Chapter 3 — The Language of Hands

In the second week, the club switched to learning family-themed vocabulary - symbols for father, mother, brother, sister, grandfather, grandmother, and verbs commonly used in daily meals such as "eat", "drink", "sleep", "go to school". Gia Bach explained that this is the most practical vocabulary group, because most members of the club have Deaf relatives or friends, and the first conversations often revolve around housework, eating, and everyday things.

"The signs for 'mommy' and 'daddy' come from touching the chin and forehead with the thumb," he demonstrates slowly. "But keep in mind, each region, each Deaf community may have slightly different variations, just like the dialect in speech. What I teach today is the popular variation in my area. If you meet people using other variations in the future, don't be surprised."

Thao Nguyen focused on memorizing, but when it came to practicing in pairs, she fell into a situation of laughing and crying. When signaling "Have you eaten?" with Minh Thu, she accidentally mistook the "eat" sign for a sign that was similar to it but had a completely different meaning — a gesture pointing to the mouth but in the wrong direction of the finger, making the question turn into something so silly that both Minh Thu and the two people sitting at the next table had to laugh.

"Did you just ask me if I was...chewing ice?" Minh Thu laughed hard, still holding the sign to tease back.

Thao Nguyen blushed and pressed her hand to her forehead. "Oh my god, sorry, I was wrong again."

Gia Bach passed by, heard laughter, stopped to watch, then couldn't help but laugh too, even though he tried to keep the seriousness of a club president. "It's okay, this is a very common mistake," he reassured, his hand repeating the correct symbol very slowly so that Thao Nguyen could carefully observe the direction of his fingers. "I once saw a friend mistake the 'sorry' sign for a 'like' sign, and as a result, he went everywhere confessing his love to the wrong person for months without knowing."

The story made the whole group burst into laughter, Thao Nguyen's tense atmosphere of fear of making mistakes gradually disappeared. She realized that perhaps this was what she needed to learn no less than vocabulary — learning how to accept mistakes, laugh at her own mistakes instead of cowering in shame.

"Mistakes are normal in the process of learning a new language," Ms. Xuan added when she saw Thao Nguyen's still slightly embarrassed expression. "The Deaf people she taught at a special school were always patient with beginners, because they understood better than anyone the feeling of having to learn a language that is not their mother tongue. What she was most afraid of was not the student signing wrongly, but the student being so afraid of making a mistake that they didn't dare sign anymore."

Ms. Xuan's words made Thao Nguyen nod and quickly write it down in her notebook, along with a small note next to the symbol "eat" correctly, boldly underlined to remind herself not to make a mistake next time.

At the end of the class, when everyone was packing up their things, Thao Nguyen's phone rang. Hai Yen texted and asked if she was free to go drink milk tea near the school. Thao Nguyen texted that he was at the club meeting, almost finished, see him at the school gate.

When she walked out the gate, Hai Yen was already waiting, her eyes lit up with curiosity when she saw Gia Bach also coming out at the same time, carrying a document bag, nodding to Thao Nguyen before turning the other way.

"Hey, is that the homeroom guy you always told about?" Hai Yen asked as soon as Gia Bach left, her voice full of meaning.

"Yes, Gia Bach," Thao Nguyen replied, trying to keep her voice normal even though her ears began to heat up. "What's wrong?"

"It's okay, I just kept looking at you," Hai Yen giggled, taking her friend's arm and pulling her away. "Tell me what you learned today, anything interesting?"

On the way to the milk tea shop, Thao Nguyen recounted the story of mistaking the sign for "eat" as a joke for the whole class, making Hai Yen laugh. "You really just have the talent to make people laugh unintentionally," Yen teased. "But seriously, I see you've become happier since joining this club. Before, every time Binh An was mentioned, your face turned sad, now..."

"What now?" Thao Nguyen asked when she saw you leaving your sentence unfinished.

"Now you tell the story of learning symbols with bright eyes like you're telling the story of meeting a crush," Hai Yen smiled mischievously. "Is it because you learned a new symbol, or is it because someone taught you a new symbol?"

Thao Nguyen lightly punched her friend's shoulder, her face red, neither denying nor admitting, just laughing it off, even though in her heart she wasn't sure what the most honest answer was.

When I got home at night, the whole family was preparing to eat. Thao Nguyen decided to immediately try to apply what she learned this afternoon. She sat down next to Binh An, waited for him to look towards her, then slowly signaled: "Have you eaten?" — this time she carefully remembered the correct direction of her finger for the "eat" sign, not to repeat the mistake of the afternoon.

