Carnaval, Upstate

“Una Pz Intranquila 15” by Anisley Lago

I ran home from the bus stop, the cold mineral air of winter filling my lungs. Laughter vibrated in my throat as I passed our neighbor's powder-blue house with Christmas lights sagging over their front windows. I almost slipped on a patch of slush before catching myself. I didn't care that it was February in Syracuse, the worst month of all with its dirty brown snow and dirty gray skies. None of that mattered because today was Carnaval.

Panting, I stopped outside of the screen door to what used to be my only home. There was so much to tell Mamãe and Papai. About the swimming pool and the library at my new residential school. About how Shannon was my best friend now. About how there was a Deaf world and how different it was. But not about Kyle or what I had said to Shanon. These I would keep to myself.

I opened the door, and warmth covered my face as Mamãe smiled up at me. Her mouth shaped some words that escaped me. Before I could figure them out, she swept me into her arms.

I must've gotten worse at lip-reading. I kept thinking about what she said, like playing a videotape over and over in my head. Then I think I got it: "You're finally home! Tell us everything."

Papai's glasses bumped my head as he hugged us. I breathed in his smell of laundry detergent as their arms encircled me. I was home now. Papai looked the same with his big dorky glasses and the blue button-down shirts he bought in bulk from K-Mart. His chest rumbled like he was talking. Sometimes he forgot that I couldn't hear him.

I told them how much I missed them and how wonderful yet strange school was. They stared at me in that confused way they had when someone spoke English too fast. It's strange how much you forget when you go away. Here I use English or my voice. ASL is for school. I arranged signs in a more English way, which felt slow and clumsy. That didn't work either, so I spoke, twisting my tongue and trying to breathe right. The words finally came, "I missed you." I forgot how hard using my voice was.

They understood and hugged me again.

I inhaled to say more, but Papai walked away before I could stop him. When he picked up the phone, I understood. Anger bubbled up as I wished they would tell me about things like when the phone rings. This never happened at school.

It took a while for Mamãe to fingerspell Roberto, her fingers tripping over one another. She wasn't practicing, which meant she would forget everything. I was about to scold her until I saw the dried blood around her nails. She was working extra hours, washing dishes and scrubbing floors—for Papai and me. It wasn't a good time to talk about the Deaf world.

I started to get to know the Deaf world when I began eighth grade this year at the Rochester School of the Deaf, an hour and a half away. Even though my name is Marina, everyone knows me by my sign name: a M at the corner of my mouth, a little like shy. Shannon says it’s perfect since I’m so quiet, but I don’t think being quiet and being shy are the same thing.

Before I went to RSD, I went to school with hearing kids. My friends all learned to sign so that we could play tag and Spit. They thought it was cool that I could sign "turtle" and "poop." That changed last year, though. Delia, who was my best friend, stopped signing. She said that it looked stupid. All of the girls wanted to talk about boys instead of playing Spit. They kept laughing without telling me why. When I asked Alice, my teacher of the deaf, about this, she told me it was because hearing people could never understand what it's like to be Deaf. Even though she was supposed to help me “integrate better” with the hearing kids, she mostly talked about Deaf culture. That's when she told me about how the kids were like me at RSD.

When I asked to go there, Mamãe cried, and Papai said that the education wasn't good. I told them that I wanted to be somewhere I could understand people better. I don't know if that's what happened.

Now that I was home, Carnaval was in the air. Feijoada bubbled on the stove, filling the basement with the smell of beans, onions, and meat. Bright reds and blues covered up the awful beige walls our landlord wouldn't let us paint. Carnaval was better than Christmases and birthdays because you celebrated surrounded by dancing. When I described this to Shannon, she said that the costumes sounded weird. Kyle laughed at the idea of clowns at my house, even though I had told him that it wasn’t like American carnivals.

Carnaval means happiness and new beginnings. You dance when it’s cold and gray outside. Everyone dresses up to welcome the spring together. Maybe it's different in Brazil since it's summer there when it's winter here.

