Whenever my mother was asked about what it was like raising a deaf daughter, she would smile, drawing back on years of memories, and say that I was a handful. To put it mildly, it was the understatement of the year.
I often was referred to as a trouble-maker by the nuns at my Catholic deaf school, and my best friend and I had nicknames assigned to us by the teachers. I was “The Dictionary” and my best friend was “The Encyclopedia.” Whenever we went outside to play recess with the other kids, the teachers would keep a wary eye on the two of us.
I have fond memories of playing with my deaf classmates, and they all looked up to me. I was the queen bee, leading the pack. One cold autumn day, I was with my group of deaf girls, idly drawing stuff in the dirt with sticks in our hands and the teachers weren’t looking at us. We were nine years old, and bored out of our minds. I looked across the playground and there was my crush, Robbie. An idea came to me, and I looked at my friends and said, “Let’s give Robbie full of cooties by kissing him all over!”
Robbie pushed his big dorky glasses to look at us inching closer to him, wondering what was going to happen. I yelled, “We’re going to give you kisses!” Robbie’s eyes widened, and he took off across the playground, not wanting to be given cooties. We took after him like a wolf pack dressed in Catholic schoolgirl uniforms. Emily, the heavy girl in the group, launched herself off the ground and tackled Robbie to the ground. Then we descended upon him, kissing him all over his face and Angela kissed his arm while Laura kissed his other arm. I gave him a big smack on the lips, and we all got off Robbie, dusting the dirt off our uniforms. The goal of filling Robbie full of cooties had been accomplished. We walked off to play on the swings, leaving Robbie astonished that he’d been kiss-pecked by a bunch of girls.
That was the kind of trouble-maker I was. One of my mother’s favorite stories about my notorious past as a trouble-maker was when she was studying for law school. One day she decided she could have an easier time studying if she put me at my deaf school to stay the weekend with the deaf boarders. I hated being there since the nuns put me to bed an hour earlier than usual at home, and being eight years old, I decided to "escape" from the deaf school and walk home to my mother's apartment. I'd memorized the route from the apartment to my deaf school and was sure I could walk there. I snuck out of the girls' dorm, moved out the brightly-lit exit door, and was caught by Mrs. Cathy, who taught piano to the deaf girls. Her headlights spun across me in my white pajamas behind a tree.
The nuns informed my mother they no longer could accept me for overnight boarding on weekends.
I was too wild for the nuns, too wild for my mother, and I shone on, irrepressible and full of joy, enjoying my friends and teasing my little brother and older brother. That joy in experiencing life as a deaf child growing up in St. Louis, causing “trouble” through escapades with my friends, sleep-overs, and badly lip-synched sing-alongs to the New Kids On The Block was with me until I moved to El Paso. Sure, there were a few moments of bullying in St. Louis, such as the time when I was hit in the face with a hockey pock on purpose while playing roller hockey. I’d come to the playground on my rollerblades with my hockey stick, hoping to impress the hearing neighborhood kids. One of the kids didn’t like me, and he shifted the hockey puck onto the blade of his stick, and shoved downward with all his strength, throwing the puck into the air. It sailed right into my face, hitting my left cheek. Tears burst out, and I was shocked.
I sobbed as I rollerbladed home, the hockey stick limply held across my arms, and I was broken-hearted in despair and disbelief. I clambered up the steps, still crying, and there now was a big purple bruise on my cheek. My mother gasped, holding my face gingerly in her hands, and asked in a hushed tone, “Who did this to you?” I gasped out the answer between shuddering sobs, “It was the red-headed boy. He didn’t want me to play with him.”
Anger came into my mother’s eyes, and she spun off, opening the door, crashing down the stairs and outside towards the playground at the local school. I was a bit stunned by my mother’s hasty departure, and followed her clumsily on my rollerblades. Mom was running in her heels, her back straight in a firm posture, and the playground was a few blocks away. The group of kids playing roller hockey stopped when they saw my mother come to a pause in front of them with her hands on her hips.
The red-headed boy was in the middle of the group. My mother pulled me forward and said, “Did you do this to my daughter?” She looked at the bruise on my cheek, her eyes darkened again, and the boy gulped. Then he took off on his skates on full-speed, hightailing it out of the playground with his hockey stick. Big mistake. My mother chased after him, not letting her heels slow her down, and I chased after my mother, not wanting to miss what was going to happen.
