Give Me a Sign(46)
Ethan pulls into a dimly lit lot that’s in the middle of nowhere. There’s a small brick building, no larger than our dining hall, with nothing else around but trees. Yet a few other cars are in the parking lot.
Simone is visibly relieved when we tumble out of the van. “Thank God —— any oncoming traffic,” she says loudly.
“Maybe I’ll drive home,” Bobby suggests. “With you guiding me.”
She grabs his arm and leads him into the bar through a doorway that’s propped open with a brick. A tilted neon sign hanging in the grimy window says Freddy’s.
I follow everyone into the establishment, wanting to catch up to Isaac, who’s at the front of our group with his friends. This place is quiet. There’s a bartender, who looks like she teaches third grade by day, and a small table of men with long white hair, which they’ve tied back into ponytails beneath their trucker hats. On his way to get another drink, one of the guys stops near us at the bar and says something to Mackenzie.
But Mackenzie shakes her head and signs, “No, I’m okay. Later, man.”
Does she not realize we’re not at camp anymore? Why is she signing to this random guy?
He scrunches up his face, notices everyone in our group is also signing, then shrugs and walks back to his buddies with his drink. Mackenzie lets out a sigh of relief.
“Why’d you do that?” I drag out my sign for the word “why” to emphasize my confusion.
“I’ve found it’s the easiest way to get guys at bars to back off,” she explains, obviously proud of her life hack.
But I push back. “How so?”
“They don’t think it’s worth the effort.”
Wow. To Mackenzie, sign language is a skill to get followers on YouTube and use whenever it’s convenient for her. She’s trying to use it as a deterrent, when in reality a disability doesn’t save you from harassment. Rather, it often makes deaf people more of a target for harm or abuse.
There aren’t many tables to choose from, so we sit along the sticky bar. The bartender puts three pitchers overflowing with beer in front of us, along with a stack of recently washed cups, not unlike the plastic ones we use at camp, that are still dripping water. Jaden slides the cups across the bar to everyone, but when he gets to me, he signs, “You drink water.”
“Right.” Even though I wasn’t ID’d, I guess we’ll still follow the law. Except, Natasha to my right is filling up her glass.
Isaac stops her when pouring his just under the halfway point. “I have to run tomorrow,” he signs. They’re eighteen. Jaden’s only a year older, so nineteen or twenty at most.
Ethan walks up to me. “Hey, you’re only drinking water, right?”
“Yeah, but . . .” I point, not too obviously, at the others.
“But they’re not the DD,” he signs.
“You’re driving,” Natasha says and signs to me, not beating around the bush.
“I’m driving?” I ask. “That thing?”
“I did it last year. You’ll be fine.” She pulls out her wallet and leans across the counter to hand cash to the bartender. “Wings and a giant pretzel, please. Keep the change.”
Her wallet is still open, so I spy a card in the clear slot where a driver’s license usually goes. It has the word Deaf in big letters.
“What’s that?” I ask.
She snaps her wallet closed. “Deaf ID.” She takes a long sip of her beer and walks away.
“Deaf ID?” I say and sign to Ethan, who steps up to take her spot. “Do you have that?”
“Nah, I use my phone, but some people go old-school.”
“Exactly what for?” I ask, signing “for-for.”
“Emergency circumstances, like, if you get pulled over while driving, to show the cop why you can’t hear them,” he says and signs. “It’s especially for deaf people who don’t use voice.”
“Interesting.” I sigh. “I feel like I keep needing Natasha to interpret or teach me about Deaf culture. I worry it bothers her.”
“Nah, she can be a little rough around the edges. Very Deaf ——。 I mean, you can be, too.”
“I’m what?” I ask, not recognizing the sign, either.
“Deaf-blunt,” Ethan repeats, holding a flat B-shape perpendicular to his face, then pushing it forward. “Speaking your mind or emotions. Very observational comments because we are very observational people.”
Huh. I want to be offended, but I’m proud to have a Deaf trait associated with me. “I guess.”
“Natasha doesn’t really like to voice most of the time.” He holds up a finger, pausing his signing and speaking as he takes another sip. “She went through a rough patch a few years ago. Her dad had a heart attack, and she was with him when it happened. He was unconscious. She couldn’t communicate well with the paramedics. When they got to the hospital, the video interpreting service they used instead of a physical interpreter was lagging and impossible to use, so she had to write back and forth with nurses to try to find out what was going on. She felt like the hospital staff wasn’t updating her because they found it too difficult to share information with her.”
“That is frustrating.” Despite my own hearing loss, I’ve never been in a situation quite like that. People tend to work to communicate with me because I speak. In terms of accessibility, I can sympathize, but I also feel guilty about moving through the world more freely.