Burn Down the Ground Read online

  The whole ritual was so humiliating that to this day I dread showering as a guest at other people’s homes. I’d rather use a wet wipe and a heavy dose of perfume than bathe in a tub other than my own.

  Once we were all clean and tick-free, we spent the remainder of our evening studying floor plans of prefabricated homes featured in advertisements and brochures. My mother sketched elaborate landscaping schematics on pieces of lined notebook paper. I loved talking about the day when we would have a trailer. I was sick of reeking of insect repellent and kerosene. The outhouse was so grotesque that I tried to minimize the number of times I needed to use it and my sides always ached from holding my pee too long. I had once known such luxuries as electricity and running water, but after a few months without them, they had become as foreign as chopsticks.

  All this work was the perfect antidote to my parents’ marriage ills. Not only was Dad staying sober and close to home, but the devotion he was showing in providing a home for his family made Mom warm up to him again. They took off alone together on long hikes through the woods and drives exploring the back roads of the country. They’d return walking hand in hand with new discoveries, like genuine Indian arrowheads, a funky-shaped piece of driftwood, a turtle, or a shortcut to a highway. They looked happy.

  Life on Boars Head wasn’t always work. On summer weekends, we piled into the Chevy and headed for the beach at Galveston Bay. Along the way, we picked up my parents’ friends Linda and Peter Sloan, another deaf couple who lived in Houston. The Sloans had two deaf children, Lisa and Skip. My parents had known the Sloans since childhood; they had all attended a state school for the Deaf in Oklahoma. The eight of us spoke solely in ASL and Linda and Peter Sloan became like a second set of parents to me. We were so close that the two sets of parents were comfortable disciplining each other’s children.

  When we lived in Houston we saw them all the time. My parents and the Sloans were heavily into smoking weed, and never hid their marijuana use from us kids. I never thought anything of it. I assumed it was something adults enjoyed that kids didn’t, like antiquing. The four spent hours getting stoned, playing cards or dominoes, and talking and laughing into the wee hours of the night. They rolled joints with a mechanical cigarette roller or smoked from a fancy bong that my father handcrafted using a glass tube and pewter. The year 1971 was engraved into the base.

  We kids entertained ourselves with games that Lisa and Skip had learned at Deaf school. We’d dream up goofy characters and comedy skits and have fun acting them out. When our parents weren’t around, my brother and I practiced making “joints” with rolling papers and loose tobacco collected from my father’s cigarette butts and argued over which of us would inherit their bong when they died. My claim was that since it had my birth year carved in it, I was the rightful heir. David’s rebuttal was that he had actually used it. I had heard he first smoked pot at eight years old. Whether it was true or not, this retort was enough for me to presume it would be his someday.

  Since moving to Montgomery, our visits with the Sloans were sporadic and we relished the beach outings. Mom made deviled eggs, potato salad, and dip from Lipton’s onion soup mix and a tub of sour cream. She packed plenty of soda for the children and cans of Coors Light for Dad, who could never be found without one, even as he drove.

  The Chevy would barely have come to a stop when we’d make a break for the water. I’d spend the entire day frolicking in the brown waters of the Gulf while our moms chatted and our dads drank beer under a beach umbrella.

  I’d swim out as far as I could, where the waves were biggest and the bottom too deep to touch. I’d count the number of somersaults I could do in a row, while hearing faint muffled laughter and chatter above the waterline. I’d wonder, “Is this what being deaf sounds like?”

  In fact, any time I found myself submerged in water, in a bathtub, a swimming pool, or the ocean, I would take the opportunity to test out how it might feel to never hear again. But I was never sure if I achieved the desired effect. I could not know what it was like for Mom and Dad.

  Sometimes, the currents would pull me down the beach some three hundred yards. It was terrifying to emerge from the surf to realize no one was watching after me. Sure, there was a lifeguard on duty, but what worried me was finding my family. Not an unnatural fear for any child but heightened because of my parents’ inability to hear me calling out to them. Besides being deaf, they were usually engaged in adult conversation and having their own fun. I often wondered how long it would be before they even noticed I was missing. After one lengthy, terrifying search for a colorful beach umbrella that had been planted by a neighboring party but had since been packed away, I realized I needed to scope out a more permanent landmark like a buoy or jetty to mark my family’s location.

