Whisper (5 page)

If there's a kind of scoring system going on with her signing and me voicing then I think we're about even.

‘Great,' Mum signs. ‘Tell us at dinner.'

It feels like a threat.

Felicity sits with a straight back. Her gym-toned arm reaches for the salt and moves it out of Harry's reach. Mum nods her approval.

‘Jim?' Mum says, frowning.

Dad is eating with his left hand and writing in his notepad with his right.

‘Where's Ryan?' I ask with my voice.

Dad sneaks me a wink. He and I do this for each other.We change the subject if Mum's about to go into nag mode.

Felicity places her hands on the table. Her fingers are splayed, showing off the white tips of her French manicure like they're some kind of achievement.

I fold my hands, hiding my short, bitten nails under the table.

‘Ryan's working on a …' Felicity turns sideways towards Mum so I don't catch the rest of the sentence. She does that quite often, even though she says she understands how important it is not to. I can generally fill in the gaps though.Most likely, he's working on a case.

‘So Demi, how was it?' Felicity asks, turning to face me again. Even though it's easy to lip-read her now, she adds some signing for effect.

‘Yes Demi, how was it?' Mum says, like an echo.

Mum reverts to her concerned look. I suspect she's hoping it didn't go so well and that I'll have changed my mind.

‘It was good,' I say with my voice.

I don't worry too much about how I sound. Not with my family. But even after all this time it still feels like I've got headphones on, and I have to trust that the vibrations in my throat will guide me to keep my voice somewhere between a whisper and a scream.

‘The class sizes are really small. There are only eight kids in my class. Well, nine actually, but one girl wasn't there.And you know how I used to miss stuff when Jules wasn't there to interpret for me? Well, the notes from every class are put up on the school intranet.'

I'm convincing myself as I go. I am trying to modulate my voice with ups and downs to convince them at the same time. If I'm not careful, Mum will sniff out the doubt.I'm about to tell her about the fortnightly elective speech therapy sessions when Mum makes the sign for me to lower my volume. Two hands pushing downwards.

I hate that sign. I really do. It means that I'm not getting it right. Again. Like I got it wrong at speech night. The thought makes me shudder, makes me cast my eyes downwards.

Mum reaches over, gently tapping the table in front of me to get my attention.

‘Do you sign or voice in your English class?' she asks with her mouth, and she looks a bit impatient, like she might be asking for a second time.

‘We mostly signed today, but the teacher's hearing so he can obviously speak,' I reply. ‘I think we'll do a bit of both.And my homeroom teacher does both too.'

‘… not right', Mum is saying, and I get straight away that she's choosing to focus on the signing in today's class and nothing else. It's annoying that she hasn't even acknowledged the small class sizes. ‘It's really important … speak so you can operate … hearing world, don't you think?'

Normally I get pretty much everything Mum says, but she's now addressing everyone at the table, so her head is swivelling, challenging each of us in turn. As she finishes, she looks straight at me, but she doesn't mean it as a question, so I don't bother to answer. I don't remind her that most English assessments are written anyway, or that the students are all deaf, so
of course
the teacher needs to sign.

She just makes me more determined to pick out the bits from my day that I want to tell. If Mum can flick away the information she wants to flick away, then so can I.

I breathe. I don't feel like talking anymore, and I can see Mum getting fidgety, patting her left hand with her right as though she's counting how long I'm being silent. It stresses Mum out to think that I might forget how to speak. It totally freaked her out when I stopped talking for a whole week.When I wouldn't go to school, wouldn't leave the house, didn't want to see
anyone.

After Northfield. That horrible day.

I wouldn't tell Mum what happened. Couldn't tell anyone.But even though I couldn't share it, I played what had happened over and over in my mind, as though going over it might let me change it somehow. Or at least wear out the memory so it no longer bothered me.

The thing is, Mum wasn't the only one freaking out.I freaked myself out, too. I'm pretty sure that week took its toll on my speech, though of course it's impossible for me to tell. I wanted to be able to keep speaking. But I just shut down after Northfield.

Dad's hand pats the table in front of me. It's a save. Well, an attempted save.

‘… it interesting?' he says with a wink.

Dad's trimmed his handlebar moustache so I can see his mouth better, but I still find myself watching the hair on his upper lip bounce up and down, not catching very much of what he's saying. I told him the trim worked fine because I knew he didn't want to shave it all off, and anyway, it's kind of comforting. I don't want him to change. I want him to stay the way he's always been.

‘… other classes – '

I can tell Mum has cut him off by the way he's stopped talking. His eyes swerve towards her and she's off again.

‘I spoke to Jules today,' she says, her attention fully aimed towards me now. ‘He thinks there's a chance we could get more funding. It's possible he could be there full time instead of three days. If we ever wanted to go back to your old school.'

It's unbelievable. She still thinks that getting a sign teacher and interpreter to be with me full time, rather than just three days, might convince me to go back to my
normal
school. She's been playing around with this idea for ages but there's never been enough funding. A while ago I would have agreed that it would make all the difference. I would have loved having Jules there every day.

But it wouldn't help now. It's too late, too much has happened. And I am not sure I even want it anymore. I always dread seeing Jules now, after what I did.

‘Mum,' I say firmly, ‘
we
understood everything the teachers said today. Not like at my old school.'

I've tried to put a sarcastic slant on the ‘we'. But I can't be sure of that sort of effect anymore, and it still shits me. I was the queen of sarcasm before I went deaf.

‘I understood what everyone was on about.' I say it straight this time.

