I’m tired because I’m deaf.
The words come to me almost as if they are being signed to me, so clearly and slowly that I can just watch and understand. No straining, no trying, no guessing.
It’s clear.
Things have almost never been clear for me.
My early years, I hardly remember. Dad told me once it was as if I was in my own world. I do remember the huge difference when I got my hearing aids. Suddenly I didn’t feel alone in a room of people any more. Everything was more alive. More intense.
But I always preferred signing, and we did it at home, for some things, but not as much once I started school. “You need to get used to people talking to you,” Mum said. “At school, no one will sign. And I’m not that good at it anyway.”
It was true. Dad was always more interested in learning Auslan. He took me to a class once, up in Sydney (“There’s not much in our area,” he told me) and sometimes helped me look up signs on the internet. We learned the sign for ‘poop’ pretty early on. He used it inappropriately and with a secret wink to me, whenever he could.
“Did you ever learn any signs?” I ask Grandma. “I can’t remember it.”
She shakes her head. “I tried, a little, when you were small. But I’d learn something and then forget it as quickly as I learned it. And then, well…” Her words stop, but I know what she means. She’s talking about the four years after my Dad died, when she didn’t see us anymore. “I didn’t really try after that,” she says.
“I know,” I say. And I sign it too. I know. I understand. I wish…
I wish.
I wish, so much, that I had friends who signed.
I wish, so much, that it had been me on the beach.
“I wish it was easier.” The words pop out of my mouth, before I can stop them.
Grandma perks her head up.
“Easier?”
I drop my head. This isn’t where I meant to go.
“Easier where?” says Grandma. She’s not going to let up. She’s got that look in her eyes. She’s going to find out what I’m talking about, and I’m going to have to tell her.
“At school,” I say, and then, “There’s so much talking now.”
I hadn’t realised it until just now. But it’s true. Being put up to the top class in Year 8 has been hard. Harder than I thought it would be, when the Head of Academics called me in and asked me if I was up for it.
“Yes, okay,” I’d said, nervous at being called into an office, even though I wasn’t in trouble. “If you think so, sure.”
But it is hard. There’s more talking out the front, and more group work, and more, well, everything. All the time, I have to ask people to repeat what they say. I have to guess what the joke or the point is. I watch hard to read people’s lips, so I’m not mistaken about what’s going on.
It’s nothing new, I think. It’s just there’s more of it now.
“Talking?” asks Grandma. “Do you mean with your friends?”
I move my shoulders around, trying to get comfortable. There’s a weight sitting on me; it’s awkward, and heavy.
“In class, mostly,” I say, and I think. “But with friends too.
When Gabby and her big booming voice disappeared from school, and the whole of our group was in tatters after the Liam and Angela incident, I was left with the twins, Olivia and Caitlin. They’re quiet, and they talk quickly and finish each other’s sentences. And now we hang with a different group, with more people around, throwing in their words, as though anybody could catch them.
I can’t catch them. Not always.
And it’s exhausting.
“But is it worse than it used to be?” Grandma’s still on the prowl for information. “What’s changed, really?”
I put my head up and stare at her, and the last piece of my tiredness puzzle drops into place.
What’s changed?
Home has changed.
If it was just school, I could cope.
But home has changed too.
It’s not just me and Mum, doing what we’ve always done, in our own space, and our own way. Now there’s Geoff, too. Another person in the mix. Another person who knows I’m hard of hearing, but doesn’t know, really, what that means, or how it changes anything. And, with everything new and wonderful in her life, maybe Mum has forgotten, or just never realised, how hard it is for me.
“I get it,” I tell Grandma, and I smile, a big, ear to ear grin. She stares back at me, with a confused face, like you’re happy?
I understand, I sign to her, and she looks even more confused. She puts her hands up, like she’s asking a question. What? But I don’t worry about it. I don’t worry about answering. Instead, I pull the screen door wide and step out onto the verandah.
Behind me, Grandma comes to the door. “Are you alright, Jazmine?” But I don’t answer her. I walk down the steps and onto the driveway, where I can see down the mountain, over the lights below. Far out in the dark sky, the moon is up, lighting the ocean: a deep grey, with silver streaks.
I’m happy, because I’ve finally understood the problem.
I’m happy, because I know it could be different. It could be easy.
I’m happy, because I’ve finally realised: I don’t belong. I’ve never belonged. I’ve never wanted to admit it, because then I’d be saying I don’t have anywhere to go.
But now I do have somewhere to go. Now I have an alternative. Now I know there are people like me.
Grandma comes outside. She still has a slight limp from her accident last year; it only really shows up in the cold, though. She puts her arm around me. I reach over and hug her. And then I kiss her on the cheek. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.” She shivers in the breeze. “Are you going to stay out here? Because you’re going to need a jacket.”
I squeeze her tighter. “I’ll come in.” And together we walk up the steps, back into the house, where it’s warm, and snug. And easy. At least, a little bit, I think.
“You could teach me some sign language, you know,” says Grandma.
“Really?” I turn to her. “Would you?”
She shrugs. “Sure. I’ll try to remember it.” She laughs. “Maybe if you teach the same thing to me every single day, I’ll get it by the time you’re ready to go home.”
“Okay,” I say, and then my brain goes blank. I can’t think of any signs, now that I have to. “What do you want to say?”
Grandma looks blank as well. “Just think of anything. I don’t know… something I say a lot maybe?”
It comes to me immediately. It’s perfect, but I have to think for a second, to get the right signs before I show her.
What do you love?
“You always say it,” I tell her. “At meals. Now you can sign it.”
I show her again, more slowly. She copies me, intent on getting it right.
“Show me that part again?”
I do it once more. “Like this. Yes, that’s it.”
She gets it, and she signs it three times in a row.
What do you love?
What do you love?
What do you love?
I drop my hands and go to reach into the cupboard for a glass — I’m thirsty — when she says, “Well, aren’t you going to answer it? I asked you a question.”
“Oh,” I say, and I smile. “I mean, right.”
I think hard for a moment. What did we eat? I skipped dinner, and I can’t think of the sign for sandwich, from lunch time. There’s a pomegranate in the fruit bowl, so I point to it, and then shake my head.
“I don’t know what it is.” My hands and arms feel heavy suddenly. Pressured. Like I’m a puppet and someone is trying to move them around with strings or rods. “You can ask the question but I can’t answer it. Because I don’t know.”
And then the old weight and tiredness comes down on my shoulders again.
I don’t know enough sign language. I don’t know enough about anything.
All I know is that things need to change, but I don’t know how to make that happen.