9
Lesson III
![A series of Visible Speech signs. [It gave me many a pang]](image/It_gave_me_many_a_pang.png)
[It gave me many a pang]
The summer I met Frank McKinney was one of the hottest I can remember. Boston stewed in sunshine. Dust from the landfill pits in the Back Bay spread across the Common so at times the trees appeared to be standing in a golden mist. No more relief could be found outdoors than indoors. The residents sat about Little St. Clouds fanning themselves and switching from the front and back parlors as the sun tracked round the house.
I collected homophenes for Mr. Bell’s paper. I watched the boarders’ conversations and made a note of any confusions. I fished out Lung and Luck from Mrs. Baylis’s remark about walking in stormy weather. Was it good lungs or luck you needed? Moat and Bones from Adeline’s comment that once she had visited a castle in England surrounded by ancient bones. Gold and Cold from what was making Joan’s head feel heavy. As soon as I spotted one, I made a note in my daily notebook or on my slate. Later I would take them upstairs and write them into my essay. I also wrote down the conversation in which they had occurred, and how I had teased them apart with the lip-reader’s skill, so I could explain them to Mr. Bell after the summer vacation.
Unlike Adeline, Mama was thrilled with Mr. Bell’s request for my essay in The Pioneer. “I have told Mr. Ackers all about it,” she wrote, “and he insists that you ask Mr. Bell to send several copies to London once it is published. You must send a copy to Miss Roscoe too.” The thought of Mr. Ackers and Miss Roscoe thumbing their way through my essay opened pride in me like a stretched scroll.
One day I accompanied Joan to Quincy Market and she bade me wait in the Public Gardens while she called on an ailing aunt. I settled myself on a bench under some trees near the Lagoon. Nearby a group of people had gathered around a board which was mounted on a wooden stand. It read:
Frank McKinney, Silhouettist.
I am Deaf and Dumb.
Likenesses Taken.
Two cents each.
I stood up and came closer. The board was covered in hundreds of silhouettes, each one cut from black paper. I marveled at the jumping dogs, dancing girls, and the figures on bicycles, each thin wheel spoke evenly cut.
Their creator, Frank McKinney, stood five yards away, slightly apart from the group who had stopped to admire his work. He was a stockily built man, a few years older than myself, his hair longer than how most men wore theirs, parting at his crown in two waves. Shreds of black paper surrounded his feet, and more floated from the sheet he was holding, his fingers lightly locked in the bows of his surgical scissors. As they ducked around the paper, he kept glancing at four women who were posing in front of him. They stood in profile, their hands raised in comic gestures, as though they were acting out a pantomime, trying their best not to laugh as they held the pose.
When he finished, he opened up the silhouettes like a string of paper dolls, and the women flocked over to see. Frank smiled and took a bow for his work, and that set off laughter in the group. They left with the silhouettes, waving as they went.
I should have moved away, but my whole body felt turned in the direction of Frank, his silhouettes, the bold words “Deaf and Dumb” shining out from the board.
The clouds shifted from the sun and my shadow sprang across the ground. It shot toward Frank as if I was a sundial and he was the correct time. Noticing it, he looked up and raised a palm, indicating the tall stool where I might take my seat. With his other hand, he tapped the board, and the word, Likeness. Then he pointed at the stool again, his eyebrows lifting with his question. Was I interested in giving my custom? He picked up his scissors and waited, still smiling.
We were in a public place, and anyone might see us. I should shake my head and move on, pretending to be no more than another curious bystander intrigued by the mute silhouettist. Instead, I thanked him in signs. I told him I was no good at sitting still. Not even for a minute. But these—I fanned my hand at the silhouettes—were beautiful.
Surprise opened his face. The fingers of one hand were still laced into the scissors, so he signed on the other hand. He asked, Are you deaf or hearing?
Deaf, I replied, supposing that my signs must not have been very good for him to even ask the question.
He put his scissors away and came closer. Which school? he asked next.
I hesitated. Had he gone to one of the schools where they used the silent language? What would he think of the little oral School where it had been banned? I decided he probably wouldn’t know of it in any case, so I may as well tell him.
He patiently waited until I reached the last letter with my fingers then his smile flared like a struck match. I know that school, he told me. He gave his chest a gentle thump. Myself, Hartford. Do you know that one? Big school, everyone signing.
He puffed out his cheeks, spun his circling indexes, blew apart his arms to show the size of the school. His fingers sprang, even as his arms kept a sure tuck about the space in which his hands turned. His whole face moved with the meaning imported to his signing, whereas I knew my signs were strung together in a fashion that was too much like English.
I know Hartford, I signed. My mother wanted me to go.
Really? Why did she change her mind? He touched his forehead with his index finger then held his hands in front of him and switched their places.
I hesitated. I couldn’t think how to explain about Adeline and her views, although probably he was familiar with them. It is a good school, I replied.
He nodded. For speaking, he signed. Right? But before I could answer, he asked, Can you speak?
His eyes were direct on me, there was nothing in his face to show his question was anything other than asking for a fact to be made apparent.
Yes, I replied. But not clearly.
Frank turned the corners of his lips down, as if he was considering this.
I forget my manners, he signed, after a moment, spelling Manners on his fingers, a shadow of English slipping across them. What’s your name, he asked.
