My Brother Signs Faster When He Is Happy

The Speed of His Hands

My brother Sizwe was born deaf, and I learned to sign before I learned to read. By the time I was seven I could tell his moods from across the playground by the speed of his hands. When he is tired, his signs go small and lazy, barely leaving his chest. When he is angry, they snap. When he is happy, they go so fast that even I, who have been interpreting professionally for eleven years, have to say, "Slow down, slow down."

For three years after he moved to the coast for work, I mostly saw his hands on a video call screen, slightly pixelated, freezing whenever the connection dropped. I could still read his moods. I could not always tell what he was not saying.

Two Cities, One Highway

I am the older sister. Our mother raised us in Pietermaritzburg after our father left, and when she died six years ago, a kind of unspoken arrangement settled over the two of us. I would be the one who made sure he was all right. He would be the one who pretended he did not need it.

Sizwe got a job as a draughtsman at an engineering firm with offices near Umhlanga Ridge. He is brilliant at it, precise and patient, and they valued him. He rented a small room in a shared house in Durban North and drove in every day. I stayed in Pietermaritzburg, where my interpreting work was, and drove down the N3 on the odd weekend to take him to lunch and check, without saying I was checking, that his fridge had food in it.

It was fine. That is the word we both used. Fine.

The Phone Call That Was Not a Call

What changed things was small.

One Thursday night last year Sizwe sent me a video message, which he only does when something matters, because typing is easier for quick things. He had been in a minor accident on the M4. Not serious. A car had braked hard in front of him and he had gone into the back of it. He was not hurt. But at the scene, the other driver had shouted at him through the window, and then the police officer had tried to talk to him, and he had stood there on the side of the highway with both of them getting louder and louder, trying to explain with a pen and the back of a receipt that he could not hear them.

He told me all of this calmly. His hands were small and slow. He was exhausted.

I watched the video three times and then sat on my bed and cried, because I had been ninety kilometres away, and that had been the one time in years he could actually have used an interpreter.

A Decision I Had Been Avoiding

I had thought about moving before, vaguely, the way you think about learning to play the piano. Most of my interpreting work was booked in Pietermaritzburg, at courts and clinics and the university. I had friends there. I had a church. I had a little flat with a lemon tree outside the window that I had grown from a pip.

But I had also been noticing that more and more of my bookings were in Durban, and that I spent hours every week on the highway. And there was the deeper thing, which was that I wanted to live somewhere I could be at my brother's side in fifteen minutes, not ninety.

I started looking, a bit secretly, on my phone late at night. I did not know the coast well. Sizwe did. When I finally told him what I was thinking, his hands went so fast that I had to tell him to slow down three times.

Looking With Sizwe

He took it over immediately, the way he takes over everything he cares about. He sent me links on his lunch breaks. He sent me floor plans with little notes drawn on them in his draughtsman's hand, arrows showing which way the windows faced, which rooms would get the morning sun.

We looked at a lot of places together on weekends. He had firm views. He wanted me close to the ridge, where his office was, but not on top of a busy road. He wanted me to have a balcony, because he knows I like to sit outside in the evenings, and somewhere he could visit without having to find street parking. I wanted something new enough that I would not be calling plumbers every month, because I have done enough of that in my life.

At one point he sent me a list of apartments in Umhlanga with his own comments next to each one in capital letters. "TOO FAR." "NICE KITCHEN." "YOU WILL HATE THE STAIRS." He was right about the stairs.

The Things a Hearing Person Does Not Check

Looking for a home with a deaf brother taught me things I had never thought about, even after a lifetime with him.

Sizwe walked into every show flat and immediately checked the doorbell. Was there a visual signal, a light, anything? He checked whether the intercom at the gate was voice only, which would have meant he could never buzz himself in when he visited. He stood in the open-plan living areas and looked at the sightlines, because for a deaf person, being able to see the whole room is the same as being able to hear it. In one place he shook his head before we were even through the door because the kitchen faced a wall, and he said, "You'd cook with your back to everyone. You'd never see us talking."

I have interpreted for estate agents and their clients many times. I have never heard anybody ask about sightlines.

The Weekend We Walked the Area

Before I committed to anything, Sizwe made me spend a whole weekend there with him. Not looking at properties, just living. We went to the beach early on the Saturday and watched the surfers. We had lunch at a place near the lighthouse where the waiter, without being asked, brought Sizwe a written menu and pointed at the specials. We walked around the newer parts up on the ridge in the late afternoon, and he showed me where he parks for work and where he buys his coffee.

On the Sunday evening he took me up to look at the view over the coast as the lights came on. He signed, "You'll be fine here," and his hands were slow and certain, and I knew he was not only talking about me.

Signing the Papers

I will not pretend it was easy. Selling my little flat in Pietermaritzburg was harder than I expected. Leaving the lemon tree was worse. I took a cutting, which is now in a pot on my balcony and has produced exactly one sad lemon.

I read everything I could about Umhlanga property before I signed, mostly so I could stop lying awake doing sums. I had a bond adviser explain things to me twice. My friends at church in Pietermaritzburg held a farewell lunch and gave me a plant and a tea towel with a map of the Midlands on it, which hangs in my new kitchen, facing the room, the way Sizwe insisted.

Fifteen Minutes

I moved in March. I have lived here eight months now.

Sizwe comes for supper on Wednesdays. Sometimes he just texts "OUTSIDE" from the visitors' parking, and I go down and fetch him because the gate intercom still does not like him, which we both find funny. My work is busier than ever, and most of my bookings are closer.

Two months ago he had a meeting with a new client who brought a lawyer, and the lawyer had not thought to arrange an interpreter. Sizwe sent me a single text: "Can you come?" I was there in twelve minutes.

Some evenings I stand on the balcony and watch the ships waiting off the coast. I used to think home was a place where people could hear you. It turns out it is a place where the people you love can reach you before things go wrong. A friend who was considering one of the Umhlanga apartments near mine asked me recently what I liked best about living here. I signed my answer without thinking, even though she cannot sign, and then had to say it out loud.

"Fifteen minutes," I said. "My brother is fifteen minutes away."