She sat not looking at me though I was directly in her line of view. I
eventually let go of her hand. I wasn't sure what I should do. There was no way
I could rectify the situation. She either had to trust me or.... what? I tried
to place myself in her shoes... What would I be feeling? Betrayal? Hurt?
Confusion? Such a mishmash of emotions that I realized maybe she plain just
needed time to sort them out and find her way back to me. I remember looking at
Jane, questioning her with my face. She offered no comfort and turned away
returning once again to what must have been for her the sanctuary of the
kitchen.
When I looked back at Emily a single tear streamed down her cheek. I wanted to
brush it way a long with the pain I must have caused her through the innocent
act of seeing that blasted box. In truth it wasn't completely innocent. I did
look at the dipstick and confirm my suspicions but seeing the box had been an
accident. Finally, I signed to her not even knowing if she was actually seeing
me, "I'm sorry." Then I stood up and walked away. I found my purse and
started toward the front door.
I didn't know exactly were I was or how to get back to school but I couldn't
stay there a minute longer feeling like I had just destroyed the world. I had
reached for the door handle when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I jumped, as I
still wasn't quiet use to one of the deaf methods of getting attention. I turned
to look up into Emily's tear rimmed eyes. "Don't go. Jane will take you to
school. I need to talk to you," she signed. I followed her meekly into the
dining room where we sat at the table.
I didn't give her a chance to start first. I had needed to remind her of
something, something that I hoped would bring her some comfort in my knowledge.
"Emily," I signed, "Do you remember what I told you I do with my
free time?"
She replied, "No."
"I run a support group for women who like you find themselves pregnant
later in life. These ladies I have helped turn to me and share some of their
deepest desires and fears. I am their confidant. I won't tell your secret. It is
yours only to tell." Looking back I am sure that my words did comfort and
alleviate her some of her fears.
I remember Jane looking at me as if I was nuts. I had never divulged to her what
I did with my life outside of the classroom. She had no way to know that for the
last three years of my life I had run a website and a support group on the
internet to help women deal with the issues surrounding having children after
the age of 40. It wasn't something that anyone would suspect a 33 year old even
caring about. I didn't run the group and site out of curiosity. I ran it because
I knew about social stigmas. I did it for my grandmother who had her last child
at the age of 44. I did it for my uncle who was born with Down Syndrome. I did
it because the world said that Jimmy was a mistake, his mother was too old. I
did it because I didn't understand how a human being so full of love could be a
mistake. He was a child created out of love; the age of his mother didn't
matter. I did it for the sake of love.
Emily looked at me then as if she was summing up what I had just told her. I
waited patiently for her to begin. "You know I use to swim, competitively.
It was my life. I wanted to show the world what a deaf woman could do. I worked
hard at being the best. I toned my body. I lifted weights. I ran many miles. I
was good. I won races. One day when swimming was no longer enough I started
teaching. It fulfilled me as swimming had once done. I thought I could be happy
teaching others, helping them learn about the deaf world, like you."
I sat in awe. This was the most she'd ever told me about herself, the real
Emily. Oh I knew about her career as a swimmer and how she had taught for years
at the school for the deaf before getting her Masters and coming to work for the
college. But I didn't know the emotions behind those things. For the first time
I saw Emily in a different light. I understood her struggles.
She continued with her signing while I occasionally had to ask for clarification
when I didn't understand a sign, "I had no desires to be a wife or a
mother. I was happy with my life the way it was. The students gave me what I
needed. My life was like I wanted it until March when I met someone. I hadn't
known how much I needed him. I was hungry and didn't know. I woke up one morning
and he was gone. No note, nothing."
Learning what had happened was like having fireworks go off inside my head.
Everything became clear then. The month of April, Emily had barely signed to
anyone including me. It wasn't that she said I'm busy but you could just tell
her heart wasn't with us as it had been in the past. I remember wanting to cry
for her as she told her tale... I know the saying says, 'It is better to have
loved and lost than to have never loved at all' but surely the person who coined
that phrase had never lost at love. Sometimes it is better not to know what
you've been missing. You never have to know the pain when it is taken from you.
You have no comprehension of it. The same can be said about hearing. If you have
no idea what it is like to hear then you can't miss it. If you don't miss it
then it has no bearing on your life except for what the hearing world imposes.
But Emily's heart had been touched and left wounded. The question I asked myself
then was would the child heal or haunt her?
"I didn't think I could get pregnant. I'm old. It shouldn't be possible. I
guess I am," Emily stopped signing and looked at me.
I knew what she was waiting for. I knew she wanted me to share with her what my
background in Biology and the women I had worked with for 3 years had taught me.
She wanted me to say that the test could be wrong. But I couldn't say that.
Instead I fingerspelled and signed, "There are not false positives. There
are false negatives. I saw the test; there isn't a question of its accuracy. It
is a true positive. You need to see a doctor and get a quantitative blood test
done."
The pumpkin colored cat, named Max, decided at that point that it was a perfect
time to jump into Emily's lap. I was glad because I didn't really want to
continue the conversation. I didn't want to know at that point what Emily's
plans where. I wasn't sure I wanted to be her confidant even though she had been
mine since the middle of the first semester. I wasn't sure I wanted our
relationship to change the way knowing her every private thought would change
us.
