Chapter 2 — The Language of Hands

The Sign Language Club's first lesson took place on Wednesday afternoon, in an empty classroom on the second floor, where tables and chairs had been pushed against the wall to make room for a spacious seating circle. Thao Nguyen arrived fifteen minutes early, partly because she was excited, partly because she was afraid that if she was late, she would have to sit in a hidden place and not be able to see the instructor's hand clearly.

"You're here so early," a voice said from behind her. Thao Nguyen turned around and saw a girl with short hair and glasses pulling up a chair and sitting next to her. "I'm Minh Thu, class 11A1. Are you new too?"

"Yes, I'm Thao Nguyen, 12A3," she replied, smiling. "First time joining a club like this so I'm a bit nervous."

"Me too," Minh Thu smiled, adjusting her glasses. "I have a deaf cousin, but he lives far away so I rarely see him. I heard that this club teaches very seriously, not the type of learning for fun."

At that moment, Gia Bach walked in, holding a stack of paper printed with the finger alphabet, followed by Ms. Xuan, a middle-aged woman with a petite figure but sharp eyes, exuding the seriousness of someone who has spent many years in the classroom.

"Hello everyone," Gia Bach said, placing the stack of papers on the teacher's desk. "Today I won't talk too much about theory, but start learning right away. Before learning vocabulary, everyone needs to know the finger alphabet first - this is the tool people will use to spell names, places, or any words that don't have symbols."

He gave each person a piece of paper printed with twenty-nine symbols corresponding to the Vietnamese alphabet, then stood in front of the class, raised his hand to model each symbol one by one, slowly, repeating two or three times before moving on to the next letter.

Thao Nguyen bent down to follow, but after just a few words, her fingers began to get tangled. The letters "N" and the letter "M" looked so similar that she constantly confused them, and the letter "U" with its typical Vietnamese swoosh made her struggle forever to find the right shape.

"It's okay," Gia Bach said as he passed by, noticing her frown. "It's the same for everyone who learns. The adult brain is used to using words, now it has to learn to control each finger in a meaningful way. It's very strange and takes time."

"But I think the other guys did it much faster than me," Thao Nguyen said softly, a bit embarrassed.

"Fast is not as important as accuracy," he replied, then sat down in the chair next to her, holding her hand and gently adjusting his finger position to make the letter "U". "The thumb goes here, not here. Also, don't compare with others - some of you learned to sign from a young age because you have a deaf relative, some of you just held the alphabet for the first time today. Everyone has their own starting point."

His hand was warm and firm as he adjusted her finger, making Thao Nguyen suddenly blush and quickly withdraw his hand as soon as he caught the correct shape of the symbol. "Thank you," she mumbled.

After the alphabet section, Gia Bach divided the class into pairs to practice spelling each other's names. Thao Nguyen paired up with Minh Thu, both struggling to spell their names slowly, often having to stop to look up the alphabet because they forgot the shape of a certain symbol.

"T-H-A-O... this A word is really difficult," Minh Thu muttered, her fingers turning over and over without an image. "You show me."

Thao Nguyen smiled and pointed to the symbol, even though she herself had only learned it ten minutes ago. There was something strangely joyful in the feeling of both learning and teaching others, as if having to explain again forced her to understand the symbol deeper, more firmly.

In the middle of the session, Ms. Xuan stood up and lightly tapped her hand on the table to attract attention - a habit she explained was to get everyone used to gesturing instead of calling names when wanting to talk to Deaf people.

"I want to remind everyone of something important," Ms. Xuan said, her voice much more serious than before. "Sign language is not Vietnamese performed by hand. It has its own grammar, its own word order, and most importantly, it has its own culture. Learning signs without understanding Deaf culture is like learning a foreign language but only memorizing vocabulary, without understanding how people live."

Thao Nguyen nodded and scribbled that sentence in her notebook, even though she couldn't really imagine what "Deaf culture" was other than what she knew through Binh An.

