Singing Hands (9 page)

Then, at one end of the lobby, I spotted the entrance to the hotel drugstore and soda fountain. I headed in and went straight to the news rack, where I knew I could stand and browse through magazines for a bit without attracting too much attention. I was just reaching out for an Archie comic book when someone tapped me on the shoulder. I whipped around to find Grace Homewood peering at me curiously.

"What are
you
doing here?" she signed.

"Oh! I—"

If there's such a thing as stuttering in sign language, I mastered it in the next few minutes. It took me three or four false starts and lots of blushing and hand waving before I came up with a halfway believable explanation for why I was dawdling in the Tutwiler on a Sunday morning. Somewhere along the way, I realized Miss Grace was such a good lip reader, I didn't even need to sign.

So I dropped my hands to my sides and babbled on. "You see, the streetcar
always
makes me queasy, and I didn't want to get sick right in the middle of Sunday-school class, so I decided to come over here and look for some Alka-Seltzer."

I felt myself turn even redder then. Miss Grace was probably wondering how I could stop to read a comic book if I had such a bad case of nausea. "Mother always gives me ginger ale to settle my stomach," I added. I clutched my middle and pointed dramatically at the soda fountain. "I was just on my way over to get one."

Miss Grace looked a little dizzy from concentrating so hard on my spluttering mouth. Still, she was nodding kindly, her eyebrows drawing together with concern. She led me to the far end of the soda counter. "I'll sit with you," she said. "Just to make sure you're all right."

I nodded back and climbed weakly up on a barstool, suddenly remembering that I didn't have a single cent to pay for ginger ale. All my chores lately had been for punishment, not for earning spending money. This morning Mother had given Nell and me a dime and a nickel each, then watched us seal the coins in our new collection envelopes. I had dropped my envelope into the silver plate just a while ago, relieved that the process had gone so smoothly compared with the week before.

Miss Grace must have noticed my pained expression and thought I was feeling sicker. "Nabs?" she fingerspelled, and pointed to a tray of snacks for sale on the counter. "The streetcar's worse if you have an empty stomach."

I loved those little orange crackers with the peanut butter spread in between, but I shook my head with an embarrassed glance at my pocketbook.

Miss Grace smiled and patted her chest. "I'll pay."

Soon, in a near-perfect speaking voice, she had ordered a ginger ale for me and a cup of coffee for herself. The man behind the counter had obviously waited on her before. He brought a pitcher of cream and two sugars without being asked. I could tell he was smitten with her. When she made the sign for thank you, touching her fingers lightly to her lips, he did the same, beaming proudly like a little boy showing off a new trick.

I thought of Corporal Homewood and the mysterious Vincent. They had probably fallen for Miss Grace the same way, admiring her gentle manners and elegant hands. I unwrapped a straw and took a long, fizzy sip of ginger ale, watching her out of the corner of my eye.

Each passing day this week had helped to ease my worries over the letter hidden in Mrs. Fernley's dictionary up in Daddy's office. I had even managed to complete my first word-list assignment without turning to the page where it was buried. And now relief washed over me as I sat next to Miss Grace. She didn't look as if she suspected anything. In fact, she looked downright happy, munching on a Nab and gazing at the people passing by outside the wide drugstore window.

I touched her arm. "I thought you always spent Sundays with your parents in Mountain Brook."

Her smile faded. All at once Miss Grace was the one blushing for some reason. "Not today," she said. "After this, I need to go to work. I have so much shelving to catch up on at the library."

The Birmingham Public Library was just around the corner from the Advent. We sat quietly for another minute; then Miss Grace turned back to me with a sheepish expression. "You want to know the truth?" she said, making her voice much softer. "I don't have much work to do at the library today. I made up a story so I wouldn't have to go to church with Mother and Father."

I paused, not wanting to seem too nosy. "Don't you like to go with them?" I asked.

"I'd rather go to your father's church."

"Why don't you?"

She heaved a sigh. "My parents want me to go to the church where I grew up ... where I met my husband. They think I should be with hearing people."

"That's funny," I told her. "I'd rather go to Daddy's church, too, but he says the same thing. He wants me to be with hearing people."