Mamãe snatched a feather from Papai with that mad-annoyed look that she got when I forgot to take out the trash. Their mouths moved in that Portuguese way. Papai touched her cheek and said something that made her stop waving the feather. She didn't look happy, but she didn't look mad either. I wished I knew what he had said. I forgot most of my Portuguese after I got sick and went deaf when I was two. Teachers told my parents that they should only speak English with me. Something about how English and sign language were more important. So that's why they use only English with me even though they're lousy at it. Sometimes Mamãe speaks Portuguese by accident and cries when she realizes her mistake.

As she hung paper palm trees, Mamãe's hips swung like a pendulum, gentle and soothing. Papai bobbed his head in that dorky way of his. I was thinking about how silly they looked when I understood. Music was playing, too quiet for me to feel.

Before I could ask them to turn up the music, Mamãe's mouth outlined something like dress before sashaying down the hallway. Papai crouched by the big stereo, wires dangling from his mouth with a crumpled manual next to him. Even though he's good at science, Papai's no good with machines. He broke the furnace once, and we had to sleep in our parkas for a week. He seemed busy, so I followed Mamãe.

She sat behind a pastel-green sewing machine with pins sticking out from her mouth. She looked so peaceful that I didn't want to spoil it. She was making one of her creations, clothes that belonged in fancy stores with shiny floors.

She could be more than a housekeeper. I once found a photograph of her standing next to a tall blonde wearing a yellow dress that floated around her body like a cloud of daisies. It said, "Rio Fashion Week 1984" at the bottom, which was the year before I was born. When I asked her why she didn't go to New York to show her dresses, she looked sad and fingerspelled "Can't. Love you both too much." Now she babysits and cleans “under the table” because Papai is here on a student visa.

She slid the fabric into the machine, her fingers so close to the needle that it looked like she'd hurt herself, but she didn't. Every stitch was perfect. A soft smile grew on her face that made her look younger and not so tired. When she looked up and saw me, the smile changed. I can't explain how, just that it did.

She snipped a thread, and the dress was done. She wriggled into it, and I gasped. It was one of her best. Reds and purples swirled around her hips and breasts, making her look curvier and taller. After I fastened the back, she twirled and her mouth moved, "You like?"

My fingers swept around my face: beautiful.

Her eyes lit up, and the soft smile returned. She remembered the sign. She pointed at the mirror, and her lips moved, "Same. We the same." We looked more alike than I remembered with our thick black hair and lips that pouted without looking sad. Up close, I saw how different we were. Her lips bright with lipstick and eyelashes heavy with mascara, she was so dazzling that I almost didn't notice the wrinkles around her eyes. I looked plain with my face bare of color and jeans that sagged at the knees. She wore a gorgeous painting.

"I want to dance in a dress like yours," I said, the words thick in my mouth.

Her hand went to my cheek. "Later. Too young."

I scowled at my reflection. I hadn't been too young to have a boy slide a hand up my shirt last week.

When Kyle led me to an empty room after class, I thought he wanted to ask me about an essay on Shiloh. Instead, he asked if he could kiss me. After thinking about it, I said yes. I wanted to know what it was like.

It felt like an alien ship landing on my mouth that tasted like warm orange juice. I didn't like it at first, then I understood why all of the girls talked about kissing. It was like the heat from his mouth spread throughout my body, warming up all of me. That felt good, so good that I wanted more. So I let him lift up my shirt and put his mouth on my breasts.

The next morning, the other boys waggled their eyebrows as I walked by. The girls turned away, but I saw their hands twisting at their cheeks: slut. I never told anyone about the kiss, so Kyle must’ve.

Kyle isn't popular just because he plays basketball and looks like Leonardo DiCaprio, except with dark eyes and hair that’s always in his eyes. He comes from a Deaf family, which means that his parents, grandparents, and even great-grandparents are all Deaf. His parents are important people. His dad teaches at the university, and his mom does what they call advocacy work. Shannon said that this is the best kind of family because everyone understands each other.

I found Mamãe and Papai in the living room, arms wrapped around each other as they danced. The only time that Papai danced well was with Mamãe. Otherwise, he bobbed his head like a duck. She said that it was because he was from São Paulo. "They too serious. We Rio people know how to have fun!" They must've forgotten I was there because they looked like they would kiss, so I left. It never seemed like the right time to talk to them.

