The Sign for Drowning

By Rachel Stolzman Gullo

When she is seven years old, Anna witnesses the tragic drowning of her younger sister, Megan. The tragedy haunts her and her parents, and in the aftermath, Anna becomes convinced she can communicate with her sister through sign language. Thirty years later, Anna, now a teacher of deaf children, adopts Adr

• Language: English
• Publisher: 7.13 Books
• Release date: Dec 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9798989121410

Book preview

PRAISE

FOR

THE SIGN FOR DROWNING

As Stolzman Gullo's character-driven debut opens, eight-year-old Anna Levy and her mother witness a horrific scene: the small boat that her five-year-old sister, Megan, is on with their father capsizes close to shore, and Megan drowns. In the immediate aftermath, Anna blames herself for not plunging into the water and joining the frantic search. She begins an imaginary, one-sided conversation in sign language with Megan that leads the grown-up Anna to adopt a deaf five-year-old (whom she mistakenly renames ‘Adrea’ by incorrectly signing ‘Andrea’) and to a career working with deaf children. As Anna and ‘Adrea’ grow into their lives together, watchful Anna is forced to confront ghosts from her past and to learn to stop living life as a spectator. Stolzman Gullo gives Anna a poetic soul (‘words of sympathy had exhausted my tolerance for words themselves’), and a carefully constructed redemption that unfolds with vivid observational detail."

—Publishers Weekly

By offering her heroine’s hesitant optimism through such disarmingly honest confessions, Stolzman Gullo exhibits an authentic emotional and narrative integrity, an impressive feat for a debut novelist. Stolzman Gullo brings this lyrical sensibility to an elegiac tale of a family’s heart-stopping tragedy and hard-won redemption, in which a tarnished silence can once again be made to shine through the resonate power of love.

—Foreword Magazine

At a time when cool, ironic fiction is too much the rage, here is a novel written straight from the heart, a tender yet fearless portrait of a loving family crippled by grief. Rachel Stolzman Gulllo reminds us what kind of stories matter, and move us, the most.

—Julia Glass, author of Three Junes and The Whole World Over

"Reminiscent of Ian McEwan’s The Child in Time and Frederick Reichen’s The Odd Sea, this is a moving and important novel. Rachel Stolzman Gullo's story about a woman’s attempts to find order in the broken world she inhabits deftly captures grief and the struggle to live within its lifelong specter."

—Bret Lott, author of Jewel and A Song I Knew by Heart

Against the themes of loss and mourning in this radiant novel are balanced those of nurturing and hope.

—Roy Hoffman, author of Chicken Dreaming Corn and Almost Family

"Rendered in spare and original prose, The Sign for Drowning is a piercing and poignant tale of loss and love. Rachel Stolzman Gullo writes from the heart and speaks to the heart. This haunting first novel is the story of unspeakable horror and extraordinary beauty."

—Patty Dann, author of The Goldfish Went on Vacation

It's a delicately balanced novel, spare but not taciturn, emotional but not overwrought, and finally hopeful but not unnaturally cheerful.

—Margaret Quamme, The Columbus Dispatch

the sign for drowning

_

by

Rachel Stolzman Gullo

7.13 Books

Printed in the United States of America

First Edition

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Selections of up to one page may be reproduced without permission. To reproduce more than one page of any one portion of this book, write to 7.13 Books at [e-mail].

Cover design by Gigi Little

Cover art by Faye Stolzman

Edited by Leland Cheuk

Copyright ©2023 by Rachel Stolzman Gullo

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

ISBN (paperback): 979-8-9891214-0-3

ISBN (eBook): 979-8-9891214-1-0

LCCN: 2023947411

For my sister, Dana,

for bringing me along to the wildest places I've been.

And for my parents, Marilyn and Richard,

who give their love with great enthusiasm

introduction

I first read an advanced copy of Rachel Stolzman Gullo’s novel The Sign for Drowning in May 2008. Her publisher had sent me the book to review; it was my second year at Gallaudet University and my research on deaf characters was keeping me busy. I had read numerous fictional books that included deaf characters and I knew that it could be time-consuming and challenging for teachers, librarians, and young readers to find these titles. The research examining deaf characters in fiction was extremely limited; arguably, it still is today. I had started the Deaf Characters in Adolescent Literature blog in 2007 which I hoped would assist in finding and recommending books with characters with whom readers could relate. I also wanted to assist in recommending books with multiple realities of the D/deaf human experience, a focus that Stolzman Gullo covers throughout the story. At the point when I read Stolzman Gullo’s novel, I had interviewed two dozen authors, and I knew I wanted to discuss this book with her.

I remembered being engaged with the text, but reading my original blog post was what reminded me that I had read The Sign for Drowning in just two sittings and had nearly missed my stop on the train because I could not put it down. I was completely immersed in the storyline, and I cared about the characters. I wanted the best for them, and I still do.

The novel incorporates growth and healing, as readers learn of main character Anna who witnesses the drowning of her sister in their youth. As her nuclear family struggles with the complexities of the death of a child, Anna develops the belief that she can communicate with her sister through sign language, which leads her on a journey of learning American Sign Language (ASL) and making a life within the Deaf community.

