The Deaf Heart, page 10
Slide #7: self portrait in front of a broken ice box.
Slide #8: these are a couple of the buildings on the campus of the University of Texas Medical Branch. The university has a nice mixture of old and modern buildings, both with beautiful architecture. The main building you see here is “Old Red,” done in Romanesque Revival style with its round arches and rows of bricks and stone. Up until 1922, Old Red was the only classroom and lab space for medical students. Now the university has about 60-some buildings.
Slide #9: the back entrance to the Pathology Building where we work. Notice how small the door is? Only 4½ feet high. It’s for when they wheel donated bodies up the ramp and through the door to the anatomy morgue, which is right down the hall from us. You don’t want to see a photo of that. We call this the Leon LeBeau Door. Named after a diminutive microbiology professor who occasionally comes to lecture to the photo residents about aspects of medical photography. He can walk through the door without having to duck his head.
Slide #10: this is the photomicroscopy room, where we do a lot of our work. When anyone starts bothering me or is trying to feed me a lot of stuff, I hold up this sign with Hebrew writing on it. It means “Bullshit!” Zag is Jewish and he feels at home when I hold up this sign.
Slide #11: the copy area (not Xerox kind of photocopying); a lot of doctors bring in these thick medical textbooks that weigh about 20 lbs. apiece. Usually they’ll want us to copy a chart or an illustration out of the book to make a 35mm slide for an upcoming lecture. We have to crack open a book to page 1,469 or something, and the edges of the damn charts are almost always near the binding. Have you ever tried holding flat a thousand-page book? Good night!
Slide #12: Happy birthday, Mom! I’m holding a piece of Texas sheet cake (chili powder is one of the ingredients) with a lit candle in your honor.
The End.
Let me know what you think. Miss all of you very, very much.
Mucho love,
Max
P.S. Please save the slides -- a few belong to Zag and he’d like to have them back someday. No hurry.
New Year’s with Reynaldo
(or, Death Never Sleeps)
Autopsy Photography This situation is relatively similar to shooting in the OR (see Surgical Photography). The main exception is that you do not need to be sterile or wear scrubs. You should wear the shoes you designated for autopsies only. Feel free to move the surgical light around to suit your shooting situation, or turn it off and use your flash. Ask the pathologist what he or she needs, and whether black-and-white or color is needed. If the field is messy, ask the pathologist if you can outline the perimeter with clean gray or blue towels. It will make the photos look nicer for lectures and publications.
Using his streetwise wiles and pseudo-innocence, Reynaldo somehow convinced Max to join him for a New Year’s Eve party in Houston hosted by the deaf association there. What it really meant was that Reynaldo needed a ride to the party. Max figured since he didn’t have any plans for New Year’s yet and it was already the 29th, why not humor Rey and give him a lift. Max asked Zag if he wanted to come along. Going anywhere with Reynaldo meant an odd adventure was in the works. Zag had no plans except to stay home, drink Lone Star beers, and watch the ball drop at midnight on TV. He had been homesick for New York City, and watching the New York revelers would be the next best thing to being home.
Max told Reynaldo he’d pick him up at his apartment at 8 p.m. on the 31st. That night Max and Zag worked in the lab until 5:30. They were the only ones left, and the place was starting to feel lonely and spooky. Two doors down from the basement-level lab was the anatomy morgue. Next door, on the other side of the lab, was where human anatomical specimens were stored in large pickle jars. A cheerful hospital staff member named Bob was the curator of this anatomical bank. Max always wondered how the man could remain so upbeat, day after day, amid a room full of dead body parts. Every time Max passed Bob in the hall, he always greeted Max with: “How’re y’all doin’?”
Bob once gave Max a tour of the bank. The room was set up like library stacks, with rows upon rows of human body parts—a macabre dime museum. So this was the kind of place from which his old biology teacher, Mr. Orendorf, had acquired his syphilitic heart for class. What shook Max to the core were the jars of fetuses. Their miniature faces looked like the faces of grown men sleeping upright—some without brains, or a hole where the nose should be, or a jaw missing, or one with two arms but no legs. Robert Ripley would buy out this whole place for his believe-it-or-not museum, if he could.
