The mute speak.

Quite often in popular fiction, we meet a character who can hear but not talk. Such mutes are rare in real life. It is vital to note at the outset that mute in this context means "lack of language" rather than "lack of vocalization." Sign languages are just as valid as spoken ones, and the deaf community is a very proud, accomplished, and articulate group. Indeed, many deaf people do not even consider themselves "disabled" but, rather, members of a linguistic minority. However, our fictional, hearing mutes do not know sign and thus truly lack language--although they understand it.

What do these uncommunicative characters represent? One answer to this question is obvious--and sexist. Observed Yvette Mimieux, an actress who played such a role: "It's probably a male fantasy--a woman who can't talk." But fictional male mutes also appear, usually in horror tales. Irrespective of gender, they are spooky, these strangely silent people. What have they seen? What secrets are they keeping? Will they break through that barrier of silence?

The three books discussed in this essay all attempt to answer these questions. Unlike their fictional counterparts, each of these mute authors is physically disabled. They also tell their secrets.

Stephen Hawking grew up able-bodied and able to speak. While a graduate student working on his doctoral thesis, he started losing his coordination and was diagnosed as having motor neuron disease, commonly called Lou Gehrig's disease. In the years that followed, Hawking's body deteriorated while he did landmark work in physics.

Though most of his limbs are now paralyzed and his voice box has been removed, Stephen Hawking has never stopped communicating. With the help of a laptop computer, the scientist uses one finger to tap out his thoughts. His words appear on a screen and can be heard through a vocal synthesizer. Through this slow, arduous process, Hawking has lectured and written many complex scientific papers as well as A Brief History of Time, a popular work on cosmology in which Hawking discusses scientific answers to the most basic questions--why does the universe exist? will it exist forever?--for a lay audience.

While Hawking's achievements would have brought him fame in any case, his disability ensures that his photograph appears in any article about him. The great physicist in his wheelchair, muscles dramatically wasted, seems to personify what the Economist called "the universe in a nutshell."

Christopher Nolan's silence is the most ironic since he is a literary genius. Severely afflicted by cerebral palsy since birth, Nolan has never spoken or signed a word in his life, yet his poetry has been compared to that of Joyce, Keats, and Yeats. The drug Lioresal has given Nolan a minimal degree of muscular control in his neck so that he can hit the keys on a typewriter by means of a stick affixed to his head. (This process may, be even more arduous than that used by Hawking. Through use of this "unicorn," Nolan wrote the poems, short stories, and plays collected in Dam-Burst of Dreams as well as his autobiography, Under the Eye of the Clock.

Ruth Sienkiewicz-Mercer may be the most tragic figure under discussion. Like Christopher Nolan, she has cerebral palsy; unlike him, she lacks even minimal muscular control. As the title of her autobiography indicates, she says "yes" by raising her eyes, "no" by lowering them, and "maybe" with a curled lip. She also "talks" through her "word boards"--laminated pieces of white cardboard on which words, phrases, and numbers are arranged in rows and columns. The person with whom she communicates points to a row to ask if a word she wants to say is there; she answers with her eyes. Then the two must go through columns and rows together until they get to the word she picks. Thus, she conveys thoughts and experiences but cannot share with us the specific rhythm and pattern of her thoughts. Unlike Hawking and Nolan, she must have a coauthor.

Why now? one wonders. Why is our age one in which so many of the "mute" are talking? The answer is twofold, both scientific and cultural. Christopher Nolan's Lioresal and Stephen Hawking's computerized voice synthesizer are blessings of modem science. (A striking irony: a voice synthesizer is also used by Koko the signing gorilla. The political and social upheavals of the last decades--beginning with the civil-rights movement of the 1960s through the second wave of the women's movement and the more recent activism of disabled groups--have opened our ears to the previously silenced. We hear because we listen. Indeed, in the case of Ruth Sienkiewicz, Mercer, the cultural milieu may deserve total credit, as she has benefited from no drugs or technological devices.

As a result, the works of these authors teach us much about our common humanity. People are different, but they are far more alike than different. In I Raise My Eyes to Say Yes, Sienkiewicz-Mercer opens her chapter on the Belchertown Institution with a sentiment common to institutional residents everywhere, whether they are college students, hospital patients, or jail inmates: "FOOD.LIKE.SHIT."

Christopher Nolan revels in everyday life. His joyous memory of his mother fixing a turkey for Christmas could be anyone's--although only he could describe it in such an arresting manner, as he does in Under the Eye of the Clock:

Wielding a sharp knife Nora cut off the lonesome, guilty-looking

head, then she cut off the scaled,skin legs. Next

she slit the turkey open and forced the flesh to yield.

She eased her hand up into the cavern. A huge gllomp

sighed from the depths within. She began to pull. . . .

At last she pulled the innards outward. Another resurrecting

plurpp issued with the tissue. She left her booty 

upon the newspapers. . . . He could see her fingers

bothering the breast skin. Then they ripped out the crop.

