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arm’s length, looking me over long and deeply. On his face I would detect a look of mild surprise, a look I could never decipher. No signs were exchanged between us. All that I needed, in order to understand how much my father loved me, was the feel of his arms around me. He spoke, and the language I heard was the language of his touch.
     

 
    3
    The Fights
     

     
    M y interpreting for my father was an external business. It occurred on the outside, in the hearing world. One day, though, I was called upon to perform my trick inside the walls of our apartment, and this time I was put to a test beyond my calendar years, and many light-years beyond my skills.
    It was a June night in 1938, and the occasion was a rematch between Joe Louis, the black man known as America’s Brown Bomber, and Max Schmeling, Adolf Hitler’s example of presumed Nazi racial superiority, a product of the Master Race. In their first fight Schmeling had knocked out Louis. The Fuehrer had crowed like the cock of the world’s walk. Now it was time for the Brown Bomber to redeem himself and expose Hitler’s lie of racial superiority.
    My father came home from work that night excitedly waving the New York Daily News in my face. “You tell me all about the big fight!” he signed, his fists punching the air. “Joe Louis is fighting Max Schmeling. Joe has my name.” He pointed to his chest. “Louis,” he finger-spelled proudly.
    My father was so excited about the fight that he rushed us through the dinner my mother had spent hours preparing. Normally my father was always after me to eat more slowly, to chew each mouthful of food at least three times before swallowing—five times if it was calf’s liver, which was exceedingly tough (and a dish I thoroughly detested). That night, however, after gulping his own food rather than chewing it, my father pushed his chair away from the table and signed to me, “ Let’s go! ”
    Twirling the dial, I soon tuned in to the broadcast of the fight. We were early. The prefight commentary by the announcer detailed the career of Joe Louis; that of Schmeling; the replay of their last fight; and the political significance of this rematch. The complexity of all this information surpassed by far both my understanding of current events and my signing sophistication. My father didn’t care. All he was interested in was the fight itself.
    Through the cloth speaker of my radio, I heard the bell ring. The crowd roared like a herd of wild beasts, the sound loud enough to wake the dead. My father just sat there, cocooned in serene silence, eyes locked on my hands, my face, and the radio, waiting for my hands to transform the invisible, unheard sound into the visible, understood sign.
    The fight was on. The noise of the crowd, and the screaming voice of the announcer, poured in a torrent from my radio.
    I struggled to sign what was happening, what I was hearing; struggled to keep up. But there were just too many raw sounds coming at me, all crowded together. Besides which, my signing vocabulary did not include signs for the boxing game. Oh, sure, I could sign chicken. That was easy, as the sign looked like a chicken. I could sign corn. (I was great with vegetables, as my father had taught me a garden of signs, a veritable farm full of signs.) But how to sign, The Brown Bomber lands with an uppercut. Now he’s jabbing Schmeling. Jab, jab, jab. There’s no letup. Schmeling’s eye is closing. Jab, jab, another jab to the eye. Joe Louis is killing him. Another uppercut. One to the breadbasket. Schmeling doubles over. OOOHH, that one will bring up his lunch.
    Pained frustration pinched my father’s face as he looked uncomprehendingly at my incomprehensible, stuttering signs.
    Equally frustrated, I leaped instinctively to my feet, swinging my arms, my childish fists extended. As I listened to each detail describing the action in the ring, I danced in circles in front of my father. I swung. I ducked. I bobbed. I weaved.
    The