Still, when Charlie pulled her own phone from her pocket, she found herself disappointed, then repulsed at that disappointment, to see none of the four new messages on the screen were from Austin.
Comingover.to drop smtng of okay?
*off
Aare u hokme?
*home!
Shit, Charlie said to her father. Mom’s coming over.
Now?
She wants to drop something off, she says.
What?
No idea.
Her mother was parked out front, leaning on her car and poking at her phone with one long acrylic nail. She seemed flustered by their arrival, as if Charlie and her father had shown up at her house instead of the other way around.
Sorry, I figured you’d be—she glanced again at her phone—home by now. Anyway, just wanted to drop this off.
Charlie didn’t know what her mother was talking about, but she could see her father remove his glasses and rub at his eyes, a tic she’d come to know was his attempt at disguising exasperation. Her mother began rooting through the contents of her purse, finally drawing out a small white box, the shape of which Charlie recognized right away.
Popped down to the clinic to grab this. So you have it for school and stuff.
Dad just picked me up for Thanksgiving break. We don’t have class.
Oh, well. Anyway, she said. Here it is.
Charlie tried to maintain a neutral expression, but she could feel her own frustration surfacing. Her mother had to have known she’d be out on break; she just wanted Charlie to show up to Thanksgiving dinner with her implant on. Why couldn’t her mother ever say what she was really thinking? Were they really still playing this fucking game after all these years?
* * *
—
Once, at the clinic, Charlie had seen a boy with a cochlear implant talking on the phone. At first, she entertained conspiracy theories. Maybe he was an actor hired by Edge, and this was a rehearsed conversation. Maybe there wasn’t anyone on the other end at all. It didn’t feel so far-fetched, given the chasm between the task this boy seemed to be enjoying and the subpar work the thing in her own head was doing. Given what she knew of implant sales reps.
In that same hospital, she’d also come upon two women with name tags and pencil skirts plucking their eyebrows before the bathroom vanity, one bragging to the other how much product she’d sold, that she was going to Biloxi for the weekend and drinks were on her. At the time, Charlie didn’t understand much beyond a gut-level aversion to the woman’s smarm, but thinking back on it later, she realized that someone must have earned a commission on her own mother’s worst nightmare.
So it was hard to watch her mother now, gingerly removing from its case the processor she’d driven out of her way to retrieve. She handled it like a family heirloom, but for Charlie it felt more like watching an alcoholic have just one beer.
They preset your last MAPping on here, her mother said. But I made an appointment for an adjustment if we need it.
We don’t need it, thought Charlie, though she said nothing aloud. Instead she took the processor, hung it over her ear, swept her hair back, and attached the magnet.
How does it feel?
Charlie was used to being asked questions about her deafness, but the one that really irked her was “What does hearing with an implant sound like?” It wasn’t the all-time dumbest inquiry—someone at Jefferson had once asked her if her ears got cold in winter—but it was the one she most hated, perhaps because it bothered her that she would never know the answer. How could she know what it was like when she had nothing to compare it to? But now, the three of them standing there looking at one another, Charlie cocking her head in discomfort, her mother all hope like a helium balloon, she felt more sad than annoyed.
Feels good, I think, said Charlie. Might take a while to tell.
Of course, said her mother. Have to get used to it.
Charlie nodded, shifted her weight between her feet. She wondered whether other people felt so awkward in front of their mothers.
Well, I better go. Ms. Sweet Potato Pie costumes wait for no woman.
In a different mood, Charlie might’ve had a good joke about pageants named after starches.
I’ll be over Wednesday night then, said Charlie.
Her mother made the one-armed reach that Charlie understood was her version of a hug, then returned to her car, where she backed out of her parking spot a little too fast, as if she were being released from captivity.
Your mom’s just trying to help.
Doing a shitty job.
Her father sighed.
The goal of your implant was always—
To make her life easier?
To make your life easier.
This makes my life easier.
Charlie held her hands outstretched toward her father.
Yeah, she guessed wrong, he said. But her heart was in the right place. She has her regrets.
Regrets? I’ve got a chunk of metal inside my head!
And what if you never had it? Never learned to speak at all?
Plenty of people don’t talk at all, she said, though really Austin was the only one she knew for sure. And they’ve had more normal lives than me.
Normal? he said. Isn’t that what you’re always raging against?
Why are you defending her?
I’m only saying she loves you. Tough love, maybe—
Was that what it was with you two? “Tough love?”
Oh no, she hated me, he said.
Charlie groaned.
But she doesn’t hate you. Despite both your best efforts.
I have homework, Charlie said.
Now?
Charlie rolled her eyes and retreated to her room. Previously, she’d believed her relationship with her mother to be a great injustice, but lately she’d been thinking that the truly unfair thing was the expectation that a mother should completely understand another human just because she’d given birth to them. Charlie was constantly letting her father off the hook for being clueless. Why wasn’t a mom allowed to be wrong? Maybe Peter Pan was messing with her head somehow, all the talk of lost and imported mothers. Either way, Charlie had not turned the processor on and her mom had not been able to tell, and for now, she thought, that was just fine.
the cure for you
Since ancient times, hearing people have been trying to “cure” deafness, with some tactics more successful （or harmful） than others. Throughout history, swindlers and medicine men have frequently been charged with fraud for their false claims to have cured hearing loss.
ANCIENT TIMES
An Egyptian recipe from 1550 bce says to inject olive oil, red lead, bat wings, ant eggs, and goat urine into the “ear that hears badly.”
This is the earliest written mention of deafness.
ANCIENT TIMES–EARLY ce
The New Testament contains the story of Jesus healing a deaf man using saliva.
“Faith healings” remain popular throughout the Christian fundamentalist tradition.
Healing rituals are also common in other religions.
EARLY CE–17TH CENTURY
Herbal and spiritual methods persist.
This period is considered the heyday of manual （signed） education, so less historical emphasis is based on cure-finding.
Use of ear trumpets begins.
18TH CENTURY
Ear trumpets gain popularity.
Acoustic throne: hidden amplification device attached to a hollow chair.
Trumpet variants include double-sided acoustic horn and acoustic headband.
19TH CENTURY
Harsh chemicals like mercury, silver nitrate