Haben Read online

  I pull a new chunk of meat from the big pile.

  “Eww!” Jessica bolts from the table.

  Looking around, I try to figure out why she left. No one says anything, and no one else leaves. Shrugging, I go back to work. My left hand positions the new chunk of meat while my right hand holds the knife.

  What on earth? Carefully putting down the knife, I examine the meat with both hands. The squishy flesh has a round base and a long shaft.

  My pulse skyrockets. It’s the bull’s penis!

  My heart hammers in my chest as I fight the urge to run. Stay calm. The guys are definitely staring. They probably set this up as a joke, expecting the girls to flee shrieking.

  A steely calm washes over me as I resolve to stay. I absolutely can sit here and cut meat. Go ahead, boys—watch me!

  Gripping the knife with my right hand, I once again use my left hand to position the meat.

  This one’s for Cinderella!

  I begin sawing the meat, and it wiggles and squirms under the knife. I press down on the blade, sawing with even more force.

  A large hand slips under mine and rescues the organ. A triumphant smirk lights up my face as I watch the guy walk away toward the backyard. There, that’ll teach them to stop pulling pranks.

  Was that really the bull’s…? My mind skims through memories from my seventh-grade sex-ed class. Maybe, possibly. Oh. My. God.

  My stomach churns with revulsion. I can’t sit here anymore. I’m done. If Saba asks why I’m not cooking, I’ll just tell her the story. I’d love to help, Mom, but I had a horrifying encounter with a bull penis.

  I put my knife down and head back to the house, stepping cautiously through the obstacle course of wedding preparations.

  Not knowing the names of the family members around me, even after working closely with them, fills me with an aching loneliness. I could have asked them to identify themselves. I could have asked Jessica to explain what was going on. By focusing all my energy on proving my fearlessness, framing the situation as me-against-them, I perpetuated and guaranteed my own exclusion.

  Chapter Five

  Key by Key

  Asmara, Eritrea. Summer 2001.

  A rocky, unpaved road winds in front of my grandmother’s house. Tall brick and metal gates line the street, marking our neighbors’ yards. Last week, my aunt’s wedding tent stood on this street. People danced and cheered, drank and ate, partying for three whole days. Now the street feels empty. Cars roll by slowly, mindful of the kids who treat the road as a playground for soccer, marbles, and tag. I stroll down the street, trailing the side to stay out of the way.

  A hand grabs my arm. Cold fear slices through me like a knife. The hand belongs to a kid three inches shorter than me.

  “What?” I breathe, telling myself to calm down. He could be a cousin, or a family friend.

  He shouts something. The jarring sound sends my pulse racing.

  “What?” I ask in Tigrinya.

  More shouting.

  I jerk my arm free. He grabs my wrist with both hands. His shrieks sound desperate. I twist my wrist, but his strong grip just tightens around my arm. That’s when I see a group of ten kids gathered around us. The other kids start shouting, too.

  My fists clench. I ground myself, preparing to kick. The Oakland Unified School District’s blindness program provided us with self-defense training. Memories from the lesson flash through my mind.

  A girl steps forward and wraps her hands around my other wrist. Her grip is gentle, light, meant to touch rather than restrain. “It’s Lydia. Can you bring the keyboard? Please?”

  I stare at her, perplexed. “Keyboard?” My grandmother’s house doesn’t have a computer. I rack my brain for possible meanings. “Do you mean the toy piano? Musica?”

  “Yes.” Lydia waves my arm side to side. “Please! Please!”

  The shouting of the kids behind her morphs into a chorus of, “Please! Please!”

  “Sure.” My shoulders relax.

  Shouting always scares me. I can’t hear the nuances that distinguish happy cheering from furious swearing. Often, people shout at me thinking I’ll hear them better. It just makes me want to run away, or kick them.

  I pull my left arm back, out of the stranger’s grasp. A lot of kids don’t know that a strong grip signals aggression. Most kids tend to ignore tactile communication. I keep reminding myself to pause and check before reacting.

