There are boxes everywhere, and Mum looks exhausted, but also really happy. She hugs me tight. “You’re back. Was it fun? Do you want to check out your room?”
She leads the way down the new hall, past the new kitchen, into the new family room, and through a smaller hall. She’s chatting all the way, but the floor is tiled, and the echoes are loud, and I only get half of it. “…more boxes than I expected… forgot how much work it is… pictures on walls…”
She opens a door with a flourish and steps inside to a small, white room with boxes piled against one wall.
“Ta-dah. See? We’ve put all your stuff inside. I’ve made your bed, but I figured you would want to put everything away the way you want it. Especially with that built-in wardrobe all to yourself.”
She slides open a mirrored door to reveal shelves, hanging space and drawers, probably three times bigger than I had in the other house.
“Wow.”
“I know, right?” Her face is all lit up like she’s won a prize. “You’ll have so much room.”
“If you need scissors to get through the packing tape, there are some in the office,” says Geoff.
“The office!” says Mum, to me, like she can’t quite believe she has an office. “Imagine.”
“Okay,” I say. I try to smile to match their enthusiasm. “Do you want to hear about camp?”
Mum makes a face like she feels stupid about forgetting. “Oh, I’m so sorry. Of course I want to hear about camp. How about you have a snack, unpack your bag, do a few boxes, and then we’ll have dinner, and you can tell us all about it then?”
I nod. Okay. But it all takes longer than I think. My ‘few boxes’ turn into nine or ten. In one of them I find the bracelet I took from Mum’s cupboard on the day of the wedding. Now I put it on and look at myself wearing it, in my new full length mirrors. I’m taller, I think.
By the time dinner is finally on the table, late, because Mum and Geoff are still busy, hanging pictures and making decisions about furniture and whether the sofa should go against the wall or not, there’s not much time for talking. Anyway, we’re all tired. We sit at the table with our plates in front of us (re-heated curry from the takeaway Mum and Geoff got yesterday, apparently) and just kind of stare at each other and the new room.
“It’s going to look amazing,” says Mum, at regular intervals, between silences. There’s noise in the room, with the tiled floors and tinkling of cutlery on plates, so it’s hard to hear her. I have to concentrate on looking at her face as well as listening. “With some more things on the wall, and maybe a new sofa…” here she makes an asking face at Geoff, “… like, maybe one of those corner lounges. I’m thinking, maybe, a red? Or maroon?” She looks around again with satisfaction in her face. “It’s going to really come together.”
By the time dinner is over, and Mum and Geoff scrape their chairs out and excuse themselves to go back to unpacking (”setting up the wi-fi,” explains Geoff. “Essential business.”) I’m even more exhausted. I rinse my plate in the sink, which is bigger and shinier than our old sink, and the tap is one of those flicky ones, with a cool nozzle that lets you twist it round so it gets the whole plate in one go. Then I put the plate in the new dishwasher. I guess at the way I think it should go, in the rack, at the bottom, where there seems to be a row of plate-sized holders.
Mum’s face pops over my shoulder. “Yes, that’s the spot. Isn’t it exciting to have a dishwasher?”
“I guess so,” I say. And then I sign, ‘I’m going to bed.’
Her eyes crinkle a little, like she’s figuring out my hand movements, but then she looks like she gets it. “Oh, sorry,” she says out loud. She makes the sign for ‘bed’. “I forgot it for a second, and you went so fast.” She signs, slowly and clearly, ‘See - you - in - the - morning.’
‘I’ll tell you about the camp then,’ I sign, but because she looks confused, I say the words as well.
“Oh, yes, okay,” she says. “That would be great.” She hugs me. “Sleep well. New room! New bed!” She grips my shoulders and grins right in my face. “It’s so exciting, right?”
And it is exciting, in the morning, to see the different way the light creeps through the new curtains and under the new blind, and plays on my wall. It is exciting to press my feet on the tiles and pad out to the kitchen and get myself a bowl, spoon, and cereal from new cupboards, and eat at the bench, looking out through the large new windows, to the new grass.
Exciting, but weird, too.
I’m halfway through my bowl of VitaBrits when Mum comes out in her dressing gown. She rumples my hair and presses my shoulders, and opens her mouth, but I can’t clearly hear what comes out.
‘Oh, sorry,’ I sign. ‘I didn’t put in my hearing aids.’
She speaks. “Well, go get them.” I read her lips mostly, and go back to my room. The hearing aids are on the bedside table, so I put them in and turn them on. Then I slip my phone into my pocket, and come back out to the kitchen.
“Are they on?” says Mum.
“All good.” I give her a thumbs up.
“Why did you forget?” she asks. “That’s like, the first thing you should do in your day.”
I shrug my shoulders. “I just forgot.”
“Well, it’s strange.”
She goes to the kettle, turning it on and pulling out a mug and a teabag from the cupboard above it. “We unpacked the kitchen first. I always think, if you do your kitchen, and make the beds, unpacking isn’t such a terrible thing. We’re mostly done, now, of course. Geoff’s already had his breakfast. He’s doing the back shed now. We got heaps done while you were at camp.”
