When I sat upright, I saw Nina sliding her own notebook across her desk toward me, and I noticed she’d scribbled something down on the front page.
Mr. Wells is a doofus. Don’t worry about him.
I fought back a tiny smile as I took my own pencil and scribbled down a response to Nina before passing her notebook back.
He’s not the first person to shout at me, and he won’t be the last. But thanks.
Nina grinned when she read my note and said, “You’ve got this.”
It was a simple statement, one I’d been told a lot in the past few weeks. But it meant just a little bit more coming from a person who wasn’t my mother or an interpreter.
CHAPTER 4
At Pratt, lunch had been my favorite part of the day. At Engelmann, I was pretty sure it was going to be my absolute least favorite part.
OK IF I SPLIT FOR LUNCH? Kathleen asked as I followed Nina into the cafeteria.
FINE, I signed. PROMISE. MEET AGAIN AFTER LUNCH.
SURE? Kathleen repeated.
YES, I signed again.
It was not as if I publicly announced I was Deaf—my interpreter and the signing and my hearing aids kind of made that obvious—but I wanted to have a normal lunch without having everyone stare at me or whisper about me. Having Kathleen sitting at the same table, interpreting lunchtime conversations, would kind of make that impossible.
Kathleen and I parted ways outside the cafeteria, and Nina led the way to the food line. The place was already crowded with old friends sitting together catching up on their summers. Everyone had their place and seemed glad to return to the same groups with the same friends.
Suddenly, I felt very homesick.
Nina found us a spot in line behind a rather short guy with smooth brown hair and a lean physique that suggested he was into sports. He and Nina exchanged pleasantries—maybe they were friends?—and then the guy turned toward me. A smile that was probably meant to be charming, but looked a little too practiced, crept over the guy’s face as he eyed me.
“Well, hello there. Who . . . have here?”
I inwardly cringed as I shook his hand, already predicting how this encounter would play out.
“Jackson, this . . . Maya,” Nina said, introducing us. Something about the expression on her face made it seem like she was trying to tell him off. “She just . . . New Jersey.”
“Wonderful!” the guy called Jackson said, and he winked at me.
The only person who ever winked at me was my Grandpa Sully back before he died, and usually it was when he was sneaking me candy behind Mom’s back. Having a guy my age wink at me was weird—and creepy.
Nina shifted slightly so I didn’t have a good look at her face, but I could tell she was trying to fill Jackson in on my situation. Whatever she was saying didn’t seem to bother Jackson as he said, “Now that’s just . . . Nina. I . . . little . . . sign language.”
His eyes moved to me again and he started to finger spell his name, although he wound up with the letter m instead of n when he got toward the end. “Jackson,” he said, leaning toward me, a telltale sign he was raising his voice.
I smiled politely at Jackson and decided to respond to his overly dramatic introduction in the same fashion. I took my time signing, I DON’T LIKE HEARING BOYS, but it was all I could do to keep from busting out laughing when Jackson nodded and gave a thumbs-up, the cheeky smile still in place as he moved forward with the line.
“Sorry . . . that,” Nina said when she turned back to face me. “Jackson’s . . . lady’s man.”
I shrugged. Wasn’t like I hadn’t met one of those before. I tapped the backs of my index and middle fingers to my forehead, the sign for stupid, and pointed at Jackson. When Nina kept staring at me in confusion, I very clearly mouthed the word without using my voice, and then she looked like she was holding in a laugh once she understood.
I bought a sad-looking roast beef sandwich and a bottle of lemonade when we reached the food and somewhat anxiously trailed after Nina. She was my only lifeline in this school so far, and I wasn’t bold enough to break off on my own and sit at a table alone. When I saw the table we were heading toward, I almost wished I had. Beau was sitting there with Jackson close by, along with a whole bunch of people I didn’t recognize.
I took a seat at the table beside Nina, across from Beau and thankfully away from Jackson. I unwrapped my sandwich and took a bite, doing all I could to ignore the eyes fixed on me. Nina mentioned she and Beau were on the student council, so it wasn’t a stretch to figure out the rest of the people at this table fell into the same category.
