Mom and I walked out through the front office and took the elevator to the main floor without saying anything. I really wanted my mom to explain everything to me, but I was also trying to sort through everything that had happened and think it through in my head first, so being silent for a while was okay.
Then when we got in the car, Mom turned it on and turned the radio down.
“Remember when we told you about Turner syndrome?” Mom asked.
“Yes. We had chocolate cake. Are we going to get chocolate cake?”
Mom laughed. “If you want, but it’s not quite that kind of a chocolate cake moment. It’s another part of … everything.”
“The icing.”
She looked at me. “Do you remember the boy in your third-grade class who took medicine for ADHD?”
“Do I have ADHD?”
“No, no, you don’t, I’m trying to find an example…”
“Oh.”
“And maybe that’s not the right way to start … I don’t know. I’ve never had to explain … But, well, everyone learns differently, right?”
I nodded.
“And there are lots of things our brains do.”
“Yeah.”
“Now,” Mom said. “Your brain is working totally fine. It’s just that a lot of times with Turner syndrome there’s something else that happens that influences the way your brain learns things.”
“Like ADHD does.”
“Sort of, yes, but this is different. It’s called a nonverbal learning disorder.”
I looked at the deep line across the bridge of her nose. She still hadn’t started driving. “I have a learning disorder?”
“I don’t like that word,” Mom said, and she kept talking, almost to herself. “The literature makes it sound … And she asked if you wanted special modifications or special testing…” Mom looked at me. “You don’t need special help on tests, do you?”
“Special help?” I asked. “What do you mean? I ace my tests.”
Mom looked ahead and nodded. “That’s what I said.” She took a deep breath, then looked at me. “But sweetie, this is part of why you … why you worry about things or get focused on things that are making you anxious. This is why certain things are especially tricky for you. Like learning piano.”
I was so focused on trying to understand the worried way Mom kept looking at me that it took a second for the words to make sense.
“This is why piano was hard?” I said finally.
“Yes. A nonverbal learning disorder makes certain things more difficult, things that you can’t explain in words. Or maybe when you’re talking with people it’s harder to understand the things they don’t say out loud. Things like friends and piano stretch your brain in a really good way, but a hard way. Do you understand?”
Her eyes searched my face like a flashlight scanning words across a page.
I thought about Nonny’s Silent Questions, and her long fingers hopping across the piano keys like jumping spiders. This was why it took me so long to figure out about Silent Questions. This was why I couldn’t ever get my brain and hands to connect to the music no matter how much I practiced.
I didn’t quite know how to feel about this new information, like it was both hot and cold at the same time. This was another way I was different. Another way I couldn’t do things the way Mom and Nonny could. If they were graceful swans, was I always going to be a fuzzy little goose?
But on the other hand, this meant it wasn’t my fault. This meant it was science.
I didn’t need to feel bad about science. Right?
Or did this mean there were more and more things I couldn’t do?
But then my mom said something.
“I’m really proud of you, sweetheart.”
Proud? I didn’t feel like anything to be proud of. I felt confused, trying to figure out how to fit the me that wanted to cry with relief next to the me that was stuck in a locked box with no key.
I looked at my mom.
She said, “You … I know you try so hard. With everything. That piano recital…”
“The one that went supernova bad?”
“No,” Mom said. “No, it’s like you played with your hands tied behind your back. And you got up and played anyway.”
I looked at my knees. There was too much heat in the car. The hot-behind-your-eyes kind of heat, and what-if-there-are-lots-of-things-I-can’t-do heat, and mom-is-proud heat. It’s not that I would be embarrassed to cry when it’s just my mom, but I never know what to do in that kind of heat. Such serious, somber heat. It makes me fidgety. I had to let out some of the steam.
So I sat on my hands, lifted my feet onto the dashboard, and started humming my old piano piece while wiggling my toes.
Mom laughed, and we pulled out of the parking lot. I hoped she knew what I was trying to say inside the joke. A different kind of inside joke.
And some of the behind-the-eyes-heat went away.
For now.