My spirit animal is a raccoon.
I have a husband who loves me and a five-year old son named Michael. We live in a beautiful house with beautiful countertops and a beautiful yard. Michael likes to run up and down the stairs and jump on my bed and hide in the curtains. I leave the house once a week for exactly two hours at a time for my sign language lessons with Philip. It’d be hard to explain that to my husband, so I don’t tell him. It’s easier that way.
A cochlear implant is a device that provides a sense of sound to a person who can’t hear.
It’s raining outside but I’m not a raccoon today which is perfect because I’m supposed to meet Philip and it’d look strange if I was wearing sunglasses. I can hear Michael upstairs banging the cabinet doors. So much energy. I wonder what he’s thinking about. Is he lonely?
When I was young I was alone most of the time. There were no other children to talk to, so I surrounded myself with entire worlds that I created. Sometimes I’d fall off the bed or trip on the carpet. It would hurt for a while, but then a knight would come to my rescue. He’d climb down from his stallion and kneel before me and say, “Are you injured, m’lady? Come with me back to the castle and I’ll attend to your wounds.”
We’d ride off together to a place with lords and ladies, a place where there was dancing and laughter and feasts. All the men would bow to me, and the women would curtsey. “Welcome back home,” they’d say. “We’ve missed you so much. You’re safe here.”
I first met Philip through a newspaper ad. I swear I’d already dropped the paper in the recycling bin that morning, but when I walked into the living room there it was on the coffee table. Michael must have put it there. It was opened to the classifieds with an advertisement for sign language lessons circled in red crayon. My hands started to shake. I thought we’d thrown away the crayons two years ago.
“Michael?” I called out before realizing how stupid that was.
I dialed the number and a man answered.
“I’d like to learn sign language,” I said.
“Great,” he said.
And that’s the story of how my lessons began.
I usually meet Philip in the park, but because it was raining I went straight to his apartment. He had on one of those loose-fitting shirts that I thought only Italian shepherds wore, but it looked good on him. He’d been wearing it the first time we’d made love, right after I’d cried and told him that I needed to learn sign language to speak to my son.
Philip poured me a cup of coffee and we sat at his table and got to work. No matter how beautiful or nice he is, the lessons come first.
I can’t ever lose sight of that.
That evening I sat next to my loving husband on the couch. He was drinking a beer and the Patriots were playing on TV, but I could see him watching my reflection in the window, waiting for a mistake. Then from upstairs came the most beautiful sound I’d ever heard. Little feet thudding against the hickory as they ran up and down the hall.
“What is that goddamn noise?” he asked.
“You can hear it too?”
“Of course I can hear it,” he said. “The whole goddamn neighborhood can hear it.”
“I think I know,” I said.
“Well, what is it?”
“Michael.”
Then I became a raccoon again. Sometimes love is strange.
I went to my room and turned the lights off. After a while the thudding stopped. I heard the door crack open but my eyes stayed shut. I felt a tiny body crawl next to me in the bed. Then two tiny hands covered my two eyes and stole away some of the wetness.
I took those tiny hands and placed them on my lips.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
Then he was gone.
Next week I got to the park early. I sat on a bench and waited for Philip and watched the world from behind my aviators. A fat man was trying to eat a hotdog while smoking a cigarette. Some teenagers practiced yoga by the lake. In the distance, there was a group of small children swinging on the playground. They soared so high.
Michael used to swing.
Philip was wearing another shepherd shirt, but this one was a different color. He hadn’t shaved in a few days, and his stubble made him look like a poet or a movie star instead of a short man who taught people sign language for seventy-five dollars an hour.
“You must be burning up in that turtleneck,” he said.
“I’ll survive.”
“Are you ready to go?”
“If you don’t mind, I’d like to just sit here for a while.”
He gave me a strange look but I didn’t care.
“I guess we can do that,” he said.
“Thanks.”
Michael used to swing. One time he went too high.
