Hands of My Father: A Hearing Boy, His Deaf Parents, and the Language of Love by Myron Uhlberg Read Free Book Online

punches I threw jolted my arms. The invisible impact of their landing shot up into my shoulders. I hunched in pain. But my face was Joe Louis’s stoic mask, the one my father had shown me in the newspaper. I was killing Schmeling, that Nazi rat. Take that ! How about this ! Smack—my leather glove beat a tattoo on Schmeling’s bloody puss. I was making hamburger out of his Aryan face, turning his Nazi body into mincemeat. So much for the Master Race.
    I rose up on my toes and pursued the retreating, cowering Schmeling around the ring.
    I heard the announcer scream, He can run, but he can’t hide. Louis has Schmeling on the ropes. He’s pounding the bejesus out of him. HE’S DOWN! HE’S DOWN! SCHMELING’S DOWN! He’s on the canvas.
    I dropped to the floor and lay spread-eagled on the rag rug.
    Louis is standing over Schmeling.
    I jumped up. I stared down at the rug impassively.
    Schmeling’s twitching.
    I dropped to the floor. Rolled on my back. I twitched.
    Schmeling’s as still as a stone.
    I was as still as a stone.
    The referee waves Louis to a neutral corner.
    I jumped up and followed his command, taking myself to what I deemed the neutral corner of the room.
    ONE.
    I signed in exaggerated emphasis the number one …TWO… two …THREE… three …SCHMELING’S TRYING TO GET UP… I fell down. I tried to rise…and continued signing …FOUR… four …FIVE… five …SCHMELING FALLS BACK TO THE CANVAS… I fell back on the rug …SIX… six…I signed the number from the floor …SEVEN… seven …EIGHT… eight …NINE… nine …TEN… I made a fist, thrust my thumb up, and wiggled my hand furiously… TEN.
    IT”S ALL OVER! SCHMELING’S OUT! I was signing like a maniac.
    THE BROWN BOMBER IS THE HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION OF THE W.O.R.L.D.!
    The noise from my radio was deafening.
    I paraded around the room, arms upraised in victory; the tumultuous cheering pouring from the radio was music to my ears. “Take that, Adolf,” I shouted at the top of my lungs.
    My father was whooping and hollering and stamping his feet on the floor in wild unleashed joy.
    The neighbors in the apartment below us were pounding on their ceiling with the end of a broom. Our next-door neighbors were banging on the wall between our apartments. The neighbors upstairs were stomping their feet on their floor. It was chaos.
    My mother felt the noise from the floor below her feet, and the reverberations from the walls and ceiling, and ran into the room in alarm.
    My deaf father heard nothing, but the look on his face said it all. He was laughing uproariously at my performance. Tears were coming out of his eyes and running down his cheeks.
    “ Great fight! ” he signed, when he caught his breath, “ I understood everything! ”
    I stood there in the middle of the ring, on the rag-rug canvas, exhausted but proud. Thank heavens, I thought, the fight had lasted less than one round. At my age I was in no shape to go the distance.
    “I didn’t know you knew how to box.” He broke up again. “Your signing was great. Very clear.” Then he laughed again; he couldn’t contain himself.
    Every year, after that performance, I was called upon to do it all over again, as Joe Louis fought his way through, and disposed of, an endless string of hapless opponents. Fortunately for me, in 1939 Joe Louis KO’d John Henry Lewis in the first round. No pile-driving man was this John Henry. He was sent to the canvas with one punch from the Brown Bomber’s lethal fist.
    My father was delighted, as was every other American, white and black.
    The next year I turned seven, and Louis KO’d the oddly named, I thought, Johnny Paychek, in the second round. What the poor fellow had to do to earn his paycheck that night at the hands (fists) of Louis, I couldn’t imagine. Personally I wouldn’t go in the ring with Joe Louis for all the tea in China, let alone a mere paycheck.
    The fight had gone one round further than I had fought before. My stamina was improving, and