Me, said Austin, pointing to himself.
He patted his chest, then his arms, then held out his hands, flexed his fingers before her.
You, he said.
He took her by the wrists and held her own hands out before her. She looked down at her palms and understood—her being was implied, her potential thoughts and feelings coursing through her body, the names of everything she knew and those she didn’t yet, all in perpetual existence in her fingertips.
* * *
—
As the weeks passed, Charlie faded from the conversation’s focus to regular conversant—she had learned all the curse words there were to know, and was getting better at following along wherever the discussion went. Her shoulders relaxed, she allowed herself to smile.
When one of the football players made an English-ASL pun—a person standing upside down for understand—she laughed and Austin raised an eyebrow at her.
You got that?
Yeah.
Not bad, hearer.
It wasn’t until he said it that she realized she couldn’t hear anything at all, not even the normal static; it was like she’d taken off her CI for the night. She detached the processor and examined it, but the battery was good, or at least the indicator light still glowed “on.” She reattached it to her head and felt something unfamiliar flutter through her as the sound returned. It gave her the chills, but it didn’t hurt, exactly, and she’d forgotten about it by the time she got to play practice.
martha’s vineyard: case study of a real-life eyeth
In 1694, deaf carpenter Jonathan Lambert and his wife, Elizabeth, arrived on Martha’s Vineyard, part of a group of Massachusetts Bay colonists who moved to the island. The shared ancestry of many of the colonists tracing back to Kent in south England, in conjunction with the difficulty of travel between the Vineyard and the mainland, meant very little genetic diversity was introduced into the community for nearly a century. The result? A high incidence of hereditary deafness on the island.
THE NUMBERS
Martha’s Vineyard’s deaf population peaked in the 1850s.
At the time, 1 in approx. 5,700 Americans was deaf.
BUT
On the Vineyard, it was 1 in 155.
In town of Chilmark, it was 1 in 25.
THE NUMBERS （CONT’D）
1 in 25 is 4% of the town’s population.
1 in 155 is only 0.6% of the Vineyard’s population, but compared to the nation’s average at the time—0.018%—it made a big difference.
What do you think happened next?
LIFE ON REAL-LIFE EYETH
Deaf islanders developed their own language, “Chilmark Sign,” now called Martha’s Vineyard Sign Language （MVSL）。
Deaf and hearing islanders all signed.
Deaf and hearing people worked and socialized together without barriers.
Hearing people sometimes even signed without deaf people around!
Does MVSL still exist? Not exactly. In 1817, the American School for the Deaf opened in Connecticut, and many children from Martha’s Vineyard attended. They brought MVSL with them, and it mixed with French Sign Language （LSF） and other home signs to create the ASL we speak today.
Deaf people began staying on the mainland after graduation, and this, combined with easier transportation to and from the island, meant less genetic isolation and the decline of the deaf population. By 1952, MVSL was considered extinct.
ASK YOURSELF:
In a community where everyone knows sign language and things like employment discrimination aren’t a problem, is deafness a disability? Why or why not?
wraparound headache—pain slicing from ear to temple, across her vision, and down her neck. Pressure, as if someone had applied a tourniquet to her brain while she slept.
Charlie lay back down, squeezed her eyes shut, opened them again, but the do-over won her no relief.
Dad! she yelled, hoping she’d been loud enough for the sound to carry through her door. When he didn’t come, she felt around for her phone and tried to text him, but the letters melted before her eyes. Even worse, she realized through her squint, she wasn’t home at all. She rolled over to face Kayla’s bed. Mercifully her roommate was still there, pulling on her socks.
You’re gonna be late.
Then, when she actually looked at her:
You o-k?
Charlie could only point to her head. To her surprise, Kayla came to her side, felt her forehead.
No fever. That’s good.
She winced. She was grateful Kayla was here, but also wished she hadn’t touched her—the pain now pooled in the spot where her hand had been, as if magnetic.
I’ll go get the dormkeeper.
Thanks, Charlie managed.
First school sick sucks. You’ll be all right.
Charlie did not feel all right, and though it didn’t really occur to her until Kayla said so, being ill away from her parents did add a layer of terror to the experience. Their dormkeeper, Michelle, escorted her to the infirmary, Charlie with her hands out in front of her like a sleepwalker, afraid to fully open her eyes in the morning sun.
With a decade’s worth of school nurse interactions under her belt, she wasn’t expecting much. Charlie remembered a running joke from middle school: if a kid turned up carrying his own arm, Nurse O’Leary’s first course of action would still be to offer him a Tums. Once she got to Jeff, the protocol was to accuse students of drug habits—no matter the ailment, the nurse would demand a list of illicit substances ingested, as if there was no other possible way for a teenager to fall ill. So Charlie was expecting Tylenol if she was lucky, and that had done jack shit the last time. But when they arrived at the infirmary, she was momentarily stunned out of cynicism when the nurse stood from her swivel chair and said:
Can I help you?
Except for via interpreter at her last visit to Colson Children’s, Charlie had never been able to understand a medical professional. She flashed back to all the notes pinned to her shirt in elementary school, all the appointments at which a doctor and her mother had talked right over her head.
Hello? The nurse waved.
Headache, she said. A strong one.
The nurse opened a large white cabinet overhead filled with generic bulk medicines. She took down a bottle, then stopped midtwist of the cap, and placed it on her desk.
Have you taken anything in the last 48 hours?
Despite the gouging pain, Charlie smiled a little. Some things were the same everywhere.
No.
The nurse motioned for her to come, sheathed a thermometer in plastic, and took her temperature.
Perfect—98.6.
I run cold, Charlie said.
But the nurse just poured two pills into Charlie’s hand and told her she could rest until they kicked in.
Thanks.
Charlie peeled back the curtain that cordoned off three cots wrapped in exam table paper. She lay down, but the room’s fluorescent light cut through her eyelids.
Hello? she called to the nurse, hoping she might be able to turn off the light.
No response. She would have to get back up. Maybe, she thought, if she moved as fast as possible, her body wouldn’t have time to register that it was happening. And so Charlie hurled herself at the curtain, and immediately vomited the remains of last night’s chicken salad onto the gray tiled floor. When she opened her eyes again, the nurse was standing there, trying not to look peeved about having to clean up puke so early in the morning.
I’ll call your parents, she said.