Half of the living room was now in my bedroom. A couch leaned against the wall, surrounded by boxes full of Papai's textbooks. Mamãe's mannequins blocked the way to my bed. I missed my bed at school where Shannon and I talked after lights out using a flashlight.

When I first arrived at school, Shannon grabbed my hand and showed me around. Even though she looks like a popular girl with the way she walks with her back straight and head thrown back, she's not stuck-up. She showed me the classrooms, told me which teachers would let you hand in homework late like Mr. Titus and who wouldn't like Ms. Rausch, and to say "I'm Deaf, too" if I saw another Deaf person. We talked about who was cute, like Kyle, and who wasn’t, like Barry. When she invited me to her home three weeks ago, I said yes.

She lives in a big house in Buffalo with four bedrooms, a slivery kitchen, and a finished basement with a big TV. Shannon's mom was really pretty in that magazine kind of way where she wore clothes with boring colors like gray or taupe but somehow looked beautiful. When she brought us hot chocolate, she talked in that careful way people use with Deaf people. She was good at it and didn't speak too slowly or make weird faces.

That's how I understood her at dinner. Shannon was slouching, which she never does at school, when her mom said, "Shannon, it's time for our lessons," with a teacher-type of look. "Your articulation is terrible these days.” Shannon’s face reddened and she yelled, "I told you! No more!" with her hands flying. She ran off and slammed the door so hard the floor shook.

Her mom turned to me with that confused expression that you see on foreigners, which looked all wrong on her face. I think she wanted to ask what Shannon said because her fingers twitched like she wanted to sign but she picked up dirty plates instead. Before she walked away, I saw tears in her eyes.

I had never seen Shannon so upset before. Her hand almost hit the lamp as she told me about the speech lessons. "My mom says that I'm not trying hard enough. I tried so hard! I'm just not good at it.” She opened and closed her mouth in a way that made speaking look ridiculous and paused like she was thinking hard. "She's not really my family. You and I are a real family. We understand each other.”

Her hands drew a circle in the air between us, like we belonged together. I thought of how much I liked talking to her and the other kids at school. They didn’t say things like "Never mind," or "It's not important." My hands could move as fast as my thoughts, and their eyes never got that confused look. I hugged Shannon and told her we were a family.

When we went to sleep, I thought of Mamãe and Papai, their eyes full of hurt. If I were part of the Deaf family, how could I still be part of theirs? I lay awake, wondering how to fit two circles together.

Now Shannon is mad at me. After I told her how much I hated Kyle blabbing about something so private, she shook her head. “You have a chance to get the perfect family, so don’t screw it up by complaining.” She didn’t hug me goodbye before I went home.

I was flipping through one of Papai's textbooks about something called quantum mechanics when I felt it. The bed shook to the beat of samba drums. Carnaval was finally here! I flung open the door, and the vibrations hit me in the chest. People had their hands in the air, swaying to the music that pounded throughout my body. Roberto waved at me from the corner, a big smile on his face.

I've always thought Roberto was good-looking, maybe even better looking than Kyle. He's skinny with curly black hair tied back in a ponytail, which doesn't make him look like a girl at all. He smiles at you like he wants to be your friend. Kyle smiles like he has lots of friends already.

"You're back! How's school?" he signed.

I pressed my cheek against his chest and inhaled his smell—Pert shampoo mixed with something spicy. I forgot for a moment that I had been away.

Roberto moved in upstairs when he was a graduate student and never left, even though he’s a teacher now. My parents dropped me off whenever they had to work, which was a lot. He learned to talk with me, and now he can sign really well for a hearing person. He said it was because he plays guitar. I think it's something else.

"School's good," I said, trying not to think about the boys’ waggling eyebrows.

"You're so far away. It's too quiet here now."

I thought about telling him everything. About how the other kids asked me if my family sold drugs. About what happened with Shannon. About how everyone had changed my sign name to slut. About how I felt different from the other kids even though we're all Deaf. But I couldn't.

When I was little, I imagined Roberto and me living upstairs, and my parents living downstairs. We would have Carnaval parties every year with him translating for all of us. It would be perfect, and if I told him, it would ruin everything. I didn't know why, just that it would.

"Are you enjoying the party?" I asked instead.

A dimple appeared in his left cheek. "It reminds me of the discotheques in Mexico City." He gyrated like John Travolta, making me giggle.

