If the secretary heard her, she made no acknowledgment. Charlie didn’t care. She would’ve said it to someone’s face. She was jittery, charged up—it was special ed all over again.
After a while, Headmistress appeared and motioned her into the back office. Charlie stood before the behemoth oak desk, shuffling from foot to foot, head as low as she could hang it without obscuring her vision.
What was that? said Headmistress.
Nothing.
You didn’t call me a bitch?
Charlie shook her head halfheartedly.
Please sit down.
Charlie sat.
To be honest, said Headmistress, I’ve been expecting this.
You have?
Well, not this exact thing, but…Look.
Headmistress scrawled two lines on a legal pad and turned it around so Charlie could see: Language deprivation.
Language deprivation, she signed. Heard of it?
Charlie shook her head. Headmistress went back to the pad, wrote more: Humans learn their first language by around age five. If not, it can cause problems.
She put down her pen and tapped her temple.
Up here, she said.
Great, said Charlie.
It’s rare to be in your position and have zero behavioral ________.
What?
S-y-m-p-t-o-m-s.
You think I’m language deprived?
Do you?
Charlie thought about her spells, about the Quiet Room, the anger Kayla’s brush-off had reignited.
I don’t know.
I don’t know, either. But I know you’ve had to work too hard to communicate.
No kidding, Charlie thought.
You need to be patient with yourself, she said. Language doesn’t just happen.
What if it’s too late?
I’ve seen too late. You’re not it.
Even though it was probably just a thing teachers were supposed to say, something about the swiftness with which the Headmistress had answered made Charlie believe her.
BUT. That doesn’t mean you can flip out at your teachers.
Charlie nodded.
Guidance counselor next three Wednesdays, 3:00 p.m., she wrote on the pad.
Understood?
Yes.
And. One other thing.
Charlie bit her tongue.
I want you in an after-school activity. Drama Club.
Charlie shook her head.
Winter play. They’re doing P-e-t-e-r P-a-n.
A play? No way.
Not a suggestion, Headmistress said.
I’m no actress, said Charlie.
You can be _______ _______.
What?
S-t-a-g-e c-r-e-w. Stage crew.
Stage crew?
Work backstage.
But what if I mess it up?
You can’t mess up stage crew.
I guess.
Again, not optional.
Right. O-k.
The end of day bell flashed above Headmistress’s desk.
And I never want to see that kind of name-calling again. Not in any language.
O-k.
Headmistress gestured with her head to the bell.
Go on then.
Charlie thanked her and stood, began her walk back toward the upper school—she’d left her books on her desk in the history classroom. She was embarrassed, but it could’ve been worse. The headmistress had gone easy on her, and she hoped most of the other students hadn’t caught what she’d said. And though she’d been resistant, the idea of the drama club did intrigue Charlie. Being part of a club of any kind at Jefferson, especially theater, would’ve been impossible. But here it was different. Maybe one day she could even be on the stage—what might her mother think of that?
She walked up the path toward her dorm, still mulling over an alternate life in which she and her mother shared an interest in performing, a daydream so absorbing that she passed right by her actual mother, the white Volvo parked in the loading zone.
Charlie!
Her mother had thrust her upper body out the car window and was now waving frenetically.
What are you doing here?
Nice to see you, too.
Sorry, Charlie signed.
What?
SORRY! she yelled.
Charlie, relax.
Sorry. Hi.
Get in, we’re going to be late.
Late?
Your implant checkup? It took me a while to get past that security guard! I mean, you’d think it was Fort Knox.
Isn’t it good for a school to have security?
Of course. Her mother sighed. Will you just get in the car?
Charlie got in, and her mother drove them back toward the main gates.
We’re doing a winter play, said Charlie, trying to fill the silence as they waited for the guard to check her mother’s ID. I’m going to be stage crew.
She decided not to mention that the activity was compulsory.
A play, said her mother. That’ll be something.
Something?
Her mother looked up at the pair of old oaks that shaded the security booth.
It’s very pretty here, she said.
It is, said Charlie, and tried to hide the uncertainty on her face.
* * *
—
Colson Children’s Hospital was a colossus, but a familiar one, and Charlie knew where everything was without even looking at the signs. She and her mother checked in at the Implant Center, and Charlie leaned in close to the receptionist’s window.
CAN I REQUEST THE INTERPRETER ON CALL, PLEASE?
What’s with the megaphone voice? her mother said.
Charlie shrugged, but realized that at school no one had told her to be quiet in weeks.
I’ll see if he’s still here, the receptionist said.
What do you want an interpreter for? said her mother.
So I can understand the doctor.
The receptionist picked up the phone.
* * *
—
The interpreter sat in a folding chair in the center of the exam room, and as the doctor and her mother exchanged pleasantries, Charlie felt almost gleeful; she was slowly becoming accustomed to signing with other deaf people, but she had never had an interpreter before. Now she could focus all her attention on this one man in his rumpled blue shirt—no guessing or ping-ponging between mouths. This, she thought, much more than the filament in her head, must be what it was like to hear.
Charlie introduced herself to the interpreter, showed him her sign name with pride. He dabbed at a milky stain on his tie, apologized, said he had a new baby at home. The doctor shuffled through her chart and Charlie’s mother sat with her hands in her lap, looking stricken.
When the doctor began to speak, the interpreter’s demeanor shifted abruptly. He sat straighter, cleared his face of the small degree of familiarity they’d cultivated in their initial conversation. It was uncanny how he could empty himself, create space to be inhabited by another.
S-o Charlie, tell me what’s been going on?
The doctor did a double take as the interpreter signed his question.
I feel something, b-u-z-z, inside my head, said Charlie.
She watched her words on the interpreter’s lips. Her voice cradled inside this man’s voice.
I get headaches.
Is the sound different than before?
I think worse.
Worse how?
Like, blurry.
The interpreter shifted in his chair, pinched his lips together.
Like, underwater? her mother’s question, brusque on the interpreter’s fingertips.
I don’t know. I’ve never heard underwater.
Nobody said anything for a second after that.
All right, let’s run some tests.
The doctor said something into his intercom; his assistant appeared and Charlie was ushered into the sound booth for the standard panel. She raised her hand in response to a series of beeps, repeated words back out into the room—“Baseball. Airplane.”—shrugged when they got too muddled to tell apart. It was perhaps the most asinine medical exercise in which Charlie had ever participated （and that was saying something）。 What did it matter whether she could hear a beep funneled directly into her head in a soundproof room? Or discern among the same ten words they’d been using on her since she was toilet-trained? It was nothing like real listening, and the results were predictably useless.