If a Tree Falls

Table of Contents

 

 

 

OTHER BOOKS IN THE REUBEN/RIFKIN SERIES

 

Arguing with the Storm: Stories by Yiddish Women Writers
edited by Rhea Tregbov

 

Dearest Anne: A Tale of Impossible Love
by Judith Katzir

 

Dream Homes: From Cairo to Katrina, an Exile’s Journey
by Joyce Zonana

 

Shalom India Housing Society
by Esther David

 

 

 

The Reuben/Rifkin Jewish Women Writers Series, established in 2006 by Elaine Reuben, honors her parents, Albert G. and Sara I. Reuben. It remembers her grandparents, Susie Green and Harry Reuben, Bessie Goldberg and David Rifkin, known to their parents by Yiddish names, and recalls family on several continents, many of whose names and particular stories are now lost. Literary works in this series, embodying and connecting varieties of Jewish experiences, will speak for them, as well, in the years to come.

 

Founded in 1997, the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute (HBI), whose generous grants also sponsor this series, develops fresh ways of thinking about Jews and gender worldwide by producing and promoting scholarly research and artistic projects. Brandeis professors Shulamit Reinharz and Sylvia Barack Fishman are the founding director and codirector, respectively, of HBI.

In this book I follow the convention whereby audiological deafness is spelled with a lowercase “d,” to distinguish it from Deafness with an uppercase “D,” a reference to the culture and community of those with fluency in sign language.

I WAS CALM WITH OUR NEWBORN BABY GIRL nestled in the crook of my arm. I hadn’t expected to be calm in new motherhood. Yet, here I was with Sophia. Soaked and happy. Anchored by her gaze.

We had arrived at the hospital to find a nursing strike in full force. Our doctor, who’d assured us that he had no plans to travel in July, was away on vacation. We were settled into a labor room by a strikebreaker scanning the room for sterile gloves and fetal heart-rate monitors.

Bill got hold of a birthing ball and a cup of ice chips, and sought to soothe me with reminiscences of the day we conceived. It was Halloween morning and we had been trying to conceive for fourteen months. Bill proclaimed to me, with prophetic sureness: “YOU are getting pregnant today.” We had a houseguest, but Bill just handed him the dog leash and a shopping list of assorted candy and ushered him out the door.

Now, nine months later, here was our girl, swaddled and warm, with wispy brown hair and huge slate eyes. Sophia.

Shoulder to shoulder with Bill in our narrow hospital bed, I lost myself in the chub of Sophia’s feet and the translucent pink of her toenails as she dozed off to sleep. I hardly noticed the beeping monitors, the flurry and rush of nurses, the ring ring of the telephone. I was in a bubble, impervious to our surroundings. I had experienced this insulation only once before in my lifetime, when Bill and I stood together beneath our wedding chuppah, alight in a September’s sunset six years earlier. My attention fixed only on him—his peacock blue eyes flickering in the candlelight, his sure voice, his vows, riding softly on the night air—until the shatter of glass brought forth the cheers of family and friends, Bill’s lips to mine.

I was jarred out of our new magic when a hospital volunteer with a red and white polka-dotted hat wheeled in a computer cart and prepared to run the newborn hearing test. Unapologetically, she swabbed Sophia’s forehead and applied electrodes in four places. Sophia stirred in sleep, but did not wake. Stepping gingerly around the computer wires, the volunteer came to stand at the keyboard, pushing keys and then waiting, staring at the monitor. Nurses had already been in and out for heel sticks, eye drops, immunizations, a vitamin K shot. I continued to gaze at Sophia.
She was all olive, rose, and brilliant slate gray, her features still mushy like a newborn pup’s.

I glanced over at Bill to see if he noticed the way Sophia’s lips pouted. I was surprised to find his face sallow. He was up, questioning the volunteer about the numbers that appeared on the screen. His stare alternated between Sophia and the computer monitor.

“What are the typical scores for this test?” Bill asked.

“The numbers are usually in the hundreds,” the volunteer mumbled almost inaudibly.

I sat up and gaped at the tiny white numbers, dwarfed by the hulking black monitor: 4 . . . 7 . . . 3.

“Soph, you’re not exactly setting the world on fire.” Bill’s voice was thin.

“Bill, what’s going on?”

“
Come on
, Sophia.”

The volunteer shifted her weight, staring at us awkwardly. Then she walked over to Sophia, removed the electrodes, and gently wiped the goo from Sophia’s hairline. She stuffed the tangle of cords on a low tray, switched off the computer screen, and guided the computer cart, backward, out of the room.

