He uncrosses his arms and signs, “Harrumph.” He makes a fancy movement with his left hand to indicate French people. Like many Americans, he considers himself superior to Frenchmen.
She starts signing again. “One gentleman named Laurent really impressed Daniel. It wasn’t just his signs, but his facial expressions. He performed famous scenes in history—like the storming of the Bastille during the French Revolution—with a few hand signs and a lit-up face that showed every emotion. Visitors who knew no sign language could guess what he was talking about.”
After what I learned in Boston, the idea that a school attracts the deaf from all over their country, possibly all over the world, and gathers them for education is astounding. To think of all those deaf people, with stories so very different from mine, gathered in one place. I feel greedy to share in their stories, and to tell mine!
Miss Hammond signs, “In all Daniel’s travels, he says our island and the school in Paris are the only two places he’s seen sign language. He’s visited places where one family has created simple hand signs to communicate with a deaf relative in the home, but no other places where everyone speaks the same signs.
“Though I’ve read that the Plains Indian Nations, like Crow and Cheyenne, use a complex sign language,” she adds. “Not just for trading between tribes, but for storytelling and everyday conversation too. I understand most of them are not deaf.”
“True?” I ask Papa.
“I suppose so,” Papa says.
Miss Hammond signs, smiling, “On my honor as a schoolteacher.”
I turn to Mama and ask, “You think we will have a deaf school in America soon?”
“I expect so,” she replies.
“If children go there from the Vineyard, will they forget island sign language?” I wonder.
Papa signs, “I don’t imagine that will happen.”
I can’t hear Grandmother Harmony’s clock on the mantelpiece, but I see that it is growing late. Mama rises, signaling to everyone.
Mr. Pye and Miss Hammond leave together. They offer Ezra Brewer a ride, but he’d rather walk. “Don’t worry about me,” he signs, tucking Yellow Leg back under his coat. “I’ll follow the stars.”
Papa will drive Nancy home. He taps me on the shoulder. I turn around to face them both.
“Bid farewell to your friend,” he tells me. “She’ll be leaving first thing in the morning.”
I hold up my hand to indicate that I will return quickly. I run to the desk in my room. I bring out the map of memories and place it in her hands.
“Don’t forget!” I sign broadly as Papa drives her away.
“Never!” she signs, looking back. Then she’s gone.
I realize too late I forgot to ask her the whereabouts of Grandmother Edith’s teapot. But I expect her to return to the Vineyard one day. None of us can stay away forever.
Before I climb into bed, I peer into the looking glass and try to tell the story of the Boston Massacre with only my face. My eyes just look wild, my expression comical. The Frenchman Miss Hammond described must be a magician.
Lying under my new blanket, my mind is full of ideas.
I feel hopeful that men like Laurent will come to America with their Paris sign language. If people in Boston and the other colonies see them as teachers and great thinkers, maybe they won’t disparage the deaf anymore. If I changed Dr. Minot’s mind about the deaf, imagine what deaf scholars could do.
But what will that mean for our close-knit community in Chilmark?
It’s late. I yawn and snuggle under my blanket. As I do, a bedtime story comes …
Once upon a time, I travel across the land at incredible speed, day and night, through cold and heat. I can’t see where I’m going, but the place is familiar when I get there.
There are people signing. I recognize some of the signs; others I cannot easily decipher. At first, it’s a confusing babble of hands. Then we begin to teach one another.
Our signs blend together to make one sign language. We keep what is unique to the places we came from. We light a beacon.
Deaf children, who can’t communicate with their families and believe there is no one else like them, find us. We accept them, no matter where they come from. We take them in, even if they are angry or hurt.
I see myself in a tall stone building, looking out the window in a classroom. A stone bench in a courtyard is covered with autumn leaves and then powdery snow and then dogwood flowers. I am a student in a deaf school, and then I am a teacher.
My hair fades and ages, like the leaves in a book. Others take my place and write their own stories. They read the book I wrote and say, “That’s how it was on their island. It is different now. But they came before. They helped us to become who we are. We won’t ever forget them.”
A NOTE ON THE LANGUAGES
I am Deaf. I do not speak Martha’s Vineyard Sign Language (MVSL). People have tried to preserve the language, but it has never been fully documented. The last native speaker, Katie West, died in 1952.
I am a fluent speaker of American Sign Language (ASL) and because MVSL influenced the development of ASL, I have used variations of ASL signs to describe some MVSL signs. As a child, I used home signs or gestures created by my family. Those signs also influenced the sign descriptions in this book. In other words, I used the sign languages I know to create the sign language in this book.
Throughout the story, I tried to highlight the differences between sign language and spoken language. In a few scenes, I chose to show readers that sign languages have their own construction that differs from English. I wanted readers to experience a flavor of
