My father had an older sister. Her name was Betty Lou. When Betty Lou was five years old, she tumbled down the wooden stairs, hitting her head and breaking something in her ears.
Everything went quiet.
Nonhearing children did not attend hearing schools, so Aunt Betty stayed home and remained very much a child. Finally, as a teenager, she was sent to a boarding school for the deaf, and there she learned something that changed everything.
Sign language.
Still, tradition insisted that to succeed in the hearing world, Aunt Betty would need to speak words, not sign them. Her family was discouraged from learning to sign as a way to force Aunt Betty to read lips and form words with her mouth. As a little girl, I struggled to understand the raw, broken sounds that were supposed to be words, so it was easier to pretend I knew exactly what Aunt Betty was saying.
It was easier still not to talk to her at all.
I was a nine-year-old kid, bike riding with my girlfriends one crisp, fall afternoon. Our meandering route took us by Grandma’s house where she lived with Aunt Betty, who happened to be sitting on the porch as we biked by. I tried pedaling faster, but Aunt Betty ran to greet me, making sounds I didn’t understand and using hand gestures that meant nothing.
I knew she wanted me to stop, but my friends were already a half a block away. So, I kept going, holding up one finger and saying what I believed she wouldn’t hear anyway.
“I’ll be right back.”
I arrived home just before the street lights flickered on, and my mother was waiting for me with a grim look on her face. Why, she wondered, would I tell my aunt that I would do something and then not do it? Aunt Betty had walked to town, bought ice cream for me, then walked back home and waited. She waited and waited and waited.
I could just see sweet Aunt Betty waiting with ice cream and childlike enthusiasm for someone who never came. I considered her life: a girl who never really grew up, a woman who lived in a world without sound, a world where no one spoke her language. Aunt Betty had always been part of my life, but I had never taken time to be a part of hers.
I was so ashamed.
The next day, I went to the library and checked out a book on sign language. I practiced and practiced until I had the alphabet memorized. When I was ready, I rode to Grandma’s house and found Aunt Betty sitting outside, as if she were still waiting for me.
I stepped on the porch and took a deep breath, my hand carefully signing the words I thought would say everything I couldn’t.
“I brought ice cream.”
Her uncontrolled shriek almost broke my ear drums, and I remember thinking that this time, Aunt Betty didn’t need words. Her tears and joyful noises said everything she needed to say.
Everything I needed to hear.
I never learned to sign with any speed, but from Aunt Betty, I learned more than my hands could ever say. With just those few signed words, a door opened between us, and for a young girl, a window opened to the world. It was the first time I’d ever walked in someone else’s shoes, the first time I’d stopped to listen with another’s ears and speak with another voice.
The first time I realized how much Aunt Betty loved ice cream.
LORRY MYERS
SORRY SIGNER
This article was originally published in the October 2020 issue of Missouri Life.