An audiologist came in five minutes later. “I’ve been notified that Sophia didn’t pass the hearing screen, but remember, your baby has been ‘underwater’ for nine
months,” she said in a reassuring voice. She went on to explain that residual amniotic fluid or a bacterial infection may have caused Sophia to fail the screening test. Statistics were in our favor: twenty-six of thirty babies who fail the initial test pass it two weeks later. Only a small number turn out to be hard of hearing or deaf.

I sat, silent, with Sophia curled in my lap.

The bright sunlight beamed through the thick hospital window. I had just finished my doctorate in philosophy, but lacked the philosophical tools to deal with this. My baby could be hard of hearing or deaf? How was this possible? Like all expectant mothers, I had harbored fears for my baby, choking down prenatal vitamins the size of horse pills and eating platefuls of kale to ward off the numerous maladies catalogued in the pregnancy books. But
deafness
? I’d had no reason to consider it. Now, despairing passages flashed through my head: Aristotle’s notorious claim that the deaf, incapable of speech, are incapable of reason. Immanuel Kant’s view that the “Dumb” (the mute) can never be full-fledged persons. The categorization, in Jewish law, of deaf mutes as forever childlike. I knew these conceptions were outdated, from another, less generous time, but they eroded my spirit anyway, and dreams I didn’t realize I carried—dreams full of a child’s chatter and song—began to wither deep inside.

The audiologist broke into my pained muddle with a pragmatism that was strangely comforting. “ I can’t have any idea what this must be like for you. I don’t have a baby, never mind a baby that might be deaf.” She went on to take down our history, asking if there was anyone with hearing problems in our families.

My mother. My mother had substantial hearing loss. She had worn hearing aids all of my life. They whistled and never seemed to work very well. But so far as I knew, my mother wasn’t born with her hearing problem—she lost her hearing after a series of mastoid infections and surgeries. It wasn’t genetic. I told the audiologist what I knew of my mother’s history.

After the audiologist left, I dialed my parents in Connecticut. With Sophia in my lap, the phone cord bunched and tangled like curly hair just above her nearly bald head.

“Dad, Sophia failed the newborn hearing screening.”

“What?”

“She didn’t pass the hearing test. The audiologist said it might be due to fluid or a bacterial infection. They’re going to test her again later. But ...”

“Jenny, I’m sure it will clear up. Listen, we’re flying out there in a few hours. We’ll see you this afternoon.”

“But what about mom’s hearing loss? Is there any chance it’s genetic?”

“No, no. Don’t push the panic button. I’m sure it will all clear up.”

Hours later, the same volunteer wheeled in the computer and re-tested Sophia. There again were those tiny white numbers—too low, much too low. Sophia lay asleep, unperturbed as Bill and I stood powerless: we couldn’t will her to hear the sounds being piped into her brain.

My parents arrived in the early evening, gift bags filled with baby blankets and onesies rustling in their arms. They settled into our crowded hospital room and took turns cradling Sophia. The place teemed with people—nurses and doctors, lactation consultants, various friends wanting to meet Sophia, a “welcome wagon” lady from the local synagogue with a challah in tow. Through the clamor, I felt a burgeoning grief rise inside me. It clashed with my joy and wonder at Sophia—how she opened her tiny mouth like a baby bird, how she stretched all twenty-one inches of herself, from the tips of her fingers to the tips of her toes, as she yawned. Against my own groundless hopes, I recoiled from every attempt at reassurance. “She probably still has fluid in her ears,” my parents kept saying. I could hardly look at Bill.

Later that night, my father walked to a nearby market to get us provisions: my favorite black currant tea, rice pudding, bagels and cream cheese, a pint of fresh blueberries.
Then my parents left. They would visit the next day, before their flight back. We were alone again. Bill and I nestled Sophia, capped and swaddled, into the bed. I stacked newborn diapers into the bureau drawer, ate a spoonful of rice pudding, then huddled next to Bill on the remaining swath of bed, burying my face in his shoulder. The prospect of middle-of-the-night feedings was a relief to me. I knew I wouldn’t be sleeping tonight.

The following day, the audiologist came to schedule Sophia for further tests. She tried to reassure us again with statistics. I clutched the small, striped hospital blanket that Sophia was swaddled in at birth. Nurses bustled about, preparing us for discharge. We were handed a form to rate our comfort level with the various tasks of baby care: nursing, diapering, bathing. We were novices at all of it, unsure even of how to rate ourselves. I stood paralyzed beside the baby bassinet, wondering if it would be all right if we took the swaddle blanket with us. Our discharge papers contained the order to return to the hospital in two weeks for audiological follow-up.