Binh An looked at her, nodded, and signaled back, "Okay, I've eaten" - a simple sentence that Thao Nguyen understood completely immediately, making her visibly happy.

Gaining momentum, she tried a more difficult question: "Did you... have fun at school today?" But when it came to the word "happy", she was confused and mistakenly remembered the symbol for "tired" that she had just learned last week, making the question unclear.

Binh An frowned, gestured and asked, "happy or tired?" to confirm, and when Thao Nguyen realized she was wrong again, she laughed embarrassedly, shook her head, and quickly wrote in her notebook: "I meant to ask in a fun way, but my hand showed signs of being tired, sorry."

Binh An finished reading, smiled softly, slowly gestured to correct her, his hand moved with rare patience - a patience that Thao Nguyen realized, perhaps she had to practice for many years when communicating with people around her who had never really learned to sign.

"I see you two are making signs to each other a lot lately," Thao Nguyen's mother commented as she brought the bowl of soup to the table, her voice unable to hide her happiness. "Have you learned much?"

"I've only learned a little, mom, I'm still confused," Thao Nguyen replied, picking up food for Binh An out of habit. "But I feel happy while learning, unlike before when I watched the video myself and then gave up."

"That's good," her father contributed, his eyes looking at the two sisters affectionately. "We don't expect you to be good right away, we just hope you don't give up like many times before."

Her father's words made Thao Nguyen a little nervous, but she nodded firmly. "This time I won't give up."

After dinner, while helping her mother wash the dishes, Thao Nguyen thought back to Gia Bach's afternoon joke — about mistaking the "sorry" symbol for "like" — and suddenly smiled to herself. She realized that lately, she had been thinking about him more than she thought: the way he patiently corrected each student's missteps, the way he told jokes to ease others' embarrassment, the way his eyes always softened every time his parents were mentioned.

She shook her head, pushed that thought aside, telling herself that she was focusing on learning symbols, not finding out nonsense feelings. But when she went to her room and opened her notebook to review vocabulary, she still couldn't help but stop at the note page of today's joke, re-reading the words she hastily wrote: "Mistaking 'sorry' for 'like' — remember carefully so as not to repeat it! (Gia Bach said)."

She smiled to herself, underlined Gia Bach's name in that note, then quickly deleted it, feeling that her actions were somewhat childish. But the smile was still on her lips when she turned off the light and went to sleep, feeling much more relieved than the previous nights, when guilt about Binh An was still the only thing overwhelming her mind every time she thought about him.

Lying on the bed, she reviewed in her mind all the symbols she had learned in the past two weeks, trying to visualize her hand moving in the right rhythm, in the right direction. There were symbols that she remembered for sure, but there were also many symbols that were still confused and blurred in her memory. She reminded herself that the road ahead was still long, there were still many practice sessions and many more embarrassing mistakes waiting. But for the first time in many years, that thought did not discourage her, but on the contrary, made her look forward to the next class.

The next morning, she woke up earlier than usual, took advantage of the fifteen minutes before going to school to flip through the new pocket symbol dictionary she had just bought, and review it just as Gia Bach had instructed. Binh An went downstairs to have breakfast, saw her sitting bent over, practicing signs in front of the refrigerator mirror, stopped to observe for a moment, her expression was both curious and funny.

"What are you practicing?" he signed, then added silently with his mouth, a habit of Deaf people who grew up in an environment that used both signs and lip reading.

Thao Nguyen pointed to the dictionary, signaling the correct sentence "eat rice", trying to show off last night's results. Binh An nodded with satisfaction, then suddenly made a series of quick signs, seemingly teasing something about her sister being slow at learning, causing Thao Nguyen to raise her hands in surrender because she couldn't keep up.

"Slowly, slowly," she said while laughing, the "slowly" sign she remembered correctly this time without looking at the book again. Binh An laughed and nodded, seemingly satisfied that at least his sister had remembered a defense sentence to deal with his speed of signs.

Before leaving the house, Thao Nguyen even had time to sign "See you in the afternoon" - a sign she overheard from a video last night. It may not be completely correct, but Binh An still understood, raised her hand to wave back, her eyes a little warmer than usual. Stepping out the door, Thao Nguyen felt her heart lighten up, as if an ordinary morning suddenly took on a completely different tone, just because of a few clumsy signs passed back and forth between the two sisters.