The boy kept on blading, and spun his body to the right, dashing between two apartment buildings. He turned to his left, and jumped onto the stoop of his apartment, opening the door frantically. He ran up the steps, leaving black marks from his rollerblades, and above us, we heard the apartment door close. We both stopped in front of the door on the third landing. My mother knocked on the door. A woman opened the door with a questioning look on her face.
“Your son did this to my daughter!” Mom pulled me forward again, lifting my face up for better light to show the large purple bruise. “He hurt her because she wanted to play roller hockey with him!”
The woman gasped at the sight of my face. She yelled for her son to come to the door, and he came nervously, his hair matted down from the sweat of blading furiously through the neighborhood. Then what the woman did next both shocked my mother and I---she slapped her son right across the face. She demanded that he apologize to me, and he did. The woman gripped furiously onto her son’s arm and jerked him back into the apartment, apologizing to the two of us profusely. She was angry and embarrassed by what he had done.
My mother and I walked home in silence, holding hands. She told me she would do anything to defend me, and the next weekend, she took me to confession so I could talk to the priest about what happened. He was a kindly old man, and we both sat in front of each other in his office. He asked me to relay the story to him, and I did. He said tenderly, “Jesus suffered too. He was hurt a lot by other people, and he had faith in God to sustain himself.” I looked at him, the bruise on my face having faded to a yellowish hue, and said, “But you see, it’s not the same! Jesus always knew what was going to happen to him, and I didn’t!”
The priest said, “You see, something good will come out of this.” And with a chuckle, he blessed me, and told me to say a few Hail Marys. In a week, the bruise faded away completely, leaving in its place a dimple. So that was the something good that came out of being hit in the face with a hockey puck as a child.
Even with the few moments of bullying in St. Louis, I felt like they were random events, not targeted bullying at my deafness, and I was largely insulated in having a large group of deaf friends. They were my world, and their support made me feel like I wasn’t alone as a deaf girl. We would confide in each other, tell each other jokes, and make up big, grandiose stories to tell during lunch in the cafeteria.
The hearing world didn’t matter to me until I moved to El Paso, Texas, when my mom got a job there, and I was mainstreamed from my deaf school into a private Catholic school. It was recommended that I repeat fifth grade again even though my grades were good, as it’d give me time to get adjusted to a mainstreamed environment. The vivacious joy I experienced in St. Louis would go away the minute I stepped onto the campus of the co-ed elementary school at Loretto Academy.
The kids in the fifth-grade classroom all looked at me with distrust when I stepped in, my hair freshly permed. My glasses, my deaf accent, the cochlear implant, and the ugly perm set me apart from them. I wasn’t one of them, and hadn’t grown up with them through elementary school. I was scared, and it showed on my face. I didn’t know what it would be like going to school with hearing kids, and I missed my deaf classmates and friends. I felt so alone in that classroom.
I noticed one clique in the classroom, led by a girl who was physically deformed. I’d heard that her mother had taken drugs when she was a baby, and Heather had come out with misshapen arms, long, skinny legs, and no neck. Her face was misshaped as well, and she looked at me with slanted eyes. I waved apprehensively at her, wondering if I could make a friend in Heather. She shook her head, black hair whipping around from the ponytail at the base of her neck, and she pointedly ignored me. I saw the girls whisper among each other, and they looked to Heather. The smile on her face wasn’t a nice one when she looked at me, and it was a smile that had disdain and mockery in it.
Confusion filled me. I didn’t know what I had done to offend my fellow classmates, and wanted badly to repair whatever unknown infraction I’d done. It was time for recess, and I went up to one of the girls, asking if she’d like to go on the swings with me. She shook her head no, and went off to join Heather and the rest of the girls from the fifth-grade classroom. I was hurt by this, and felt alone again, rejected by the group of popular girls and their leader, Heather.
Some of the boys walked by, and one of them, Austin, a freckled boy that I’d thought was cute, wrinkled his nose in laughter, and started making fun of my speech. The pain began anew in my heart. I’d worked so hard to speak well, and it hurt having these kids make fun of how I talked. I went off to one of the concrete barrels on the playground, and cried.
