March 2024
Bio Note: Born and adopted in Luxembourg with my deaf twin sister, I grew up cherishing every moment that we spent together. I mourned the loss of Renée, in a sense, when she left to attend a residential school for the Deaf at age twelve, and again when she suffered a life-changing injury a few years ago. As well as to celebrate our twinhood, writing poems has helped me to process loss, and a collection appears in my newly-released second memoir in verse entitled Echoes in My Eyes (Kelsay Books, 2024), available on Amazon.
Handheld Voices
Four tiny, identical hands
sculpted a language without sound,
rich with revelations, exclamations, declarations,
and the curious questions of hearing impaired twins in three countries.
No practicing of hard and soft consonants
and no exchanging of short and long vowels
slipped through chapped lips
and rolled on fruit punch-stained tongues
while handling wooden blocks and stacking plastic rings.
A hearing family’s throated language
did not hop and bop in the girls’ mouths
or sweeten and spice their shared space.
There were no ma-mas and da-das
or verbal declarations of mine!
that romped in the company of grown-ups.
Instead,
fingers wiggled,
thumbs folded,
knuckles bent,
tendons flexed.
Palms opened and closed, like oysters,
to reveal
precious pearls
of concept and emotion;
to shape,
to hone,
to reveal a language
known only to two.
The excited exclamation, I have an idea!
sprang from a small, erect index finger
with raised auburn eyebrows
and a smacking of lips spreading into an impish grin.
Four consecutive twists of the wrist
with curled three-year-old fingers
holding an invisible soup can
translated to: Time to go to the food store with Mommy.
Shopping at a bustling market,
a mother plucked items from the shelves—
such as a dented can of Campbell’s soup—
and with a bangled wrist twist,
turned one over to locate the price on the bottom.
For nearly seven years, before touching down
in the land of American Sign Language,
communication existed
within a world of unique invention,
untouched,
unlearned
by a hearing family
with ignorant sight.
The girls used their native language
while chewing meals at the dining table,
muted only during the spooning of tomato soup
and the cutting of roast pork with dull knives.
A faded photograph
snapped by the wife of a fisherman
of murmuring mountain streams
named Daddy
captured twins in identical striped outfits
sitting cross-legged on a manicured lawn
with a pile of freshly caught rainbow trout
nestled in the grass between them.
Frozen in time is a moment when inspiration struck one,
as evidenced by a tiny finger in the air,
a head cocked to the side,
and lips parted in an inspired smile.
What did four-year-old girls wearing pigtails
tied with pink and white ribbons
wish to do with a half-dozen dead fish in the waning summer sun?
Only two in the world knew.
Meanwhile, a fisherman and his wife
chatted beside them.
One held a camera in her hands,
and one held a fishing rod in his.
Four hands,
shamefully
empty.
Originally published in Echoes in My Eyes (Kelsay Books, 2024).
What Did They Say?
Your twin sister is retarded, the teenage neighbor boy
sneers over the picket fence.
What did he say? your grass-stained four-year-old hands
sign to me between somersaults.
He’s mad because he can’t do a somersault
as good yours, I tell you,
and lead you to the peeling swing set
on the other side of our house.
When you go in to fetch us cans of Hawaiian Punch,
I run to the fence and spit at his inky shadow through a narrow slat.
On another day, a gangly blond girl
who lives three doors down the street
points at you and shouts retard
as we pedal gleaming new bikes with training wheels—
mine with a white wicker basket
and yours with red, white, and blue streamers—
down the sidewalk past her porch.
What did she say? you sign beside me
with one hand off the handlebar.
She likes your streamers, I sign.
When you turn your head
to look at a squirrel that has caught your eye,
I show the gangly blond girl a lone finger,
like I had seen grown-ups do sometimes when they were mad.
Months later, when it is time to enroll us in kindergarten
in a new country, grown-ups separate us
because they say I will help you too much
if we are in the same classroom.
No one signs in your new classroom;
everyone is hearing.
We, at least, ride the school bus home together.
You tell me every day: I don’t know what they say.
We play “School” every day when we get home
with our Fisher Price desk and a slate with blue chalk.
I arrange magnetic letters of the alphabet
and count with colored beads I put into piles
to teach you what I learn in my classroom—every single day.
Now it’s your turn, I tell you.
Pretend you are Teacher
and teach Owl the same things I just taught you.
Nearly two years later, in another country again,
we find our second new school—
this one with one classroom for deaf students—
and grown-ups test you when we enroll.
She learned much more than one would have expected, they say.
They speak of your intelligence and your capability.
And I tell you
…what they say.
Originally published in Echoes in My Eyes (Kelsay Books, 2024).
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