on, I’d catch up later. For some reason I’m not in the mood for socializing right now.
It’s all your fault, you know. I didn’t realize how much I needed you until this long time apart. Oh, I knew that we liked spending time together. But I’d always thought that was just normal sister stuff and that we’d grow up and get over it. What I didn’t know was that you were my rock. You ARE my rock! When I started at college and everything was a whirlwind with so many people and things to do I figured the confusion was just part of the experience. You throw about a million kids together and stir them all up with a big spoon and you’re going to get some craziness. Boy, are you going to get some craziness. But then when the dust clears you wonder who it is that’s looking back at you in the mirror. Is she that girl with the bloodshot eyes who can’t remember where she slept last night? Is that who she’s become or wants to be?
And then I saw you behind me with that stupid knowing and patient smile that always drove me crazy but I then realized was my backstop. All my life I could do foolish and impulsive things and you’d be there to catch me and pick me up and dust me off and tell me it was O.K. even when sometimes it wasn’t. And where were you now, when I needed to be picked up and dusted off? I’d even let you put some make-up on me. Do you have anything that will hide the shadows under my eyes?
I wish I could bum a ride home and we could get in the station wagon and go out to the mill and just sit and talk the way we used to. I’d drink my peppermint schnapps or sweet red wine and you’d politely decline each time I offered it to you. And we’d get it all figured out.
Well, isn’t that a fine how do you do—tears making this stupid ink run! But don’t worry. You know old Brooke—if there’s one thing she’s good at doing, it’s picking herself up and getting on with life!
I can’t wait to see you—just one week from tomorrow! We’ll have a great time! If it’s sunny, bring a bathing suit. We’ll lie out on the Quad and make all the guys drool!
Hope everything went well with Paul. Can’t wait to hear about it. And let’s talk about that Jamestown trip. I have some ideas on how to break it to Momma.
Your spend-Friday-night-in-her-room
Brooke (and happy for the peace and quiet)
September 25
Dear Brooke,
I am sorry I was not there with you Friday. I cannot believe you would have let me put make-up on! If I had known that, I would have walked to Center.
I will not ask what happened Thursday night, but it sounds like it got a little wild. I hope things have calmed down since then. Have you made any friends you can talk to? Letters are good, but the response time is a little slow. Should we try smoke signals? That might work faster. (Guess you can see I am thinking a lot about my Pocahontas paper!)
Paul did finally sit at my table—on Monday (he was not in school Friday). What a fiasco! He approached with his lunch tray and looked to me for permission to sit, as if I owned the table (come to think of it, maybe I do—squatter’s rights!) I did my best to keep from blushing (though I’m afraid I probably turned bright red) and nodded. He sat down and glanced up for just a second then started jabbering away in rapid-fire words and got a little flustered and looked down at his food but kept on talking. I think he knows I am deaf and knows he is supposed to talk slowly and at my eyes but like every other kid in the school he cannot make himself do it. I was doing my very best to follow what he was saying but maybe got every fifth word and of course nothing made sense. He looked up briefly a couple times and my attentive expression must have made him think I was really interested and following so he promptly looked down again and continued his monologue. At some point I caught the words Mr. Jensen—you know, the gym teacher—and then I swear he said “farted.” Even though I knew I must have been mistaken, I could not get the word out of my mind and had this picture of Mr. Jensen leading gym class farting! And that image set me to giggling and I could not stop no matter how many sad things I tried to think of. I attempted to keep the giggles down in my throat, but then they would accumulate and burst out even worse. At some point Paul looked up again. He had gone on quite a while after I started giggling, so I guess I suppressed the sounds fairly well or he was truly oblivious. When he saw me laughing, he assumed I was laughing at him and got confused and hurt and clammed right up. I shook my head and tried to explain, first with eye contact, then with signs but neither got through. So I leaned over to get my pad and pen from the book bag; but when I looked up he was gone, headed for the dirty dishes window then out the door. Poor boy did not even get to eat his lunch. I thought about chasing after him, but what would I do? How could I explain that a word I thought he said but probably did not say had launched me into a giggle fit? That would have really made a good impression! And then of course I would have to tell him the word. How do you sign “farted?” (Do not answer that—it is a rhetorical question!)