  Lydia holds my hand and we walk with our arms swinging. She’s eleven, a year younger than me. She speaks the best English of all the neighborhood kids, so the others often ask her to explain games to TT and me.

  The group gathers at my grandmother’s front door. I wave at them as I go through.

  Music and I have a complicated relationship. My limited hearing means I miss most of the music around me. Part of the sounds produced by keyboards fall within the small range of hearing I have in the high frequencies. My ears can process certain types of simple, straightforward melodies—the less noise the better.

  Engaging with music through my sense of touch heightened my understanding of sound. In school, Ms. Scott taught me braille music. Each musical note has a corresponding braille symbol. After memorizing the braille music for “Are You Sleeping Brother John,” I then proceeded to the large keyboard in our classroom and played the song. The challenge of training my fingers to perform the pattern pleased me.

  When Ms. Scott introduced chords, my progress petered out. The low frequencies of the chords drowned out the high frequency sounds in the melody. The whole left half of the keyboard sounded dull, like the rumblings of a washing machine. Music will never fill my soul with joy the way it seems to for the people around me.

  My family adores the toy piano. We brought it from the United States for my little cousin. He banged on it a few times, then abandoned it. My twenty-four-year-old uncle Abraham picked up the purple children’s toy and began playing Eritrean songs by ear. His ability to identify a note just by listening to it astounded me. Key by key, Abraham taught me how to play the music of Eritrea.

  When I emerge outside bearing the precious toy, the crowd of kids at the gate has grown. Lydia takes my arm and leads me to a pair of large rocks where we sit down. The crowd follows, forming a semicircle around us.

  I proffer the keyboard to her, and she begins to play a melody. At the end of her piece, the group applauds.

  Lydia passes the keyboard to a new girl, who takes her place on the rock.

  “What is your name?” I ask.

  “Sara.”

  Smiling, I wave at the keyboard. Holding the toy with one hand, she pecks at keys with the other. The notes sound disconnected. She starts over, and this time I catch parts of the song she’s trying to play. She stops and starts again.

  I reach over and play the first seven notes of the song. My index finger taps out the pattern again, going slowly to help her memorize the sequence. The other kids lean in to watch.

  I turn the keyboard back to Sara. She hits a few wrong notes, but quickly corrects herself. On her fourth try, she plays the pattern all the way through without mistakes.

  “Awesome!” I give her two thumbs up.

  While I’m teaching Sara, the kids are teaching me something, too. I’ve wondered what I could offer a sighted, hearing world, a world where it feels like I’m always the last one to know something. Society frames people with disabilities as incapable of contributing. And yet, these kids treat me like someone with gifts to share and lessons to teach.

  Sara returns the keyboard to me. I play the next seven notes in the song, repeat them, then pass the keyboard back to her.

  Sara plays, then leaps off the rock. The kids start shouting. My heart slams against my rib cage as I squint at the crowd, trying to spot the source of the distress.

  Beside me, a tall lanky man sits down on the rock with my keyboard in his lap. He starts playing a song.

  I power on my sternest, iciest, most authoritative voice. “We’re taking turns here. Gi
ve the keyboard back to Sara.”

  “Haben, don’t you know me? It’s Tomas.” He’s a nineteen-year-old who lives two houses down.

  My frown deepens. “Tomas, you need to get in line. It’s not your turn. Give it back to Sara.”

  “Okay, okay.” Tomas mutters something in Tigrinya. “Just one more song.”

  My stomach twists into knots. I don’t want him to play even one song, but I can’t make him return the keyboard to the kids. “Okay, one song.”

  He starts to play. The music taunts me, mocking my inability to control what happens to me or the treasured keyboard. It feels like an even stronger force has grabbed and twisted my wrists, leaving me helpless.

  At the end of his piece, Tomas finally hands the keyboard to me. “Bye, Haben.”

  I glare at him. “Bye.”

  The next day, I head outside again for a walk. My family can sometimes hear the front door open and close, so my hands work slowly, carefully, quietly as I slide the bolt out of its lock. I pull the door open just wide enough for me to slip through and…bam! A pair of hands shove me forward. I spin around. One of my little cousins pushes past me.

