Prickly Pear

"Hey!" Renee didn't hear the word, but she saw the wave, the open mouth, and the frantic college student running toward her. They trotted silently next to each other as Renee counted off the last half mile. Finally she stopped and looked at her roommate, the one who had ignored her all semester. "I didn't know you ran!" Her roommate, Cam, grinned at her. Renee locked her hands behind her back, so she didn't prattle off with something sarcastic like, Oh, you didn't know deaf people could run? Cam stood there for one more minute and then waved half-heartedly, jogging off in the other direction. Renee shook her head and threw open the door to her room, hoping Cam would leave her alone so she could get work done.

She plopped at her desk and sighed, leaning back lazily in her chair. The blank computer appeared to be mocking all the work she had yet to do. She adjusted her iPhone on its stand, and sat on the stubborn edge of her phone against the part of her roommate's plant. It would never stay in the holster. There were so many changes she needed to make her dorm room, but hadn't yet taken the opportunity. Textbooks lay next to her computer for biology, English Lit, and Geometry, not a single spine broken. In a creative burst of inspiration, her finger hovered over the “record” button on her phone. She hesitated and scooted her chair back, showing the top half of her body from her face to her elbows. This was a familiar area of the signing space, what most hearing people refer to as the head shot.

Renee, as deaf adult in a hearing university, had learned to modify her habits so that she received the support she needed. She concentrated on correctly writing in English the modifications she needed. She wasn’t as confident using English as she was her native language, American Sign Language. Much of the time in class, she utilized her interpreter. However, for initial introductions since high school, she had made a point to introduce herself to her professors face-to-face. She wanted to allow the professors to see who she was, rather than just a name with some type of modification.

Her eyes fell to the stack of unused textbooks again. It took too much brain power to study on the weekends because of all the new terms she learned in her class. Science especially. Since her goal was to be a pediatrician, she often scoured medical websites with detailed definitions and used her ASL dictionary, incorporating some fingerspelling and motions whenever a sign did not yet exist. Though ASL was a thorough language with it’s own grammar, there wasn’t always a concept she could connect to known words. This meant that she often raised her hand in class to request an explanation when the words on her paper ran together in a meaningless jumble. It was embarrassing, but her determination to improve drove her. Teachers did their best, but it was tiring to find a workaround for everything she did.

A sharp finger tapped her on the shoulder and she whirled around. Her roommate, Cam, held a plate of fruit, diced and fanned out. “A-P-P-L-E-S”? Renee fingerspelled slowly with her eyebrows raised as a question, knowing that her roommate knew that much Sign Language.

Cam shook her head. “No,” she mouthed. “P-E-A-R-S.” She wrote on a kitty notepad, "I'm making pear turnovers. My grandmother's recipe. She has an entire tree in her backyard and likes to send some home with me."

Renee nodded. They weren’t bad. The flavor burst in her mouth giving her the bubble of excitement to finish her project. She waved at the camera on her video phone, explaining her full name and date, but she was brainstorming for a project that they had to complete. The phrasing was different from English, but she was hoping her own visual notes would help when it came to writing her end of unit paper. She finished a section with a flurry of fingerspelling a list of technical, five-syllable words.

A hand appeared above her head, waving two fingers in the air. She whirled around to see her roommate laughing. She grabbed a piece of paper from the printer and scribbled on it, “I’m trying to study!” Cam wiped her smile off her face and shrugged. She fingerspelled, “H-U-N-G-R-Y”? Renee nodded hesitantly. She really needed to finish her project. She wiggled her fingers, both palms up in front of her, then spelled out the meaning, “W-A-I-T”. She turned around and rushed through a summary of her last chapter while Cam leaned against the door jam to their bathroom.

Cam often saw Renee at lunch, but did little more than wave and smile. She would glance at her in Biology, but never motion for them to sit together. They had never eaten at the same table in the past two months on campus. Now she's offering snacks? Cam mouthed, “I’m trying,” Then wrote on the bottom of the paper. “I just don’t know how to act sometimes.”

“We’ll have to see.” Renee pantomimed a single finger in the air and put one foot forward, fingerspelling “S-T-E-P”. Then she repeated the gesture.

Cam nodded, motioning towards the door. “Right. One step at a time. Let’s get started.”