Instructions

“Just put your pencil right here. It’s simple,” my friend’s mom said.

I doubted it. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to write the number 8.

I was six years old and visiting my friend’s house. She lived down the street and around the corner from me in a nice apartment.

“Give it a try, honey,” her mom whispered in my ear.

Could I really do it? I put my pencil on the page, held my breath, and started to move my hand. The number 8 appeared!

“It’s magic,” I said. I didn’t believe for one second that I had written the number. My friend’s house must have been magic. It was full of crayons and dolls and games — all the things that you couldn’t find in my home. At our apartment there were loud voices and scary men and drugs being passed around.

Though it’s been nearly thirty years since I learned how to write my numbers, I still feel that mom’s whispered breath tickling my ear. 

Nikki D.
Wilsonville, Oregon

In the 1950s I attended Saint Mary’s Academy, a New Orleans school for colored girls run by the only order of black nuns in the United States, the Order of the Holy Family. The school was located on the corner of Orleans and Bourbon Streets, in the heart of the French Quarter, and the building had originally been a ballroom where the notorious pirate Jean Lafitte had come to court the beautiful octoroons — women with one-eighth African ancestry. Each day I climbed a mahogany staircase underneath crystal chandeliers on my way to chapel or to Latin class. 

The nuns gave us strict instructions not to walk up Bourbon Street on our way home from school; we were told to go a few blocks up to Dauphine and catch our buses in front of the a&p. Of course my friends and I — a bunch of twelve-year-old Catholic schoolgirls in blue-and-white uniforms — made a mad dash around the corner onto Bourbon at least once a week. From 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. we learned about the Virgin Mary, but after three we entered the world of Mary Magdalene, the whore. 

Even in the early afternoon Bourbon Street was alive. The hawkers outside the strip clubs would open the doors to give us peeks. By the time we got to Canal Street, we had seen the equivalent of an entire striptease. I’ll never forget the window display for a stripper named Alouette. The tassles on her pasties lit up and twirled electronically. The French song “Alouette” was never the same for me after that.

We passed stores that reminded me of toy stores, because they displayed pink plastic and rubber things in their windows. Once, we went inside one, and I got a queasy feeling in my stomach. One girl picked up a pencil with a little pink penis eraser on top, and we all ran out of the store in a burst of giggles. 

When we arrived at Canal, we stopped at the newsstand to buy candy bars and browse through Mademoiselle magazine. Swapping bites of Milky Way and Baby Ruth, we became innocent Catholic schoolgirls again, ready to go home to our parents and their usual question: “What did you learn today?”

Francine Verrett
Los Angeles, California

One quiet winter afternoon my mother showed me how she applied her makeup. As she pulled each item from her kit, she explained where she’d bought it and how it should be used. She had done this fifteen years earlier, when I was in high school and just learning to wear makeup myself. But the purpose of today’s lesson was different: now she wanted me to know how to apply her makeup for her after she was no longer able to. My mother was battling cancer, and the doctors thought she may live only six more months. I didn’t think makeup was a high priority when one is facing death, but I listened patiently to her instructions.

I also went with her to make arrangements for her funeral service. The funeral director ushered us into a room decorated in colonial style and gave us some books of sample programs and thank-you notes to review. My mother asked which thank-you note I liked best. Of course my favorite was different from hers, and an odd discussion ensued over who should get to choose: I would be sending them, so shouldn’t I pick them? But it was her funeral, so shouldn’t she have the final word? In the end I let her decide. It was always easier that way. 

Then we went into a room full of caskets, where Mom selected a moderately priced model with a light blue interior that she thought would match the dress she planned to wear. As she peered into the casket, I could tell she was imagining herself lying in this box, wearing her dark blue velvet dress, her makeup perfectly applied. 

After Mom passed away, I had no decisions to make. She had left me explicit instructions on whom to call, what the pastor should say, what gifts to give the ladies who helped at the church, and how her hands should be laid across her Bible in the casket. On her desk I discovered a recording she had made for me. I put it in the player, curious to hear what she’d needed to say. And there she was, slowly telling me, step by step, how to apply her makeup for the funeral; she was afraid she’d left some details out of the earlier lesson. 

My mother was not one for warm sentiment, but her trusting me with the intimate details of her beauty regimen, so that I could instruct the funeral director, was a sign of her love. I’m glad she made the tape. It is the only recording I have of her voice.

Amy Knife Gould
Chicago, Illinois

As my mom led me down the dingy school hallway toward the kindergarten room, I squeezed her hand and pulled in the other direction. She signed, “Let go. Hurting me.” I could hear, but she couldn’t.

I shook my head no. All I knew about kindergarten was that she wouldn’t be staying. 

We stood at the swinging doors to the classroom until the teacher noticed us: “And who do we have here?”

I signed to Mom, “Who you?”

Mom signed, “Tell.”

“I’m Allyne,” I said. “This is my mommy.”

“Doesn’t your mommy talk, sweetie?”

“Can you talk?” I signed to Mom.

“Deaf!” Mom signed, that one word charged with years of pent-up frustration over inconsiderate people who could hear. 

I responded, “She’s deaf,” leaving out her intonation.

The teacher leaned down to look into my face and said, “Oh, you poor little thing.”

Mom tapped my shoulder: “What?”

Reluctantly, hating this teacher and this room I would be left alone in and the burden that had been placed upon me, I signed, “She says I’m poor.”

Mom had had enough. Before turning to leave, she shot the teacher a glare. I cried and watched her go.

“Class, pay attention,” the teacher said, continuing with her lesson. She proceeded to give us instructions on how to color a scarecrow drawing, describing what color to use in each part of the body. “When you are finished coloring, you may go outside to play.”

The other kids picked up their crayons and rushed to fill in their scarecrows. One by one they finished and went to play outside, but I didn’t know how to start on mine. When I tried to look at their papers, the teacher scolded me for copying and sent me to a table by myself. I sat alone, looking from the blank scarecrow to the kids playing outside.

I had learned everything I knew from my deaf parents either through signing or demonstration. It took me years to understand that my brain does not process verbal instructions without visual support. That was the first of many assignments I would not understand, and my kindergarten teacher was the first of many professionals who would scold me for being “uncooperative,” “defiant,” and “stupid.”

Allyne Betancourt
Sandy, Utah

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