  I catch his arm. “Did your mom say you could go out?”

  “Leave me alone!” Only one of the little cousins speaks English: Yafet. He was born and raised in California, like me.

  “Let’s go ask your mom if—”

  Yafet yanks his arm free and runs.

  I chase after him on a road teeming with rocks and potholes. I move at a fast walk, my toes slightly raised to maintain my balance whenever my shoes smash into things. Taking long strides, I finally close the gap between us, catching part of his shirt. “Yafet, stop!”

  “Let go!” He wiggles free, running farther down the street.

  “I’m gonna tell your mom!” I shout, hustling after the wild child.

  Yafet suddenly veers right. I change course, following. He veers left. I veer left, too. He runs right, then left again. He runs up to a gate and disappears.

  That’s where Tomas lives! My heart starts pounding with panic. My baby cousin has entered the wolf’s den!

  Taking a deep breath, I stride over to the gate. A person stands in front of the door.

  “Hi, did Yafet go inside?” I ask.

  “Baaaaaaaa! Baaa!”

  I roll my eyes. “Fabio?” Tomas has a fifteen-year-old brother who likes to joke around.

  “Baaaaaa! Baaaaa! Baaaaaaaaaaa!” he bleats.

  The corners of my lips curl up in a smile. “All right, Black Sheep. Have you any wool?”

  “Baa! Baaaa!”

  “Excellent. I’m gonna go get the bag of wool and the little boy.” I push the gate open and walk inside.

  A rectangular courtyard stretches out before me, with a wall on my left and a building to my right. I walk forward cautiously. A closed door appears on the right. Yafet could be in there. Or not. I keep walking, venturing deeper into the courtyard.

  Someone approaches. “Hi, Haben!”

  “Hi.” I offer the woman my hand. She takes it, then gives me a kiss on each cheek. “What’s your name?”

  “Soliana. I am Tomas’s sister.”

  “Nice to meet you. Is Yafet here?”

  “Yes. I’ll show you.” Soliana takes my hand and guides me through a door. A television plays along the left wall. Two people sit on a sofa by the television. A small, Yafet-sized person lounges in an armchair in front of me.

  “Haben! It’s Tomas.”

  I do a double take. Most people don’t identify themselves. “Hi…”

  “Come in! Come sit!” Tomas projects his voice. I’m surprised that I can hear him across the room. He mastered the art of projecting without vocal tension.

  I walk around the two armchairs to reach the sofa. There’s no room on the sofa, so I sit down on the bed next to it.

  Tomas leans forward in his seat. “How’s your family?”

  “They’re good.”

  “How’s Mussie?”

  My eyebrows shoot up in surprise. Tomas knows my brother.

  Family history never fits into a single, neat narrative, especially in a large family spread across four continents. The stories unfold over years, detail by detail, person by person. Somehow, someway, Tomas holds a part of my family history.

  My two brothers mostly grew up separate from me. American culture might label them as half-brothers. In Eritrea we just say brothers. The oldest, twelve years my senior, is Awet. He teaches kids at a school in California. The other brother, six years my senior, is Mussie. He is the only other person in my family who is Deafblind.

  Tomas’s question triggers memories of family conversations. Mussie grew up here, with Grandma Awiye. Is that how Tomas knows him? Grandma tried to provide Mussie with an education, but the schools said they could not teach a Deafblind child. Mussie stayed at home while the other kids attended school. After several frustrating years, Mussie immigrated to the United States. He finally gained access to school at age twelve.

  I swallow, trying to clear the lump in my throat. “Mussie is doing well. He’s in New York at the Helen Keller National Center. He’s staying there for nine months to learn independence skills. They work on traveling with a white cane, using assistive technology, braille, sign language, cleaning, cooking…Can you cook?”

  “A little bit.”

  “Uh huh. I bet Mussie cooks more than you.”

  Tomas talks to the person next to him on the sofa. They chat for a bit. “Haben, this is Dawit. Do you know Dawit? He’s my friend.”