It looked like a burst balloon and was inclined to twist

around her fingers.

These mute authors give fresh insight into the cliche, I'd give anything to have been a fly on the wall when. . . " The severely retarded are frequently perceived as invisible; so are those mistaken for such, like Ruth Sienkiewicz-Mercer. Un, fortunately, the insights she received through her fly on the wall" status were often depressing. She writes:

You can tell an awful lot about a person from how she

picks you up and feeds you as well as from what she

says about people behind their backs when she doesn't

suspect you're listening and comprehending. . . . [The

attendants) talked disparagingly about me right to my

face, as if I couldn't understand a word they were saying.

Throughout his long and harrowing illness, Stephen Hawking has never stopped talking. But the incurable and progressive nature of motor neuron disease means that he may lose that final finger which constitutes his "hold" on the world. So a hideous possibility exists: Stephen Hawking could make a great theoretical breakthrough but carry it to his grave because his illness finally renders him as silent as the proverbial fly on the wall.

We get a glimpse of the enormous frustration a genuinely silenced Hawking would suffer when we read the life stories of Christopher Nolan and Ruth Sienkiewicz-Mercer. Nolan writes that when he was three years old he wept with frustration and self-pity at his condition. The following demonstrates how sensitive his mother was to her speechless son's thoughts and feelings:

Nora serenely simpered as she lifted him. Washed and

powdered he sat on her lap. Fondly she slipped the

geansai over his blonde head. His head tilted boldly for,

ward then suddenly it shot backwards. He faced his

mother. He gazed his hurt gaze, hp protruding, eyes busy

in conversation. He ordered her to look out the window

at the sunshine. He looked hard at her ear ordering her

to listen to the birds singing. Then jumping on her knees

he again asked her to cock her ear and listen to the village

children out at play in the school yard. Now he jeered

himself. He showed her his arms, his legs, his useless

body. Beckoning his tears he shook his head. Looking at

his mother he blamed her, he damned her, he mouthed

his cantankerous why, why, why me? Distracted by his

youthful harshness of realization she tried to distract him.

Lifting him in her arms she brought him outside into the

farmyard. "Come on till I show you the calves," she

coaxed. His lonely tears rushed even faster. He knew

why she tried to divert his boyish questioning. He childishly

determined not to look at the calves and shaking

his head he gazed the other way. His mother tried again.

"Look over at the lambs," she said, pointing at the sheep

feeding at their trough in the field. He cried so loud he

brought her to her senses. "Alright," she said, "we'll go

back inside and talk." Placing him in his chair she then

sat down and faced her erstwhile boy, yes, her golden,

haired accuser. Meanwhile he cried continuously, conning

himself that he had beaten her to silence. Looking

through his tears he saw her as she bent low in order

to look into his eyes. "I never prayed for you to be born

crippled:" she said. "I wanted you to be full of life, able

to run and jump and talk just like Yvonne. But you are

you, you are Joseph not Yvonne. Listen here Joseph, you

can see, you can hear, you can think, you can understand

everything you hear, you like your food, you like nice

clothes, you are loved by me and Dad. We love you just

as you are" Pussing still, snivelling still, he was listening

to his mother's voice. She spoke sort of matter of

factly but he blubbered moaning sounds. His mother said

her say and that was that. She got on with her work

while he got on with his crying.

The decision arrived at that day was burnt forever

in his mind. He was only three years in age but he was

now fanning the only spark he saw, his being alive and

more immediate, his being wanted just as he was.

Dread-filled fretting marked Joseph Meehan's scene

that day, but that scene and that day looked out through

his eyes for the rest of his life. Comfort came in child-like

notions, his clumsy body was his, but molested by

mother-love he looked lollying looks at his limbs and liked

Joseph Meehan.

This emotional communication between Joseph and his mother, limited to "eyes busy in conversation," has a parallel in a similar process worked out by Ruth Sienkiewicz-Mercer and another severely handicapped, mute patient:

Suddenly a remarkable spark passed between us, some,

thing that no one watching us would have been able to

perceive . . . a riveting, deeply moving flash of complete

understanding. . . .

Our souls embraced. Our eyes locked for several exhilarating, magnetic, timeless moments. Then Theresa turned her head and nudged the yellow teddy bear lying beside her pillow. Making quiet, gentle sounds, Theresa repeated this gesture several times until she was certain I understood. By indicating her teddy, the only object of affection around her, she was telling me that she liked me very much, that she was beginning to develop a profound understanding of me.

. . . I responded with loving sounds of my own, and raised my eyes in an emphatic "Yes!" to make sure Theresa understood that I felt the same way about her. At that instant Theresa figured out what none of the staff would decipher for several years: that I raised my eyes to say yes.