Nina placed a hand on my shoulder for my attention, and I watched her introduce me to everyone saying, “This . . . Maya. She just moved . . . New Jersey.”
I gave a small wave as some people presumably said hello and quickly returned to my sandwich. I had this bad habit of eating super-fast when I was nervous, and at my current pace I was going to finish my sandwich in under a minute, tops.
I gave a start when Nina nudged me with her elbow, and when I looked over at her she nodded toward Jackson. He was leaning toward me across the table, two seats down from Beau, and he was talking to me, fast and with no breath in between.
It could’ve been because I was already exhausted from lipreading, trying to remain alert, and overly paranoid that people were talking about me behind my back that I spoke, because it was the quickest way of getting my point across.
“I’m assuming Nina told you I’m Deaf, right?”
I saw Beau’s eyes widen, and I could tell the next words out of his mouth were, “You can talk?”
And in that split second after Beau said those words, my mood went from uneasy and unsure to pissed off.
“Of course I can talk! A lot of Deaf are oral, but it’s our choice whether we want to use our voices,” I told Beau, my glare fierce. “Just because I choose not to talk doesn’t mean I can’t do it. I’m not stupid or anything, you know. I’m just as capable as you are.”
I was angry at that unbelievably thoughtless comment, but lurking on the periphery was the fear that my voice sounded so bad and was somehow so surprising it caught Beau off guard.
Beau started to say what I was sure was going to be some lame excuse, but Jackson started tapping on the table in front of me, wanting my attention again. When I turned my glare on him, he seemed oblivious to my anger, saying, “If you . . . talk, why do . . . sign language?”
“Why don’t you use sign language?” I snapped at him.
I snatched my backpack off the back of my chair, grabbed my sandwich and lemonade bottle, and was off like a rocket. The hallway outside the cafeteria was blissfully empty, so I just took off, not caring if my shoes were slapping extra loud on the tiled floor. I wanted to put as much distance between me and that lunch table as possible. It was a shame walking all the way back to New Jersey was out of the question.
I’d never gotten, “You can talk?” before. As if my being able to talk was somehow supposed to be impossible because I was Deaf? What did that have to do with anything?
I felt myself growing more and more irritated with myself because I was actually embarrassed about having spoken in front of Nina and Beau and those other total strangers at that lunch table.
Don’t think about it, don’t think about it, I chanted to myself as I kept on down the hallway. These people didn’t mean anything to me. I didn’t care what they thought or said. At least, I didn’t want to.
Taking up a post at my locker, I picked at the rest of my sandwich and took a few sips of lemonade, though my appetite had all but disappeared after that little display in the cafeteria. As I ate, I debated the merits of going out and getting a job to buy a car so I could drive myself to that school for the Deaf. It wouldn’t be the same as Pratt, but at least there I could be around other people who “spoke” my language. It was a nice thought that kept me going through next period’s art class, though I knew it wasn’t exactly realistic. Even if I found a job in the next few w
eeks, I doubted I could save up enough to get a car before I graduated.
Mom’s attempts at reassuring me everything was going to be great at this hearing school already hit a brick wall on the first day. How could she have ever thought this would turn out okay?
CHAPTER 5
YOU OK? Kathleen signed to me on our way out of chemistry class, the last class of the day. SAD, she added, pointing to me with raised eyebrows.
FINE, I signed back. TIRED.
Not a total lie—I was exhausted. I’d forgotten how tiring it could be to lip-read so much, trying to make sense of what people were saying around me. I had to put forth way more effort into communicating than the hearing people at this school. It was depressing to think I was going to have to do it for almost eight hours a day, five days a week, for the next several months.
TOMORROW NEW DAY, Kathleen signed to me, smiling encouragingly.
I KNOW, I answered. BUT I FORGET HEARING PEOPLE WEIRD WITH DEAF.
Kathleen signed, I KNOW. She didn’t offer any other words of encouragement, just gave my shoulder one of those squeezes, and I was grateful she was leaving it alone.