Miss Grace's blue eyes flashed and she rocked her whole body forward in agreement. "Because you're hearing," she signed firmly. "Makes good sense. But my parents can't understand that I—"

The soda-fountain man looked up from wiping the counter. When Miss Grace noticed him staring, her hands fell still again and she glanced at the clock over the window. "I should be getting to the library," she said, and began rummaging in her purse and setting money on the counter. I had been watching the time, too. I had fifteen minutes, just enough time to sneak back into the parish house through the courtyard and find Nell.

Miss Grace grinned at the empty Nabs wrapper on the counter. "You must be feeling better," she said. Somehow I had managed to eat the last five crackers.

We walked together back toward the Advent and the library. I planned to say goodbye at the courtyard gate, but when I peeked through the wrought-iron rails as we passed, I could see two men still in their choir robes talking by the oak tree. And up ahead, the minister was standing on the church steps with a knot of stragglers from the last service. I almost groaned out loud when I spotted the hunched old usher among them—the one who had escorted Nell and me to our seats in slow motion last week. He stood at the bottom of the stairs, shaking hands with people as they started home.

I clutched Miss Grace's arm, stopping her in the middle of the sidewalk so that she could read my lips.

"What's wrong?" she asked, her face filling with worry.

"Can I see where you work?" I blurted out, edging around so that my back was toward the church. "Can I see the library? I've never been inside the downtown branch."

Miss Grace looked baffled. "Don't you have to go back to Sunday school now?"

"Yes. But Mrs. Walton might be mad if I come in for the last ten minutes of class and interrupt the lesson, and I've always wanted to see inside the library."

She hesitated, wrinkling her brow apologetically. "The library's closed on Sunday mornings. I'm not really supposed to bring anyone in when I work odd hours."

"Just a quick peek," I pleaded.

She started to smile.

"Good!" I signed before she could say anything else. Then I wheeled around and began walking past the church steps, fast, with my head down, as if I was marching against a driving rainstorm. Miss Grace was too polite to stop me and ask why I was acting so strange. She tagged along until we had safely rounded the corner and crossed the street, where I let out a deep breath and waited for her to catch up.

Of course, I didn't really care too much about seeing the downtown library. I just needed a place to wait while the coast cleared in front of the church. Until Miss Grace unlocked a side door and led me down a dark, echoing hall into the main reading room, I assumed one library was just like another.

But I gasped when she flipped on a row of light switches next to the wide doorway. The ceiling was high and vaulted, with gold designs etched on the beams, and all around the huge room, above the bookshelves, were magical scenes painted directly on the walls—a knight on horseback, an exotic woman with gold bangles raising her arms to a flying carpet, an Egyptian king perched on his throne. Miss Grace followed my gaze around the murals.

She had stopped talking out loud in the hushed library, and I had to watch her hands and lips closely to understand. "There are sixteen of them," she signed. "They represent the world's greatest stories." She pointed to a graceful white horse with wings towering over the doorway. I knew it was Pegasus. A Greek hero dressed in a royal blue cape and gold helmet was holding him steady by the bridle.

"My favorite," Miss Grace signed, staring up at the horse. "My mother loved Greek myths. I still remember when I got sick. She used to help me fall asleep by telling me the story of Pegasus flying up to the stars."

I waited for her to look back at me and read my lips. "Is that how you..."

My whispered words trailed off, but Miss Grace knew what I was asking. She nodded and gave a little shrug. "I was five. One day I woke up with the measles, and a few days later I woke up and couldn't hear."

I remembered the photograph I had seen in Miss Grace's room—the little girl and her delighted parents before the measles had swept in and changed everything.

I circled my heart with my fist. "I'm sorry," I said awkwardly.

Miss Grace waved away my frown. "Don't be sorry," she signed. She gestured toward the rows and rows of books lining the walls under the murals. "Isn't this a fine place to work?"

"Yes, it's the prettiest room I've ever seen," I signed back, "and so ... so
quiet.
" For a few seconds I stood soaking up the stillness and feeling, for the first time, what it might be like to be deaf. Then, just as quickly, the spell was broken by the sound of the big brass church bell over at the Advent clanging the new hour.