Once school was over, and my mother was there in the van to pick me up, I came into the passenger seat, crying. I told my mother that the boys had teased me, made fun of my speech, and the girls wouldn’t let me play with them. I asked my mom what I could do to stop the teasing. She was confused, and didn’t know how to handle it. After driving home in silence, she watched me pet my dog, Max, and said, “Maybe they’re scared of you and don’t know how to act. Just try to be nice to them, and remember the social manners we’ve taught you. I think it’ll change soon, and you’ll have friends.”
My mother was wrong. I was rejected constantly by the girls and learned that it was better to keep quiet to myself, and read a book during recess, rather than seek their company for some play. The boys I stayed away from completely. I became moody, withdrawn, and had suicidal thoughts. I was ten years old, and it was the first year of hell at Loretto Academy.
I felt so defenseless against the teasing. I remember one day, it was P.E. and we were running around the track. I felt my sides get a stitch from the running, and slowed down my pace. Heather saw this and went to the coach, telling him a lie that I’d cut across the field to cut down on the laps I was supposed to do. The coach came back and started yelling at me for breaking the rules, ignoring my vehement cries that I hadn’t done so and I’d respected the rules. He said he was giving me a ten-minute demerit after school. Heather grinned, her misshapen mouth stretched wide open in laughter. She turned her body around to wave at her group of friends, since she couldn’t turn her neck and her crooked fingers went up in a thumbs-up at her friends.
I was angry, and wished all sorts of harm to come to Heather and to her group of popular girls. I hated them all. One day, Heather was alone on the playground, and I came up to her, angry with my fists clenched, and I said, “You’ll never marry, and you’ll never have kids because you’re so ugly and you’re a cripple, Heather! You can’t even turn your neck to see someone without turning your body!” I regretted the words as soon as I said them, and saw the hurt land in Heather like a punch to the gut. I was miserable afterwards, feeling guilty for telling that to a disabled girl.
My mother rarely saw a happy girl when she picked me up from that elementary school. I cried almost every day, often late at night into the soft fur of my dog's neck. The months passed, and I no longer was the wild child I had been in St. Louis. It was the last day of classes, and I'd been thinking and praying for an entire week beforehand, dreading the entrance into the 6th grade next year. I got the courage to stand up, and I asked my teacher, Mrs. Hitch, if I could have a moment to address the entire class. She was surprised, but gave her assent in a nod, holding her hands together on the desk as she watched me approach the podium in front of the entire classroom.
I looked at Austin, my former crush, Jesse, his friend, who'd participated in the mocking of my speech, the ringleader of the popular girls, Heather, her friends, Perla, Amanda, Rachel, and at Art the boy from Mexico who was teased for constantly farting in the classroom. They looked at me curiously, the expression on their faces different from the expression of disgust they'd had the first day of classes.
My mouth felt dry, and I began with my speech.
"I came here from a deaf school where I had a lot of friends. I was scared when I came here because I didn't have these friends anymore since they're so far away. I wanted to make new friends, and I didn't get the chance to do that. You teased me, called me names, and you made up lies about me to the coach. You wouldn't let me be your friend. I want you all to know that I forgive you for what you did to me. It hurt, and it made me cry a lot but I forgive you. I don't want to be enemies. I just want to be friends, and to be treated nicely."
The room was quiet when I ended my speech. The teacher was slack-jawed, and closed her mouth. Perla was crying, and some of the girls next to Heather looked guilty and ashamed. The boys were quiet. After 5th grade, I wouldn't see them again since middle and high school was only for girls. But the girls I would see again next year.
Much of the teasing stopped since Heather wasn't in middle school and was pulled out of school for health reasons. I still didn't have friends throughout middle school, but most of the girls were nice to me. They joined the newspaper I started up, and I made some of them editors. The newspaper was called "Loretto Times" and we'd distribute copies of the newspaper throughout the school. I got respect, but the one thing I yearned for, I never really got there---friendship.
It's why I asked my mom to put me in a different school for high school. I couldn't stand the thought of another four years surrounded by these same girls, being miserable, wanting and not getting friendships. I really began to blossom in high school, becoming the wild child I used to be back in St. Louis. I look at that eleven-year old girl that is me to the right, and I just want to hug her and tell her everything will be okay, and that she'll turn out alright.