Page 28 - WTP Vol. IX #8

LIGHT BULB (continued from preceding page)
open when it talks. Marina had used two hands when she signed partials, both hands making that bent-
L handshape, which had to mean upper and lower partials. Plural. On the sentential level, her eyebrows were raised in the final sentence, peaked in the shape of a circumflex, which meant it had to be an interrog- ative. And finally, on the textual level, there was that hope thing perched in her soul, and even though she didn’t explicitly use the sign HOPE, it was implied—
I could read it there, sort of hear it singing. It was
the unspoken text, the hidden text that I had missed when I was chatting her up in the waiting room because I hadn’t put two and two together; wasn’t thinking of dentists and dentures and people with some or none or few abysmal teeth in their mouths. Instead, as usual, I was thinking of things that were a little off the point, like Horace Mann, or Emily Dick- inson, or riding an ASL bicycle down a steep hill with look-ma-no-lips. So I missed it. I missed the fact that Marina wasn’t opening her mouth because—and only because—she was embarrassed: She barely had any teeth in her head, the poor thing.
“Yes, we got your partials back from the lab,” said the dentist. “So let’s go ahead and lean you back, and we’ll see how they fit, shall we?” Then he pressed
the foot control that lowered her chair, and down
she went. That’s when I jumped up, hitting my head on the rotating x-ray arm, and said, “Whoa, wait a minute. Don’t lean her back until I’ve had a chance to interpret what you just said. She can’t see me when she’s horizontal.” Marina couldn’t help laughing when she saw me hit my head, and that’s when I caught a glimpse of the gummy pink absence of all but a few craggy teeth before she covered her mouth self- consciously, clamping it shut again. “They have your partials,” I signed to her, “and he wants to lean you back now and see if they fit.” I wasn’t entirely sure of the most conceptually accurate way to sign fit, and
I vacillated briefly between the bent-L handshapes that she had used and the bent-5 handshapes that can mean fit but can also mean match or roommate or reconciliation. Or I could just fingerspell F-I-T while also mouthing it to her. I went with the final option because, after all, she was a Clark School grad from Holyoke. Then I gave the dentist the go-ahead and he leaned her back, turned on the overhead light, and told her to open.
But she didn’t open. Because he was wearing a mask and even the best lipreader in the world can’t lipread someone who’s wearing a mask and shining a light in your face. And also because she was horizontal and couldn’t see me signing OPEN, even though I was signing it correctly in the conceptually accurate one-
handed way and not the two-handed bent-5 alligator way, or the generic two-handed closed-B way, like a door, which would have been an absurd choice in the context of a mouth. “Just tug on her chin if you want her to open,” I whispered to the dentist. A little com- mon sense goes a long way.
But when it comes to common sense, doctors and dentists, in spite of their long and expensive edu- cations, seem not to possess even a modicum of it where Deaf people are concerned. “How will the patient tell me if it hurts?” the doctor or dentist will often ask me. She will probably wince or groan or say ouch, the way most people do, I tell them. “But shouldn’t we come up with a sign or a signal, like maybe having her raise her hand, to tell me she’s in pain?” No, because there’s already a sign for pain. There are lots of signs for pain. There is a sign for every point on the pain scale, from feeling- no-pain to hurts-like-a-motherfucker. The Deaf patient will let you know if it hurts, and how much. And if you’re not understanding, I will interpret. That’s why you hired me. “Did I hire you?” they often ask, a little surprised. Indeed you did. Or your practice or your hospital did. Because it’s the law. The Americans with Disabilities Act. “Oh, I thought you were a friend, or maybe a family member. How long did it take you to learn that anyway?” Trans- lation: How long did it take you to learn to sign fluently enough to be able to effectively interpret a doctor’s appointment? A little longer than it took you to learn that, I usually tell them. Translation: Longer than it takes to get through medical school.
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