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Speaking Through the Silence, Book 3 World Without Sound Series

By Linda Sammaritan

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Chapter 1: Temper Tantrums (August 1968)
Six, nine? Or nine, six?
I don’t know. They look the same!
They make me so mad!

***
My little sister lined up four cards, one right next to the other. Three nines and a six lay on the family room’s carpet to display her latest collection for our game of Go Fish. Krista was good at recognizing numbers, but since she wasn’t quite three years old, nines and sixes looked pretty much the same.
I shook my head and pointed to the mismatched card. Krista’s proud smile disappeared. I spread the cards further apart so she could see them clearly, but she wouldn’t look at them. Instead, she stared daggers at me.
After gathering the four cards, I returned them to her. She fired them at my face.
“Stop it.” I signed the word for stop and offered the cards to her again. “Do you want to play, or not?”
Krista accepted the cards with hooded eyelids and a tightening of her lips. Mad, but not out of control. She locked her gaze on mine and with perfect control, threw the cards at me a second time.
Here we go again. All I’d wanted was to do something fun with her while we waited for dinner. Without breaking eye contact, I shook my finger at her. Bad. I signed the word and flung my hand straight toward her. “You are bad.”
“Yeeeeeeee!” Her voice rose like the screech of a tea kettle on full steam. She picked up the rest of the deck and threw it at me.
Being deaf didn’t give her an excuse to be a brat. I grabbed several of the cards and threw them back at her. I was entering my freshman year in high school, and she had me behaving like a kindergartner.
When Krista lunged for me, I grabbed her around the waist with one arm and lugged her over my hip to the back door. No easy feat. She might be skinny, but with the metal ankle-to-thigh braces sheathing her legs, lifting her felt like carrying a loaded garbage can to the curb. My free hand turned the handle, and I hoped those lethal legs didn’t kick through the new storm door. They shouldn’t. After my thirteen-year-old brother Paul punched through the glass last month (long story—he deserved to be locked out), Mom replaced it with acrylic. Nobody wanted more blood splattered all over the house. Or another ambulance run.
My parents and Grandma waited for an explanation on the deck as I dumped Krista beside Daddy lounging in one of our newest lawn chairs. If anyone could get her to behave, he could.
“We were playing Go Fish, and all of a sudden, she’s throwing the cards everywhere and screaming at me because I told her a nine and a six are not the same number. Which she already knows.”
I slumped on the picnic bench, finding no pleasure in the ocean breeze, while Krista continued to jabber and screech at me. She was really hard to deal with sometimes. She couldn’t see our words, and doctors told us we weren’t supposed to use sign language, so how could we get any kind of message across? I had learned some sign language—the doctors could go fly a kite—but I didn’t study it like I studied Spanish. Which meant I didn’t know enough to help Krista all the time.
Even when I signed, like with the card game, she still lost her temper. Terrible Twos reigned supreme.
With Krista still shrieking at me—no words—just high-pitched, angry squeals, Daddy grasped her shoulders and turned her around to face him. He raised his eyebrows and gazed directly into her eyes. She dissolved into tears and hid her face in his lap.
She and I were totally alike when it came to Daddy. We couldn’t stand to disappoint him. And it wasn’t just the fact that he’d only been home for two weeks after a year spent fighting in Vietnam. I still hadn’t stopped saying in my head, “Thank you, God,” every time he pulled into the driveway.
Daddy rubbed Krista’s back in soothing circles, something that used to calm me down, too. “Go get the cards that started the trouble,” he told me.
I made sure the adults heard my martyred sigh as I pushed off from the bench. With fifty-two cards scattered all over the den, I searched every corner to find the four I needed. When I returned, Krista was cuddled into Daddy’s chest. She threw a sullen look my way, then shifted her position so her back was turned to me.
I held out the cards. “Nine of hearts, nine of spades, nine of clubs, six of diamonds. She thinks they all match. At least, that’s what I think she thinks.”
Daddy grouped them so their corners were right next to each other. Obviously, three numbers had a circle at the top and the fourth a circle at the bottom. He tapped Krista. She looked up, noticed the cards, and burrowed her face against Daddy.
He flipped Krista so she was forced to sit with her back against him, then held the cards in front of her. He pointed to the corners.
She whimpered.
“Honey, if she starts in again, can we leave this for another time?” Mom was sick of tantrums, too.
Grandma stepped inside with her magazine and iced tea. She hated loud noises.
Daddy handed the cards back to me. “Hold two in each hand.”
I muttered under my breath. “This isn’t gonna be pretty.”
“Debbie.” His voice held warning.
I thrust the cards close to Krista’s face.
Daddy pushed them a few inches away and leaned forward so Krista could see his lips. He pointed to each nine. “What number?”
With a pout, Krista held up five fingers on one hand and four on the other.
Daddy nodded and pointed to the six. “What number?”
The pout tightened to a grim line. She held up five fingers on one hand and four fingers on the other.
“A nine?” His eyes opened wide in surprise. He swiveled his head in an exaggerated motion as if he were examining all the cards carefully. “Nine. Nine. Nine.” Pause. “And nine?”
What a ham. Krista stared at him, not impressed with his antics.
“Debbie, put the nines in one hand and the six in the other, then bring the cards closer to my face.”
I stood to one side keeping the cards a couple of inches from Daddy’s nose. He leaned even closer so one eyeball was almost on a number nine. He looked at Krista. “Nine?”
She nodded. The pout was gone from her eyes. Her lips remained tight, but the corners began to curve up.
Daddy leaned so close to the number six card that his face touched it. He pulled back and looked at Krista, his eyes wider than ever. “Nine?”
He returned to peering at the six. A little snort escaped from Krista. Daddy’s head snapped to face her again, and a startled giggle erupted.
“Nine?”
She started to nod, but he raised his eyebrows in a “think again” expression. Krista leaned closer to the six card. Circle on the lower portion of the number. She glanced at Daddy, back to the number. She darted a look at me, then back to the six, then back to Daddy.
“Nine?” he repeated.
Krista hung her head. Slowly, she lifted five fingers of one hand and the thumb of the other. And I had called my baby sister “bad.” What was my problem?
When she raised her head, she found me kneeling beside the chair, my arms opened wide. She slid off of Daddy’s lap for a hug. The only way she knew to say, “I’m sorry.”
Mom stood and picked up her glass, plus Daddy’s. “This is why we need to find a school. She’s got to learn to communicate without all the tears. It’s exhausting for all of us, and it’s not fair to her.” She headed for the door. “Dinner will be ready in ten minutes.”

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