Mum nods. Her face has relaxed a bit, now I've spoken again. She pauses, as if she's gathering her thoughts. But we all know her well enough to know that they're already gathered. She's just figuring out her delivery.

‘That's great, Demi,' she says. ‘It's just an option.'

Flawless is sitting next to Mum. Her mouth is moving, but her eyes are on Harry. He's pushing peas under a mound of mashed potatoes. It's pretty funny, but of course Felicity is not amused. She leans across to him and pulls them out with her fork, one by one. I presume she's giving Harry a lecture. When he glances at me, I give him a wink like the one Dad gave me.

I feel Felicity's eyes on me. I look at her properly for the first time that night. She looks as perfect as ever, but still I notice there's something different. She looks tired, her eyes somehow duller.

‘See? Mum's right,' she's saying. I realise that she's at the end of her little speech, and that it was aimed at me and not at Harry and his pea mutiny. ‘… nice to have options like Jules.'

I zone out. Felicity has swallowed Mum's philosophies as a pre-dinner snack. It's quite a skill that she is able to regurgitate them whole.

‘Anyway, just a thought,' Mum says with a shrug suggesting it's all very casual.

It's a thought that surrounds me. A thought that seeps into every nook and cranny of my life.

chapter 7

After dinner, Mum puts the boys to bed while Flawless does the dishes. Mum goes back into the kitchen. I can see them through the doorway, sitting next to each other on barstools at the kitchen bench. The two of them chat away like girlfriends.

I go into the lounge room. I choose one end of the couch, and Dad chooses the other. I put my feet on his lap and we watch
Law and Order
, S.V.U.

I always hated subtitles. Now I'm stuck with them for any TV show – I rely on them. It's funny, but I hate subtitles even more than I used to. I can tell they're not accurate, that they only give the viewer a small taste of the detail.

Rock music plays inside,
explain the subtitles. But what does that mean? Is it modern rock or old rock? It makes a difference.
Dog barks.
Is it the bark of a big, mean dog or the yap of a cute little poodle?

It's just like my life. I'm always trying to figure out what's really going on. Always having to fill in the gaps, but never getting all the details. It's like trying to do a jigsaw when I don't even know what the picture is, and I'm missing one of the vital middle pieces.

Now, I get that Rin is speaking, though he's off camera.His name comes up in a box, and his dialogue is beside it.I know he's a man of few words, so I probably don't miss much. But when Olivia goes off on one of her major rants, and the same words stay on the screen for ages, I know I'm missing out on a stack of detail and it drives me crazy.

It's just like the day I had the fight with Nadia. When everything I'd been bottling up erupted.

Dad is writing stuff down. He's taking notes on what the subtitles have missed, and hands me them in the ads.

It's a gift, though I know he doesn't think that way.He just does it.

I snuggle down again. My feet touch Dad's. He's wearing his old woolly Explorer socks.

S.V.U comes back on. The case has gone to trial.The district attorney is smart. I love how she lines up her closing argument and trips the crim over his own lies.She's exactly who you'd want to be, if you could choose.

Dad writes as he watches. He knows this is my favourite part of the show, so he's more thorough now. He flags the last few words that have been subtitled and then jots down the words they've missed or misrepresented.

There's another ad break, and I have time to read Dad's notes. When the show comes on again, it's only a wrap up.

The notebook is resting on Dad's chest, suggesting that he doesn't feel the need to catch me up. That I've got the whole plot.

For once.

I'm in bed and still reading when Mum comes to the door.

‘Night, Demi,' she says. I put my book face down beside me.

‘Why are the boys sleeping here again?' I ask.

I see Mum sucking in a breath, pausing before she answers.

‘She has a … morning,' Mum says. She's not quite looking at me, so I don't catch everything.

‘A what morning?' I ask.

This time, Mum signs what I've missed. An appointment.I've had enough appointments in the last few years to know the sign perfectly.

I roll my eyes. Mum seems to be looking after the boys a lot lately. I wonder what Felicity's appointment is.

She's probably broken a nail or needs a wax.
Emergency!

‘Night,' I say, picking up my book again.

There's a strange look on Mum's face. I can't read it.Maybe she's just tired.

‘I want
you
to be happy,' she signs, and the way she points to me while she's signing is a bit confusing.

Does she mean, simply, that she wants me to be happy?Or does she mean she wants me to be happier than someone else? I'm not sure, but Mum is already moving on.

‘Did something happen with Jules?' she asks with her voice now. ‘You still like him, don't you?'

‘Yeah, of course,' I say, faking a yawn.

She leans against the doorframe. She is frowning, like she doesn't entirely believe me.

I look down at the page so I don't have to make eye contact. And then I look back at Mum, because she's still standing there.

‘Just think about what I said,' she says, as she slowly turns to leave.

I try to go back to my book, but Mum's suggestion has taken. I think about Jules.

I met him during the rodeo ride of specialists. We were still hopeful I'd get my hearing back. But we were hedging our bets. I was learning sign, just in case my condition was permanent.

We were still being given casseroles, lasagnas and sympathy. But Jules didn't walk into my life with sympathy.He walked in with intent. He told me how his sister had been deaf from birth, and that it never stopped her from doing anything he did.

And he taught me to sign.

Jules and I sat together on stools in the bathroom for many of our early lessons. I watched his mouth in the mirror practising lip-reading and signing. Sometimes there was a bit of stubble on his upper lip. Sometimes there was smoothness. There was always a smile in his eyes.