  Heading home from one beach outing, David and I and the two Sloan kids hunkered down low in the back of the Chevy. We zipped along the highway, and the wind whipped my long blond locks, stinging my salty burned skin. I was daydreaming and playing with a jagged edge of a rotten wood slat in the truck bed with my foot when one of my Flintstones flip-flops vanished through a hole. Seeing it tumble out of sight shocked me into a burst of tears.

  Lisa banged on the glass and signed to my father, “Kambri lost shoe!” Dad took one look at me crying and brought the Chevy to a screeching halt. I was surprised when he shifted into reverse and drove backward until we saw my flip-flop stranded on the asphalt. A car had run over it, sending it spinning into the path of another. What my father did next was so reckless he had to have been drunk. Hopping out of the Chevy, he bounced on the balls of his feet, ready to spring into action. I was in awe.

  Seeing a lull in traffic, my father sprinted across four lanes of Houston highway and scooped up the flip-flop. Triumphant, he raced back waving the plastic thong in the air, dodging cars that honked in protest. Everyone erupted into cheers except for Mom. She slapped her forehead and shook her head in relief. I was still slack-jawed when my beaming father handed me the shoe and signed, “Don’t cry, baby girl.” Using his big calloused thumb, he wiped away my tears and kissed my head and cheeks a dozen times before he hopped back in the driver’s seat.

  Back home, I could smell the beach salt for days. Tiny grains of sand found their way into my sleeping bag and scratched my burnt skin. As always, I had gotten too much sun and was covered in blisters by bedtime.

  Mom patted me down with vinegar to take away the fever and chills. Then she squeezed cool, oozing juice from a stem of an aloe plant that grew wild behind the shed and spread it across my bubbling skin. I drifted off to sleep while thinking about what my father had done and felt a twinge of guilt. That flip-flop was a cheap old thing. It didn’t even really fit me anymore.

  I thought I’d be overjoyed when our brand-new cream-colored mobile home with chocolate-brown trim was delivered—complete with its own furniture—but I could hardly stand it for the smell. We had been sharing that one-room tin shed all summer long and were all looking forward to the upgrade, but the stench of the formaldehyde used to make the cabinets and walls was overwhelming. It burned my eyes and throat and made me retch.

  “You’ll get used to it,” Mom told me. I was tempted to stay in the shed, but I wanted to sleep in a real bed in my own room, so I slept with a sheet over my head and breathed through my shirt.

  David’s and my bedrooms were at the opposite end of the trailer from my parents’. Their room spanned the width of the trailer and had its own en suite bathroom. There was a living room, kitchen, dining area, and den separating their bedroom from ours. Each room was carpeted in thin brown acrylic shag. The walls were constructed with fake wood-grain panels so thin they couldn’t hold a nail. We still didn’t have electricity or water, but we finally had privacy and liberation from dirt.

  The trailer was on stilts, so David and I made an extra effort to walk around on tiptoes because the entire mobile home would vibrate if we didn’t and that would annoy our parents. Vibration is one of the best ways to aler
t a deaf person. In fact, there is a whole product line of alarm clocks and smoke and carbon monoxide detectors that shake the bed of a deaf or hard-of-hearing person.

  Besides vibration, another way to get a deaf person’s attention is by waving your arms in the air or flicking a light switch on and off. Mom always preferred a flashing light to wake her up, but my father needed a good shake to rouse him from a deep sleep. Even Pamie knew how to get Dad’s attention. Instead of clanging her empty food dish for me and my brother to fill, she’d pick up the bowl and place it in my father’s lap.

  In the evenings, I loved to help Dad with whatever project he was working on. Dad customized the kitchen floor with fancy tiles he brought home from a construction site, and made a larger breakfast nook where all four of us could eat together. David and I helped him build decks for the two doors exiting the trailer.

  By the back porch, my father hung a tire swing from a fat old oak tree. David and I took turns pushing each other high enough to kick the other branches of the tree. I loved twirling the rope tight before letting go, making myself spin so fast my hair stood straight out.