I clapped my hand over my mouth. "I'm late," I cried. Miss Grace must have been startled when I gripped her in a clumsy hug, made the sign for "Thank you," and ran for the door. I wanted to say more, but there was no time. Nell would be waiting, ready to congratulate me for surviving another dreaded morning of Sunday school at the Advent.

It happened the next week, too. I found myself skipping Sunday school again. Yet this time, I went even further. I put my sealed envelope in the silver collection plate, but the offering money was rolled in a tissue at the bottom of my pocketbook. Fifteen cents—just enough to buy a Coke and Nabs and give me an excuse to sit in the Tutwiler drugstore until Sunday school was over and it was time to meet Nell.

What possessed me? I kept asking myself the same question all the way up the block on Twentieth:
How could you, Gussie?
I wouldn't let my mind even venture toward a proper answer. All I knew was that I didn't belong at the Advent. Anything was better than facing Missy DuPage and all the other snooty kids in beady-eyed Mrs. Walton's class—even if it meant keeping my offering money.

At the Tutwiler my pulse raced and my palms turned clammy as I sipped Coke through a bendy straw, searching the counter for faces I might recognize. At least there was no danger of Miss Grace wandering in. I had seen her drive off to church with her parents earlier that morning. After a while, when no one gave me funny looks or even seemed to notice me sitting at the far end of the counter, my palms dried out and I felt my guilt fizz away like the bubbles in my glass of soda.

By the next week, skipping seemed almost easy. As I munched on my Nabs at the Tutwiler, I even relaxed enough to read the comics and do half of a crossword puzzle in someone's old
Birmingham News.

Not long after I skipped Sunday school for the fourth time in a row, Daddy arrived on Myrtle Street in the big white Packard donated by Mr. Snider. It wasn't brand-new, like Mr. Snider had promised, but even with the few nicks on the fenders and worn spots of upholstery inside, the car seemed the peak of luxury to Margaret and Nell and me. When Daddy rumbled up the driveway, we all rushed outside to stand on the running boards and take turns sitting behind the huge steering wheel.

Mother seemed charmed, too, as she leaned over to peer at the fancy hood ornament, a graceful chrome swan with outstretched wings. The Packard was supposed to make Daddy's life so much simpler. And if Daddy's life was simpler, Mother's would be, too.

But as July steamed along, it slowly dawned on all of us that the Packard plan had backfired. Having a car made it easy for Daddy to fit in extra stops between his scheduled preaching visits around the South—a stop at the printing press in Mobile to check on the deaf workers there, a trip to Jasper to perform the marriage ceremony for a couple who were both deaf and blind, a swing through Talladega to visit the Alabama School for the Deaf.

And now, with the summer half gone, Daddy was late again, off on another errand in the Packard, accompanied by yet another visitor from who knew where. And Mother was upset over
another
special meal growing cold.

"Late," she signed. She stood over the dining room table and scowled down at the congealing lunch of salmon croquettes and marshmallow-fruit salad that she had arranged so carefully on her best china a half-hour ago. The ice cubes in our sweaty glasses of tea had melted down to tiny nubs.

"Late! Late! Late!" Mother's rigid hands flew as if she wanted to send sparks shooting from her fingertips. I was glad she couldn't hear the grandfather clock in the foyer grimly striking half-past noon.

With a final look of disgust, Mother shoved her palms down through the air, ordering the three of us to sit. "Eat!" she cried out loud, her voice even higher and more warbly than usual. Then she snatched her apron off the back of the chair and banged through the swinging door into the kitchen.

"Uh-oh," Margaret said with an ominous glance at the still-swinging door.

Nell flinched at the sound of cake tins and a handful of cooking utensils crashing into the sink. "Oh, boy," she murmured.

"Oh, boy is right," I agreed, staring down at my plateful of food. "I guess we'll make things worse if we don't eat all this." I picked up my fork and scooted my salmon croquette around the plate like a hockey puck.

When the doorbell rang and the light bulb on the wall began flashing, I was the first one to scramble off my chair and run for the front door, thrilled at the chance to escape salmon croquettes for a minute. It was Mr. Runion. I pasted on a little smile as I let him in, quickly tucking my right hand behind my back, where it would be safer. Fortunately, Mr. Runion didn't seem to be in the mood for his usual greeting. He looked straight past me and nodded at Mother as she came out from the back hall untying her apron.