She enters my side of the booth, her laminated ID badge dangling from her neck, and sticks various diagnostic tools in my ears and on my head. Throughout several rounds of different examinations, I suppress the urge to compare this to an alien abduction.
When it’s all over, Ms. Shelly returns and leads us out of the soundbooth and over to her office, where I usually get fitted for new earmolds and have my hearing aid levels adjusted. We take a seat around a small side table. My mom pulls her chair forward so they can crowd together over my results. I sit back, a little anxious, though there hasn’t been any reason to be yet. My hearing loss, which I’ve had since birth, isn’t supposed to be degenerative.
My mom frowns at the printout. I scramble to push in my hearing aids, looping the backs over and behind my ears. Wearing them helps, but they’re never going to be a perfect fix. What people don’t understand is that when I’m wearing my hearing aids, there’s still a lot that I miss. And without them, there’s still a lot I could catch by relying on lipreading and deductive reasoning.
We peer at the audiogram as my audiologist points to the zigzag lines trailing downward along the bottom half of the graph. The results for my left and right ears are close together, a fairly even loss across both sides.
“So we have a small dip since last time,” Ms. Shelly explains seriously, but then she smiles. “I wouldn’t be too worried about it.”
“All the more reason for her to use her accommodations for school,” my mom says.
“There is a newer FM she might prefer.” Ms. Shelly reaches back to her desk to get a pamphlet for my mom, bypassing other ones that showcase different hearing aid brands or earmold color options. “Look how cool! It’s sleek and modern.”
But I don’t care. While they discuss the pros, cons, and cost of a newer model, bemoaning the lack of insurance coverage, I stare back at the audiogram. I’ve always wondered what an additional loss would feel like. I’m not upset about it. If anything, I’m annoyed it’s not more significant.
To hearies, that may seem weird. I can’t really express why I feel this way, other than it might be nice to not stay caught in between. Like, if I had to choose between being fully hearing or fully deaf, I’m not certain my decision would be obvious.
And maybe, if the loss were profound, my family would be forced to finally take learning American Sign Language seriously. I’d seem “deaf enough” that my classmates would truly understand my need for all those school accommodations, rather than silently judge and question me. Because right now, they know I’m not hearing, but I don’t fit their expectations of deafness, either.
It’s a strange realm, here in the middle.
Since I’m overdue for a new set of hearing aids, Ms. Shelley gets out the supplies to create earmold impressions. I sit still as she squeezes cold pink goo into each ear. In a few weeks, I’ll come get the molds and processors when they are ready and assembled. It will take wearing them awhile for my brain to adjust to the latest technology and for the world around me to sound like I’m used to.
I’m not ashamed of my disability or anything like that. What bothers me is trying to fit into the hearing world. That I’m constantly the odd one out, the one who always has to explain or adjust.
I can think of one place where I didn’t feel this way: Gray Wolf, a summer camp for the deaf and blind. I stopped going after eighth grade, since leaving for an entire summer didn’t really fit into my plans once high school began. But it was a unique place where I didn’t have to explain my hearing loss to anyone. And it was my introduction to sign language and Deaf culture.
I’m starting to really miss it.
Chapter Two
Two months later, our school has a half-day Friday to kick off spring break. My friends and I are sitting at a metal table outside Mackie’s. We’re enjoying the spring weather, which is unseasonably warm for the Chicago suburbs. I gather my long brown hair and tie it up with a purple ponytail holder. We’re trying to figure out how to start off our vacation, but hunger and exhaustion from a morning full of exams has us parked here for lunch.
Kelsey takes a big bite of her chicken sandwich, putting a hand over her mouth to finish speaking while she chews.
“What?” I ask, leaning forward. It’s times like these that remind me how much of my hearing is supplemented by lifelong lipreading skills.
“No,” my other friend Riley says. “Not that one.”
Kelsey takes a big drink of water and tucks her blond hair behind her ears in a feeble attempt to stop the light breeze from blowing it in her face. She hasn’t repeated what she said yet. I’ve hardly touched my cheeseburger and have to swat away a pesky gnat that won’t leave it alone. I turn to Riley instead and ask, “What’d she say?”
Having someone else repeat for me helps sometimes. Even if they aren’t any louder, I might understand them better if they are closer to me, enunciate more clearly, or have more familiar lips.
But Riley doesn’t echo exactly what Kelsey said. She unbuttons her shirt, tying it around her waist to sit cooler in just her tank top, and reaches for lotion from her bag to soothe her dry, white knuckles. “We’re trying to figure out what movie to see. It’s too hot to hang out outside.”
I knew that much. What I still don’t know is what movie options are being discussed.
“Is there even a showing soon?” Kelsey asks. Both girls pull up their phones to check the times, so I do the same but get sidetracked on Instagram.
In the midst of a Deaf-identity crisis after my audiology appointment, I’ve recently started following a ton of ASL accounts to restore my diminishing sign language skills. Fortunately, I remember a bunch from my time at Gray Wolf, but the reality of how much I still have left to learn is hitting hard. At least I know enough that I can determine if an account has a fluent Deaf teacher or an unqualified hearing person giving inaccurate lessons.
Even though I remember summer camp being a welcoming place for kids from all backgrounds, it can be hard to reconcile that with what I’ve seen on the internet—people arguing over speech, sign, culture, devices, and more. Sometimes it can seem like all I truly know is that I’m not hearing. I could spend days scrolling through conflicting takes of people within the community debating semantics as I settle deeper and deeper into impostor syndrome. People give too much power to labels. It can feel exclusionary, whether intentional or not.
“How about something”—Kelsey says—“like, uh . . .”
“What?” I ask again, my mouth jumping to the word before my brain can piece together that she said “like, uh” and not “Li-lah.” I shake my head in response to the blank stares from my friends. “Never mind. You two pick. As long as it’s something fun.”
“Okay, let’s do the superhero one,” Riley says.
My burger is cold, but I take a few final bites. Kelsey always sits up front in Riley’s car, so I climb into the back and stare out the window the entire way, since it’s impossible to hear them over the noise of the vehicle and the radio.
At the Regal, Kelsey and Riley buy their tickets. When it’s my turn, I step forward and say, “The same one they got.”