  We found the smoothest patch of land we could to serve as a basketball court, where Dad installed a backboard and hoop. He made sure to hang it two feet shorter than regulation height since the tree he nailed it to would keep growing taller, just like my brother and me.

  By the front deck, we executed Mom’s sketched landscaping design with logs from the dismantled cabin and planted elephant ears, yellow daffodils, and wild crape myrtles she dug up from the side of a road. Dad handcrafted a wooden bench swing and hung it from a pole attached to two trees. It was sturdy and could fit all four of us at once. If I ever wondered where Mom was, I would usually find her on it reading a book with Pamie curled on her lap. After she and I painted the swing a rustic red color, I could have sworn it came from a factory.

  We had done it all ourselves, and it was beautiful.

  Months went by before my father completed the water line that tapped into the natural spring that flowed freely beneath our land. Then he dug a hole for our very own septic tank, rendering that nasty old outhouse practically useless.

  One day, Mom beat her palm on the side of the trailer and yelled, “David! Kambri! It’s time!” We didn’t need to ask, “Time for what?” We dropped everything and ran to the pole where Dad had hooked up the box that would catapult us into the future. He posed as Mom snapped a picture, his white smile gleaming through the grime on his face.

  “Ready? Let’s count down.”

  “Five, four, three, two, one!” we shouted while signing the numbers for Dad. On “one,” he flipped the switch.

  Electricity!

  “WOO HOO!” We whooped and hollered and danced and raced back to the trailer to turn on every single light. Not until Hurricane Alicia blew through the Gulf of Mexico a few years later would I have to read by the light of a lantern again.

  My father had accomplished everything he’d set out to do. In my eyes, he was Daniel Boone, Frank Lloyd Wright, Ben Franklin, and Elvis Presley all rolled into one.

  YOU’RE THE ONE THAT I WANT (OOOH, OOOH, OOOH)

  Soon after the trailer arrived on Boars Head, Dad brought home all the belongings we’d placed in storage. While emptying one box, I came across report cards, yearbooks, and glossy black-and-white pictures affixed to construction paper with adhesive photo corners. I recognized my parents in some of the photos, but they were much younger.

  “Mama, what’s this stuff?” I asked.

  “Those are my things from when I was a girl.”

  I traced the letters on the cover of one book with my index finger and asked, “What’s Will Rogers?”

  “That’s where I went to school before I had to go to Deaf school. It was named after the famous cowboy.”

  “You went to hearing school?”

  “Yep, and that meant I could live with my parents all year.”

  Mom’s parents, Carlus and Betty Worth, were fluent in ASL and active in the Deaf community, and they lived a traditional suburban life. Her father worked full-time in a factory while her mother tended to their modest two-bedroom brick house.

  Back then, manual labor was a good job for deaf people. The assumption was that they were not capable of doing much of anything else. My grandfather was one of eleven deaf people to find work at Century Electronics. The others were either from his extended family or former classmates of his from the Oklahoma School for the Deaf. It was such an unusually large concentration of deaf employees that The Tulsa Tribune featured them on its front page with a photo of Dad’s eldest deaf sister, Norma, hard at work wiring an electronics panel.

  When my mother was born in 1947, services for the Deaf were practically nonexistent. The only way to communicate with the hearing world was by using pen and paper. So as soon as my mother was old enough to talk, she became the family’s de facto interpreter. This was not uncommon for CODA.

  “We went to the ice cream parlor every week,” Mom recounted. “Your grandpa would lift me up and place me on the counter and tell me what kind of ice cream they wanted. I’d say to the cashier, ‘My mama wants brown and my daddy wants white.’ I was only about three years old, so I didn’t know the words for chocolate and vanilla.”

  The only story I recall Mom ever telling about her deafness having any negative effect was about the time when she was eight years old and had dinner at a hearing friend’s home. Midway through the meal, the friend’s father banged the table with his fist and shouted at my mother, “Would you quit that damn smacking?!” Mom was so embarrassed and upset at his outburst that she ran home in tears and never saw her friend again. But she never smacked again, either, and she made sure to share with her deaf family her new knowledge that eating food made noise that was apparently very irritating to hearing folks.