I wait. She’s going to ask the question now, surely? How was camp? It must have been amazing, right? But there’s nothing. Just Mum making a cup of tea, chattering about furniture and boxes.
“…and the removalists were really great. They put all the boxes just where I’d organised…”
I decide to break in.
“So, camp was good,” I say, on top of her words. “I had a good time.”
There’s an awkward silence. Mum stops talking and looks at me like she’s confused. I shift my eyes to the side a little, and then look straight back at her, because I have just as much right to talk about camp as she does about moving.
Her face changes and she looks sorry. “Oh, Jaz, I apologise. My head’s been full of all of this. I guess I expected you to be thinking about all the same things as me.”
I shrug, like it’s okay but I don’t really think that inside.
“So, tell me about it all.”
She sits down at the table with her mug, and then hops up again. “Tell you what? You talk while I unpack this box. It’s all the DVDs. I can put them in the drawers while I listen.”
She moves over to the family room end of the kitchen and sits next to the entertainment cabinet and opens a drawer.
“Are we putting the TV in here?” I ask. “It’s going to be really hard for me to hear anything in the kitchen if it’s on in the background.”
Mum makes a face, like she hadn’t thought of that. “Hmm.” She looks around her for a bit. “Maybe. But it is the best place for it. Geoff agrees. Why don’t we try it out, and if it really doesn’t work, we can shift it then.”
I shrug again, like okay, but I know it won’t be.
“So, were they nice people?” Mum asks. She’s picking DVDs out of the box, lining them up neatly in the drawer. “Were there a few your age?”
Somehow, the energy has gone out of me. “I guess so,” I say.
“You guess there were, or you guess they were nice?”
“Both,” I say, but my words seem sluggish.
“Boys or girls?” says Mum.
“Both.”
My phone vibrates in my pocket and I feel strangely hopeful.
“Who’s messaging you so early?” asks Mum. “Is it Gabby?”
I pull the phone out and check. It is Gabby, and my hopeful feelings dissipate, like steam thinning out and flying away. I put the phone back in my pocket.
“Aren’t you going to reply to her?” Mum looks dismayed.
“Later,” I say. “I thought it was someone else.”
Mum raises her eyebrows and puts two more DVDs in the drawer. It looks like she’s trying to put them in alphabetical order. I know Geoff is a lot neater than she is. She wouldn’t have cared about things like that before.
“So… what did you do at camp?” she says. “Like, for activities and stuff.”
“Um.” I stop and think. Yesterday I wanted to tell her everything. Now it feels like I want to keep it all to myself, in my own heart. Just for me. If I put it out for everyone to look at, maybe they won’t understand. I give her something I know she’ll relate to. “We played touch footy. And we went in the pool.”
“Oh, that’s fun.” She looks up, concerned. “But I hope no one went in with their hearing aids on. That would be an expensive cost for the parents.”
I smile. “No one wore their hearing aids at all, all weekend.”
“Really?”
“Yep. Just signing.”
“The whole weekend? Teachers, too?”
“Uh huh.”
“Didn’t they want you to have your aids on?” She’s up to M. Minions, Mighty Mouse, Madagascar. She holds them up. “Do you think you still want these? Do you ever watch them anymore?”
I shake my head. “It’s a camp for deaf kids. Of course we talk in Auslan.”
She puts the DVDs down. “Yes, I know. But not everyone who goes is totally deaf, right? I mean, you’re not ‘deaf’.” She puts finger quotes around the word. “You have… how did the doctor put it? Mild to moderate hearing loss. Nothing that can’t be sorted out with the right hearing aids.”
There’s a rush of something in my stomach, and a thudding in my head.
“Mum, I am deaf.”
She moves towards me. “You have a few hearing problems, sweetheart, that’s all,” she says. “There’s nothing wrong with you.”
She reaches out for my hand, but I won’t give it to her. Instead, I stand up. I feel almost like I’m not really in my body, like someone else is controlling it, but it’s a really strong someone.
“Mum, I figured something out this weekend,” I say. “I am deaf.” She winces at the words, so I say them again. “I’m deaf. It’s not so hard to hear. And it feels awesome to say.” I swallow my fear. “There’s nothing wrong with me. You don’t have to feel sorry for me. But I am deaf. And I fit in with deaf people.”
Her face is white now, and I kind of feel bad, but I also feel mad. “I speak Auslan. I have deaf friends. There’s nothing wrong with them. And, you’re right. There’s nothing wrong with me.”
I pull out my hearing aids and shove them into my pocket. “I don’t want to wear these all the time. I’d prefer to sign.”
Mum stands up too. She uses her signs, slowly. ‘You’re tired, sweetheart. You’re a bit upset. Maybe the move is making you feel funny. You’re not being yourself.’
Something in me breaks off. It’s a piece of myself that’s tired of everyone else telling me who I am. It wants its own voice, it’s own hands, to sign.
“I am being me. I’m being Jazmine,” I sign. “Maybe the problem is you. Maybe you just don’t recognise me.”