Ellen, I spelled back, before adding: Lark.
Morning bird, he signed. He flipped his hand up for morning, then turned his fingers into a snapping beak. Bird.
My sign-name, I told him, and showed him. It was the first time I’d used my sign-name since arriving in Boston, and I felt a skip in my chest to feel it on my hand again.
He tapped the board and flashed his name on his fingers. Frank McKinney. Then his palm struck out straight from his nose: the sign for frankness.
Are you? I asked. Frank?
He smiled and looked at me with the same directness as his hand slicing from his face. My heart capered like a gusted leaf. I smiled back and tried to consider him with an open equanimity like he was giving me. He was neatly dressed, in spite of the shreds of black paper caught in the laces of his shoes. His eyes were brightly brown, and there was a softness in his face that seemed to add up his features into a smiling aspect even when he wasn’t smiling. He stood steadily and his arms moved quickly, while his torso remained broadly facing forward, making small, decisive shifts with some of his signs. He was one of those people who looked as if he was always ready to present himself, even before he knew what or whom he was presenting himself to.
I knew I should leave. Joan would be back soon, and we would go on to Quincy Market. But his signs were such a draw on my eyes, it was like every muscle in my body was bending my attention to them, and I couldn’t move my feet away if I tried. And I liked the easy flip of his smile, and his unflinching manner.
He signed, Hearing people say deaf people are always too direct. But hearing people are the opposite, talking, talking, never being clear, wandering from the point. They say it’s a good thing. Yes, I’m frank.
I laughed. Same, I signed. People call me blunt, B-l-u-n-t, same.
He nodded. I’ve seen you here before. You’re always writing and walking, doing both at the same time. One day you’ll walk into a tree or a gaslight.
His signing showed me walking into a tree, then a gaslight, falling backward. I couldn’t help a second smile. His teasing made the space between us feel smaller, the sun hotter on my neck. I lifted my hands to tell him about the essay for The Pioneer but before I had a chance, we were surrounded by children. They were shouting Look and Shadow Man at each other. The younger ones tugged on Frank’s sleeve, raising their hands into what looked like duck beaks making Quacks.
What do they want? I asked Frank.
He spelled on his fingers: Shadowgraphs.
He flapped his hands at the children—All right, all right—and turned around his board so that the plain wooden backing faced the sun. Some of the children started jumping up and down, clapping their hands. Frank positioned himself between the sun and the board with his own hands raised. In quick flicks of his fingers and wrists, he deftly arranged a succession of handshapes. His palms open and interlocked were a dove’s wings, his fingers sticking up made a rabbit’s ears, or hanging down formed an ass’s tongue. He even took the toy telescope a child was holding, which became the tall hat of a speculator. The shadowgraphs hovered on the board and the children called out their names. They shouted Goose, and Bearded Goat, and Farmer, the last one being a man with the brim of his hat upturned.
Some of the children seemed to be shouting out requests, saying the same things over and over. The words were simple on their lips. Dog. Devil. But Frank just moved on to another shadowgraph. So I started spelling them for him: d-o-g, d-e-v-i-l.
His eyebrows lifted but he gave a small nod. He made a barking dog with a tooth in its jaw. Then a devil with a warty chin, hooked nose and long pointed ears.
We worked our way through a whole farmyard and fairy tale of characters. Finally, Frank stepped in front of his board, placing his whole body where the shadows had been. He swiped his hands through the air to show he was finished making shadowgraphs. Instead, he pointed out a tree, and made his arms wave, like the tree caught in the wind. The children looked very hard at the tree and then did the same. Next Frank pointed at a stage car that was rolling down the road. The children did their best imitation of that too, their arms shunting circles at their sides for the wheels. Frank was nodding—not bad, not bad—making a show of being impressed. He looked around, searching out something else for the children to copy.
Ah ha! His eyes lighting up. He pointed at a post which was about waist height. That, can you do that? His pointing finger asked the question. The children pulled themselves erect and stood as still as they could.
Perfect! Frank signed. The children grinned, but this made them wobble. Frank shook his head—No wobbling! He pulled himself up equally straight and made his eyes motionless at the distance. Soon the children were wobbling all over the place in fits of laughter. Frank slackened and waved his hand at them. The show was finished. His hand dropped away from his lips—thank you—and the children copied him. They ran off, still touching their fingers to their lips—thank you, thank you.
Frank turned to me. They liked that, he signed. You could understand them, he added. Lip-reading. You are good at that. Did they teach you at your school?
Every day, I replied, and grimaced to show him how I felt about all our ceaseless drills. Suddenly, I didn’t want to leave the Public Gardens. Could he tell? Smiles slipped between our glances, like the swans weaving on the Lagoon’s waters. Curls of giddy lightness unwound in me so I had to look away.
Frank started packing up his bags. He looked up as I dithered next to his board. Finished for the day, he told me. He pointed at me and made his face into a question. Which way are you walking? His flat palms walked like feet.
I pointed out the gate onto Tremont Street where I was meeting Joan. He turned over his two index fingers, tapped his chest. Same, he signed. I’ll escort you. He held out his left arm and rested his right hand in the crooked elbow where mine would go. Escort. But then he dropped his arm: he didn’t mean that I should actually take it.
Thank you, I replied.
