Sniff.
The air of your room. The odor of sheets and blankets, hot summer dust, old technology equipment, an Old Spice deodorant stick worn to a nub. The stinging smell of detergent from the washing machine outside your door burns the lining of your nostrils.
You are sitting alone at your desk in your T-shirt and shorts. The undersides of your thighs are sweaty and stick to the fiberglass chair. The tips of your fingers rub themselves against the cool plastic keys on the keyboard. You tilt your head down close to it.
Sniff.
Plastic-and-dripped coffee smell. Maybe the sticky crumbs of old peanut butter and grape jelly sandwiches? You lift the back of your wrist to your nose.
Sniff.
Soap, hair, and skin.
You look toward the computer screen, your face just inches away. Making love to the screen, your trainer from the Abilities Institute called it. The white screen has been inverted to black because it's easier on your eyes—or eye, rather, as there's only one that has any usable vision left. The giant white cursor, magnified with your ZoomText software, winks at you over and over again, calling you to write, demanding you take control of your sinful mind. You begin to type three-inch-tall white letters that march across the screen one at a time... T... O... M... R... S...
To Mrs. Clara Shuster, MSW
I have getting your email. Please telling potential MALE interpreter (10 a.m.) and female interpreter (11 a.m.) with TOP TACTILE ASL SKILLS I will meet them and YOU tomorrow on ABILITIES INSTITUTE FOR THE DISABLED, 114 Skidmore Street, Poughkeepsie, NY, at SECOND floor conference room. After meeting BOTH MALE AND FEMALE ASL interpreters I will then DECIDING which will team with my OLD LONG TIME INTERPRETER MOLLY CLINCH.
You stop typing. Molly has been your interpreter and Support Service Provider, or SSP, since you were thirteen years old. Other than Brother Birch, Molly is the most important person in your life who is still alive. She was there when all the worst, unspeakable, sinful things happened.
You fingers find their place back on the keyboard.
Tell INTERPRETERS to bring jacket or sweater for interview, because Second floor of ABILITIES INSTITUTE on 114 Skidmore Street can getting COLD like refrigerator. (FROWNING) Cold, I guess, make Mrs. Clara Shuster SMARTER and WORK HARDER. HA HA. This is JOKE. (BIG SMILE)
Writing English is hard. Brother Birch says when hearing people read your writing they think you're a small child. (You aren't.) Or that you have developmental disabilities. (You don't.) English is just not your first language. American Sign Language is. Writing in a language that you've literally never heard is like battling monsters with your hands tied behind your back. No matter how much you try to butt them down with your head, they keep knocking you down. The worst are the confusing Preposition Monsters and the giant Verb-Tense Rodents, sharp-toothed beasts who have time and again... have eat you? Have eat-ed you? Has ate you? Have will eaten you?
This is why Brother Birch is letting you take a class at the community college this summer to make you a better writer, which will help you to write sermons and preach the word of God. Hallelujah.
