She tried once to discuss the forms with her mother, but her mother had only grown agitated by the onslaught of questions. February could see she was scared that she could no longer find answers to inquiries about the basics of her own daily routines, things she had done for years, things she should know. February didn’t ask again, and was left to fill in her best guesses about what her mother might like to eat or watch on TV for the foreseeable future.
She continued this way for a few weeks, using the collapse of her school to distract herself from her mother’s departure, and her mother’s departure as an excuse for not talking to Mel about school. When her mom was all settled in and safe, and she and Mel were alone together again, then she would tell her. There was over a month before the district administrative meeting. She still had time.
* * *
—
Mel was prone to carsickness, so she would drive them into Cincy; that was a given. But when it came time to leave, February couldn’t stand the idea of putting her mom in the backseat alongside her suitcase and comforter, like she was headed off to summer camp, so February situated her mother in the passenger seat, then squeezed herself in beside the luggage. Her mother said little on the ride there, and Mel’s alternative rock station was in the middle of an acoustic hour so melancholy February almost asked her to turn it off, but she was afraid silence would feel worse.
They drove along Colson’s periphery, passing the graying Goodyear-turned–Edge Bionics plant and some desolate streets before the last of the city finally melted into pastures, fire and brimstone billboards looming large over soy plants and plastered to sides of barns. It was flat and brown like this for a while. Her mother asked twice where they were going, but February was grateful that when they reminded her about Spring Towers, she seemed to know what they meant.
Then up from the fields grew the exurbs, subdivisions, and warehouses that signaled they were approaching Cincy’s city limits. As Mel guided the car off the highway, February felt her mind pick up speed, and she worried she might enter a full-on panic attack, but instead she plucked one of the thoughts from the stream and tried to anchor herself to it: once she lost her job, she could get her mother back, and stay home to care for her. The idea briefly stayed her, but it left her with a bitter aftertaste.
Inside, Spring Towers was pristine—light walls, fresh-scrubbed tile, and chrome elevator bays. February wheeled a pair of her mother’s suitcases as they followed an aide up to the third floor to a room near the end of the hallway, where a tiny woman was hunched in a recliner watching television. The aide flicked the light switch to get Lu’s attention. Lu looked up, and the aide approached a large whiteboard on the side wall.
Guess who’s here? she wrote in large print.
Lu looked up at them with delight. Relief swelled in February at the interaction—they knew how to care for deaf people here. Her mom would be okay.
Who is that? her mother said, bursting through February’s moment of calm.
It’s your friend, L-u.
L-u?
From high school.
Lu rose from her chair and shuffled toward them, then pulled February’s mother into an embrace.
I’m happy you’re here, she said.
Me too, said February’s mother.
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.