I started ASL classes shortly after Megan’s death, and this directness was a great relief to me. Sign filled a gaping void and took me away from the world of bereavement.

Learning a second language often requires being immersed in a new culture and that immersion can transform you. That is what happens to the character Anna and that is what happened to me. As a teen, I was diagnosed with Ménière disease, which causes vertigo, ringing in the ears, and hearing loss. A frightening medical diagnosis led me to a culture that completely changed my life. My mother and I had never met Deaf people who used ASL before taking a course at the local community college. We met new people, visited Deaf clubs and schools for the Deaf, and that led me to applying to be a student at Gallaudet, which then led me to being a K-12 Deaf Education teacher, which later led to me becoming an English professor at Gallaudet. It’s hard for me to imagine my life without ASL, without my friends—both Deaf and hearing who use ASL—or without Gallaudet.

The character Anna grows up, becomes a teacher of the Deaf and decides to adopt a Deaf foster child; much of the pain and loss Anna felt as a child is carried into her adult life. The story includes the struggles of coping with loss, adoption, parenting, and how best to educate a deaf child. One of the main storylines includes Anna traveling with her adopted child to France to a school for the deaf that has developed a new technology for deaf people.

I recently had the opportunity to read Stolzman Gullo’s 2023 revised novel, which updates the storyline and sets it in the 2020s. References to technology in novels become outdated quickly. What we used in 2008 is quite different from what we use today; back then, I had a T-Mobile Sidekick and had not yet joined Facebook. My career at Gallaudet has paralleled an amazing time in technological advances. I remember going to conferences where, for the first time, FaceTime changed how my Deaf peers communicated with their children at a distance. They could call home and use ASL to talk with their kids via video. TTYs gathered dust as the upcoming generations of Deaf people began using their smartphones for texts, direct messages, and video calls. Now many of my peers have voice-to-text apps on their phones enabling them to connect to users of spoken language with real-time speech transcription. With technology continuing to evolve and becoming more accessible to more users, many might question the future of Deaf Culture. I have watched these advances connect us and enable new bridges to communication.

Anna, her adopted daughter Adrea, and numerous other characters in the book use ASL to communicate (and French Sign Language when they visit France). Stolzman Gullo studied ASL and worked with Deaf adults in New York City while writing her novel. Through the storyline, she shares details about the language, the Deaf community, and many of the challenges that Deaf people face, making it an excellent read for teachers of the Deaf, especially for hearing teachers who may question whether they belong in the field. The character Anna captured many of the feelings that I had during my first years as an educator in the field of Deaf Education. The plot also is an accessible, and not at all didactic introduction to the choices parents make for their deaf children.

For those readers without a prior connection to deafness or ASL, Stolzman Gullo approaches an emotionally heavy situation and uses it to explore the silences that come with death and grief, the limitations of language, and the ways people try to communicate across the divide. Childhood trauma follows Anna into adulthood. She believed that if she just remained still and quiet, the horrible accident would not have occurred. The silence becomes oppressive, and she longs to find a better way of living while still longing for closeness and communication with her sister.

For a story to be meaningful, the characters must be compelling, and they must resonate with readers. Reading The Sign for Drowning again flooded me with so many emotions of my dear friend, Susan, who was more like a sister. We had shared so much of our lives together—attending childhood parties and vacations, learning to roller skate and ski, participating in school drama, attending prom, celebrating high school and college graduations and first jobs, and taking part in each other’s weddings. These were all memories which the fictional characters Anna and her sister Megan had missed. I could not help but think of future events—motherhood, professional careers, and old age. Susan and I had talked about sitting together in rocking chairs on some porch when we were old women. We had made promises to one another just as the characters had. Just five years before Stolzman Gullo’s debut novel was published, my friend Susan had died in a boating accident—the boat capsized, she became Hypothermic, and she drowned. She was 29 years old and had been my close friend since elementary school. Being born two weeks apart, we had celebrated so many of our birthdays together. I turned 30 alone. George Eliot writes, Our dead are never dead to us until we have forgotten them: they can be injured by us, they can be wounded; they know all our penitence, all our aching sense that their place is empty, all the kisses we bestow on the smallest relic of their presence. Anna’s grief about moving forward and leaving her sister behind is one with which I deeply connect. Stolzman Gullo handled this part of the storyline with finesse.

It has been quite an experience to read this book again after so many years. I found myself focusing on the adult relationships between Anna and her mother and father, and the ways that we push away our loved ones in hopes of protecting ourselves. I connected with Anna’s concerns about replacing her sister with another relationship, including a relationship to a new language. And I appreciated that the approach to family was broadened to include single and adoptive mothers.

Circling back to the adopted child Adrea, who is full of potential and promise; I hope she chooses to come to Gallaudet University. As the global leader in education for deaf and hard of hearing students, Gallaudet is changing the world with a bilingual way of being. Gallaudet is a place where vitality of the deaf experience and vibrancy of sign language thrive. Adrea could remain involved in the American Deaf community and explore global issues related to deaf people in other countries. She could participate in Deaf culture and along with her peers, she could experiment with the latest technologies including artificial intelligence in hopes of making apps more accessible for users. Young people like Adrea are the future. It is my hope that readers of The Sign for Drowning connect with the characters and want to learn about and from Deaf leaders in their communities.

