Everybody kept tailing me-in handtalk, you underatandhow sorry they were for me. They petted and stroked me, trying to draw some of the misery away.
Pink came racing in. She had been sent for to act as a translator if needed. Since this was a formal proceeding it was necessary that they be sure I understood everything that happened. She went to Scar and cried with her for a bit, then came to me and embraced me fiercely, telling me with her hands how sorry she was that this had happened. I was already figuratively packing my bags. Nothing seemed to be left but the formality of expelling me.
Then we all sat together on the floor. We were close, touching on all aides. The hearing began.
Most of it was in handtalk, with Pink throwing in a few words here and there. I seldom knew who said what, but that was appropriate. It was the group speaking as one. No statement reached me without already. having become a consensus.
"You are accused of having violated the rules," said the group, "and of having been the cause of an injury to (the one I called Scar). Do you dispute this? Is there any fact that we should know"
"No," I told them. "I was responsible. It was my carelessness."
"We understand. We sympathize with you in your remorse, which is evident to all of us. Hut carelessness is a violation. Do you understand this? This is the offense for which you are (-)." It was a set of signals in shorthand.
"What was that?" I asked Pink.
"Uh...'brought before us'? 'Standing trial'?" She shrugged, not happy with either interpretation.
"Yes. I understand."
"The facts not being in question, it is agreed that you are guilty." (" `Responsible,"' Pink whispered in my ear.) "Withdraw from us a moment while we come to a decision."
I got up and stood by the wall, not wanting to look at them ath d b te went back and forth through the joined hands.
I "e ae )a There was a burning lump in my throat that I could not swallow. Then I was asked to rejoin the circle.
"The penalty for your offense is set by custom. If it were not so, we would wish we could rule otherwise. You now r.-have the choice of accepting the punishment designated and having the offense wiped away, or of refusing our jurisdiction and withdrawing your body from our land. What is your choice?" a I had Pink repeat this to me, because it was so important that I know what was being offered. When I was sure I had read it right, I accepted their punishment without hesitation. I was very grateful to have been given an alternative.
"Very well. You have elected to be treated as we would treat one of our own who had done the same act. Come to
Everyone drew in closer. I was not told what was going to happen. I was drawn in and nudged gently from all directions.
Scar was sitting with her legs crossed more or less in the center of the group. She was crying again, and so was I, I think. It's hard to remember. I ended up face down across her lap. She spanked me.
I never once thought of it as improbable or strange. It I flowed naturally out of the situation. Everyone .was holding on to me and caressing me, spelling assurances into my palms and legs and neck and cheeks. We were all crying. It was a difficult thing that had to be faced by the whole group.
Others drifted in and joined us. I understood that this punishment came from everyone there, but only the offended person, Scar, did the actual spanking. That was one of the ways I had wronged her, beyond the fact of giving her a scraped knee. I had laid on her the obligation of disciplining me and that was why she had sobbed so loudly, not from the pain of her injury, but from the pain of knowing~she wouldhave to hurt me.
Pink later told me that Scar had been the staunchest advocate of giving me the option to stay. Some had wantedto expel me outright, but she paid me the compliment of. thinking I was a good enough person to be worth putting herself and me through the ordeal. If you can't understand= that, you haven't grasped the feeling of community I felt among these people.
It went on for a long time. It was very painful, but not cruel. Nor was it primarily humiliating. There was some of that, of course. But it was essentially a practical lesson taught: in the most direct terms. Each of them had undergone it during the first months, but none recently. You learned from it, believe me.
I did s lot of thinking about it afterward. I tried to think of what else they might have done. Spanking grown people is :. really unheard of, you know, though that didn't occur to me until long after it had happened. It seemed so natural when it was going on that the thought couldn't even enter my mind that this was a weird situation to be in.
They did something like this with the children, but not as long or as hard. Responsibility was lighter for the younger : ~a ones. The adults were willing to put up with an occasional bruise or scraped knee while the children learned.
But when you reached what they thought of as adulthood-_ r which was whenever a majority of the adults thought you . had or when you assumed the privilege yourself-that's when the spanking really got serious.
They had a harsher punishment, reserved for repeated or malicious offenses. They had not had to invoke it often. It consisted of being sent to Coventry. No one would touch you a for a specified period of time. By the time I heard of it, it sounded like a very tough penalty. I didn't need it explained to me.
I don't know how to explain it, but the spanking was administered in such a loving way that I didn't feel violated. ;~ This hurts me as much as it hurts you. I'm doing this for your own good. I love you, that's why I'm spanking you They made me understand those old clich8a by their actions.
When it was over, we all cried together. But it soon turned to happiness. I embraced Scar and we told each other how sorry we were that it had happened. We talked to each other-made love if you like-and I kissed her knee and helped her dress it.
We spent the rest of the day together, easing the pain.
As I became more fluent in handtalk, "the scales fell from my eyes." Daily, I would discover a new layer of meaning that had eluded me before; it was like peeling the skin of an onion to find a new skin beneath it. Each time I thought I was at the core, only to find that there was another layer I could not yet see.
I had thought that learning handtalk was the key to communication with them. Not so. Handtalk was baby talk. For a long time I was a baby who could not even say goo-goo clearly. Imagine my surprise when, having learned to say it, I found that there were syntax, conjunctions, parts of speech, nouns, verbs, tense, agreement, and the subjunctive mood. I was wading in a tide pool at the edge of the Pacific Ocean.
By handtalk I mean the International Manual Alphabet. Anyone can learn it in a few hours or days. But when you talk to someone in speech, do you spell each word? Do you read each letter as you read this? No, you grasp words as entities, hear groups of sounds and see groups of letters as a gestalt full of meaning.
Everyone at Keller had an absorbing interest in language. They each knew several languages-spoken languages-and could read and spell them fluently.
While still children they had understood the fact that handtalk was a way for deaf-blind people to talk to outsiders. Among themselves it was much too cumbersone. It was like Morse Code: useful when you're limited to on-off modes of information transmission, but not the preferred mode. Their ways of speaking to each other were much closer to our type of written or verbal communication, , and-dare I say it?-better.
I discovered this slowly, first by seeing that though I could spell rapidly with my hands, it took much longer for me to say something than it took anyone else. It could not be explained by differences in dexterity. So I asked to be taught their shorthand speech. I plunged in, this time taught by everyone, not just Pink.