Telling you now it all sounds pretty funny. Nothing seems as bad after I tell good old Brooke. I saw him at lunch and in the halls a few times the last two days. Each time he avoided my eyes, but I think it was more in embarrassment than in anger. I could be wrong, but nothing I have ever seen about Paul suggests anger or coldness. I think now he feels I am not worth the effort—after those weeks of building up the courage to have it end so badly.
And maybe he is right. I am not worth the effort. I do not say that out of self-pity but in simple acknowledgement of the complex demands of human relationships. I had never thought much about friendships while I was at Susan Sartor. We were all in the same boat, shared so much in common before we even met that we immediately had something to build on. And of course I had you. From my earliest memories we had each other. We did not have to try or think about it.
But now in a big public school with such a wide variety of people each with their own background and hopes and needs, I realize how complicated relationships are. And of course no one there has my particular set of conditions. But what I also know is that my deafness does not make me as different as everyone assumes. I am not a different species! (No comment, Brooke! On second thought, comment requested—am I different species? If so, what am I?)
At least I do not think of myself as a different species. I always fit in with you. I know I’m different, but only as different as everyone else is different. Those differences could be fun. They could be interesting. They do not have to be awkward or embarrassing. But the chasm seems so wide now, and part of it is my fault. I have not yet learned how to approach people and break through those initial differences to get to the common ground. And here Paul makes the effort to bridge that gap and I have a giggle fit! Maybe it is as bad as I first thought. Maybe it is worse.
I cannot wait to see you this weekend. Knowing the next time we communicate will be in person (FINALLY!) will help me get through the next two days. I am counting down the hours, the minutes, and the seconds.
With her eye on the clock, your forlorn sister,
Leah
Brooke was waiting in the shade of the portico when Momma dropped Leah off in front of the dorm promptly at ten on Saturday morning. As she emerged from that shade into the bright sun and strode quickly to the loading/unloading curb where they’d parked, she looked to Leah so much older and more confident that she didn’t seem her sister—or, more accurately, seemed to be someone else in her sister’s body. From the letters, and given the time of day and day of the week, Leah expected a bleary-eyed sister at the least, more likely a tardy one needing to be roused by a suitemate to tend to the weird deaf girl standing in their doorway that she’d reached only through handwritten pleas to sympathetic undergrads—I’m deaf. Please help me find my sister who lives in this dorm.
Leah knew this imagined scenario was just that—imaginary. Brooke would be there, however disheveled or rumpled; and if she weren’t, Momma would make sure and find her before leaving Leah. Still, the waif scenario was telling of how insecure Leah had grown in the month since they’d given Brooke farewell hugs at just this spot. At t
he time, everyone, Leah included, had fretted over how Brooke would adjust to her new environs and demands and freedoms. No one, not even Leah, had worried about the other Fulcher sister and the big changes facing her.
No one, that is, except Brooke. She knew Leah better than Leah knew herself. And she knew Leah’s confidence and self-possession, well-groomed over many years, was largely dependent on familiarity with her surroundings and situations. To be sure, she could extend that grace and calm into unexpected challenges, as she had many times—with Brooke as the most frequent benefactor. But these were always short-term trials, where Leah’s determination and composure were more than adequate to the task. But her sister was not of infinite self-confidence, and the big challenge for her would come in the slow ebbing of this resource, as in the daily turned into weekly benign neglect of her public school classmates, neglect that would eventually come to feel like rejection. Leah, boosted and affirmed by her family and friends since birth, had never experienced such grinding indifference and isolation, and would have to figure out on her own how to deal with it.
Well, not entirely on her own. She still had a big sister who cared