We parted ways, promising to meet in front of the school tomorrow morning, and I made the trek all the way back to my locker on the other side of the building.
I kept my head down and quickly gathered up all the textbooks and homework I received throughout the day. I’d already been assigned a few hours’ worth of homework, and I was weirdly grateful. The work would be a temporary distraction so I wouldn’t have to think about how awful coming back to this stupid school was going to be.
Mom was waiting outside in the pickup loop, and I wrenched open the passenger side door and leapt in, throwing my backpack down between my feet with a little too much force.
I leaned back in my seat to wave hello to Connor sprawled out in the back with several bags of groceries Mom must have picked up, looking a little tired after his first day of school but otherwise just fine. He signed, HELLO, followed by a smile where he stuck his tongue through the gap where his two front teeth used to be—one of his favorite things to do since he lost them a couple weeks ago.
Then Mom had her hand on my shoulder, and I twisted back around to look at her. By the expectant look on her face, I could tell she was silently asking, so how was it?
AWFUL, I signed to her. I started listing off everything that went wrong as she put the car in gear and maneuvered out of the parking lot. GIRL ANGRY WITH ME FIRST CLASS, WHY? TEACHER HAVE HER MOVE FOR ME. DIFFERENT TEACHER YELL AT ME. LUNCH SOME HEARING BOY TRY F-L-I-R-T WITH ME, AND DIFFERENT BOY NAME B-E-A-U SURPRISE I TALK. HE REALLY SAY, ‘YOU CAN TALK?’
If Mom were not familiar with the way I signed she probably wouldn’t have a single clue about what I was telling her given how frantically I was signing, but she got it. She had this disappointed look on her face as she drove, turning to look at me so she could reply when we reached a stoplight.
REMEMBER, YOUR FIRST DAY, she signed. THINGS STRANGE FIRST DAY. HEARING SCHOOL NEW FOR YOU AGAIN. BUT SORRY THAT HAPPENED.
SAME, I signed, sinking my teeth into my lip. I felt frustrated, angry tears pricking my eyes, but I refused to let those jerks get to me by making me cry.
NOT MEAN KIDS, Mom continued. THEY DON’T KNOW ABOUT DEAF.
SHOULD KNOW, I told her.
Mom pursed her lips in thought, and it wasn’t until we reached another stop sign that she signed, TEACH THEM.
Connor’s small hand squeezed my shoulder tight before I could respond, and immediately I felt my anger begin to disappear.
Despite how thin and pale Connor always seemed to be, he was probably the happiest little kid I knew. He had this mess of brown hair that stuck up everywhere despite how much Mom tried to tame it, a bunch of freckles, and he was always smiling.
Connor didn’t know much sign, but he gave it his all whenever we were around each other. A lot of the time he would write notes to me, so we had a special spiralbound notebook covered in Marvel comic book stickers for that exact purpose.
HELLO, Connor signed to me again. MISS YOU TODAY.
SAME, I signed with a grin, then said aloud, “How was your first day of school, squirt?”
Connor was one of the few people I didn’t mind using my voice in front of. He was too young to remember what it was like when I was still hearing, so to him I’d always been his Deaf big sister.
“Awesome!” I watched Connor say excitedly. He gave another big thumbs-up with his toothy smile. “I have . . . new friend . . . teacher put us . . . name . . . Trevor. Likes . . . Spider-Man!”
“That’s great!” I said, thinking that at least Connor enjoyed his new school even if I hated mine.
A handful of minutes later we were pulling up into the driveway of our new home.
This house was smaller than our home in New Jersey, but it was still cute—painted green with a nicely kept front lawn and a big sweetgum tree out front. It was maybe the one thing I liked about moving so far.
Inside was still a total mess, with us navigating around the stacks of moving boxes everywhere. We’d gotten the couches arranged in the living room and the entertainment stand set up with the TV, but everything else was still chaos.
I started in on my homework once all the groceries were put away, setting up camp in the living room with Connor. He didn’t have any homework and was perfectly content turning on some cartoons and plopping down on the couch, making sure to turn on closed captioning for me. I was caught up outlining the chapter in my AP US History textbook about corporations in early twentieth century America when Mom popped her head into the living room to tell us dinner was ready.
