Here you can read online Marcia Calhoun Forecki - Speak to Me! full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. year: 1990, publisher: Gallaudet University Press, genre: Detective and thriller. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:
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1985 by Gallaudet University. All rights reserved Published 1985. Second printing, 1989. Third printing, 1995 Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Forecki, Marcia Calhoun, 1951 Speak to me. 1. Children, DeafFamily relationships. 2. Deaf Education. I. Title. HV2392.2.F67 1985 362.4'2'0924 84-28740 ISBN 0-930323-68-8
Cover design and illustration by Todd Dawson from a photography by Council Bluffs (Iowa) Nonpariel.
Page v
This book is for my family, who helped me through it; For Judy, who made me write about it; And for Charlie, so he may understand it.
Page 1
Prologue
A cold Iowa Sunday afternoon. I sit on the floor with my son. We are playing with his collection of miniature cars. His collection rivals that of the Big Three and the houses of Nissan and Mitsubishi combined.
Today, we are driving up and down roads we've built of blocks. A noise in the parking lot draws my attention; the spinning of tires on ice. Some poor devil is trying to get up the hill. I leave the little cars on the floor and move to the window. I watch on tiptoe, looking over the level of frost growing on the inside of the glass. The driver makes one futile attempt at the hill, then two, three. Charlie is still playing with the cars on the floor. The sound of the spinning tires begins to grind on my nerves just as the rubber grinds itself into the unyielding ice. Charlie looks up and notices I am missing from the game. He comes to watch, too. I hold him up so he can see the fourth and final attempt to scale the driveway. The car rolls back, nearly invisible beneath the cloud of its exhaust smoke. Charlie looks at me and shrugs. I shrug in response.
Bored with the cars (I am, not he), I suggest a snack. Charlie seems agreeable and follows me to the portion of our living room held out as a kitchen. "What would you like?" I ask.
"Peanut butter," answers Charlie.
"All right. Peanut butter and crackers?"
"No."
"Peanut butter and toast?"
"Brown."
Page 2
"Brown? Brown what?"
"Brown."
"Brown bread?"
"Brown."
"Brown what?"
"Brown."
"Show me." Charlie looks up at the open cabinet. He wears a searching expression as his eyes move from item to item.
"Brown."
"Brown what? How about these crackers?" I take out the box of saltines, but he shakes his head no.
What is brown that relates to peanut butter? Pancakes? A remote possibility, but worth a try. I hold out a box of pancake mix. "Do you want pancakes and peanut butter?"
Charlie shakes his head emphatically. "Brown." He is losing patience. I suggest other snack items, even to the extreme of cooking something. No, he wants something brown.
"Let's play with the cars." Even that is preferable to playing riddles about brown food.
Charlie's face becomes insistent. "Brown, brown." Charlie tries very hard to say it clearly. The br and n are missing, but the ow and the sign are unmistakable. He looks up at me and repeats ow, then signs, "Good speech."
"Yes, that's very good speech. Brown what?" I'm beginning to panic. Getting him to make such an effort to say a word usually requires all the persuasion, bribery, and praise I can muster. What in hell is there to eat with peanut butter that is brown?
Charlie is repeating the ow, holding his hand on his throat. He believes that if he can make a good sound, he'll get whatever it is he wants. If I can't come up with it, he may decide that speech is a waste of time and so he may never try to speak again. It is, after all, something he does strictly for the benefit of others. He gets little personal satisfaction from speaking. He can't even
Page 3
be sure he's said it correctly, or nominally so, unless someone else tells him he has. It's an effort for him and it's difficult. Without speech, he may grow up unable to live independently. He'll be cut off from the job market. He'll lose all confidence and wind up a hopeless pauper dependent on the public weal; or worse, dependent on me. He's only six now. I can't take his being dependent on me for another fifty or sixty years.
"Store," Charlie signs. I don't want to go out in the cold to a store to buy something brown. But, I must. Charlie's future seems to depend on it. Besides, if he thinks I don't understand him, he may grow up to hate me. The thought of his being dependent on me and hating me for another half-century is too much to bear.
"Put on your coat. We're going to the store. We'll buy brown."
Gleefully, Charlie turns toward the closet (located in another corner of the same living room) for his coat. I remember the ice-covered hill. Will the car make it down? Or back up again? We'll have to walk.
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