We set off together, crossing over the bridge and wending through the flowerbeds. Do you mind the children? I asked, thinking of the parents that had also gathered, entertained by Frank and a simple idea of sign language as some sort of gestural spectacle.
He shrugged. I like children, he signed. Your family, he asked. You are the only deaf one?
Scarlet Fever, I was four, I told him, spelling out the illness that wiped sound from the world. I wanted to tell him more—about the snow, and how after the illness I didn’t know that I’d lost my hearing, only that I was constantly getting everything wrong. But my signs were muddled. I kept switching between spelling and hand shapes, and there was no fluidity in my meaning.
Frank nodded. I supposed he had guessed from the English shapes I was apt to put on my mouth that I wasn’t born deaf, just as I had guessed from his lack of lip-shapes that he was.
I asked him all the same, holding out my fist to him.
Born deaf, he signed. Three brothers, all deaf. Parents same. Uncle, aunts same. Actually, one aunt, she is hearing. My father is a teacher at the Hartford. Two brothers are also teachers.
His signing was faster again, there was pride on his face. I felt a scratch of panic that I wouldn’t be able to follow. Are you a teacher? I asked.
In Boston? He laughed. The only school here is an oral school.
O-R-A-L, he spelled and I dropped my eyes. At Miss Roscoe’s school we hadn’t questioned that our signs were complicit, hidden, even when Theresa Dudley told us about the deaf schools where everyone signed. I couldn’t imagine a whole family of deaf people, all signing.
I’m a printer, he added. He spelled out the words and followed with the signs: he had trained as a printer and bookbinder.
A bookbinder? My excitement must have showed because he laughed again. All deaf people same, he signed. Always writing, writing so hearing people can understand. Like you and your notebook.
He made the movement of a pen and hunched a shoulder to show me bending over my book as I wrote, while staring ahead, concentrating on a point in the distance, as the pen still hurried on. His eyes were tight and watchful, his hand flying from left to right.
My pride spilled through me, and I resisted his effort to make me smile. It wasn’t idle notebook-scrawling but important work for Mr. Bell. I told him, I’m writing an essay for a journal of science.
I wished that I was skilled enough to make my signs appear lofty but, as it was, I didn’t know the signs for either Essay, Journal or Science and had to finger-spell all three of them.
An essay? Frank made a sign I didn’t recognize. My temples were starting to ache from watching his signing so closely, but I couldn’t help making a note of it. An essay. That’s what I was writing. He looked impressed: I noted that readily too. What’s your subject? he asked.
I spelled out the title in full but I must have made an error because Frank frowned. So I just dashed my V-shaped hand in front of my lips.
Lip-reading? His head cocked backward, and his index finger snagged in the air by his temple. He still didn’t understand.
I started trying to explain about Mr. Bell, Visible Speech, The Pioneer, but I didn’t get far with the long string of my finger-spelling before Frank stopped me. Mr. Bell? he asked. You know him?
He made a sign like the ringing of a bell at his ear.
His sharpness surprised me. He’s my teacher, I replied and returned his question with an emphatic sealed fist in the air: did he know him?
He hesitated. I’ve met him a few times, he signed.
He looked preoccupied. We reached the Maid of the Mist and his gaze drifted through its watery plumes. I waited, but he didn’t explain. The easy mood between us puckered like cold skin, as if we’d stepped right into the fountain. What was his hesitation? Had Mr. Bell taught at the Hartford School? I supposed it was likely. Hartford wasn’t so far from here, it was one of the largest schools of its kind in the country and Mr. Bell’s methods were considered pioneering. It was likely he’d been invited once or twice. Did he not care for Mr. Bell’s methods? That seemed likely too.
I tried again to explain about my essay but there was too much in my head I wanted to say and too little in the repertoire of my body to match it with. I stopped and took out my notebook instead. Then I wrote that the purpose of the paper was to enable deaf people to study and therefore be aware of the most common homophenes that arise in speech—you might say the words that are likenesses of each other—to help limit the misunderstandings that so frequently occur for people of our situation.
I handed the notebook to Frank. Had I written too much? But his eyes quickly skimmed the text. He signed, Let me check I understand. You are writing an essay about how to speech-read?
I nodded firmly. He considered me, and signed, All deaf people are different, as if this concluded the matter.
A moment ago you said we were the same, I began, but I stopped when he stepped close leaving only enough space to make small signs. His gaze landed so heavily I felt as if everything I’d just been thinking was knocked away, leaving only the spidery lightness of one of his silhouettes.
Don’t tell Mr. Bell you saw me.
Plaintiveness stretched his gaze so his eyelids flickered. English questions went through my head. Why would I? Why shouldn’t I? But my English and my signs were all tangled, and I had no hope of deciding what it was I should say, let alone how to say it in the silent language. I nodded my head although I didn’t want to collude with his secretiveness.
Thank you, he replied.
We were both relieved when the children returned and started asking for more shadowgraphs. Frank went through his cycle of shadows, and I interpreted their requests, and by the time we were finished, the conversation about Mr. Bell was almost forgotten. When the children finally were gone, he walked me to the gate on to Tremont Street, where I would wait for Joan.
We stood for a few moments. This isn’t your gate? I asked.
No. He smiled. Goodbye. I’ll see you again, writing your paper.
But this time he didn’t imitate my fervent concentration and I wished he would so I might laugh and amend the turn our conversation had taken.
