The Sign for Home

A Novel

Blair Fell

• Publisher: Atria/Emily Bestler Books
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781982175962
• eBook ISBN: 9781982175979

Longlisted for The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize

When a young DeafBlind man learns the girl he thought was lost forever might still be out there, he embarks on a life-changing journey to find her—and his freedom.

Arlo Dilly is young, handsome, and eager to meet the right girl. He also happens to be DeafBlind, a Jehovah’s Witness, and under the strict guardianship of his controlling uncle. His chances of finding someone to love seem slim to none.

And yet, it happened once before: many years ago, at a boarding school for the Deaf, Arlo met the love of his life—a mysterious girl with onyx eyes and beautifully expressive hands which told him the most amazing stories. But tragedy struck, and their love was lost forever.

Or so Arlo thought.

After years trying to heal his broken heart, Arlo is assigned a college writing assignment which unlocks buried memories of his past. Soon he wonders if the hearing people he was supposed to trust have been lying to him all along, and if his lost love might be found again.

No longer willing to accept what others tell him, Arlo convinces a small band of misfit friends to set off on a journey to learn the truth. After all, who better to bring on this quest than his gay interpreter and wildly inappropriate Belgian best friend? Despite the many forces working against him, Arlo will stop at nothing to find the girl who got away and experience all of life’s joyful possibilities.

1 SNIFF

Sniff.

The air of your room. The odor of sheets and blankets, hot summer dust, old technology equipment, an Old Spice deodorant stick worn to a nub. The stinging smell of detergent from the washing machine outside your door burns the lining of your nostrils.

You are sitting alone at your desk in your T-shirt and shorts. The undersides of your thighs are sweaty and stick to the fiberglass chair. The tips of your fingers rub themselves against the cool plastic keys on the keyboard. You tilt your head down close to it.

Sniff.

Plastic-and-dripped-coffee smell. Maybe the sticky crumbs of old peanut butter and grape jelly sandwiches? You lift the back of your wrist to your nose.

Sniff.

Soap, hair, and skin.

You look toward the computer screen, your face just inches away. Making love to the screen, your trainer from the Abilities Institute called it. The white screen has been inverted to black because it’s easier on your eyes—or eye, rather, as there’s only one that has any usable vision left. The giant white cursor, magnified with your ZoomText software, winks at you over and over again, calling you to write, demanding you take control of your sinful mind. You begin to type three-inch-tall white letters that march across the screen one at a time… T… O… M… R… S…

To Mrs. Clara Shuster, MSW

I have getted your email. Please telling potential MALE interpreter (10 a.m.) and female interpreter (11 a.m.) with TOP TACTILE ASL SKILLS I will meet them and YOU tomorrow on ABILITIES INSTITUTE FOR THE DISABLED, 114 Skidmore Street, Poughkeepsie, NY, at SECOND floor conference room. After meeting BOTH MALE AND FEMALE ASL interpreters I will then DECIDING which will team with my OLD LONG TIME INTERPRETER MOLLY CLINCH.

You stop typing. Molly has been your interpreter and Support Service Provider, or SSP, since you were thirteen years old. Other than Brother Birch, Molly is the most important person in your life who is still alive. She was there when all the worst, unspeakable, sinful things happened.

Your fingers find their place back on the keyboard.

Tell INTERPRETERS bring jacket or sweater for interview, because Second floor of ABILITIES INSTITUTE on 114 Skidmore Street can getting COLD like refrigerator. (FROWNING) Cold, I guess, make Mrs. Clara Shuster SMARTER and WORK HARDER. HA HA. This is JOKE. (BIG SMILE)

Writing English is hard. Brother Birch says when hearing people read your writing they think you’re a small child. (You aren’t.) Or that you have developmental disabilities. (You don’t.) English is just not your first language. American Sign Language is. Writing in a language that you’ve literally never heard is like battling monsters with your hands tied behind your back. No matter how much you try to butt them with your head, they keep knocking you down. The worst are the confusing Preposition Monsters and the giant Verb-Tense Rodents, sharp-toothed beasts who time and again… have eat you? Have eat-ed you? Has ate you? Have will eaten you?

This is why Brother Birch is letting you take a class at the community college this summer to make you a better writer, which will help you to write sermons and preach the word of God. Hallelujah.

Gold star.

And maybe you will also be able to meet new people, including girls, and that will help you to stop having sinful thoughts about the person you are never supposed to think about ever again.

Red star.

You return to typing the email to Mrs. Clara Shuster.

When male and female interpreters comes to Abilities Institute they will recognize ME since I will be ONLY 23-year-old MAN with a WHITE cane and DOG who does NOT look up when Interpreters CALLS OUT NAME. Again JOKE. (Big Smile) DARK HUMOR. I am not RUDE MAN. Of course I DEAFBLIND. HA HA HA. Please tell all interpreters I DO NOT LIKE SWEATY HANDS or bad breath or too much perfume which stings my nose.

Before, when you were small, everyone at the Kingdom Hall was taller than you, so your head would come up to their chest and shoulders. They always smelled like armpit. Now you smell the tops of their heads, which smell like hair cream, shampoo, or dust.