His eyes got serious. His hands moved—"Tell me more about school"—until he caught sight of a blonde wearing a skirt too short for Syracuse winters. He promised to talk later and went to the blonde. She kept flipping her hair, which made her look like she had a neck problem. Roberto must've liked it, though, since they went upstairs together. Maybe she was his girlfriend, and he hadn't told me.

Bodies and colors swirled around me as people talked, laughed, and danced. Lips shaped into different languages. Portuguese had more lip-puckering and moved faster. English was slower, with the mouth opening wider. Spanish was somewhere in between. No matter how hard I tried, the words stayed out of my reach.

I bumped against a table full of caipirinhas. Papai likes to drink them and say, "Only real Brazilians drink these. Americans keep their watery beers and snobby wines." His eyes always glazed over, and he acted like he didn't have to worry about money or his dissertation. Carefree, that's the word for how he looked.

I stared into the cup, wondering what it tasted like. Everyone said that drinking was bad. Teachers. Roberto. Mamãe and Papai. The word no appeared in my mind, the oval mouth-shape, the fingers clamping together. I wanted to tell everyone no. No to Mamãe and Papai for not understanding me. No to Kyle for blabbing. No to the name-calling at school. No to Roberto for not telling me about his girlfriend. No, no, no!

The drink burned all the way down. How could Papai like something so awful? I must've missed something, so I drank another and another. It was like kissing. The more I tried it, the more I liked it. The sweet and tart blended into something so delicious that nothing else mattered.

Nobody noticed. Everyone kept dancing, dancing, dancing.

The floor turned wobbly like jelly. A red feather bounced in the air, so beautiful, and a pleasant heaviness weighed down my limbs. Somehow the colors, the movements, everything around me, had become more vivid, more real.

BOOM, badum—badum—tish. BOOM, badum—badum—tish.

The beat flowed through my body, the drums pounding as I swayed, swayed. Everyone was twisting and turning, the colors of their masks blurring together. I was inside one of Mamãe's dresses, full of floating colors.

BOOM, badum—badum—tish. BOOM, badum—badum—tish.

Expressions of ecstasy surrounded me as everyone lost themselves in the dance. Oh, I wanted to reach out and touch their happiness, or maybe I could. I didn’t just want to watch, not anymore.

Cuica—cuica—BRRRUUUU—UUM! BOOM, badum—badum—tish. BOOM, badum— badum—tish.

I wanted to dance. Why hadn't I thought of this before? It was so obvious! The drums inside me had to escape, I needed to go out there and dance, dance, dance.

Hot, sweaty bodies pressed against me. I raised my arms and waited for the dance to come. Nothing happened ... my body wouldn't move ... a man looked angry when I stepped on his foot ... I'm sorry ... I tried to follow everyone else ... I tried harder ... stiff limbs ... nothing was working!

Tears stung the back of my eyes. I turned and saw her.

Mamãe was dancing on top of a table, her hips whirling in figure-eights. The lines of her dress swirled together into whirlpools of color. Oh! So beautiful. A smile lifted her mouth as she reached up. Oh! The picture was interrupted when Papai brought her down to dance with him. They swayed together in perfect harmony.

The table stood empty, looking sad. Mouths opened in "Dance! Dance!" I took an outstretched hand and jumped onto the table. Everything started to spin, and I squeezed my eyes shut. The music felt shaper, clearer here. Cuica—cuica—BRRRUUUU. My body loosened, moving to the beat pulsing upward. Badum—badum—BOOM. Yes, yes, yes! Sway, lift, shimmy, twirl. I was dancing! Dancing, dancing, dancing!

Rum—brum—BRRRRUUUUU—UUM!

Laughter burst out of me. The dance flowed through me, bringing with it everyone's joy. I belonged here. Twirling, twirling, twirling.

Something grabbed me. I almost fell off the table.

Papai's hand was on my arm—why?—and he swept me off the table. His hand kept me in place as Mamãe's worried face appeared. Her lips moved in meaningless shapes, nonsense, gibberish. I shook my head. What did she say? What was happening?