Goodbye, I signed and walked through the gate. My thoughts were a jumble of confusion. When I looked behind me, Frank was headed up the hill to the Common. By the Maid of the Mist the children were making shadowgraphs on their own. The sun was low in the sky and as Frank walked by the fountain, his own shadow briefly consumed their doves and speculators. They called and waved for him, but he didn’t turn back.
As summer wore on, I waited for Mr. Bell to write me about the new semester. I checked the boardinghouse’s letters every day, but there was nothing from Brantford. I began to wonder if I had dreamed Mr. Bell’s request. Eventually a note came from Miss Lance. My lessons, she informed me, had been moved to morning-times.
I stared at the note as sunshine spilled over the paper, and the white cloth of the breakfast table. The Day sisters turned to each other with knowing looks and Mr. Bell on their lips. All summer they had teased me about the essay and said it was like having a spy in the house because of how I wrote down everyone’s words. I gave up explaining about The Pioneer.
It’s from Miss Lance, I told them, trying to hide the fact I minded. But the Day sisters were right to see that I cared. My evening lessons with Mr. Bell had hardly felt like lessons at all. Our conversations had moved freely, or so I thought. I’d never talked to anyone in that way before, my mother aside. I still thought of the piano wire, and the feel of his voice in my fingertips, like his words had jumped right into me. Had I made up the whole thing? Mr. Bell hated mornings, and surely Miss Lance knew it. I remembered her warning that I ought to keep to Visible Speech in our lessons. Perhaps she was plotting timetables even at the stagecoach stop.
I folded away the note and returned to my toast. The Day sisters made their faces straight, as if in imitation of my own. Rhoda Day reached out to pat my hand. It was kindly meant, so I smiled at her. Then Mrs. Baylis arrived and started talking about some kind of Dazzle or Tassel which had either been Displaced or Displayed. At first I thought she meant the sunlight, and then the curtains as she crossed the room and fussed at the strings that replaced the broken tassels. The boardinghouse was starting to become shabby. I gave up trying to ascertain her meaning, but as I took out my notebook and wrote down these new homophenes, my resolve tightened. I would finish my essay for Mr. Bell, and he would publish it in The Pioneer, and it wouldn’t matter whether my lessons were morning or evening-times, he would be so pleased.
At the first lesson, Mr. Bell didn’t show up for a full fifteen minutes. Miss Lance felt beholden to wait with me. She sat in Mr. Bell’s chair with her hands folded in the skirts of her dress. It was a middling gray color that matched the middling brown shade of her hair so that in the dim classroom, it seemed a determined effort to blend the two colors into one. Her features were delicate and every now and then a quick smile would escape like a jet of released air, and you glimpsed an appealing prettiness. Her eyebrows lifted as she talked, as if she was making the biggest possible space on her narrow face for her words.
Mr. Bell is a night owl, she said. Night owl, she repeated when she saw my frown. Night. Owl. Someone who prefers the nighttimes.
Yes, I said, once I had grasped “Night.” I know what night owl means.
Mr. Bell, I thought, would never have confused my difficulty lip-reading a word with a lack of knowledge. But my abruptness only caused Miss Lance to give me a sympathetic smile. She straightened her face and then continued, Well, he is even more of a night owl these days, so he must cut back on his teaching.
Her face didn’t lend itself to expressiveness, especially while trying to speak steadily, but she attempted to convey just how much Mr. Bell needed to reduce his teaching load by scrunching up her cheeks and bringing her brows down. It was an awkwardness that brought Frank McKinney into my thoughts unbidden, and the natural liveliness of his face matched to his hands. But I pushed the thought aside, as I had done all summer. I’d not seen him in the Public Gardens again.
And I felt sorry for Miss Lance having to make excuses for Mr. Bell like this. She was never late for a lesson herself, and was always at the door to receive his deaf pupils as well as his other teacher-students. I pictured her studying hard into the night, same as myself, getting ever closer to her goal of becoming a fully qualified teacher. Did she talk to hearing people about her work with this same solemn expression? My impatience for Mr. Bell to arrive became even stronger.
So when she said something about inventing, I replied: I know about it. My words must have rushed out with ill-mannered roughness because she jumped. About what? she said, looking confused.
I hesitated. I was sure she was talking about Mr. Bell’s inventing work but Mr. Bell had told me not to tell a soul about the Harmonic Multiple Telegraph. She must mean his work in the Institute and the device for deaf people.
Before I could respond, Mr. Bell arrived. Miss Lance looked about as relieved as I felt. Guilt nudged at me for the hard time I’d given her, but it didn’t last long for Mr. Bell was smiling at us, and saying Good Morning and he was sorry to be so late.
I stood up to greet him, but Miss Lance started talking. She was speaking rapidly and he answered in the same way. His speech was a narrow muscular twitch within the panel of skin made by his beard. I watched as carefully as I could but none of his words would appear for me. Was this his normal speaking speed? Had I forgotten how to lip-read him over the summer? He didn’t look changed in any other respect. He wore more or less the same suit and hadn’t even acquired a suntan.
Finally, he sat down. You are the morning lark, he said, and his words were clear again. Calling me to my lessons.
Relief flooded me. I glanced at Miss Lance who was leaving the room. It was not my idea to have you rise so early, I said as carefully as I could.
