Singing Hands by Delia Ray Page A

It was shaped like a perfect, small hand, pressing whatever was underneath into order.
    The only other object on the desk was a framed photograph of a young couple gazing down at a towheaded toddler in her father's arms. The baby girl was wearing a sunsuit and beaming at the camera. Her mother was on the verge of laughing, tickled with some clever thing her child had just done. I bent closer. Was that a picture of Miss Grace with her parents when she was little? I hardly recognized those delighted faces. Miss Grace's parents seemed as cold as stone whenever they came to fetch their daughter on Sunday mornings. Several times I had peeked around the drapes in the parlor to see them sitting at the curb in their long black Oldsmobile, staring blankly ahead until Miss Grace slipped out of the house to meet them.
    Once, Mother had joined me at the window to watch over my shoulder as they drove away. "Why don't they ever come up on the porch to say hello?" I had asked.
    "They're hearing," Mother had signed. Then she had added another little gesture—a quick brush of her finger under the tip of her nose while she pursed her lips, as if she had just bitten down on something sour. I knew what she meant. Miss Grace's parents were Uppish Hearing. Too high and mighty to try to communicate with simple deaf folks like Mother and Daddy, who lived on the wrong side of town and rented out rooms on the third floor.
    "But what about Miss Grace?" I had asked, pushing for as many answers as I could get before Mother grew impatient. "Their own
daughter
is deaf."
    Mother had shrugged as she signed. "They can't stop wishing she wasn't."
    I had frowned, lifting my hand to fire out more questions. But Mother had already turned away from the window and was rushing off to clear the breakfast dishes from the table.
    I moved back to the box of Corporal Homewood's things, feeling a little squeamish as I suddenly remembered my mission: to get a pair of trousers and shoes for the Birthmark Baines dummy. Mrs. Fernley's opera music seeping through the back wall of the closet didn't help to calm my nerves. It was a recording I had never heard before—something wild and frantic, with dueling voices and clashing cymbals that made me think of armies charging into battle. My heart thumped along with the music as I set the corporal's photo aside and fumbled through the box, searching for what I wanted. On the top of the pile were a striped necktie and a fine gray wool suit, with suspenders still buttoned to the pants and traces of a sharp crease running down the front of each leg. Too swanky for Birthmark, I decided, and carefully laid the suit on the floor. Next came a worn baseball mitt and a white sweater with a blue border around the V-neck—the kind I had seen tennis players wearing at Aunt Glo's country club. No help.
    A red silk bathrobe. No.
    Flannel pajamas. No.
    Growing impatient, I yanked out the next piece of clothing in the pile and then caught myself as I slowly realized what I was holding. It was the military jacket Corporal Homewood was wearing in his photograph. My hands tingled as I laid the dark blue jacket in my lap and ran one finger over the gold buttons and the colored military badges still fastened over the breast pocket. An awful thought crept into my mind, and I leaned closer, examining the pocket for holes. He had been shot through the heart. What if this was the jacket he had been wearing?
    "Snap out of it, Gussie," I whispered. This was his dress uniform. He would have been wearing soldiers' fatigues on Okinawa. I closed my eyes for a second, then thrust my hand down to the bottom of the box and pulled out the matching pants of the uniform.
    I groaned under my breath. They were light blue with red trim. I'd never be able to pull off Birthmark Baines with a pair of marine pants. Feeling defeated, I returned the clothes and the photograph to the box, making sure to get them in the right order. Then I shut the cardboard flaps and