  Mom spoke clearly. So clearly, in fact, that most of the time you wouldn’t even guess she was deaf. But if she said a word filled with extra s’s, you’d know. For fun, David and I used to trick her into saying them.

  “Hey, Mama,” David asked. “Where’s Boston?”

  “Masssssaaa-sue-ssesss,” she answered. David and I burst out laughing and tried to elicit more.

  “What state’s next to Alabama?”

  “Georgia?”

  “Noooooo, not that one,” I led on as I zeroed in on her teeth and tongue.

  Knowing we were waiting for a payoff, she gave wrong answers until finally she said, “Misssssisssssssippi?” sounding like she had been to the dentist and the hiss was waiting for the novocaine to wear off.

  David and I erupted into cheers, “Yeah! Mississippi!”

  “You know how to spell it?” she asked. On cue, the three of us sang (shouted, really) in unison, “M, I, crooked letter, crooked letter, I, crooked letter, crooked letter, I, humpback, humpback, I!” and dissolved into heaving laughter.

  I think sometimes it embarrassed her, but I loved it. I just loved it when Mom said, “Mississippi.”

  “Look here,” she said, pointing to a picture of her in a group with other young girls, dressed in gingham-checked uniforms. “I was even on the pep squad. We had pom-poms and would go to all the games. I even remember our cheer, ‘Hey! Hey! What’d ya say? Bobcats get that ball away!’ ”

  I was awestruck. Mom looked like Sandy from Grease. We spent the whole afternoon going through her mementos, as she fielded my questions. “Why did you fail gym class?”

  “Because I didn’t want to swim.”

  “Your school had a pool?” I thought Will Rogers sounded pretty impressive.

  “Out of all the girls at school I wore the prettiest sweater sets with matching wool skirts and spent so much time on my hair. Swim class was first period. I refused to get my hair wet, so the teacher gave me an F.”

  My parents were always so proud when I brought home my report cards. I would have swum across the Gulf of Mexico and back to avoid an F. And I was such a tomboy, the idea of being so concerned about a hairdo s
eemed really prissy. I didn’t even own a brush.

  As long as Mom didn’t have to board at Deaf school, her parents had a live-in translator who could use the telephone and help with day-to-day tasks. But her hearing got worse and her grades started slipping. “I sat in the front row and tried to keep up but I got tired of it. And my sister and all my friends were at the Deaf school anyway.” So she moved to the boarding school for the Deaf to finish her education, and there she met Dad.

  If my mother was Sandy Olsson, my father was definitely her bad-boy love interest, Danny Zuko. He was slim, good-looking, and had a bad reputation. His smooth skin was bronzed and his thick hair was slicked back. In every picture, he posed with classic cars of the 1950s, his arm slung around the shoulder of various girls. He wore a tight white T-shirt, dark denim jeans with the cuffs rolled up, and black leather dress shoes.

  “Your daddy picked on me from day one. He told everyone I wasn’t a natural redhead and dyed my hair. When I wasn’t looking, he emptied a full shaker of salt in my milk. I took a few big gulps and swallowed a huge chunk.”

  “Why’d he do that?” I asked. It sounded like something my brother would do to me.

  “He said, ‘I just thought you’d take a sip and it would taste funny. I didn’t think you’d gulp it.’ Well that night, I got so sick. I vomited and started coughing up blood so they had to take me to the infirmary. My very first night! Your daddy came to visit and told me he was sorry. From then on, he pestered me to go out with him but I told him, ‘No, I’m already dating Garland.’ ”

  Garland was a senior and Mom’s first boyfriend. She pointed him out in the yearbook and her voice got dreamy. “He was an all-pro football and basketball player, six foot four with blond hair and blue eyes. Everybody loved him, teachers, my mom and dad, everybody.” I wasn’t surprised to hear that Mom was in love with another boy before she met my father. My parents didn’t censor much of anything. They were openly affectionate in front of us and weren’t uncomfortable teaching David and me about the human body or the birds and the bees at an early age. When I was five, Mom bought us the Peter Mayle books What’s Happening to Me? and Where Did I Come From? and instructed us to read them whenever we wanted. The pages were dog-eared from all the times we consulted them, while the World Book Encyclopedia set we bought at the grocery store gathered dust.