Mel returned to the car to retrieve the last of the bags while February helped her mother unpack, placing stacks of clothes neatly in her dresser, hanging her robe and blouses in the wardrobe. While her mother and Lu chatted about Spring Towers’s amenities, February stacked and restacked a selection of word searches and paperbacks on the bedside table. Then Mel returned, and the aide returned and walked February through a clipboard full of final forms.
The dining room is open for lunch, said the aide. It’d be good for her to go down and get acquainted with everything.
February knew this was their not-so-subtle cue to leave, and that the distraction of food and meeting new people would make an easier transition for her mother. She nodded, went to her mother, now sitting in a recliner opposite Lu’s, and knelt down in front of her.
Mel and I are gonna go so you can have lunch, she said. But I’ll be back to get you as soon as I can. And you can come home.
Her mother just nodded and said okay.
I love you so much.
Love you too!
February stood and kissed her mother on the forehead. Her mother smiled brightly and February was a little hurt that she was taking it all so well.
Drive safe!
Mel gave her mom a thumbs-up, then took February’s hand and led her from the room. February pressed her tongue hard against the roof of her mouth to keep from crying. She thought of the day she left for graduate school, her parents standing at the end of the driveway, waving fervently, her mother’s eyes welling up, tears magnified behind her thick glasses. How thrilled February had been that day, to leave her parents’ house and Colson behind, even if she wasn’t going very far. What kind of child had she been, to practically delight in abandoning them?
At the front desk, the receptionist handed February a family welcome folder with a pamphlet listing special dates and events, and an index card with her mother’s room information and videophone number on it. February hugged the folder tight to her chest and kept it there the whole ride home.
You okay?
Yeah, said February. I think. I don’t know. I just feel guilty.
I know, babe, but it’s the safest place for her.
February nodded.
Hey, what did you say to her before we left?
That I loved her?
Oh, okay.
What?
I thought you said something about coming back to get her, said Mel.
February’s neck hairs prickled. Mel’s ASL had really improved in the months her mother had been with them.
Yeah. I did.
Here was where she should have told her wife everything. It was the perfect in—Mel might even take pity on her in this state instead of berating her for having kept it a secret.
For Thanksgiving, I mean, February said instead.
Coward. She began to pick at her cuticles, peeling a thin line of skin away from one finger until Mel reached across the armrest and took her hand.
Don’t do that, she said.
Listen, said February.
Yeah?
I, uh—
She couldn’t bring the words up into her mouth.
Thank you, she said. Really, thanks for all you did to organize this. You know how much she means to me.
I know, babe, Mel said.
She patted February’s arm tenderly, not unlike her mother might have done, then returned her hand to the wheel to merge onto the highway toward Colson.
word about Sky’s hearing—like all Deaf gossip—had spread quickly through the community. Austin sometimes thought that if hearing people ever studied the power and speed of the Deaf rumor mill, they might think twice about classifying deafness as a “communication disorder.”
Most of his friends still didn’t know, though, since most of their parents weren’t Deaf. So while he wasn’t trying to hide it, exactly, he saw no reason to bring it up. Anyway, most teenagers weren’t that into talking about babies, beyond the terror of accidentally making one, and how best to avoid it. Then the news trickled down through the Valenti parents to their daughters.
Gabriella had appeared beside his locker one afternoon, and Austin remembered a time when seeing her there would have delighted him, but now his heart’s skipped beat was dread-induced.
Heard your mom had the baby.
He nodded.
Congratulations.
Thanks.
Gabriella smiled, but her eyes narrowed, a tell Austin knew meant she was about to strike. He waited for a moment, then gave in.
What?
I heard someone failed her deaf test.
And?
Nothing. Just fun to see the mighty topple is all.
What are you talking about?
Come on—the poster family for Deafhood has a hearing kid? You have to admit it’s kind of funny.
What does that even mean?
Of course Austin knew there was clout embedded into his family’s Deafness, but he wasn’t sure about “poster family.” It wasn’t as if he walked around policing people the way Gabriella sometimes did, making snide comments about someone who used English word order, or mouthed English words as they signed. Most days—at least before Charlie and Sky—he’d rarely thought about an “ideal” version of deafness at all. He was hardly marching around like some reverse Alexander Graham Bell. Then again, maybe standing for something wasn’t always a choice.
Hello? Gabriella was cackling now. Anybody home?
I—
Whatever, say hi to the baby for me.
She batted her eyes, looking demure.
I mean, if you can.
Oh, fuck off, he said.
She only laughed harder. He slammed his locker door and went to lunch, directly to the corner of the cafeteria where he knew he’d find Charlie.
You can sit with us, if you want, he said.
now Charlie’s language was burgeoning. During the school day, she sat on the edge of her chair, eyes tracking wildly between her teachers’ hands and whatever clues she could glean from the whiteboard or PowerPoint. The night classes were still useful, chugging along with their methodical repetition, she and her father working as partners and slowly recounting to one another the day’s events. Then, in the cafeteria, the other ASL.
Charlie had always been fond of curse words. In hearing school, kids would teach her strings of vile things to say and she’d parrot them back as best she could to make them laugh. She was willing to be the butt of this kind of joke if it diverted their attention from other ways to hurt her.
Here, too, curse words were an easy bridge. Since the incident with his ex, nothing more had happened between her and Austin, or her and Gabriella. But after a while he had invited Charlie to sit with him at lunch. On the far end of the table, Gabriella and another blonde spent a lot of time staring pointedly and then laughing at Charlie, but the rest of Austin’s tablemates—a pair of brawny football players, two gangly boys who looked like they’d never played a sport of any kind, plus Alisha and another girl from Drama—had quickly descended upon the language gap and offered up their favorites: “shit,” “fuck,” “slut,” “bitch,” “asshole,” and several variations on the theme of “motherfucker.”
She saw English, rigid and brittle, crack before her eyes—concepts that took up whole spoken phrases encapsulated in a single sign. Other signs were untranslatable even with multiple words: a sign that sometimes meant I see and sometimes I understand or that’s interesting, or an affirmation that you were paying attention; another that seemed to be a more emphatic version of “real talk,” and which was transliterated for her alternately as true business and true biz.