Give Me a Sign
Anna Sortino
For my twin, six years younger
Note
To distinguish between spoken English and American Sign Language, I’ve italicized when characters are communicating with sign.
There’s no guarantee that children with hearing loss will be provided access to sign. A range of communication styles exist, such as Sim-Com （simultaneous communication of both sign and speech）， PSE （a hybrid of ASL and English grammar）， and SEE （verbatim English）， as well as regional dialects, notably BASL （Black American Sign Language）。 Many signs don’t have direct English counterparts.
Thus, italicized wording in this novel is not a literal translation of ASL. It’s Lilah’s internal interpretation of what’s being signed.
Chapter One
No one knows my deafness as well as I do. There isn’t a single test that can truly get inside my head and understand how I’m experiencing the world. Doctors, parents, and strangers like to chime in with their assumptions. But after seventeen years, I’m still figuring it all out.
My annual audiology appointment is every January. My mom and I are driving through melting mounds of snow to get there. She won’t let me do this alone because she doesn’t trust me to be on top of things, especially after I got my fall semester report card this morning.
“We agreed you could stop using the FM system so long as your grades didn’t slip.” It’s not the first time we’ve fought about this wireless device I’m supposed to use in class. My mom stares straight ahead as she drives down the highway, and I have to crane my neck to read her lips. “Are you proud of getting straight Cs, Lilah?”
“Half of my teachers practically refused to wear it anyway,” I mumble. “It’s too much of a hassle.”
“Then you have to remind them to use it.” She sighs, and says something about “—— outlined in your IEP.”
“It isn’t in there?” I ask, not sure I’d heard correctly.
“It is,” my mom repeats, turning to face me. “So you need to use it. We didn’t pay for it to sit in a case all year.”
I wanted high school to be different, but these past few years have been rough. When my teachers use the FM system, it brings their voices directly into my hearing aids, making their words louder but not necessarily clearer.
All these necessary accommodations bring attention to me, which I hate. So instead of pointing out that I need closed captions whenever we watch a video, I sit there quietly. I don’t catch most of what’s being said, and I fail the quiz on the material afterward. Plus, teachers accuse me of “talking during class” whenever I try to ask the person next to me to repeat what the assignment is—after struggling to follow the lesson in the first place. So, I get another bad grade. Every day is exhausting.
“And you’ve been skipping your group meetings with the hearing itinerant?” my mom asks.
Those are . . . not fun. An hour each week, I’m forced to learn how to “advocate for myself,” which often boils down to a reminder to sit in the front row.
“How am I supposed to get better grades if I’m pulled from class?”
My mom can’t think of a response to that one. She clenches her teeth and turns carefully into the hospital’s salt-covered parking lot.
We wait in the lobby for my audiologist. A toddler fitted with two large hearing aids runs across the room. His parents are trying to hide the fact that they’re observing me closely. I’m used to the stares, especially here, since I’m one of the oldest patients at this children’s center. It’s possible this kid and his family have never seen someone my age with hearing aids before. They wonder what he’ll be like when he grows up. When I was young, I didn’t really know any older deaf people, either.
Until I went to summer camp.
My audiologist brings us back for my hearing test, and I take a seat in an office chair positioned in the middle of the dark-gray enclosed sound booth. This space doesn’t exactly scream comfort.
To the outside observer, this may seem a strange little room. There’s a creepy animatronic monkey on the shelf in the corner, with its cymbals hanging lifeless since it’s used when testing little kids. The wide metal door to my right seals this chamber shut.
I wish I were alone. Instead, my mom sits on an identical chair against the back wall, holding her purse, silently observing. I steady my hands together in my lap, resisting the urge to crack my knuckles.
My audiologist, Ms. Shelly, a cheerful presence throughout the years, has me remove my hearing aids. They’re now sitting on a tissue at the side table to my left. She leaves the booth and takes a seat in the other side, looking at me through a small window. She turns on background clatter and loud crashing sounds, supposedly reminiscent of daily life surrounding me, as I struggle through the chaos to decipher words she says into a microphone.
“Say the word ‘baseball.’ ” Ms. Shelly’s voice is initially set loud enough to rival the noise.
“Baseball?” I answer, my voice funny in my throat. I suspect I whispered my response. People tell me I speak too loudly, but whenever I’m focused on the volume of my voice, it comes out too quiet.
I cough to clear my throat, wondering why I’m nervous. I’ve done this every year of my life. It’s nothing new.
“Say the word ‘hot dog.’ ”
“Hot dog!” Whoops, sort of yelled that one. I need to settle into a happy medium.
The chair scratches my thighs as I shift to relax my shoulders and stare ahead. But my audiologist is holding an envelope over her mouth so I can’t read her lips. She keeps gradually lowering the volume now, so it’s projected at a level that isn’t necessarily comfortable or effortless to hear. “Say the word ‘ice cream.’ ”
“Ice cream.” I’m still confident enough in the words to repeat them.
But it gets more difficult. Ms. Shelly increases the background noise, and I almost can’t tell if she’s still speaking. She’s being drowned out by the roar. From the familiarity, I recognize, “Say the word ——。” Yet I can’t make out the rest.
I scrunch my nose and tilt my head to the side. Definitely didn’t catch this one. It was . . . no. I’m supposed to give my best guess, but I can’t even think of a word similar to what I heard. A hint of frustration rises within me.
It’s my hearing being graded, not me.
This is the point in a typical conversation where I’d proclaim my most often used word—“what?”—as many times as it’d take for a person to get their message across. It’s best when someone can switch up their wording to help me along. The greater the context, the more likely I am to pick up on what I’m missing.
However, right now, there is no context. Only background noise and an elusive word. At least this is better than the frequency test. I swear by the end of that one I’m imagining beeps that don’t exist.
I give up and shrug. What’s another failed test at this rate?
Ms. Shelly continues. Another twenty or so words later, she finally puts down the envelope and gives me a smile while shutting off the background noise and returning her voice volume to full blast. “Great job, Lilah. We’ll move on now.”