Hands—theirs? someone else's?—pushed and pulled at me. Papai's glasses flashed the reflection of Carnaval's colors. Everything went double, two of Papai and Mamãe, four anxious faces, six mouths flapping in nonsensical shapes. What? Why? The harder I tried to catch the words, the more they slipped away. I was sick of always chasing the mouth-shapes, trying so hard to understand, of not being understood. Enough!

My fingers moved—flying, swooping, dancing—as my words flowed in torrents. Why don't you know my language? Don't you know what that means? It means that you don't know the Deaf-world, you can't understand me, and if you don't understand who I am, how can you love me? How can we be a real family? My hands danced in the air, all of my thoughts unleashed, free of slow movements and cramped tongues. Don't you understand, Mamãe and Papai? Don't you want to be my family?

Someone jostled me, breaking the circle I was drawing in the air. Papai looked like someone had punched him. Mamãe put her face into her hands, her shoulders shaking like she was crying. They stayed there, looking small and broken. Even if they didn't understand the words, they felt their force.

Everyone kept dancing around us, making me dizzy and queasy. My stomach cramped as I circled my fist on my chest—I'm sorry—and ran, ran to the bathroom. I was going to be sick.

The white bottom of the toilet bowl gleamed as Mamãe held my hair back. My stomach clenched and everything came up. My mouth burned afterward. Papai’s arm felt warm around my shoulder as I fell into bed.

I woke up with a dry mouth and a throbbing headache. Mamãe was sitting by me with a glass of water and an aspirin, her face scrubbed clean. She looked younger, more like me. I gulped down the water, the most refreshing thing I had ever tasted. She started to talk, her hands too slow for her mouth. I was too young to drink. Carnaval wasn't an excuse to misbehave. I had to clean up the mess as punishment. That was what she said, more or less.

She pressed her cool hand to my forehead, her eyes full of melancholy as if she wished for something she could never have. Her lips moved in that Portuguese way and I caught a word, amor, love. The strange expression vanished, and her palms came together, "Clean up now!”

My head pounded as I went into the living room. It was a mess. Empty paper plates and cups were everywhere, even on the new stereo, which had a big brown puddle on top. I hoped Papai hadn't seen that yet. My foot caught onto some lumps in the carpet. Someone had stepped on some pão de queijo and smashed it deep into the fibers.

I felt footsteps behind me and turned to see Roberto. “Crazy Carnaval this year, uh?" he said after hugging me. "Sorry that I missed your dance performance."

My blush made him laugh.

“We all need a release sometimes. Otherwise, you’re too bottled up to think straight. Things look better afterward,” he said before grabbing an overflowing trash bag and heading outside.

Papai came to kiss my forehead. His eyes had the same sadness as Mamãe’s had. Maybe they understood what I had told them yesterday—not everything, but enough. And they still loved me.

The vacuum rumbled as I passed it over shreds of feathers and fallen confetti. As I cleaned, I decided what I would say to Kyle and Shannon. To Kyle, I’d say that I don’t care that he’s popular and I don’t kiss blabbermouths. To Shanon, I’d explain that I don’t need perfect families, just a real friend. That made me feel better, ready to go back.

I turned off the vacuum when it reached two paper plates on the carpet, stacked like a Venn diagram. I picked them up and tried to mash them together but they crumpled without merging. I stared down at the crushed circles that would never become one and put one on top of the other. Maybe this was just how things were. Two circles, two families, and two lives. Two was more than one, and maybe that wasn't so bad.

About the author

Cristina Hartmann grew up in upstate New York as the daughter of Brazilian immigrants and identifies as DeafBlind. She received the June 2020 Deaf Artist Residency Award and currently lives in Pittsburgh with her boyfriend and a cat that drools all over the furniture.

about the artist

The artist Anisley Lago was born on October 23, 1987, in Habana, Cuba. She studied Fine Arts at the "National Academy of Art of San Alejandro" graduated in 2012. She participated in a workshop with artist Rocio Garcia called "Nuevo Fieras", in 2010, where presentations were made in different provinces of the Island. She participated in different collective and personal exhibitions.After finishing her studies she moved to the United States of America in 2012, where she maintains her career as an artist. Her work depicts the vision of creating inner worlds, where physical and spiritual journeys emanate from the conscious and subconscious desire for freedom.