Yet she had no choice. She lifted her hands and moved her fingers in rhythmic patterns.
Anna didn't understand at first and began to respond in ASL.
"No," Melanie instructed, frowning for emphasis. "No signing."
It was vital that she convey her message, for she believed she could save the twins at least, and maybe one more – poor gasping Beverly, or Emily, whose thin white legs Bear had been staring at for long moments before he pulled Donna Harstrawn toward him and spread her legs like a hungry man opening up a package of food.
"Take gas can," Melanie communicated. Somehow. "Tie sweater around it."
After a moment the girls understood. They eased forward. Their tiny hands went to work enwrapping the can with the colorful sweater.
The can was now enwrapped by the sweater.
"Go out back door. One on left."
The doorway swept clean of dust by the breeze from the river.
"Afraid."
Melanie nodded but persisted. "Have to."
A faint, heartbreaking nod. Then another. Emily stirred beside Melanie. The girl was terrified. Melanie took her hand, behind their backs, out of Bear's view. She fingerspelled in English. "Y-o-u w-i-l-l b-e n-e-x-t. D-o n-o-t w-o-r-r-y."
Emily nodded. To the twins Melanie said, "Follow smell of river." She flared her nostrils. "River. Smell."
A nod from both girls.
"Hold on to sweater and jump into water."
Two no shakes. Emphatic.
Melanie's eyes flared. "Yes!"
Then Melanie looked at the teacher and back to the girls, explaining silently what could happen to them. And the twins understood. Anna started to whimper.
Melanie would not allow this. "Stop!" she insisted. "Now. Go."
The twins were behind Bear. He'd have to stand up and turn to see them.
Afraid to use her hands, Anna timidly lowered her face and wiped it on her sleeve. They shook their heads no. In heartbreaking unison.
Melanie's hand rose and she risked fast fingerspellings and hand signs. Bear's eyes were closed; he missed the gestures. "Abbé de l'Epée is out there. Waiting for you."
Their eyes went wide.
De l'Epée?
The savior of the Deaf. A legend. He was Lancelot, he was King Arthur. For heaven's sake, he was Tom Cruise! He couldn't be outside. Yet Melanie's face was so serious, she was so insistent that they offered faint nods of acquiescence.
"You must find him. Give him note in your pocket."
"Where is he?" Anna signed.
"He's older man, heavy. Gray hair. Glasses and blue sports coat." They nodded enthusiastically (though this was hardly how they pictured the legendary abbé). "Find him and give him note."
Bear looked up and Melanie continued to lift her hand innocently to wipe her red, but dry, eyes as if she'd been crying. He looked down again and continued. Melanie was grateful she couldn't hear the piggish grunts she knew issued from his fat mouth.
"Ready?" she asked the girls.
Indeed they were; they would leap into flames if it meant they could meet their idol. Melanie looked again at Bear, the sweat dripping off his face and falling like rain on poor Mrs. Harstrawn's cheeks and jiggling breasts. His eyes closed. The moment of finishing was near – something Melanie had read about but couldn't quite comprehend.
"Take shoes off. And tell De l'Epée to be careful."
Anna nodded. "I love you," she signed. Suzie did too.
Melanie looked out the doorway and saw Brutus and Stoat, far across the slaughterhouse, staring at the TV. She nodded twice. The girls picked up their gas-can life preserver and vanished around the corner. Melanie watched Bear to see if their passage was silent. Apparently it was.
To distract him she leaned forward, enduring the ugly man's ominous stare, and slowly, cautiously, with her burgundy sleeve wiped the sheen of his sweat from the teacher's face. He was perplexed by the gesture then angered. He shoved her back against the wall. Her head hit the tile with a thud. There she sat until he finished and lay gasping. Finally he rolled off her. Melanie saw a slick pool on the woman's thigh. Blood too. Bear glanced furtively into the other room. He had escaped undetected; Brutus and Stoat hadn't seen. He sat up. He zipped his filthy jeans and pulled down Mrs. Harstrawn's skirt, roughly buttoned her blouse.
Bear leaned forward and put his face inches from Melanie's. She managed to hold his eye – it was terrifying but she would do anything to keep him from looking around the room. He spat out, "You… word about… you're…"
Delay, stall. Buy time for the twins.
She frowned and shook her head.
He tried again, words spitting from his mouth.
Again she shook her head, pointed to her ear. He boiled in frustration.
Finally, she leaned away and pointed to the dusty floor. He wrote, Say anything and your dead.
She nodded slowly.
He obliterated the message and buttoned his shirt.
Sometimes all of us, even Others, are mute and deaf and blind as the dead; we perceive only what our desires allow us to see. This is a terrible burden and a danger but can also be, as now, a small miracle. For Bear rose unsteadily, tucked in his shirt, and looked around the killing room with a glazed look of contentment on his flushed face. Then he strode out, never noticing that only four shoes remained in place of the twins and that the girls were gone, floating free of this terrible place.
For a few years I was nothing but Deaf.
I lived Deaf, I ate Deaf, I breathed it.
Melanie is speaking to De l'Epée.
She has gone into her music room because she cannot bear to think about Anna and Suzie, leaping into the waters of the Arkansas River, dark as a coffin. They're better off, she tells herself. She remembers the way Bear looked at the girls. Whatever happens, they're better off.
De l'Epée shifts in his chair and asks what she meant by being nothing but Deaf.
"When I was a junior the Deaf movement came to Laurent Clerc.
Deaf with a capital D. Oralism was out and at last the school began teaching Signed Exact English. Which is sort of a half-assed compromise. Eventually, after I graduated, they agreed to switch to ASL. That's American Sign."
"I'm interested in languages. Tell me about it." (Would he say this? It's my fantasy; yes, he would.)
"ASL conies from the world's first school for the deaf, founded in France in the 1760s by your namesake. Abbé Charles Michel de l'Epée. He was like Rousseau – he felt that there was a primordial human language. A language that was pure and absolute and unfalteringly clear. It could express every emotion directly and it would be so transparent that you couldn't use it to lie or deceive anyone."
De l'Epée smiles at this.
"With French Sign Language, oh, the Deaf came into their own. A teacher from De l'Epée's school, Laurent Clerc, came to America in the early 1800s with Thomas Gallaudet – he was a minister from Connecticut – and set up a school for the deaf in Hartford. French Sign Language was used there but it got mixed with local signing – especially the dialect used on Martha's Vineyard, where there was a lot of heredity deafness. That's how American Sign Language came about. That, more than anything, allowed the Deaf to live normal lives. See, you have to develop language – some language, either sign or spoken – by age three. Otherwise you basically end up retarded."
De l'Epée looks at her somewhat cynically. "It seems to me that you've rehearsed this."