From that moment on, Theresa and I were close friends. We took advantage of every occurrence on the ward--movements, feeding, changings, noises, outbursts, periods of total boredom--to exchange glances, facial expressions, and sounds. In this way we developed our own special language, evolving it slowly over a period of three or four months land) we were able to fashion a basic" yet effective, system of communication.

. . . We became attuned to every change of tone and pitch in each other's repertoire of sounds, familiarizing ourselves with what each sound meant in terms of emotion, opinion, or thought. To demonstrate the significance of our expresions, we studied each other's face while repeating our sounds over and over.

Christopher Nolan's Under the Eye of the Clock and Ruth Sienkiewicz-Mercer's I Raise My Eyes to Say Yes both record breakthrough experiences reminiscent of Helen Keller's justly celebrated "water" scene. However, there is a significant difference between them: the untutored Keller did not understand language. By contrast, Nolan comprehended language at the usual age, as did Sienkiewicz-Mercer.

Thus, the communicative breakthroughs in their books do not record others' thoughts getting "in" to them but, rather, their thoughts getting out" to others. Nolan described it:

Breathing a little easier, his body a little less trembling,

he sat head cupped in Evan's hands. . . . Perhaps it won't

happen for me today he teased himself but he was wrong,

desperately, delightfully wrong. Sweetness of certainty

sugared his now. Yes, he could type. He could freely hit

the keys and he looked in the mirror and met her

eyes. . . .

[Eva asked his mother to watch a typing lesson.

Nora waited, her son's chin cupped in her hands. Then

he stretched and brought his pointer down and typed

the letter "e" Swinging his pointer to the right he then

typed another letter, and another one and another. Eva

finished speaking on the telephone and Nora, while still

cupping Josephs chin turned and said, "Eva, I know what

you're talking about--Joseph is going for the keys himself--I

could actually feel him stretching for them." Eva

brought [her fist] down with a bang on the table. "So

I was right, I was afraid to say anything, I had to be sure,"

she said as she broadly smiled.

Joseph sat looking at his women saviors. They chatted

about their discovery while he nodded in happy

unbelievable bewilderment. He fell himself float reliably

on gossamer wings. Life hungered no more.

Sienkiewicz-Mercer described her liberation:

During lunch one day in early December 1965, Wessie

said something to me like "Too bad the food at this place

is so lousy."

I laughed, and raised my eyes toward the ceiling in

an exaggerated way to draw her attention.

As she brought the next spoonful of food up to my

mouth, she noticed that I was doing something funny

with my eyes, obviously in reaction to what she had just

said. I kept looking up at the ceiling, but Wessie couldn't

figure out why I was doing that. She put the spoon down

and thought for a few seconds, then asked, "Ruthie, are

you trying to tell me something?"

With a broad grin on my face, I looked at her squarely.

Then I raised my eyes up to the ceiling again with

such exaggeration that I thought my eyes would pop up

through the top of my head.

Wessie knew she was onto something, but she wasn't

sure just what. She pondered for a few more seconds . . .

then it clicked! A silent conversation flashed between

us as loud and clear as any spoken words. Even before

she asked me a dozen times over, and before I exuberantly

answered a dozen times with my eyes raised sky,

ward, Wessie knew. And I knew that she knew.

I was raising my eyes to say yes.

We both started laughing. Then I started laughing really hard, and before I knew it I was crying so uncontrollably that I couldn't see because of the tears. They were tears of pure joy, the kind of tears a person sheds on being released from prison after serving three years of what she had feared would be a life sentence.

A common reaction to the stories of people like Nolan, Hawking, and Sienkiewicz-Mercer is that they prove that, "if you really want to do some, thing, you'll find a way to do it." Such stories of disabled yet wonderfully able people are often cited as support for the quintessentially American view that each individual is completely responsible for what he or she does with his or her life.

But this is a misguided reading of such people's lives.

Stephen Hawking, for all his brilliant scientific achievements, is not an inventor; had he been born before the computer era, most of his brilliance would probably have been undiscovered. Similarly, Christopher Nolan did not discover the drug Lioseral; nor did he invent the typewriter. Without these things, his poems and stories might never have been written. Ruth Sienkiewicz-Mercer speaks to us because of a miraculous accident.

Hawking, Nolan, and Sienkiewicz, Mercer all have benefited from the in, sights, discoveries, patience, and inventions of countless others: those near and dear to them as well as complete strangers; the living and the long-dead; people acting altruistically and those just trying to earn a living. And they, in turn, by utilizing the opportunities made available to them, have vastly enriched the storehouse of human knowledge and provided inspiration for us all. The true lesson which the mute speak is that of human interdependency.

Denise Noe has been published in Gaunt, let, Exquisite Corpse, the Village Writer, Chrysalis Quarterly, Metis, 'scapes, The Gulf War Anthology, Light, the State (in which she has a regular column), Attitude Problem, the Arizona Unconservative, artisan, and other places. Her major interests are dinosaurs, the ape-language experiments, and social-welfare issues, though not necessarily in that order.