moment he said, Tell me how you came to Boston.

It was like I’d settled into a plush sofa, and I felt a greedy stirring to see more of his clear, steady words. I told him about Miss Roscoe’s school and Mama’s visit from England, and Mr. Ackers’s letter. But I said more than I’d meant to, and his eyes started to show a faint strain so I guessed my voice was becoming slack. I stopped abruptly.

He picked up his pencil. “My estimate,” he wrote, “is that you lost your hearing at six or seven years of age.”

He turned the notebook to show me his words. In the slope of his penmanship, a more orderly, and perhaps older, professor presented itself than the one seated opposite me.

I was very pleased at his guess. Actually, I said, although Actually was not a word I could really say at all. I was four.

Why had I not started with Thank You? I was quite well rehearsed in Thank You and it would have been better form besides. But Mr. Bell didn’t frown or look alarmed. He took up the notebook again and wrote, “Let us discuss your modes of communication. You read lips and use notebooks. Do you know the manual alphabet or de l’épée signs?”

I hesitated, before answering, I know the American and British—

But I could not say Manual Alphabet easily so flashed ABC in the air with my fingers. My mother is English, I finished.

This interested Mr. Bell. English? he said, not bothering with the notebook. I’m from Scotland. He smiled at my surprise. His lip-shapes, I realized, were similar to Mama’s. Surely that was one reason I’d understood him more readily: his accent must be British. I supposed it was the first thing people learned as soon as he opened his mouth. I felt a kick of betrayal that neither my mother nor Adeline had thought to tell me.

He bent over the notebook. “I would permit,” he wrote, “the limited use of the American Manual Alphabet in this classroom but not the de l’épée signs. There will be no signs of any kind in the place of speech.”

He turned the page, and I nodded to show my understanding. I’d not expected his rules to be any different from Miss Roscoe’s and who would I use hand-talk with besides? There were no other pupils to draw into conversation.

He continued writing for some time, pressing the pencil harder than seemed necessary. We would use a notebook, he wrote, as it was the most effective way of conveying the material. In time, we would progress to viva voce and speech-reading. Some of the terms were quite technical. In the lesson we would only speak or write. Did I understand? At home I must practice very hard if I expected to see any kind of improvement.

I read his words and nodded again, wishing that he would put down the notebook and speak to me again with that careful, clear manner. It was not so different from Mama’s way of talking to me. But he kept his head bent over the page and wrote, “This book is intended to record the progress made by Miss Ellen Lark in gaining complete command over the movements of the vocal organs.” He continued down the neatly ruled page: “Plan of Daily Instruction.”

I didn’t understand half of the things he wrote but made a note of the main headings for they seemed like impressive things to tell Mrs. Baylis over dinner. I would study two strands, these being Articulation and the Culture of the Voice. The last one consisted of Timbre, Duration, Force and Pitch. Every day I would need to study the elementary symbols and take a reading lesson with Roman letters.

You are curious?

I realized I was leaning forward in my seat in my attempt to read his handwriting upside down. I brought my finger and thumb together with less than an inch between them: a little. Then I remembered what Mr. Bell had said about not using my hands, and put them back in my lap.

He didn’t notice, or chose not to. Instead he took a piece of unwrapped chalk directly out of his pocket and rose from his chair. Mr. Bell, I said before I could stop myself. Your pocket!

I blushed at my outburst, fearing that I was no better than Adeline for my judgment although I knew that I already liked his disordered ways. Mr. Bell peered down at his pocket, inserting a finger into the lip and drawing it open so he might see inside.

White, he said, laughing. Like the moon!

He looked at me with awful seriousness. Several pupils, he said, have looked horrified. Now I know why—he finished, tapping the side of his head to signify this new knowledge. I smiled because I could see his own smile starting to crinkle his eyes. I wondered if he’d chosen Horrified on purpose. I’d have no chance at spotting a word like Aghast.

I took the notebook. “There is a groove in the blackboard,” I wrote, pointing at the board when he looked up from my words.

Good idea, he said but he didn’t cross over to the board, and reached for the notebook instead. “My landlady will admonish me,” he wrote, “for my pockets. She already cuts my candles in half.”

I frowned and blinked, meaning to convey my bewilderment. I signaled for the notebook, “But light is so precious at this time of year,” I wrote. “Why would she do that?”

“It is for my own good, so I go to bed before midnight. But sometimes I think my mother has a hand in it. She is always advising everyone on my health.”

I was delighted at this unexpected idle chat. Wasn’t this the kind of trivial subject that people told me it was no matter to miss? Then I wondered what was wrong with Mr. Bell’s health. Was this another fact that Adeline and Mama knew which I was only learning? That is a late hour, I said, trying out my voice again.

