The Deaf Heart by Willy Conley

Author:Willy Conley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gallaudet University Press
Published: 2017-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

February 2, 1982

Happy Groundhog Day,

UTMB, Moody Medical Library

Dear Mumsie and Dadsie:

I’m pissed at myself for not writing sooner. Have had some kind of a brain-lock clasped on and couldn’t find the keys. This will probably be a long one. I’ve been holed up in the lab pretty much for the month of January. Adopted a tunnel-vision mentality to prepare myself for nothing but the most critical phase of my certification -- the portfolio. I swore off all social contact, including Reynaldo (remember my Deaf Mexican friend?), warning him that I was not going to be available at all for a while. Surprisingly, he was okay with that. He said he was going to visit a friend in Seattle for a few weeks who might help him find a good job.

Well, he’s back in town already. It seems the job situation there wasn’t good for him. He wasn’t eligible for welfare and couldn’t find a job. He has yet to get his green card so he’s still an illegal alien. He got his old part-time job back at the tackle factory, but he’s talking about going back to Mexico to find what’s left of his family (parents, relatives). He doesn’t seem to be too happy here. He plans on leaving sometime this summer. What a sad case -- depresses me sometimes when I see him.

Actually today was the first day I saw him but the old feelings of pity for him returned. I don’t show it to him of course and I try to encourage him to do things or give him direction that will guide him the right way. He just sort of half takes it all in and then forgets about it or doesn’t care. Except for his little boy, Rey’s mind seems to be concerned with what he considers the finer things in life, like a big beautiful house and a car, and earning lots of money. He doesn’t seem to understand that he is uneducated and illiterate, and therefore his choice of jobs is very limited. He works at a place for a while and quits, comes back and asks for his job again, then quits, and round and round and round it goes. He came to me once with a note from UTMB Housekeeping saying that they couldn’t hire him anymore because he had quit twice already.

The tackle factory pays Reynaldo quite well in spite of his shortcomings, but he doesn’t realize how well Junior (his employer) has been treating him, and how Junior goes out on a limb for him. And now Reynaldo wants to split for Mexico. I can’t half blame him, because of his immediate family -- the retarded black girl with whom he has a son and who won’t let him see the boy. And her brothers who are protecting her and acting as physical barriers, I mean physical -- like with guns and knives. It seems that Rey is barely going to have enough money saved up to buy a one-way ticket to Mexico.

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