I’ve been told, throughout my entire life, that one of my best physical assets is my smile. Because of this, I’ve always enjoyed smiling and laughing and always appreciated when I could make others smile and laugh. I realize this may be something most people don’t actively thing about. But, I do.
While we were still in Peru, Kaitlyn told me that I would make someone smile for the first time in their life. Then, when we were staying at one of our hostels in between Bolivia and Peru, Christie, one of our team leaders, spoke life into me and said that I would be filled with joy this entire month. She also confirmed Kaitlyn’s truth about making someone smile by saying that I have a contagious smile and laugh, so contagious that whoever I smile at will have no choice but to smile back at me. This may all sound a little charismatic but, yesterday, it happened.
After I was exhausted from playing with some of the boys at the deaf center, I sat down on one of the swings and motioned to the boys to continue playing while I rested. I closed my eyes and tilted my head back to let the sun hit my face as I swung back and forth, in and out of the tree’s shadow. When I opened my eyes to sit up, I saw a lady sitting beside be on another swing. At first, it scared me and I wanted to move away, but then I recognized her from our visit a couple days before.
I’m not sure how she got to live at the center, since it is mainly for younger boys, but I am sure she is completely deaf and also has some kind of mental disability. It could be due to the fact that she has not seen the outside world for about 13years (that would make me definitely go mad) or it could also be some kind of chemical imbalance that has been in her brain since she was born. Either way, I got the sense that she does not get a lot of attention in the center because of all the adorable younger boys running around craving love.
If I had to guess, I would say this womanweighs about 80 pounds, is around my height and walks with a limp. She cannot sit down or stand up by herself and her hands shake constantly whenever she touches something or tries to hold something. Her hair is grey with streaks of white and is normally tucked away into two ponytails that fall short of her shoulders. Her eyes are glazed over with some sort of white goop that never seems to go away. And her smile, is also contagious.
She cannot sign. Somewhere along the line, she learned some signs (I guess in the hopes of trying to communicate with other people in the center) but now, she just mixes a bunch of random signs in a pattern that does not make sense. She will usually point to something in the distance that I can’t see, make the sign that means coffee, point to her, point to me then sign the word for afternoon, then finally she will cross her arms over her chest and hold herself. She repeats this, but changes the direction she points in every time.
When I figured out that I could not talk to her using sign language or Spanish, I just watched her pattern of motions until I knew what was coming next. After she pointed towards the sky, I knew the sign for coffee would be coming next so I quickly balled my hands into fists, one on top of the other, and twisted them back and forth as if I were grinding coffee in between my hands. She just stared at me for a minute with a confused look on her face until I continued to sign the rest of her pattern. After I placed my arms into X’s and held my chest, Iflung myself off the swing and pointed my entire arm towards the sky and laughed. My eyes were closed so I had no idea what her reaction would be to this. I didn’t want her to feel like I was laughing at her or making fun of her, but I genuinely wanted her to feel like someone was listening and understood her. I was about to sit back down on the swing and forget about it when I heard her laugh, which also scared me because it didn’t sound like a regular laugh. It was lower and more of a moan, but she was smiling. She continued to hold her smile and clap her hands until I sat back down beside her. When I did, she noticed my pink toenails and motioned for me to put my foot on her lap. She pointed to my toes and then pointed to hers. What you could see of her toes was mainly covered with crusted dirt. Her toes were practically engulfed by her toenails, which here tinted a deep yellow. I smiled at her and opened my palmtowards my face and made a circle motion to sign the word for beautiful. She smiled back, put my foot back on the ground and began to touch my hair. She ran her fingers through my hair and then made my finger touch her hair. She made a disapproving face. I repeated the sign for beautiful and took my hair out of her hands and kept twisting and running my fingers through her ponytails. Finally, she took my hand and made me touch her cheeks. She closed her eyes as she felt my hand on her face. Then she pushed my hand away and touched my cheek and smiled. I pushed her hand away and continued to trace the outline of her face with my fingers on one hand and signed the word beautiful one more time with the other. At this point, I was on the verge of tears at the thought of her thinking she was inadequate compared to me. I felt inadequate the entire day by not being able to speak fluently to these boys who just ache for someone to talk to. As I felt myself tearing up, I told her she was beautiful again (even though I knew she did not know what it meant) and hugged her while we both just sat on our separate swings. When I finally pulled away, there it was, her contagious smile.