Sharon Pajka, Ph.D.

Professor of English

Gallaudet University

prologue

My father and Carla towed the yellow inflatable boat carrying the girls into the water. The low tide held them far out, bobbing in the small waves. The girls were both five years old, born just a week apart, my mother and Carla having met in a birthing class. Every day my father took the girls out in the rubber raft, some days two or three times. Some days at dusk, my mother complained it was too dark, the girls’ brown hair and tanned skin would disappear in the darkening waters.

My father held the boat behind where Megan was sitting. Carla stood behind Bonnie. I know the inexplicable behavior of the sea. When the tide seems to push up against the shore and the undertow slips out like a fluid carpet toward the ocean’s vast center, and the whole sea heaves its chest.

When the waves fattened and heightened, Dad motioned Carla to push out further, beyond the break. He guided the boat, seeking the solace of the rolling hills that the ocean offers anyone who can penetrate the crashing falls of its shoulder.

We were girls, with lungs, not gills. But I was in no danger. I stood in the dry sand, watching.

Megan wore a navy blue bathing suit with a sailboat on it. I remember her skinny arms and muscular legs, slow brown eyes and long lashes. She had a beauty mark on her right cheek and a matching one on her right buttock. I remember that.

My mother was on the shore with me, making a home movie of the girls, Dad and Carla playing in the big surf. I looked at Megan’s and Bonnie’s upturned faces, smiling expectantly at the down-crashing wave. I heard Megan squeal. My mother bumped into me with her camera. We both laughed at their predicament.

The wave came down, without question or hesitation, unbidden, naturally. When the three of them surfaced, both Carla and Dad had their hands on Bonnie’s streaming body. Surfacing, my father looked as ungraceful as a human out of his element. He threw his head back, cleared water from his blinking eyes. Carla was gasping. From the shore, we noticed first; Megan was not in the boat.

For several long seconds after Megan vanished, with the camera’s eye, my mother searched the surrounding water. She filmed until she realized that she was still holding the camera, realized that Megan was truly underwater too long.

It is obvious in my mother’s movie that Megan is gone, as though the camera, the viewer, the audience is omniscient. I was the first to fully realize that Megan was under the waves. I was watching Carla, her hands wrapped under Bonnie’s arms, gripping her child’s chest, looking to my father in disturbed confusion.

It was Carla’s expression that finally alerted my father to Megan’s absence. In our home movie you see his eyes frantically jump to his hands. It registers. He’s holding Bonnie’s small calves, not Megan. Then he grabs for his own thighs, as if he might be on the warm beach, Megan safe in his lap. Then the camera starts scanning the surrounding waters. You can feel the panic in the rapid pacing of the churning waves. In actuality the ocean calmed terrifically, as though satisfied.

Dad and Carla began clapping the water around their bodies. My father shouting, But she can swim! She can swim! The film heads into its epilogue of moving sand. As my mother drops the camera, it turns lazily falling downward, and there is a brief framing of the cloudless sky, before the camera comes to rest. The film ends with many minutes of sand. It is not motionless; the wind is blowing grains in front of the lens. It is a hypnotizing movement of nothingness.

One of Megan’s and my favorite beach games was to stand at the tip of the shore, where each creeping wave could only lap around our toes and halfway up our heels. We loved the way the wet sand sucked at the bottoms of our feet. As my mother charged the ocean I was acutely aware of this sensation. I was immobile.

On the nape of my neck, fine hairs standing up, thin skin raised in bumps, bowed down, nape inviting fear. The water looked too strong. Hands fisted, I dug my nails into my palms, drew my fingers up to my face. In the soft flesh below my eyes, I pressed my nails making deep crescents. My sister was lost underneath. Burning juice rose from my stomach, scalded my throat. I was afraid for her and for myself.

The guilt began immediately while I felt the ocean pull at my feet, as it pulled at my sister. I knew that I would not be able to move, that I would remain on the beach, mute and watchful. I believed at this time that if I stood perfectly still and did nothing but concentrate on Megan’s appearing that I could will her back from whatever depth. It was then I began speaking to Megan without words.

My mother rushed into the waves, beating the surface of that great body of water, as if enough force would cause it to relinquish her child.

Megan did make contact, a final touch with Carla. This part I always omit when recounting Megan’s death. It seems too cruel and impossible.

Suddenly Carla was yelling, I’ve got her! She glanced at Bonnie, who was holding the side of her raft, peering into the opaque water, and dove under. We above shared an eager relief. Of course she’s okay. This was only a terrible scare. Carla emerged, her face shattered, humility. She immediately dove again. My mother howled. Carla surfaced a minute later; Bonnie raised her arms toward her and whimpered. Carla moved back toward the boat. She brushed against my leg. Then she clutched her own child.

My parents began diving and surfacing, diving and surfacing. Carla held Bonnie, both crying and visibly shivering. It was then that I realized I was holding my breath. Good, of course, as long as I can hold my breath she’s still alive! Then my last hope was not to breathe and to wait for