He smiled, ruefully I thought, although I didn’t see why he couldn’t change the timetables himself. It was his school after all. How is your progress on the essay? he asked.
I have finished it, I said, feeling pleased to be able to tell him this. Then I said: I added the last homophenes last night. Quick and Wig.
Wig! he said. I knew about Wink, like a winking eye, but did not think about Wig.
The corners of his lips pulled wide on the vowel. As well as Wig, there was Wink and Wing and Wick, which all looked the same as Quick. I felt impatient for him to have the paper and fetched it from my bag. I could feel my smile trembling as I handed it over and wished it wouldn’t.
It is not only the homophenes, I told him. I wrote the essay like you asked. About how important context is for the lip-reader, and having a wide vocabulary—
I stopped because my voice was starting to feel loose, and I could see that familiar pinch of assessment in Mr. Bell’s eyes. He took the paper and read out the title. The Art of Speech-reading, he read, with a Survey of Homophenous Words in the English Language.
He looked up. By Miss Ellen Lark, he finished, keeping his eyes on me so that my own name felt like a crown he meant to place on my head. I look forward to reading it, he continued, but you will have to give me a week or two.
Of course, I said, but as he placed the paper on his desk, I couldn’t help the soft drop of disappointment like a coat slipping from an overloaded rack. I had pictured him reading it during our lesson, issuing the invite to the Institute there and then. The essay wasn’t so very long.
Mr. Bell was reaching for the notebook. His movements were slow, as if his sleeve was filled with stones. He looked as if he’d only woken up about five minutes earlier. My earlier annoyance at Miss Lance softened. If anyone was going to have the difficult morning lesson with Mr. Bell, I was glad it was me.
The following week Mr. Bell failed to turn up at all. He had told Miss Lance the day before that his headaches were too severe in the mornings. I watched Miss Lance convey this reason to me and explain that she would be teaching my lessons instead. I examined her face for any kind of satisfaction at the arrangement. Although Mr. Bell seemed prone to headaches, I didn’t believe this was solely his decision. But Miss Lance was focused on making her speech clear and kept her face neutral, although her pale eyes kept blinking above her careful mouth.
All through that lesson and the next four lessons with Miss Lance, I tried to keep up my spirits. After all, I knew the reason he was so busy. He had trusted me to understand his situation, so I tried to be understanding every time Miss Lance led me up the stairs. But her lessons were tiresome. She followed the Visible Speech primer exactly. She never wavered on the instructions or allowed detours. She took so much care chalking the symbols on the board, it was like watching someone arranging priceless china, so deliberately that you couldn’t help the searing temptation to rip away the tablecloth.
At the end of each class, she wrote a report of my progress for Mr. Bell. I could hardly bear to watch her writing it. She seemed determined to prove her teacherly credentials to Mr. Bell by delineating each of my difficulties. “Miss Lark struggles to produce accented syllables,” she wrote. I wanted to point out the symbols I was sure I’d mastered, but she already suspected me of being proud. That same pride made me sit still and say nothing as she listed my failings.
On around our fifth lesson, Miss Lance was about to take me upstairs when she glanced back at the door again. Her face was crosshatched with surprise. When she opened it, Miss Mabel Hubbard was waiting on the doorstep.
Am I late? Mabel asked as she stepped inside, noting Miss Lance’s concern. She saw me in the hallway and looked at Miss Lance who was resting her fingertips on her jaw and saying, Oh! I must have given you the wrong time.
I glanced at Mabel. It would be a long journey for her back to Cambridge whereas if I returned in the afternoon, Mr. Bell might be around. I said, I can come again later. It’s not far for me.
I smiled at Mabel but she was looking at me as if she was scrutinizing an outside scene from a window, trying to determine some distant detail. I was about to repeat myself when Miss Lance held up her hands. No, no, she said over the tops of her fingertips.
Mabel swiveled her head neatly. Even her confusion shivered with beauty as she turned between us and a ripple of shine went up and down her hair. Her thinking eyes made for a lively impression.
Miss Lance said, Today you can have your lesson together. Her eyebrows strained higher than ever.
I felt a knock of surprise. I supposed she didn’t want to turn one of us away over her error, but she had never suggested I meet any of Mr. Bell’s pupils before, let alone take classes with them.
Then she started saying something about a problem. There was a problem with the usual classroom. We needed a different room? We needed more chairs? She waved up the staircase and said, Go ahead. I will be one minute. Then she went down the corridor, presumably to fetch some item—was it chairs?—which I’d missed her telling us about.
I looked at Mabel. After you, I said, indicating the staircase. I didn’t want her to see I hadn’t understood Miss Lance and didn’t know where we had been instructed to go.
Mabel hesitated. She said, Please, you go first.
We gazed at each other for a moment and Mabel broke into a huge grin. I don’t know where! she said, making a shrug. Do you?
No, I replied, as friendly relief rushed through me. I have no idea.
Mabel craned her neck down the corridor, looking for Miss Lance. She shrugged again, then pointed at the staircase with a questioning face.
I smiled. After you, I said again, but with a mock sweep of my hand. This time she laughed.
We went up to the first landing where there were three closed doors. Mr. Bell’s room was another floor up. Mabel paused at the nearest door. Since there was no use in cocking an ear to listen, she knocked to give fair warning to the people inside, eased the door open, and quickly shut it again. Her smile wrinkled into a comic line as she shook her head gravely. Not that one! That one? And she pointed at the next door.