On the wall was a piece of paper that read, in large block letters: ALL SPECIMENS MUST BE TREATED WITH DIGNITY. DISRESPECT FOR SUCH MATERIAL THAT WAS ONCE A PART OF A LIVING BEING WILL NOT BE TOLERATED.
“Let me know if y’all have any questions. If y’all see something y’like, just holler, and I’ll git her down for y’all,” said Bob. Genuine customer service with a smile. Bob gave Max a pat on the back and left him alone to scan the shelves of jars.
One of Max’s portfolio requirements had been a photograph of a gross anatomy specimen documented with the proper background color, exposure, and scale. Max had to produce one color slide and a 5x7 black-and-white glossy print. After a half hour scanning the shelves, Max settled on a kidney that was sectioned longitudinally in half. He didn’t want to pick something that was round or slimy. A good, firm kidney with one flat side to prevent it from rolling around on the table would help get the job done quickly. He completed that requirement, knowing he would never again have to visit the bank and experience the eye-burning smell of formaldehyde and the odd assortment of human deformities.
As part of Max’s orientation to the Pathology Building, Bob had also given him a tour of the anatomy morgue. This place was a horror film set, with the stereotypical white-tiled floor and walls, fluorescent lights, autopsy table, Frankenstein-esque lamp, weight scale, and stainless steel sinks. A large, raised rectangular block with a metal cover, the cadaver-immersion tank—like a tub from an old Russian bathhouse—sat in one corner of the room. A technician came in and lifted off the cover. Strong formaldehyde fumes hit Max. Two bloated bodies floated in the amber fluid. The technician got a long wooden stick and stuck it in the bath. To ensure that the bodies would be well preserved, he turned them over one at a time so that they faced down. And then he replaced the cover.
Zag tapped Max on the shoulder, startling him out of his trance. “I’m hearing strange sounds next door, Max. It’s creeping me out.”
“Yeah, I’m getting a little spooked myself,” said Max.
“We’re probably the only ones working late in the building on New Year’s Eve.”
“Except for the anatomist that turns over bodies in the immersion tank next door. Maybe that’s what you’re hearing? The splashing and plopping sounds.”
“How would you know how that sounds?” said Zag.
“Oh, I don’t know. I’m just guessing.”
“Let’s get the fuck outta here, boss. I’m ready to celebrate New Year’s Eve.”
They cut out for home, exiting up the ramp and ducking through the little Leon LeBeau door where donated bodies were wheeled in. Back home, Max and Zag quickly got showered, shaved, and dressed. Max turned on the stereo and played the album John Barleycorn Must Die. Since their move into the beach house, all he had wanted to listen to was music by Traffic, which Zag had introduced him to. Both munched on a bowl of pretzels and popped cans of their first Lone Stars for the night. Max wanted to hear the song “Every Mother’s Son.” Zag had written out the lyrics the other day, and Max was starting to memorize them—his way of being able to follow music:
“Once again I’m northward bound, on the edge of sea and sky …”
The great thing about Zag was that he had no qualms about cranking up the volume to compensate for Max’s hearing loss. Zag loved concert-level amplification. Max could really feel the bass and drums through his housemate’s powerful Harman Kardon stereo system. And it helped to be in an all-wood beach house on stilts where you could feel the vibrations throughout the whole house—even while sitting on the toilet.
At eight o’clock, they rolled up to Reynaldo’s shotgun shack facing an alley on Avenue E; he wasn’t outside waiting. Max went up to the door. There was no doorbell or doorbell light button to press. He tried the doorknob and found the door open. He stuck his arm in and waved—a courteous way to inform a deaf person that someone is at the door. No response. Max opened the door further and peeked in. The place was a rat hole smelling of mildew, cat piss, and unwashed socks. Then the bathroom door swung open, and out came Rey. Each was startled to see the other. Rey burst out laughing and gave Max a bear hug. He had a floppy cowboy hat on his head and was dressed like a zoot suiter in secondhand clothes. He looked as out of place as a surfboard in a subway, but Max didn’t want to say anything about his attire. It was obvious that this was a big night for Reynaldo.
“Scared me, you!” said Reynaldo. “Me thought my ex-brother-in-law.”
