Deaf Like a White Dog

No advice, for fuck’s sake. Don’t tell me to use ASL when you don’t know how to do it—like, what am I gonna do? Sign to myself? 

Ayala didn’t look up from her phone. Signed, you know that I know how to sign.

Ha! Prove you know! 

Ayala signed, I just did. 

CaféMania started filling up. All the tables were taken. 

Ayala signed, you know that anger is trying to hide grief. You’ve got so many reasons … our Abuela gone, Mother, too. Plus, you can’t hear. But remember, you’re not gonna be deaf all your life, Jaqui. They’re coming up with new stuff all the time. 

Oh, yeah? New stuff, ha! I’ll wait. I’ll wait till you kill the song of every bird that flies by our window. Till you stop the songs coming out of your ear buds, till you drown the ocean’s roar at La Boca Beach. I’ll wait for all that.

My sister was still scrolling but I could tell that she was listening. I put my hands flat on the table, pushed my ribcage hard against the edge, got right into her face and talked en voz alta. Ha! I said. Hallo, Herr Doktor Freud! Ach, du lieber Gott. Vat haff ve here? Ze dreaded Repetishion Kompulshion viz ze underlieing Opsseschions. Komes from ze sublimaschion of dezires from wone sipling to anozzer. 

My sister laughed. The cappuccino crowd stared, the chico came over, Antonio embroidered on his red shirt. He swished his checkered dishcloth across the table and took my empty cappuccino cup. Said something to Ayala. She shook her head that got her ponytail swinging.

I said, I hate this. It’s way too noisy here. My body feels sound. Like Beethoven’s did. I wish I could move to Japan. 

Hey, I’m talking to you! Tell me, was there a reason that you never asked Mother why she forgot to add pink cilia to my ears? And … why in hell did she let Father in? 

In the mornings, when I was brushing my teeth, he bumped into me from behind, looking into the mirror, making smoochy pedo sounds, “You / built like / a boy.” Later, after lunch, he mouthed HOMO while we loaded the dishwasher. I was five when I started to hiccup whenever he came round.  

Mother researched obsessive compulsive hiccups. She settled on “excessive masturbation” as the cause. Yeah, right, like I should’ve grown hair on my palms …

Ayala blew me a kiss. She signed, Oh my sweet pea Jaqui. I’ll always love you. Protect you from monsters. Ayala called Father Epsteenie, and spit on his body when he was hanging there, in the attic. 

No more hiccups. 

Lookee there. You. Dude by the door … whatchu leering at? Your Moca not to your liking? He gave me the middle finger. I called, hey, there’s a really good barbershop two blocks from here, CutUDown. Use the side entrance on 38th that’s for humans, the backdoor’s for dogs. Called GRROOM‘nBARK. Ask for Jaime. Tell him Jaqui sent you. He’ll scoop out that botanical garden you got sprouting from your ears and nose. 

The chai-latte-double-espresso crowd laughed. Ayala grabbed my sleeve so hard that it came off my shoulder. She mouthed, JAQUI, STOP! And so I did. Too late. Dude was already on the sidewalk, in the bright sun, walking away all chesty like.

Mother died harnessed to a respirator. COVID while 45 was POTUS. Recommended Hydroxychloroquine. Mother didn’t drink it and died anyway. Father was hanging from the crossbeam in the attic. Sun beams flickered through streaks of dust, floating skin cells, too. It all pooled on his crotch. His brother Oswaldo flew in from Quito to settle Father’s estate. Ayala and me squatted in the house. We laughed like kookaburra and sometimes like hyenas whenever the real estate people tried to show it. Ha! They stumbled, and fled across the overgrown lawn, horrified.

That was not now. Today, at CaféMania, from deep down I dug up my favorite line from Nightwood to explain life. Making it chime, I declared, “The unendurable is the beginning of the curve of joy.” The room stopped. Oh Djuna. The silence was so fat, you could’ve squeezed it. I said it again, coaxing more joy into the room. “The unendurable / is the beginning / of the curve / of joy.”

Antonio brought us shots of Strega, 80 proof. He pointed at Graziella, his boss behind the counter. She grinned, signed her love for Djuna, that she’s treating us to a shot of the Witch. I bowed and tossed back the Strega. I closed my eyes and imagined sitting on the back of Yoshi Vintage’s motorcycle. Yoshi and me, deaf like white dogs, never really rode, but I could see and smell it now the bite of smoking tires rose up in my nose; our backside out. Have you ever done it? Sneakist drift; smokin’ grit and dust with side swipes at the dude in the blood red helmet. 

 My sister and me, we don’t drink often. Or like fish. I realize that you find that hard to believe, like, the more you protest with clichés the less anyone believes you. Like in the psych ward at Lost Creek. When you scream that you’re not insane—they wrap you up in a jacket, white or puke green, shoot you up with Midazolam because your screaming proves it. 

But these days, fuck it, us Antifa chicas should just go ahead and drink. Like, hard stuff.  Then we’ll high-heel it home, balancing on our fuck-you-pumps. Ha! Down the Avenue with the trees on each side, and bubble gum wrappers crumbling up against the curb. Looking over our shoulder, brown skinned with jacked-up asses those white chicas wish they had. 

We’re always trying to keep from getting snatched off the street by marauding patrols in our neighborhood, by “agents” wearing masks and driving government SUVs, sent by hooligan.gov in DC. Hotbed around our neighborhood with migrants from South America. AOC country. Ayala and me, we know how to dodge the snatchers. With ICEBlock we’re always one fuck-you-pumps-step ahead.

They lost us. We ducked into the front door, didn’t turn on the lights, but poured some shots of Campari. Salud! Ayala lifted her glass then stopped cold, signed, he’s laughing, I can hear him laugh. She turned on her phone torch, showed me her goosebumps to prove it. We put chairs under the attic stairs.

Listen! I said. I didn’t hiccup. That proves it. No Father! 

Ayala scratched some skin from her lips and squeezed a little lemon on it. Guau! Sitting at the kitchen table, I said, you’re not the boss of me, and we drank some more shots of Campari and sucked on lemons. I sang, “I’m deaf Like a White Dog!” to the tune of something I had composed, Bowie-like.  

And my sister, she stared at me and giggled when I told her, “Ha! YOU, survive as a deaf chicadeeka? Never ever, I said, and hugged her tight. Coz you don’t have a clue. Like Freud advised our Abuela while she reclined on the sofa in Vienna’s Berggasse 19: faze ze Opsseschions. Look zem in ze eies. Zey arrize from zee subconschious viz zeir orritschin in psychozexual dezires. Vye not indulsch zem?

And after I quoted Freud according to our Abuela I put on my best Chief Marge Gunderson stare, and whispered “Don’t you know that?” and we laughed and laughed till all the tears we had stopped spilling out of our eyes.