I saw her game. We would go through the whole building like this. I went over and knocked the same as she had done. Inside was a room full of Oratory students, their faces turned in shining rows with all eyes on me. The teacher must have left his post at the blackboard to open the door himself, because he stopped mid-room when I made my abrupt entrance. His lips moved with a question.
Sorry! I said, and my exclamation bounced in amongst all those faces like a ball, breaking the wall of expressions into a wash of surprise and disdain. I couldn’t help the rupture of a laugh as I turned to back to Mabel, who had a whatever-shall-we-do? smile on her own face.
The third door was locked so we ran up the next flight of the stairs, skipping Mr. Bell’s room. Then we tried the floor after that one, but each room was filled with students and teachers who varied from smiling to disgruntled on our interruption.
We were breathless and heaving with laughter by the time we reached the top floor. It appeared to be deserted, all the rooms empty but with no sign of Miss Lance’s things or evidence of being a Visible Speech classroom. Mabel dropped into one of the battered-looking chairs. I didn’t want to go back downstairs to Miss Lance, and she seemed equally disinclined. She said something, and it looked amusing, but I missed it. The rules of our game were gone, and we were in freer territory where she might be saying anything. I locked my eyes harder onto her words, feeling that old desperation inch up inside me. She repeated herself but it was no use.
I took out my notebook and offered it to her. To my relief, she took up the pen gamely enough. She wrote, “I expect Miss Lance is regretting not sending one of us home! She has lost both of us now.”
Another laugh jumped into my throat but I tried to seal it in with my mouth. I didn’t want to give Miss Lance any clues as to our whereabouts, although she was probably already on the trail of disgruntled professors. I sat down next to Mabel and took the notebook, never more grateful for the silence offered by the page.
“I was at Miss Roscoe’s school,” I wrote. “Your father visited it many times, I think.”
She frowned as she read my words so that I feared my stumble. Had my appeal to some kind of connection been too conspicuous? I wanted Mabel to like me. It was partly because of that lonely, unique feature of ourselves that we shared, but it was also because of the lively family life I pictured for her in her busy home in Cambridge. I couldn’t help the needling desire to glimpse something of it, when my own family had been so shorn. And weren’t we both Mr. Bell’s best pupils? I had even been chosen for sponsorship by the esteemed Mr. Ackers. In that respect, if not much else, we were equals. Mabel might be the better lip-reader, but Mr. Bell was going to publish me in The Pioneer. I wanted to tell her about the essay, but feared she would take it as a boast. And Mr. McKinney’s scorn still hovered in my mind although surely Mabel, unlike Frank, would approve.
“I don’t recall my father telling me about that one,” she wrote. “I had instructors at home although I went to school in Germany when we lived there.”
My disappointment that she didn’t know Miss Roscoe’s school, and had no need to know of it, vanished into the cloud of my astonishment. “A normal school?” I wrote back.
She smiled widely, evidently pleased, and wrote, “Yes, I learned to speech-read German.”
My astonishment didn’t abate. I stared at her, then finally was roused to take up the pen. My fear about boasting disappeared and my pen hurried across the page. “I am writing an essay,” I wrote, “on the art of speech-reading for Mr. Bell’s journal The Pioneer. Perhaps you could help me include some notes on acquiring second languages?” I paused, then added, “When I first saw you, you understood Miss Lance so easily I thought you were studying to be a teacher like her.”
But she only seemed mildly pleased at my invite. If anything, she pursed her mouth slightly as if she was tasting a sour flavor. “Miss Lance talks to us like we are ‘cases,’ don’t you think?” she wrote. “Whenever I meet a teacher of the deaf, I watch them to see if that is what they are thinking.”
I looked at Mabel with her treacle hair pooled across her shoulders and her eyes emanating the same velvet warmth as the chair’s fabric. Hidden pride glinted inside her, and I knew it was the same as my own. It was the endless tug and pull between not wanting to be a “case” and knowing that you needed special consideration and should be grateful for it.
“Mr. Bell doesn’t talk to us like that,” I wrote.
Mabel smiled. “No, he doesn’t. He talks about so many things, it is hard to keep up! Sometimes I think his classes are harder even than German, but much more fun. I’m always sorry when we must turn back to Visible Speech. Do you know he is only twenty-nine? I thought he was at least thirty-five.”
I read her words slowly. She might have been writing about my own lessons with Mr. Bell. But how did she know his age? Twenty-nine was still many years our senior, but she seemed to think it was significantly less. And what were the various “fun” things he talked to her about, and was it the same as what he’d discussed with me? For a moment, I struggled to write anything back. I didn’t want to lose this mood of commonality between us but my desire to tell her what passed between myself and Mr. Bell, and have her tell me the same, was flaring inside me.
“I didn’t know that,” I wrote, “but Mr. Bell and I also keep our study of the symbols brief. In fact, I believe soon we shan’t even have lessons in the classroom anymore. I am to accompany him to the Institute of Technology in connection with my essay.”
As soon as I handed the words over I regretted them. I had harbored his promise all summer, not even mentioning it to Adeline or the Day sisters when they teased me. Now I realized it had sustained me in the manner of a secret. Mabel’s politely impressed smile didn’t seem worth having relinquished it.
