Tag Archives: Sara Novic

Weekend Write-Off

Collective Superstition

“Air-conditioning will give you kidney stones,” Luka said. I was gradually recalling those mundane moments – the ones that had until now given way to more traumatic memories – of a childhood governed by collective superstition: Never open two windows across from each other – the propuh draft will give you pneumonia. Don’t sit at the corner of the table; you’ll never get married. Lighting a cigarette straight off a candle kills a sailor. Don’t cut your nails on a Sunday. If it hurts, put some rakija on it.

I tried to think of a singularly American superstition. I’d learned a few from the Uncles – something about not letting one’s shoes touch the kitchen table – but those were all imported from the Old World. Perhaps a country of immigrants had never gotten around to commingling the less desirable pieces of their cultures. Either that, or life wasn’t difficult enough to warrant an adult’s belief in magic.”

Girl at War: A Novel by Sara Novic

https://sara-novic.com/girl-at-war
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true biz ASL
Weekend Write-Off, Writing

Being the Verb

What that? she signed, pointing to one boy’s lunch tray.

Pizza, someone said.

What i-s that? she said. She fingerspelled emphatically, question-marked her eyebrows. Austin understood first. With a flash of recognition, he scrunched up his face and gave her a scolding finger wag.

I-s. Finger wag, he said.

Charlie was disappointed – so ‘is’ and ‘am’ and ‘are’ just . . . weren’t?

How could a language exist without so fundamental a concept? Perhaps, she thought grudingly, her mother and doctors were right about the limitations of signing. Could you have a real language without the notion of being?

true biz ASL

But Austin just pointed to Charlie’s hand, then made his own gesture, sweeping up from his stomach out into an arc across the room. Charlie copied the sign, but that didn’t seem to be what he wanted. She stared.

Me, said Austin, pointing to himself.

He patted his chest, then his arms, then held out his hands, flexed his fingers before her.

You, he said.

He took her by the wrists and held her own hands out before her. She looked down at her palms and understood – her being was implied, her potential thoughts and feelings coursing through her body, the names of everything she knew and those she didn’t yet, all in perpetual existence in her fingertips.

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Weekend Write-Off, Writing

‘To Be’ Does Not Exist

Something was missing. Where was the verb ‘to be’? How are you? What is your name? Maybe it was too complicated for beginners.

They spent the rest of the class pointing at objects around the room and learning what they were called, but this only exacerbated Charlie’s curiosity – what might the noun for ‘being’ be, and did the answer to her missing verb lie there? She wanted to ask the teacher but didn’t have any of the words to form the question. That night she stayed up searching online ASL dictionaries, endless scrolls of GIFs and line-drawn bald men frozen in sign. She looked for the sign for ‘to be’ and found several sites confirming that it did not in fact exist, but no satisfying explanation for its absence.”

True Biz: A Novel by Sara Novic
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