You like short people better than tall people.

Mama was short. Molly is short. Your old friends from the Rose Garden School, Big Head Lawrence and Martin, were short. Martin also had lots of fat on his body. (You also like fat people.) The person-who-you-are-not-allowed-to-remember was also short, but thin, with black eyes, thick black hair, and smelled like…

Quiet! Quiet, stupid brain! Quiet!

Red star.

Down at the Kingdom Hall hearing members will do very basic Tactile Sign Language with you, so if they ever meet another DeafBlind man they will know how to talk to him about Jehovah God. Some of the girls take a very long time to spell their names and mix up the letters. Sometimes they let their hands linger longer in yours than is proper, and you’ll let your own hand wander up to their wrists. And that’s when things get different inside you. Sometimes, if they have nice hands—soft, smooth, expressive, not sweaty—you ask them to fingerspell their names a second time even though you understood the first time. You’ll pull their hands in a little closer, so you can feel the warmth of their bodies. You’ll inhale their perfume, powder, skin, breath. Then sometimes you daydream about asking the girls to put their fingers inside their soft place, the way you-know-who did, and let you smell them.

Red star.

You pray again to Jehovah God: Please, Jehovah God, let me stop having sinful thoughts every five minutes. Please let me take Brother Birch’s kind and loving advice to “Not be like Lot’s Wife and look back at the past”—especially about you-know-who—and please let me be a spiritually strong man and servant to you and your son, Jesus Christ.

You take a deep breath and finish writing the letter to Mrs. Clara Shuster:

Let BOTH interpreters with HIGH SKILLS know my old GUIDE DOG is name “SNAP”… (SNAP FINGERS is name). She is old secondhand guide dog. She do not BITE a lot. But tell interpreters with HIGH SKILLS NOT to BANG BANG on table to show they am HERE. SNAP does not like it and BARK ANGRY. GASP. GULP. Embarrass! Better way, gently TAP on my shoulder, and hold, do not move so don’t LOSE YOU. After that I will interview potential INTERPRETERS and then pick one to work with me and Molly this summer. Okay?

Thank you for all helping me so much. I am very exciting going to WRITING CLASS at Dutchess Community College. I promise work very hard and get good grades so Brother Birch, Jehovah God, and you WILL HAVE be proud with me.

Blessings and Hugs,

Your friend

Arlo Dilly

2 THE TERP

“I’m here to see Clara Shuster,” I said to the Abilities Institute receptionist. “The name is Cyril Brewster. I’m here to interview for the interpreting gig.”

“Clara will be with you in a moment. You can wait in there.”

The receptionist pointed to the door of a waiting room just off the hallway. I went inside. The decor of the Abilities Institute, like most decent purveyors of social services, strained for an aura that said We really, really care… no, really. Everywhere I looked there were racks of helpful brochures and cliché posters of sunsets and waterfalls with inspirational quotes written in script. One said: “It Is During Our Darkest Moments that We Must Focus to See the Light.”

Irony, I thought.

As I passed a mirror, I took note of my face. As always, I sucked in my cheeks and widened my eyes. My ex, Bruno, used to call this my fake mirror face. For a man in my middle years, I’m still decent looking—for a redhead. I stretched the crow’s feet around my eyes, and once again considered whether Botox would be feasible. It was always the same conundrum: Which do I follow, my desire to be attractive or my desire to be a good interpreter? I have what people call “Deaf face,” meaning I wear my emotions—and the hearing consumer’s emotions—like a billboard on my face. Facial expressions are a big part of ASL grammar, signaling questions, mood, anger, joy, confusion, and more. I wouldn’t have been as popular with Deaf consumers if my face were always frozen into a dashing look of sexy disinterest. Nope. No Botox for me!

Of course, my face won’t matter if I get this job.

I felt nauseated. I had a strict policy about not taking gigs with the DeafBlind where I’d have to interpret in Tactile ASL (TSL). DeafBlind people who use TSL will express themselves the same way as any sighted ASL user. But when they “listen,” rather than using their eyes, the DeafBlind consumer will place their hands on top of the person’s with whom they are communicating, feeling the signs. Think Helen Keller talking to Annie Sullivan in that movie The Miracle Worker. The problem was, I was no Annie Sullivan, and I knew it. You’d think they’d require a certain skill level to take a job like this, but that’s not how this business works when there aren’t enough interpreters. If you’re smart, you don’t take jobs you can’t handle. But sometimes you don’t know you can’t handle it until you do.

Before that day I had accepted exactly one DeafBlind assignment in my entire career. I was a baby interpreter, just out of my training program, and it was a medical gig. The agency that hired me said it would be exactly like regular ASL interpreting. It was a lie.

We’ll call the DeafBlind client “Shirley.”

Shirley was in her forties with prematurely gray hair and eyelids that drooped to the point of being almost closed. As soon as I arrived at the job the nurse informed me that the doctor would be giving Shirley the awful news that her daughter was dying of cancer. It was bad enough I didn’t understand the ins and outs of Tactile Sign Language, but I was being asked to transmit the worst news of this woman’s life.