“Does he scare you?” asked Max.
“Sometimes he come … beat me. If me not pay money to ex-wife.”
“That bastard beats you?!”
Reynaldo nodded and toed aside an empty pizza box on the floor. On the cover was the proverbial mustachioed, smiling chef with a wink and the classic Italian gesture of “magnifico.”
“Aw man, that burns me! We gotta do something about that.”
“No, no, no—don’t. Make worse—leave it,” said Reynaldo.
“Leave it alone? How? Your ex-wife and her brother are taking advantage of you.”
“My ex—M-R, little bit, remember?”
“Yes, I remember she’s a little retarded. You showed me a picture of her one time,” Max said. It was a tattered wallet photo, but Max could see in her eyes and the way she hung her head that there was some level of mental retardation. In her arms was an alert and beautiful half black, half Hispanic baby boy about a year and a half old, the subject of much angst and financial strife for Reynaldo.
“My son … me don’t want turn everything upside down. Keep peace,” he said. “Brother-in-law hits like a pussy—no hurt me.”
“OK, let’s go. Zag is waiting out in the car.”
“Jew Man’s here? He coming with us?”
“Oh yeah! He wouldn’t miss this for anything.” Reynaldo loved Zag, for some weird reason. Observing the two of them communicate was like watching a good mime trying to gesture to a bad mime. Zag thought he understood most of what Rey said, but often Max had to interject and clarify what Rey had really meant. Because Zag was hearing, and good-natured, Rey put him on a pedestal, which told Max that Rey’s past contacts with hearing people had rarely been positive.
Reynaldo climbed into the front seat and turned around and gave Zag a big smile. Both gave each other a hearty handclasp. Zag gestured a J on his chest and held both arms straight out, as if he were flying like Superman.
“Jew Man’s here and he’s gonna fly!” Zag tried to say.
Reynaldo let out an ear-shattering deaf laugh. Zag handed him a can of Miller Lite.
“Sorry, no Tecate tonight. We’re poor like you,” Max said.
“Lemon, salt—where?” asked Reynaldo. Max pointed to the glove compartment, where he kept carryout salt packs and a lemon-shaped container of reconstituted lemon. Zag slapped Max on the back of his head. Max turned around.
“Don’t tell him stuff like that,” said Zag, while Rey was rimming his can with salt and lemon juice. “We’re not as bad off as he is.”
“Sorry, but sometimes I need to put him in his place,” Max said without signing his words. “Did you see the look he gave you? As if he was disappointed that you didn’t have expensive Mexican beer.”
Reynaldo looked at Max and held out the salt and lemon, gesturing to see if he wanted his beer Mexicanized. Max nodded and handed him his beer can. Zag held out his can so Reynaldo could dress his beer as well.
“What’s with the lemon and salt?” asked Zag.
“Rey told me that in Mexico and South America it helps to improve the taste of shitty beer.”
Reynaldo handed Zag back his lemon-and-salt-laced beer. Zag took a big swig and gave a facial expression of pleasant surprise. He signed, “Shit, thumbs-up!” Reynaldo roared with laughter at Zag’s clever sign play.
The men drank in silence. Mexican fan palmettos swayed to and fro along the alley. The humid summer-like breeze off the Gulf of Mexico made it hard for Max to believe that it was late December. He felt he would be perfectly happy not going anywhere, just sitting all night in the car sipping beers and enjoying the warm Gulf air waft through the car. Yellow pools of light from the sodium-vapor street lamps lined the alleyway, seemingly all the way to infinity.
Zag tapped him on the shoulder and gestured, “Let’s go.” Max started the car and put it in gear, but before taking his foot off the brake, he asked Reynaldo where they were going.
“Over bridge, Texas City,” said Reynaldo. “Pick up friend—woman.”
“He wants us to stop off in Texas City to pick up a lady friend,” Max told Zag. “Sorry, I thought it was just going to be the three of us.”
Zag leaned over to the front seat and looked at Reynaldo before gesturing, “Big boobs?” Reynaldo nodded eagerly. Zag rubbed his palms greedily together and smacked his lips. He held out his hand for another bro-style handclasp. Reynaldo let out his patent deaf roar of laughter. Max let go of the brake and eased the car onto Broadway to head toward the causeway.