“There is something I’ve always wondered about Visible Speech,” she wrote. “It is fine if you have the symbols to read in front of you, but when it comes to the things you want to say yourself, you must try to remember what your words look like in symbols before you speak them. But how can you do that for every single word in a dictionary?”
Mr. Bell’s first demonstration crept back to me like a stray dog I’d been trying to ignore. The best part, he’d told everyone while indicating his three pupils, is that they don’t even know they’re saying words at all.
But Mr. Bell was going to publish my words.
I started writing, “At least with Visible Speech—” when Miss Lance appeared at the top of the stairs. Her cheeks were pink, and she was saying something about having disturbed every professor in the building.
I closed my book and Mabel stood up. Her smile was winning. She said, We got lost!
Miss Lance gazed at her. Her disbelief at our misdemeanor twitched into hesitation. She couldn’t reprimand us, Mabel in particular. Her eyes lingered on Mabel, trying to fetch up a smile, and I couldn’t help my prickle of envy. It was evident that Mabel was the star pupil as far as she was concerned.
Well, this way, she said, waving her hand, and we followed her down the stairs.
The new classroom—which turned out to have about twenty chairs in it—was in one of the rooms with a stiff latch that we’d mistaken for locked. The rest of the hour followed much like any of my lessons, although I paid more attention to my companion’s reckoning of Miss Lance’s tiny and precise symbols than I did my own. Throughout the lesson, Mabel sat perfectly still and upright. She scarcely demurred, the symbols causing her no effort.
As the lesson dragged on, I felt our conversation among the sunlit dust motes of the School of Oratory’s upper reaches slip away. The symbols clustered at my eyes like tiny dark weights, trying to pull me under. Mabel waited patiently until Miss Lance finally said to me, Yes, that’s it, and then she smiled, and I saw she meant to be encouraging.
After the lesson finished, we went downstairs past the closed classroom doors and Mabel sneaked me a smile, recalling how we’d knocked on them all. At the front door, Miss Lance took out her notebook, perhaps fearing another misunderstanding, and wrote, “I will write to you with new times. Mr. Bell is only teaching afternoons at the moment.”
Mabel looked at me and said, I do not mind the mornings.
I gazed at Mabel. Had I seen her meaning correctly? She would choose a lesson with Miss Lance over one with Mr. Bell? Doubt plowed through me. Did her lessons with Mr. Bell not matter very much to her? Was her own life full enough in spite of what she lacked? I felt a hot rub of shame that I had made so many boasts to her when no doubt she had seen plainly my loneliness shining through each one. Surely she had plenty of her own friends, and they were hearing people of a similar standing to her family. My thoughts turned black: her kindness to me had been like hearing people’s kindness.
Miss Lance pursed her lips then glanced at me. I guessed her dilemma. She disapproved of the carefree style of Mr. Bell’s lessons with me, but would prefer to have Miss Hubbard as her own pupil in the mornings. After a moment, she nodded. All right, she said. Miss Hubbard in the mornings, Miss Lark in the afternoons.
I kept my nod functional to show simply that I’d understood the arrangement.
Mabel turned to me to say goodbye, since her stagecoach stop was different to mine. I was surprised to see that she looked anxious, her smile trembling into carefully modulated words. I watched her mouth, hoping to find some expression of her pleasure, or desire for us to meet again. Whatever she had said, Miss Lance didn’t feel the need to relay it to me. She took her favored pupil’s elbow, and they went off in the opposite direction.
In our next lesson, Mr. Bell hardly looked better for it being past the lunch hour. His smile barely lifted the moon-colored hang of his cheeks. His eyes were small, shadows circled them. I couldn’t help my concern. As we took our seats, I asked, How goes the night owl?
Mr. Bell laughed. Is that what Miss Lance calls me? he said. Well, I really must congratulate her. She has been doing a marvelous job. Then he said, I’m sorry I haven’t been able to teach you. The night owl is not as bright as the morning lark, it’s true.
I smiled, and wished I had some words of reassurance, although it looked like what he needed most of all was a proper night’s sleep. Truthfully, I was also relieved to see his exhaustion. Miss Lance was right. He was working hard into the small hours, and it was no wonder he had been unable to take my lessons in the morning. Here he was, exhausted, and yet smiling at me as well as he could manage.
The morning lark, I told him, advises going to bed at sundown.
He shook his head, made a scoff. I have too much to do, he replied.
Let me help you, I said. The question was out before I’d even thought about what I meant.
Help me? he asked, and his look of genuine surprise sank into me like teeth.
Well, I said, trying to brush aside my hurt and meaning to remind him that in actual fact he had already asked for my help with The Pioneer. I took out my notebook because suddenly my voice was feeling unsteady. “I am very thorough at copy-work,” I wrote. “Every week you have to write out the Visible Speech exercises for your pupils and there are so many new pupils this semester.” I paused before adding, “There is also my work for The Pioneer.”
Mr. Bell looked like he had forgotten my essay altogether. He read my words once, then nodded as he appeared to read them through again. I waited, my breath feeling bundled in my chest.
I’m sorry, he said. I haven’t had time to read it yet.
His eyes were settled gravely on me as if to slide along his apology, but it felt instead like a small shove.