Not as late as five o’clock in the morning.

Surely not, I said, making my best show of being shocked.

He seemed pleased. Ah, but those are the best hours!

Now he did rise from his chair and step to the blackboard. I felt a grab of disappointment at his departure, but he put the chalk in the blackboard’s groove and took out not one but three more pieces of chalk from his pocket, placing them in a line. He turned in time to catch my smile. Gratified, he began chalking out a picture. When he finished, he stood back to let me examine his creation.

It was a cross section of a face. It showed the cavity of the mouth, sealed off by the teeth at the front with a wide-open throat at the back. The tongue was in the middle like a soft muscly foot. The teeth didn’t fan around the mouth, but protruded like a pair of spikes from the gums.

“It’s a face,” I wrote.

Good, he said, and started rubbing away some lines while leaving others. Soon I began to see them: the horseshoes and vertical dashes of the symbols I’d seen the girls read at the demonstration.

He pointed at the curved line where the tongue had touched the teeth, and instinctively I touched my own tongue against my teeth. He was sitting down again with the notebook while gesturing at the symbols behind him.

“Good,” Mr. Bell wrote. “Now push the air through your throat. Good. You just said ‘t.’”

Next he pointed at the horseshoe that replaced the lips, and I closed my lips.

“Add voice through your throat. Excellent. You just said ‘b.’”

B was made of two symbols, a curve for the lips, and a line for the throat, to show that air was passing through it.

He wrote how you could combine the elementary symbols to make more complex symbols. All the consonants had a horseshoe curve that represented the position of the tongue while the vowels had a straight line for the aperture of the mouth. There were glides, hooks, crossbars. Tiny squiggles indicated suction, tones, trilling and even inflection.

He pointed again at the curved line meaning “lips” and I lightly touched my lips together. But next he drew a small line inside the curve. “That means ‘shut’,” he wrote, so I shut my lips more firmly. I kept my lips clamped together as he closed off the curved line with a new line at its neck, so it was a semicircle. “This straight one means ‘voice.’” Next he made the line wavy, like the outline of a nose. “This is nose. So you have lip-shut-voice-nose. Go on.”

I tried to push a sound through my nose.

“There is no voice coming out through your nose.”

He showed me his words, and I released the seal of my lips, feeling my breath collapse inside me. I couldn’t help my disappointment, or my wish that we would go back to our earlier chatter in the notebooks. Does your mother suggest cures for your health? I would ask him. For I knew all about cures, that endless quest.

He reached into his other pocket and this time took out a white glove and canary feather. He held up the glove, which had been marked on the fingers with letters from the alphabet. Not this, he said, and stuffed it back into his pocket. That is for the children. This, he said, holding up the feather.

I didn’t think the feather seemed any less appropriate for a child than a labeled glove, but I didn’t say anything. Instead I wrote, “Who are the children? Do they come here?”

“No, I teach the children at the Boston school. I’ve always loved teaching children. But also, I am a tutor for a child in Salem. That is where I reside, with the boy’s family.”

I revised the image I’d made earlier of Mr. Bell living in a shabby boardinghouse with a landlady who mercilessly severed his candles to save money. Surely this was a family of some means if he resided as their child’s tutor, and they had a genuine concern for his night-owl habits.

Here, he said, raising the feather. A downy puff of barbs surrounded its quill while the rest was a smooth yellow oval. He held it under my nose and lifted his eyebrows to indicate I should try again.

“The feather will move,” he wrote, “when the sound has passed satisfactorily through the nose. That is not bad. Now try ‘P’ from the lips. This is the basis of a universal alphabet. It is called Visible Speech. Every letter, and every part of a letter, has a definite physiological meaning. In this way, you can represent any sound that the human mouth can make, so that another person should be directed how to utter it.”

But the triumph I’d felt on ruffling the feather had faded. I saw again those girls talking on the stage, speaking languages from around the world. Was this how they had begun? Their first lesson, making a mmmm sound through their noses and blowing a feather from Mr. Bell’s palm?

Mr. Bell was watching me. He wrote, “One day your voice will move more than a feather, I can assure you.”

I thought of asking if I might move a roomful of gentlemen to their feet. I thought of the Day sisters, the long evenings sat in the parlor with not a word to be grasped. If I conquered the feather, might I move Adeline to laugh or stir Mr. Dupont to a response? Could I fold myself into a tête-à-tête with Mrs. Baylis or cause Mama’s face to slacken in astonishment? Theresa had done it, hadn’t she?

I took the feather and placed it on the back of my hand. Pursing my lips, I made a firm puh along its barbs, my breath spilling over my wrist.

That is excellent, he said. Visible Speech is not easy, he added, leaning in as though others were in the room who must be kept out of earshot. But I think you will do very well.