Reynaldo guided Max through the suburban blue-collar communities of Texas City. In the background, the oil refineries, basked in bright orange floodlights, were smoking and going full blast into the new year. Max parked in front of a split-level house that had seen better days. An airboat sat on a trailer on the front lawn. An old Chevy pickup with its hood up was in the driveway. A redheaded deaf woman whom Reynaldo introduced as Oma Dell—name sign O on the chest—met them at the door. She welcomed them into her house. Max turned to Zag and secretly gestured two O-shaped nipples.
“Her name is Oma,” Max said. “Two Os like this.”
“Get outta here!” Zag said. “I saw just one O on the chest.”
“Maybe she only has one tit,” Max said.
They sat in the living room, which smelled of motor oil. A bald man in his fifties had full reign over the sofa. He was cleaning out a carburetor on his lap. On the coffee table were auto parts, hand tools, and dirty rags.
Reynaldo said, “That Cooter, Oma’s boyfriend.”
Zag and Max made a move to shake his hand. Cooter looked up and just lifted his eyebrows to acknowledge them, while still wiping his rag through the carburetor shafts. Oma asked if they wanted something to drink. Her right eye constantly blinked, seemingly from a nervous tic. Although she was probably in her fifties, she looked older because of the wrinkles on her hands and face. She voiced and signed everything she said, apparently knowing that Zag was hearing. To Max, her voice sounded like his grandmother’s. He was mentally laughing his ass off at Zag’s anticipation of her being a sexy woman with big breasts.
“Dr. Pepper, milk, or water?” asked Oma, and then added, “If Cooter is in a good mood, he might let you have some of his beer in the cooler over there.”
Max and Zag said “water” in unison, almost too quickly. Reynaldo said “beer” and went to the cooler beside the sofa to help himself. Before he lifted the lid, he looked at Cooter, who gave him a slight nod of approval.
A pale-skinned, plain woman with long black hair entered the living room. She was obviously a hearing person because of the way she enunciated her words, slowly and clearly, to Oma. “I heard you talking to someone.”
“This is my friend Lenora. We work together as secretaries over there at Union Carbide.” Max looked through the plate glass window to where Oma was pointing. He could see that her living room had an unobstructed view of the chemical plant, with its large cluster of buildings, pipe work, and smokestacks surrounded by a high chain-link security fence. Reynaldo got up and walked over to give Lenora a bear hug. He thought that everyone deserved a bear hug—part of Deaf culture, he always said.
“Hi Rey,” Lenora said, patting his back. She touched his coat lapels. “Nice duds.” Reynaldo introduced her to Max and Zag—the Jew Man, with the help of Oma voicing for him. Lenora giggled, and held out her hand for them to shake.
“Nice to meet you, Lenora,” said Zag. “I’m hearing, by the way.”
“Oh, good! I thought I was the only hearing person here,” she said.
“Is it OK if she comes with us to the party?” asked Oma. Her winking was getting excessive. Max had to remind himself that she wasn’t winking to get him to say yes to go along with some joke she had in mind. She was serious, her left eye looking straight at him, unblinking. Max looked sideways at Zag and then at Reynaldo to see whether it was OK with them for Lenora to join this ever-expanding New Year’s expedition to Houston.
“Of course,” said Zag. “The more, the merrier.” He turned to Reynaldo: “Jew Man wants to fly!” He struck a superhero pose and aimed for the door. His outstretched arms made Max think about Zag’s parents, and how much their son and thus their lives had evolved—for better or worse—since the days when they had settled in the United States as survivors of Auschwitz. He never forgot how embarrassed he’d been the first time he met them in their tiny Brooklyn kitchen.
That morning, Zag’s mother had made strong European coffee. When she’d set their coffee cups on the table, he saw that she had a tattoo of a row of numbers on her left forearm. Zag’s father was doing a crossword puzzle, and Max noticed he had a similar tattoo in numbers on his left arm.
“Hey, Reuben!” Max had said. This was a month before they’d ended up in Texas as medical photography interns and Reuben had shortened his name to Zag. He was much happier now—he’d hated being associated with Reuben sandwiches.