For the last six months I had gone to Emily's office relishing the time I spent
with her. She opened the door to this world that was so foreign to me. I could
ask her questions about the Deaf World and she would answer to the best of her
ability. She was always cheerful, always teasing me with an insistent,
"What?" as I stood before her desk bursting with laughter. That's not
to say that some days the "What?" joke didn't hurt me a little. Some
days my moods were gray and brooding. The joke on those days cut like salt in a
wound. She knew perfectly well why I was there and yet there was that darn,
"What?" On those days I had to remind myself it was only a joke and
force a laugh instead of the tears that threatened to spring from my eyes. But
still I loved her. Every day I would return.
It was more than that, though. Emily was and is my salvation. Until I came to
the ASL program I had been living the life of isolation. I feared living. I
feared rejection. I feared what being deaf would mean. Five years ago I went
through a time where hearing aids didn't help me to hear. During that time
period all the people I considered my friends disappeared. I had to leave my job
as a CNA because I feared for the safety of the patients in my care. I spent 8
hours a day working in genealogy reading obituaries and marriage records just to
have something to do. My parents didn't know how to deal with my depression. I
slowly and methodically withdrew from the hearing world. My life after that time
consisted primarily of hours at a library or on my butt in front of a computer
screen.
It wasn't all bad that this happened to me the way it did. I mean it did help me
to create the support group that now has probably helped 20,000 women. So for
all the bad there is some good. Then I was forced to take ASL. The isolation
that I lived in had been broken down. Primarily it has been Emily that has held
the door open so that I can explore my new surroundings. It has been Emily that
I turn to when I am afraid of the world around me. And it has been Emily I turn
to when I need a friend's shoulder on which to cry on. But that day at her house
the tables were turning and I wasn't sure I wanted them to. It was my turn to
need to think. I closed my eyes and therefore I shut down Emily and Jane's
ability to speak to me.
I sat there with my eyes shut trying to sort my way through my own emotional
baggage so that I could help Emily with hers. The thing that my mind kept going
back to was how did Emily feel about having a baby? She had said she's never had
the maternal desire but that was before. Now that there was a miracle and it was
a miracle how did she feel? Did she desire to have the baby or did she want to
close the door on the possibility? If she wanted to have the baby did she have
any idea how precarious the life she carried was? Did she know that the chances
that she'd carry the baby to term were against her because of her age and the
increased risk of miscarriage due to chromosomal abnormalities? Then there was
the fact that after the age of forty the hormones needed to maintain a pregnancy
begin to decrease. At 48 her progesterone levels might be so low that unless she
got supplements right away the pregnancy had no chance of making it past the
first trimester. I didn't know how to ask her these hard questions. And I didn't
know how to tell her the hard cold facts if she did want the baby. I didn't know
how to turn my thoughts into words signed or spoken. I finally opened my eyes to
find her still looking at me, waiting.... I turned to my only recourse. I dug in
my purse for a pen and paper and began to write my thoughts. Then I nervously
slid them across the table to her. It was my turn to wait, as she read what I
couldn't find the words to say with my hands.
Emily tended to answer my written queries as she came to each question without
indicating to me exactly what she was answering. So I wasn't ever sure what
questions the yes's applied to or the no's. In the end I signed that I didn't
understand what she was trying to tell me. She tried again this time she
borrowed my pen and wrote out the answers next to my questions and thoughts when
I wasn't following her signs. How did she feel about the baby? Confused... how
does any woman who's never even desired having a child of her own feel when
presented with the prospect? The idea of being pregnant was unreal. She was not
to the point of accepting that it could truly be fact. Because she couldn't
accept being pregnant yet the rest really didn't matter. She'd not had the time
to assimilate and think everything through. The one thing she did stress with
double underlines was that I couldn't tell anyone what was wrong with her. As I
had said it was her story to tell and hers alone to tell when and if the time
came.
There was some thing I knew that Emily wouldn't know unless I happened to her.
It didn't matter if she was unsure of her feelings about having the baby. If she
lost the pregnancy before she came to terms with it she would feel grief that
would touch the very core of her being. It wouldn't matter if she accepted it or
not. Until you live through such a loss you cannot know how greatly it will
affect your life. In not telling anyone that she was pregnant if she lost the
baby she'd not have any kind of support and would have to go through the grief
process entirely on her own.
I signed my understanding before adding, "Your secret is safe with
me." But I wasn't sure how we could go back to the relationship we had
before. It had changed too drastically in the course of an hour and a half. How
would I go to her office the next day or the next week or even the next month
without wanting to know how she was really doing? How would I hide the secret
she carried and still be a friend to her? I'd have to lead a double life. The
old Rachel and Emily would have to exist when the door was open and the new
Rachel and Emily would have to exist with the door closed. I had one last
question that I needed to ask her before Jane took me back to school, "Who
knows?"
"Jane, You and me," was her reply as Jane looked at her watch and
announced she had to go back to school to teach her afternoon ASL 2 class.
I don't know what Jane told Sally or anyone else about Emily's absence or
illness that day. I didn't want to know then and I don't want to know now. The
less I had to say to anyone the better. To this day I unaware if anyone besides
Jane and Emily know that I knew the truth from the beginning.