Baby’s here! Want to come see?
Boy or girl, which? Austin said, groggy.
Surprise, his father said.
Austin followed and found his mother sitting up in bed holding a bundle of pink, and he felt light-headed—a girl! The fates had gone easy on his mother after all.
Want? his mother said with her free hand, pointing to the baby.
His excitement was quickly replaced by apprehension. He had never seen so new a baby up close.
Sure, Austin felt himself sign.
He wasn’t sure. What if he broke her? He sat down in the chair beside his mother’s bed while his father transferred the baby into the crook of his arm.
Support her head, his mother said.
So red and wrinkly, and smelling of soap. So, so small. Austin felt something inside him open, a fullness in his heart beyond the pride of a good grade or leading role, more satisfying even than lying naked beneath Gabriella’s sheets at her parents’ Memorial Day cookout. He would protect this tiny person squinting back at him. His sister.
Her name what? Austin asked after a while, when he could bring himself to look away from the baby.
S-k-y-l-a-r. You’ll see when she wakes, her eyes—so big and blue.
Skylar. Austin knew no one else with the name; it was a word he’d never spelled before. He tested it out, feeling the way the letters rolled across his hand like an ocean wave. He’d learned in science class once that babies’ eyes could change color as they got older, but the name felt sweet on his fingers so he said nothing.
Hi S-k-y, he said to the baby, though she slept. Welcome.
Eventually his mother fell asleep and Austin gave the baby back to his father.
Pretty amazing, right?
So small. Doesn’t seem real.
She’s a good size for two weeks early. You weren’t much bigger.
Austin tried to imagine his own first hours, his parents a decade and a half younger and having their first child. Had he been born in this hospital? He assumed so, though he’d never asked.
Skylar woke and cried; his father woke his mother to feed her; a nurse appeared and had a terse conversation with his father that Austin couldn’t follow.
What’d she say?
What’d she say?
Austin and his mother both looked to his father as the nurse scooped up the baby and took her down the hall. His father sighed.
What? said his mother. Don’t make me nervous.
She wanted to know how you would hear the baby cry.
Oh for fuck’s sake.
His mother smiled, relieved—Austin, too, had been expecting something worse.
She’s just taking her for her standard screenings.
I don’t understand how nurses can be so ignorant after all that school!
What’d you tell her?
That we have more flashing alarms in our house than a fire station. That deaf people have been raising children for thousands of years.
And she should mind her own damn business?
I can tack that on when she comes back if you want.
They laughed, and Austin found all his anxiety about the new baby melt away. They turned on the television and watched the morning news—morning! He had completely lost track of time. He was supposed to be in math class.
Don’t worry. I’ll write you a note.
Hopefully Walt remembers to tell the office.
Here. His father pulled out his wallet. Go find the vending machine. Breakfast Cheetos?
No Cheetos! It’s 8:00 a.m.
Or hot fries!
Austin took the money and bounded down the hall with a goofy smile on his face. He bought Cheetos and pork rinds, and returned to find Skylar back in his mother’s arms. The nurse had said something his father was on the tail end of interpreting, and whatever it was left his mother blanched and his father flushed—his body vibrating with an energy Austin didn’t recognize. The nurse brushed by Austin and left.
Everything o-k?
Yup, his father said. Nurse was explaining test results.
All good?
Perfect.
Austin thumbs-upped the news but could tell something was wrong. His mother’s brow was furrowed, her lips drawn inward.
He raised an And? eyebrow.
Well—
Baby’s hearing, said his mother.
Oh.
There was a saying in the Deaf community: passing the hearing screening was called “flunking the deaf test,” a joke to counter all those times parents had been apologized to, told that their infants were already failures. But at first it didn’t seem like such a big deal to Austin. His father was hearing, he loved his father, he signed all the time, and there was no question the baby would too. Plenty of hearing CODAs—children of deaf adults—were fluent, native signers, like Headmistress Waters. Then, surveying his dad again, his ruddy complexion, the smile he was trying so unsuccessfully to conceal even now, Austin understood.
Wait—that’s why you’re so happy?
What?
Austin pointed an accusatory finger at him.
“Perfect,” right?
I didn’t mean it like that.
How did you mean it?
But Austin allowed only a moment of false-start responses before he pulled a move he hadn’t since he was a small child—he stomped out of the room, slid down to the hallway floor with his back to the wall, knees pulled to his chest, and squeezed his eyes shut, blocking out the foot traffic, the horrible fluorescent lights, his father’s secret hopes and dreams laid bare, and his flawless baby sister, who had, in a few short hours of life, already taken down more than a century of family tradition.
a month and a half in, Charlie had hit a wall, and not just in the figurative sense. Things had been going well for a while—between night classes and the 24/7 exposure, her conversational ASL had made great strides, and she’d even gotten a B+ on an algebra test. But on Wednesday night, as they were getting into bed, Kayla said something Charlie didn’t understand, and when Charlie asked her to repeat it, she rolled her eyes and said the phrase that was the bane of Charlie’s existence: forget it.
In English, it was usually “never mind,” but the message and the feeling were the same: you are not worth the trouble. By morning Kayla was her regular self and had forgotten the forget it, but Charlie could not—not when she again sat alone at lunch, or when Headmistress Waters handed back their first essay assignment and Charlie saw that she’d earned a D on that paper, and especially not when, moments later, Headmistress called on her to answer a question she hadn’t even seen asked.
I don’t know, she said, motioning to the essay on her desk that had been holding her attention.
But Headmistress wouldn’t let it go, waved her up to the board. Charlie stood, hesitated.
Hurry it up.
I’m going, she said.
You don’t have to be a bitch about it.
Excuse me?
Shit. Had she said that aloud? She had forgotten Headmistress Waters could hear.
Nothing?
Out.
And Charlie got out, except that she was so mad she just stood outside the classroom and kicked the wall until her big toe went numb and Headmistress poked her head into the hall and pointed toward the vestibule.
My office. Now!
Charlie walked down to Clerc and paced the waiting area of the main office, despite the headmistress’s secretary’s repeated attempts to get her to sit down.
She’s teaching right now, said the secretary.
I know, said Charlie.
I fucking know.