"Just a simple example," Ms. Xuan continued, "when you want to attract the attention of a Deaf person, don't constantly pat them on the shoulder or stand behind them waving your arms wildly. A light touch on the shoulder, or waving your hand within their sight, is enough. And when talking, always look straight at the person who is signaling, don't turn away midway, because for a Deaf person, turning away is like the hearing person covering their ears."

That sentence made Thao Nguyen pause for a moment, thinking about how many times she had gestured and looked down at her phone while talking to Binh An, not realizing that action could have a heavier meaning than she thought.

The lesson ended at five o'clock in the afternoon, when the sunlight had turned yellow through the window. Before leaving, Gia Bach called Thao Nguyen back. "You're learning faster than I thought," he said, a small smile at the corner of his lips. "Remember to review the alphabet when you go home, don't forget it. For beginners, forgetting is normal, but if you review it every day for fifteen minutes, a week later you'll remember it all."

"I'll try," Thao Nguyen replied, then hesitantly asked, "When did you learn to sign?"

"Since I could talk," Gia Bach laughed. "For me, symbols and Vietnamese grew up at the same time, neither one came before. But that's why I sometimes forget how difficult it is for a beginner to learn. Thank you for reminding me of that."

On the way home, Thao Nguyen stopped by the bookstore near her house and bought a small pocket symbol dictionary, even though she knew in her heart that a book could not replace real practice. When she got home, she saw Binh An sitting at the desk, her head bowed over a half-drawn page.

She took a breath, deciding to try something new. Instead of greeting with her voice like usual, she gently touched her brother's shoulder, waited for him to look up, then slowly signed the alphabet of her name - even though they both knew each other's names, this was just a way for her to practice.

Binh An watched her spell, his eyes gradually widened in surprise. He waited for her to finish spelling, then laughed, shook his head, and signed back much faster - a series of symbols that Thao Nguyen couldn't keep up with at all.

“Slowly, slowly,” she gestured by holding her hands out in front, palms down, moving slowly — a sign she had learned this morning.

Binh An raised her eyebrows, seemingly surprised that her sister knew a symbol outside the alphabet, then repeated more slowly. This time, Thao Nguyen recognized a few familiar symbols — "learn", "new", "fun" - but still couldn't put them together into complete sentences.

"You said... learning new... fun?" she guessed, her voice hesitant.

Binh An nodded and wrote in her notebook to add: "It's fun to learn something new. It's been a long time since I've studied anything."

Those somewhat teasing words made Thao Nguyen both laugh and feel a little sad, but she wasn't angry, just nodded in acknowledgment. "Yes, this time I really learned," she said, trying to sign each word, although she was still not sure about the sign for "real" so she had to replace it with an affirmative nod.

Binh An observed her for a moment, then suddenly took out his notebook and pointed to a small drawing in the corner of the page - a picture of two hands clasped together, simple but soulful drawing. "I drew this a while ago," he added below. "No offense, just trying to draw my hand."

Thao Nguyen looked at that drawing for a long time, a warm feeling crept into her heart that she couldn't name right away. "It's beautiful," she said, trying to sign the word "beautiful" that she remembered from this afternoon's class, even though her hand movements were a bit stiff, not as soft as when Gia Bach or Ms. Xuan did them.

Binh An laughed out loud - a rare sound, enough to make Thao Nguyen startled with surprise and joy at the same time - then gestured to correct her, his hand moving softly, the accompanying facial expression much clearer than her stiff movements.

She did it again, this time trying to imitate her facial expressions, her eyebrows slightly raised, the corners of her mouth slightly curved. Binh An nodded in approval and gave a thumbs up.

That evening, when she went to her room, Thao Nguyen opened a new notebook and wrote down all the symbols she learned that day, along with a small line at the bottom of the page: "The symbol is not only in the hands. It is also in the eyes, in the face, in the way you look at the other person." She looked at that line for a moment, then underlined it twice, as a reminder to herself.

She thought of the drawing of two hands clasped together in Binh An's notebook, of her rare laughter, of Gia Bach's warm hand when fixing her fingers in the afternoon. Something was starting to change, slowly but surely, like the symbols she was practicing piecing together into sentences—still clumsy, still broken, but no longer the same silence as before.