We walked a couple blocks south to his flat. I sat at his kitchen table and took off the aviators.
“Jesus Christ,” he said. “What happened to you?”
“It’s nothing. Can we just get started?”
“Did he find out about us?”
“No,” I said. “It was something else.”
Philip started pacing in his kitchen. He made a fist and looked like he was about to punch the wall but he didn’t. I was glad that he didn’t.
“You have to get out of there. You’re not going back. It’s not safe.”
“Can we just start the lesson?”
“Jesus Christ. No, we can’t just start the lesson. He’s going to kill you.”
Philip looked like he was about to cry.
“I can’t keep doing this,” he said. “I can’t keep seeing you like this.”
“Look,” I said, “I appreciate your concern, but I really need to learn sign language, and I’m going home after the lesson because that’s where my life is.”
I didn’t tell him that Michael is my life.
A cochlear implant is a device that provides a sense of sound to a person who can’t hear. But if they’re hit hard enough they break. That’s why we still need sign language.
Philip made coffee and we started the lesson. He saw that beneath my turtleneck there were other raccoons of different shapes and sizes. Some had eyes close together, others had eyes far apart. Some hid in places that you’d never expect. Some were young and pronounced, while others were so old that they’d nearly become ghosts. The ghosts remain with you, though, even if you can’t see them.
Philip told me that he was sorry but it would have to be the final lesson because he couldn’t take it anymore. His door was always open if I changed my mind about leaving. I was sad, but I understood. I had to make this last lesson count. There were so many things left that I still needed to tell Michael.
How do you sign, “I love you more than anyone and I’d give my own life to hold you one last time and take away all the pain you’ve ever felt.”? I’d be a raccoon forever if it brought him back. How do you tell someone that? How can you prove it?
Michael used to swing. One time he went too high because my loving husband pushed him.
I know we threw those crayons out two years ago. I threw them away with my own hands. It was the saddest day of my life.
Michael couldn’t hear me scream when I found him in the back yard. He couldn’t hear the sirens of the ambulance as we rode to the hospital. He couldn’t hear his father tell the doctors that whatever company manufactured the swing set was going to get sued straight to hell. How could the chain just break like that? Could Michael feel my trembling hands on his leg before they wheeled him off to drill a hole in his skull in an attempt save what cannot be saved, to save what was already eternal and omnipotent and free? Could he feel my hands before he left, or was he already gone?
I came home three hours late today, but I didn’t care anymore. My husband was waiting for me in the kitchen. His whiskey was nearly empty.
“Where were you?” he asked.
“I went to the park.”
“Without telling me?”
“There’s a man who teaches me sign language. We meet there once a week.”
My husband started to laugh, but it wasn’t a nice laugh.
“I knew it. I could smell the stench of your whore sweat before you opened the door.”
For the first time, I could see Michael watching in the corner of the room. He wasn’t making any noise but he was growing more and more real by the second. He looked afraid, like he was about to cry.
“I wanted to learn sign language,” I said.“You want to learn sign language? I’ll show you some sign language right now. When I’m done, let me know who the better teacher is.”
Michael covered his eyes as I spoke.
“I already know who’s the better fucker.”
Michael and I watch our house from across the street. Soon the police arrive with their flashing lights. Paramedics pull a stretcher from the back of an ambulance and wheel it inside but they don’t come back out. My husband is handcuffed and taken away in a cop car. The neighbors are watching too. Their faces are sad and confused.
Michael looks up at me and I squeeze his hand. It feels so warm, so alive. My raccoon heart has transformed into something new. Maybe the past really was just a shadow of things to come. Now we can ride together to a castle where the men will bow to us and the women will curtsey. There will be feasts and dancing and laughter. They will have missed us and they’ll welcome us home and we’ll be safe. Or we can go somewhere else, wherever he wants.
I lean down and whisper in his ear, “I love you.”
He hears me and smiles.
My eyes drift from his to the sky where the stars await, burning fierce and mysterious against the night.