DINNER, Connor signed at me when I didn’t immediately get up, making the letter “D” with his fingers and tapping the side of his jaw.
Mom already had the table set in the dining room just off the kitchen when Connor and I joined her. A shrimp pasta with a side salad was a welcome change from all the take-out we’d been having since we moved.
I sat across from Mom for any necessary interpreting and dug into my plate of food.
As we ate, every so often I would look up and see Connor in conversation with Mom, and then I would feel that little twinge of sadness I always did when my family was speaking around me and I didn’t have any idea what they were saying.
I didn’t blame Connor or Mom for not always signing when they spoke because that wasn’t an easy thing to do when your first language was English. I never felt sorry for myself because of it, but sometimes it was impossible to put a cork in it. I didn’t hate being Deaf—it was part of who I was—but sometimes my lack of hearing made me feel painfully alone.
Once dinner and cleanup were finished, I grabbed my things from the living room and went upstairs to my new bedroom, which was all the way at the end of the hallway beside the bathroom I shared with Connor.
Rather than dive back into my homework, I hung up a few posters, mostly reprints of Van Gogh and Picasso masterpieces that always made me marvel. I got sheets properly fitted on my bed, put more clothes away in the dresser beside the window, and then decided to give up and FaceTime my best friend Melissa.
Melissa picked up after a few rings, waving her hands excitedly as she came into view on my iPad. Melissa and I met at Pratt shortly after I transferred there, and we’d been close friends ever since. Unlike me, Melissa was born deaf, which meant ASL was her first language. It had taken a while for me to stop thinking so much in English since it was my first language—and sometimes I still thought I wasn’t fluent in ASL—but this had never been a problem for Melissa.
Melissa was spunky and bubbly and never failed to see the positive side of the equation—something I could definitely use at the moment. And after this mess of a first day at Engelmann, I was hoping Melissa’s self-confidence in her identity as a Deaf person might rub off on me.
MISS YOU, was the first thing Melissa signed to me. COLORADO, YOU LIKE?
FINE, I signed back. BEAUTIFUL MOUNTAINS.
HEARING SCHOOL? Melissa signed next, raising her eyebrows in question.
AWFUL, I told her honestly.
I wasted no time giving Melissa a play-by-play account of everything that happened my first day of hearing school. She watched me intently as I signed, twirling a strand of her dyed black hair around her finger. When I got to the part about lunch, the creepy hearing guy, and Beau, the expression on Melissa’s face went from interested to annoyed.
HEARING PEOPLE, she signed, and gave a disgusted shake of her head as if that said it all.
I KNOW, I signed in agreement. AND I STUCK HERE NOW. EIGHT MONTHS BEFORE GRADUATE.
STRONG, Melissa signed, pointing at me. BELIEVE IN YOU.
THANK YOU. I attempted a smile even though I felt like bursting into angry, frustrated tears all over again. MISS YOU SAME.
Melissa and I spent the next half hour catching up. As we were signing, it was almost like I hadn’t moved and was back in my old bedroom in New Jersey, procrastinating doing my homework with Melissa. She promised me we would FaceTime again after her first day back at Pratt, which wasn’t until next week, and fill me in on everything I missed.
It was eleven o’clock east coast time by the time Melissa and I signed off. I hated saying good-bye, but I still had homework to finish. And even though getting to see her face made me feel better, it somehow made me feel worse too. Our call reminded me that I had left so much behind in New Jersey—a life that had been happy and comfortable and full of people who understood me. If my first day at Engelmann had proven anything, it was that I was completely, utterly different from everyone else.
And there was no chance that was going to change.
CHAPTER 6
When I lost my hearing, Mom got her hands on an assistive technology catalogue and bought me a new alarm clock called a Sonic Bomb. It was geared toward those with hearing loss and came with a vibrating disc you slipped under the mattress that would shake the bed when the alarm went off. The thing even had a red flashing light.
The Silence Between Us Page 3