Finding Zoe. Gail Harris
entire class. I watched the deaf kids in the class next door and copied what they did. Years later, my mother told me that I pretended to sign, using signs that had no meaning, like a child playing make-believe. I also fiddled with my hearing aid wires and the controls. Eventually, it became clear that I needed more support; so in second grade, I finally went into a deaf class and loved it.
It was an “oral” class, meaning that the teacher spoke and didn’t use sign language. We read her lips, so I continued using my speech, as my mother had wanted (as do most hearing parents who have a deaf child). I had already grasped the essentials of English: pronunciation, syntax, inflexion, even idioms, which had all come by ear. I had the basis of a vocabulary, which would only be enhanced by reading, and I continued reading at home with my parents. There were only three students in the class—Tom Halik and Tommy Miller, who could both hear a bit and had spoken language, and completely deaf me. Every day, I’d watch our teacher, Mrs. Kutz—with her long black hair cut in a feathered, wispy style and her huge smile—write on the overhead projector (this allowed us to absorb things by having the benefit of a visual aid) and read her lips all day long.
It was then that I became more aware that I was different. In first grade, I had done pretty much whatever the other kids did, but with the work becoming more academic, I began realizing that I was missing directions and puzzled about some of the assignments. Mrs. Kutz discovered that I couldn’t spell well and began giving me additional help.
The class next door to mine was for the deaf kids who used sign language and didn’t use their voices at all; they were students who were born deaf or who had lost their hearing prelingually (the more common scenario compared to mine).
Those were the kids who taught me how to sign.
I had started picking it up from them from the moment I’d started school—at recess, in gym, and while sitting with them on the school bus day after day after day. By the end of first grade, I was signing right along with them.
In fourth grade, I finally made my first deaf girlfriend, Lisa, and it was a big deal to me. Other than the kids at school, I played with my hearing friends from the neighborhood. Even though Lisa and I spoke in class, we signed when we played together. I remember the day my father drove me to Lisa’s house for the first time my mother was just overjoyed.
It’s amazing to me now when I remember that when Lisa and I played together, we couldn’t watch television or go to the movies. (Today, it’s hard to imagine Zoe not in front of the TV.) But closed-captioning wasn’t available then; it didn’t become widely available until the early 1990s. Lisa and I couldn’t even listen to music. But life was good.
There were challenges. Once, I was left in the stacks of the school library during a fire drill. There were childhood trials. Even though my closest friends remained true, other kids teased me. The kids in the playground made fun of the way I talked. (Not being able to hear my own voice impacted my speech.) Once, a kid asked me if my hearing aids went through my head. “Yeah, right through my braaain,” I told him, thinking what a jerk he was. Some kids didn’t even believe I was deaf, so I took them to my house to show them the “Caution, Deaf Child” sign that my mother had put on the front lawn.
I hated that sign with a vengeance. “Why do I need a sign to tell cars about me?” I wanted to know. My mother just wanted them to slow down, of course. What I hated most was riding in the bus for “special needs” kids, which the year before my friends and I had named the “baby” bus. It was half the size of the regular bus. Other people may have thought I was different, but to me, I was still the same. I wasn’t handicapped or special, and I certainly didn’t need a sign or a baby bus. I didn’t want to be different, and I didn’t want to be labeled. Yet, even though I was unable to express those concerns, I was more upset by them than by the fact that I was deaf.
In third grade, we got a new swim coach. Even though none of my previous swim coaches had ever coached a deaf kid before, this coach was so closed-minded and was very uncomfortable around me; he honestly believed that my being deaf limited my swimming ability. He took me out of the lineup, which really angered and humiliated me because I had never been behind with my start: I would wait for the smoke to appear from the starting gun when it went off, and then, bam, I was off. I was one of the best backstroke swimmers and had been on the swim team every summer. It was the first time that anyone had made me feel like a second-class citizen because I was deaf. Fortunately, my mother spoke to the coach, he put me back in the lineup, and things worked out after that.
Despite the few mishaps, I had adjusted very well to being deaf. I was succeeding academically, I had become a good lip-reader and signer, and I still had speech. Even though a few kids in the playground wouldn’t play with me anymore, I was thriving socially; when my deaf friends weren’t at my house playing, my hearing friends were. I was part of the crowd and having fun, doing homework, and joining in after-school activities. My desire to do well, be accepted, and please others, such as my parents and teachers, especially since becoming deaf, also helped—as did my self-confidence.
Who knows whether that confidence came from an intense drive to do my best or from my connection with God and knowing that I’d be taken care of. One way or another, I’ve just always been that way. We went to an Episcopal church at the time (later, after my parents divorced, we switched to a Lutheran one), but it was my own individual connection to God that nurtured me and allowed me to become strong. Somehow, I always wanted to be better than average and to do something first class with my life. Becoming deaf might have traumatized another child, but not me; I think that it has made me a better person. It has forced me to raise the bar in everything I do and has helped me to become more self-aware, giving me the opportunity to go beyond my comfort level, be less prejudiced, and relate well to people who are “different.”
Facing such a huge loss at a young age forced me to see how people treat one another and what it’s like to grow up in America as part of a minority. The experience also gave me a different perspective on living with the majority—being deaf in a hearing world. My world was silent. I was cut off from communicating and had to learn to survive through that.
The world operates through spoken language. I had to think ahead, be more aware, be more alert, and take on challenges I might not otherwise have taken on. Today, I can’t listen to the radio as I drive to work in the morning; hear announcements over a PA system; or, if it isn’t captioned, watch TV. Often, because of communication barriers, I have to work twice as hard as a hearing person. Instead of it taking me five minutes to make a doctor’s appointment, it takes me ten.
At home, I use a videophone to make phone calls. When I am talking with a deaf person, I see them signing to me on a screen. It’s sort of like Skyping; we just sign back and forth to each other. To connect with people who don’t have a videophone, I use something called Video Relay Service. So when making a doctor’s appointment, for example, I sign to a video relay interpreter I see on my screen, who then interprets what I said for the nurse on a telephone.
It takes extra time. First, I have to make sure that the interpreter is voicing for me correctly so that the nurse is getting the correct information, which I do by reading their lips. Then, I have to request that an interpreter is present at the appointment, and if the nurse isn’t familiar with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), I have to educate her that this is my right. It’s like that for deaf people in the mainstream. By now, of course, living that way has become second nature. I don’t even think about it.
Back then, I started compensating without thinking much about it either. It was funny. When I first became deaf, people started treating me differently, although I still felt like I was just like everyone else. But as time passed, the reverse happened. My family and friends in the neighborhood told me that despite my being deaf, I functioned just fine, that it seemed as though I were hearing, and that I was bright and could make it in the hearing world. They said that I didn’t need to be with deaf people at all. Yet, even though I inherently knew that what they were saying was wrong, that being deaf did make me different, even with all my confidence—I tried so hard to convince myself that what they were saying was true. I really took what they said to heart.
While I had some deaf friends at school, at home,