  “Nice to meet you.” We shake hands.

  “So Mussie is okay?” Tomas continues.

  “Yes. He graduated from high school and now he is getting training in New York. Why?”

  “We used to hang out all the time. We were best friends. We were like this. You know this?”

  “This?”

  Tomas shows me his hand. His middle and index finger are twisted together.

  Laughing, I nod. “You were very close.”

  “Yes! We were very close. We did everything together. I wanted to know that he’s doing okay. Tell him we miss him and that he should come visit us.”

  “I will.”

  Soliana asks something from the doorway.

  “Haben, do you want tea?” Tomas repeats the question for me.

  “Sure.”

  Soliana hands me a cup of tea. Her kindness touches me. Then a new thought surprises me: the guy who jostled his way into the center of a group of kids and snatched a toy from a little girl actually has a warm side.

  Sighted, hearing people can process multiple social details at a glance, details like facial expressions, body language, spoken words, and vocal inflection. For a Deafblind person, the world presents environmental information piece-by-piece. Each new piece of information has the potential to flip the feel of a situation.

  I place the empty tea cup on the table. “I’m going to go home and let everyone know that Yafet is here. Thank you for the tea.”

  Someone speaks from the doorway.

  Tomas responds in Tigrinya, then he turns to me. “Fabio wants to ask you something.”

  Fabio bounces the bed as he plops down next to me. “Baaaaa! Baaaaaa!”

  Rapid-fire Tigrinya from Tomas.

  My eyes sparkle with laughter. “Hi, Black Sheep! Where’s that bag of wool you promised the little boy?”

  “What? What do you mean?” Fabio asks.

  “There’s a song in America called ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep,’ so I named you Black Sheep because you sound like one.”

  “Ah, okay…I was wondering, can you get your keyboard?”

  I burst into incredulous laughter. “You, too? Okay, I’ll go get it.”

  Chapter Six

  Dancing in Enchanted Hills

  Napa, California. Summer 2003.

  “Haben, this is your last chance,” a British voice warns.

  The blind high school students attending Enchanted Hills Camp can all identify the Bri
tish counselors by their voices, except me. I just turned fifteen, and camp is the first big adventure of my fifteenth year. The camp offers swimming, boating, horseback riding, craft-making, hiking, sports, and theater.

  Blind and sighted counselors teach blind campers how to do all of these activities, from safely mounting a horse to playing goalball. In goalball, players roll a basketball-sized ball with bells in it, sending it at top speed across the court. The opposing team members throw themselves on the floor in the ball’s path, blocking it from entering the goal zone. All the players, sighted or blind, wear sleepshades (eye masks) to even the playing field. Goalball is a popular sport here, but I quickly discovered that my limited hearing makes it difficult for me to determine the ball’s path of travel. So I’m avoiding goalball this year.

  This year, I want to try theater.

  “Haben? Don’t you want to audition?” The British counselor asks. I’ve missed half of what they’ve said during the audition. As far as I can tell, people have been singing songs to audition for parts in West Side Story. Twelve blind campers sit in chairs facing the stage.

  Heart racing, I shake my head no.

  “Come on, give it a try.”

  Sinking into my seat, I shake my head again.

  “Okay. We’re done here, everyone can go. We’ll do announcements after lunch.”

  The sounds of chairs scraping against the floor echo around the large room. Tap, tap, tap. Some campers use white canes to find their way to the door. I have a white cane, too. It’s leaning against the wall of my closet at home. The cane helps me navigate unfamiliar places. I don’t need it at camp because I’ve learned the lay of the land. My residual vision helps, too. I can see the white walls, the sunlight pouring in through the open front door, and the six people walking in front of me.

  Outside, I step away from the group. The summer sun warms my skin. A light breeze carries the smell of horses from the stables down the road. A long, paved road runs from the cabins all the way up to the dining hall. The road has a three-foot-high rope along each side. Some campers like holding the rope to help them stay oriented. Other campers use their canes or residual vision.