Then the boys ignored Mama entirely. They stuck out their arms to balance like unsteady tight-rope walkers as they peered into the next property. Each lot was supposed to be its own private domain. It was bad manners to look through your own windows on the side that faced your neighbors. What the boys were doing was disgraceful as well as dangerous. Joseph wondered ifheshould say something, but surely the brothers wouldn’t obey him either. Should he run and find Papa?
Then, Mama commanded the boys with words. Her syllablessounded broken, and they startled even Joseph. He’d never heard her speak before. Even laughing seemed to embarrass Mama. He thought she was trying to say “Get down right now!”
In response, the boys on the wall broke out in unsuppressed guffaws and nearly fell off. First one brother then the other imitated her sounds, distorting them even worse. Though Mama couldn’t hear them, she understood that the boys were mocking her. She clamped her mouth shut, drew in a few unsteady breaths, and turned back toward the house.
Before he followed her, Joseph shouted up at the brothers: “She wastryingto keep you from breaking your worthless necks!” Sometimes he wasn’t very good at behaving like Christ either.
Joseph and Mamafound Papa carrying Hélène, her arms around his neck. Hélène waited till Mama wasn’t looking, then she squinted an eye open and grinned at Joseph. She wasn’t sleepy at all. She’d simply found the perfect excuse for a hug—with Mama right there.
When they reunited with Cathy, Joseph raised his eyebrows in question. His sister nodded and smiled. She didn’t need words either.
At home, May met them in the hall with a lamp, and Mama noticed Joseph’s stained knees. Papa set down Hélène and followed Joseph into his bedchamber. Joseph disrobed to his long shirt, and Papa confirmed that Joseph’s only injury was the bruise already forming on his hip. Papa said he had a salve in his office.
Joseph didn’t want him to leave yet. “Papa…can Mama speak?”
“Didshe?”
Joseph nodded haltingly and explained about the boys on the garden wall.
“That is why shestoppedspeaking,” Papa said quietly, “and why she tried so hard. Adult cruelty is usually more subtle, that’s all.”
“Does she remember how to speak from before she went deaf?”
“Perhaps a little. She tried to learn again at the Institute in Paris.” Papa sat heavily in Joseph’s chair, and Joseph settled on the edge of his bed. “The Abbé de l’Épée founded the Institute on sign—he called it the ‘natural language’ of the deaf. But many of the men who came after him have dismissed sign as primitive and refused to learn it. One of them was a doctor named Itard. He insisted that deaf children should speak.” Papa stared out Joseph’s window at the dark piazza, but he seemed to be seeing the school all those years ago. “That was what your mother wanted: to appear ‘normal.’ She and so many other pupils struggled foryearsto form sounds they couldn’t hear. Of course their speech was imperfect, and when they tried to read other people’s lips, they could understand only fragments. Your mother was in tears almost every day. She could read and write French and sign beautifully, but she thought she was a failure.” Papa shook his head. “I wanted to strangle him, that Itard. He was the worst kind of physician.”
Joseph frowned. “Because he wouldn’t learn to sign?”
Still Papa addressed the window. “Itard also tried to ‘fix’ the deaf children. He shocked their ears with electricity. He forced probes through their noses. He burned their skin with poultices. He purposefully took a hammer and fractured their skulls! He accomplished nothing but suffering.Hekilleda boy, trying to make him hear again—and your mother was heartbroken because Itard was experimenting only on the male pupils. So she beggedmeto fix her.”
Joseph held his breath. What a terrible choice. But if there was a chance she could be cured… “Did you try?”
“No!” Papa cried, staring at him as if Joseph hadn’t been listening.
Before Joseph could respond, they heard a timid knock. The door crept open, and Mama peered around it. ‘Is he all right?’ she signed.
Papa nodded and stood. To Joseph, he said: “I’ll find that salve.”
CHAPTER 9
In a higher world it is otherwise, but here below to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.
— John Henry Cardinal Newman,Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine(1845)
Joseph wondered what color he was. He suspected he had passed pink quite some time ago and turned downright crimson. Not only his cheeks but his entire body felt as if it were on fire, and it had nothing to do with the temperature of the air.
“Do you have any questions?” came Papa’s voice from the other side of his desk.
Joseph shook his head and kept his eyes on his shoes. He’d thought that painting of the Virgin’s breast was the most dangerous thing in Papa’s office. He’d been wrong. Spread out between them now were half a dozen proximate occasions of sin: distressingly detailed anatomical diagrams.
“I know I’ve made you uncomfortable, son, and your modesty does you credit. I considered waiting another year. But your body is starting to change, and you’ve such a keen, curious mind. I would rather give you the truth early than have you grow up gathering liesthe way other boys do. And believe it or not, what I’ve just told you is afractionof what you’ll need to know before your wedding night.”
Already Joseph’s head was swimming. Mama said taking pleasure in anything except God was a sin. But Papa spoke as if a husband’s pleasure was inevitable and his wife’s pleasure was his responsibility. How could a man ask a woman to let him do—thatto herunlesshe made it pleasant?
“Would you like to borrow any of these books?”
Joseph shook his head again. Perhaps too quickly: Papa understood that he really wanted to nod.
He chuckled. “If you can’t stop thinking about women’s bodies, son—even if blood has gone somewhere besides your cheeks—that isn’t a sin. It’s perfectly natural. It’s necessary!”