Of course, I said, feeling my lack of other options. I understand, I added effortfully, and made a silent farewell to all the carefully collected accounts I had hoped to discuss with him. Of Cold and Gold, Tassel and Dazzle.
Good! he said. I will read it as soon as I can, he added. This week, I expect.
The prospect of our Visible Speech drills loomed toward me. Is it the Telegraph, I tried in an attempt at deflection, that keeps you up all hours?
Ah, he said. As a matter of fact, yes. He began talking, but his speech was faster than usual. I watched his words carefully, but every time I managed a few, more would rush along and knock them from my grasp. I saw Telegraph and Harmonic, because I knew to expect them, given my question. There was something about the summer vacation and a voice. A human voice. But his words slipped and slipped, and the more they fell away from me, the more I became distracted by the idea that most of the time I could understand him because he talked to me like I was a “case,” as Mabel said all teachers of the deaf did. Or was it just the summer vacation? Had the summer made him forget our way of speaking? Or had my eyes fallen out of practice? These thoughts ballooned in my mind until there was no room at all to concentrate on his lips.
Mr. Bell, I said. Please. You are talking very fast.
My request seemed to spin around us in the long pause that followed. He frowned as if he was the one who didn’t understand. I said, Just a little bit slower. I am quite tired today, although I’d slept perfectly well the night before. Then I watched the awfulness of his expression gathering, as if now he remembered who I was: a pupil, a deaf girl, someone with whom he could not talk naturally or freely. I was like any one of his other pupils, in fact, whom he must take through a carefully prepared lesson. I wanted to say No, he only had to talk like before, and then we could discuss the Telegraph to our hearts’ delight. But it was too late to take my request back, and the truth was stark enough: I had not a clue what he was on about.
He took up the notebook, and I didn’t know if I felt relief or disappointment that he had to resort to it. “I have this headache,” he wrote. “It’s because I can’t keep to normal hours like most people.”
I nodded. Again, I opened my mouth. What was I going to say? Mr. Bell, it must be terribly hard. You must rest more. The morning lark wins out, you must rise before ten. I tried to think of all the people I had seen making heart-to-hearts and imagine the responses that tipped from one heart to another, and the kind of thing that should tip from mine.
What I said was this: Mr. Bell, did you know that Pain has thirteen homophenes?
He blinked. It does? What are they? he asked.
Pain, I said then wrote down the rest, starting with Bait and Maid.
To my surprise, he laughed. Thirteen! he said. You found thirteen. Miss Lark, I must apologize. I do declare, he said, that thirteen is a triumph. I’ll write it for you. “Triumph.” Here are the symbols. Triumph. Say it with me. Triumph!
A triumph, I said. I liked how the long “Tri” of the first syllable ended with a firm thump of air on the lower lip, as if a decisive victory had been awarded for one’s efforts. Triiii-umph, I said again.
A triumph. Do you know, Miss Lark, what I do when something is a triumph?
I shook my head.
Please stand, he said. Do you promise not to laugh?
Laugh? I said. I won’t laugh.
Good, he said. Now please stand.
I cautiously rose to my feet.
We shall commence a war dance.
A war dance? I asked, taking a chance on what I’d seen, since the words also looked like Audience.
A war dance, he repeated, and reached for the notebook. “I learned it from an Indian man who lives near my parents’ home in Canada. A fine fellow. Now, I want you to follow me.”
I got up and followed Mr. Bell around the room, crouched low, stamping from foot to foot. At first, I felt foolish, but soon in spite of myself I was laughing, like I said I wouldn’t. Even the walls of the room seemed to reverberate with the shared stamping of our timely feet. My body filled with the shake of the floor and the room, and with the laugh in my chest, and his laugh too.
When we came to a pause, and I’d straightened up, Mr. Bell was looking grave. He wrote, “I told you not to laugh, Miss Lark.” He looked so stern that cold worry rose up my back until the corners of his smile puckered. You have a rare talent, he said.
For speech-reading?
For dancing!
I have never done a war dance before.
You dance like you have won many battles. He took the notebook again, and wrote as if he was making a formal invitation. “Miss Lark, would you come to the Institute of Technology with me? I would like to show you some equipment I am developing to help the deaf. This is not the Telegraph, but the other aspect of my work. I would appreciate your opinion.”
Should I point out that he had already promised a visit? He was making this invite sound like the first. But perhaps it was an expanded gesture to compensate for failing to read my essay. That hardly mattered now, I thought, if he wished for me to go to the Institute. He would get to my essay in the fullness of time. For now, he wished for more direct advice, outside the confines of our lessons.
I said, I shall check with my grandmother. This time next week?
I didn’t think Adeline would approve of me going to the Institute of Technology. What place did a young woman have in those halls? She decried anything that fell outside of her narrow jurisdiction, but if I went in place of my lesson, she’d have no way of knowing.
Perfect, he said. Your lesson will be my lesson.
I laughed. For one hour, I said, I will be your teacher.
Exactly that.
As I was leaving the school, Miss Lance asked me, What was all that noise? I couldn’t help seizing her hands and squeezing them, as if vestiges of Mr. Bell’s war dance still possessed my wrists and fingers. She looked quite taken aback, more so when I said, in perfect Visible Speech: A triumph!
That’s what the noise was, I told her. A triumph.