Shirley’s daughter was lying in the bed unconscious, tubes coming out of every orifice. Her hands were resting on her daughter’s forearm, waiting for her to wake up. I tapped Shirley on the shoulder to introduce myself. She stood up and faced me, placing both hands on top of mine, her breath heaving onto my face, no boundary between our bodies. The Tactile thing felt awkward, like someone was putting their tongue in my ear in order to speak. My heart pounded. Sweat poured down my temples. Due to my ignorance and panic, I envisioned myself being smothered by an elderly, fragile DeafBlind octopus.

Before I could even attempt to practice some Tactile sign with her, three doctors, two nurses, and a social worker entered the room and introduced themselves. Still feeling so unsure of myself, I awkwardly jammed my signs into Shirley’s hands, as if by sheer force I would be able to convey the message more clearly.

“I’m sorry, Shirley,” the doctor said. “Your daughter’s tumor is m-a-l-i-g-n-a-n-t. Unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do.”

Shirley didn’t react, so I assumed the doctor’s words weren’t registering. Was my Tactile interpreting totally off?

I repeated the doctor’s words again, changing my vocabulary and trying to slow myself down.

“Your daughter’s tumor is very very bad. Can’t operate. Can’t help. Short time, and then will pass away. Sorry. Understand?”

Still no reaction. Just as I was about to take a third stab at the interpretation, Shirley’s body started shaking. A moment later she was weeping and squeezing my hand close to her body to steady herself. Her tears fell onto my wrist, and suddenly my own eyes began to well up. But, being new, I was so concerned about being “professional” that I pushed Shirley away so I could interpret “properly” for the doctor again. Comforting her wasn’t my job, I thought. But Shirley didn’t want the doctor at that moment. She wanted me, the person who allegedly knew her language. I should have hugged her. I should have done something other than what I did.

My head began screaming: You useless idiot! You should never have taken this job! Fuck that agency for sending you here.

That was the moment I promised myself I would never take another DeafBlind gig.

And I didn’t—until that morning at the Abilities Institute. Until I met Arlo Dilly.

I was desperate. I needed money—a lot of it. Now past the age of forty, I sensed myself beelining for homosexual obscurity. In Poughkeepsie some of the local queens had a saying: If you wanna meet a man the odds are good, but the goods are odd. And boy were they. You could sleep your way through the locals in a week and a half. Otherwise you had to travel up to Albany (Smallbany, we called it) or try your luck with random weekenders up from Manhattan. They usually already had partners and looked at hooking up with the locals as some kind of bucolic novelty, like apple picking in the fall. If I was ever going to fall in love again, and not end up some depressed, lonely country queen who watched QVC and Golden Girls alone in bed every night, I knew I had to get the hell out of Poughkeepsie.

And then I had my chance. Just two weeks prior an old Deaf friend called about a potential staff interpreting job outside Philadelphia. It was set to start in the fall if I could only save enough money for the relocation and tie up some loose ends (aka a boatload of credit card debt). Unfortunately, my five-day-a-week gig at...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Chapter 1: Sniff
• Chapter 2: The Terp
• Chapter 3: What’s It Like?
• Chapter 4: The Meeting
• Chapter 5: Leaving Home
• Chapter 6: First Day of Class
• Chapter 7: Banisters and Baloney
• Chapter 8: Professor Lavinia Bahr
• Chapter 9: Martin and Big Head Lawrence
• Chapter 10: Hanne
• Chapter 11: What Is the Grass?
• Chapter 12: Ghost Child
• Chapter 13: Lunchtime Epiphanies
• Chapter 14: Hanne Meets Arlo
• Chapter 15: Crazy Charles
• Chapter 16: Essay Crit
• Chapter 17: The One Who Stays Behind
• Chapter 18: The Great Tribulation
• Chapter 19: My Secrets/Your Secrets
• Chapter 20: Email to Hanne
• Chapter 21: The First Time
• Chapter 22: The Giveback
• Chapter 23: Romeo and Juliet
• Chapter 24: Rainstorm
• Chapter 25: Tabitha
• Chapter 26: Rainstorm (Part 2)
• Chapter 27: Protactile
• Chapter 28: The Argument
• Chapter 29: Top Secret
• Chapter 30: Truth-Telling
• Chapter 31: The Day That Changed Everything
• Chapter 32: The Facebook Profile
• Chapter 33: Reunion
• Chapter 34: Alone Again
• Chapter 35: Savior Syndrome
• Chapter 36: The Field Trip
• Chapter 37: New Plan
• Chapter 38: Termination
• Chapter 39: Confrontation
• Chapter 40: The Unexpected Visitor
• Chapter 41: Gone Gone Gone
• Chapter 42: Conspirators
• Chapter 43: Travel Training for an Escape
• Chapter 44: Chasing Arlo
• Chapter 45: Grand Central
• Chapter 46: Lost and Found
• Chapter 47: The Rescuers
• Chapter 48: Nursing Home
• Chapter 49: In Your Eyes
• Chapter 50: Cultural Mediation
• Chapter 51: Aftermath
• Chapter 52: Outlaws
• Chapter 53: What Happened Next
• Epilogue: Story Finish
• Acknowledgments
• Reading Group Guide
• About the Author
• Copyright