Page 34 of Resilience

Not for being raped, but for being weak. For not being able to do anything to stop it. And not being able to make him pay all that he owed.

She was getting some of her confidence back now, knowing that Hunter Cruz would pay. Not with blood, but with enough.

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~oOo~

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“Are you sure?” Athena asked.

Sean, an eighth-grade student she’d been tutoring since sixth grade, read the chapter-review question again. Then he nodded and signed again, “Cell wall.”

“Can you tell me why you think it’s cell wall?”

Sean looked at the chapter review page, then at her, then at the book again. “I just remember it.”

“Okay, let’s go back into the chapter and check your answer. Can you find where it is?”

“I got it wrong, didn’t I? It’s cell membrane, then.”

She smiled. “There are only two choices, so one of those is right. I didn’t mean to suggest your first choice was wrong. But any time you can’t say why something is right, that’s a sign that you should check and make sure you understand.”

Athena worked as a tutor for the middle-school kids, grades six to nine. Though she wasn’t yet a teacher and had only a diploma from this very school, she’d been working in the tutoring office long enough that the credentialed teacher who was officially in charge of the office had mostly handed over the reins to Athena so she could focus on her other job of being the Middle School’s roving substitute.

The office was small, with only three tutors. Each tutor had a desk where they could work with students individually. There were also two small ‘classrooms’ for group sessions. Each tutor was nominally a specialist in one or a few subjects—Athena was the go-to tutor for science and math—but really they were all generalists, helping out with whatever was needed. They worked regularly with students who consistently struggled in certain subjects, and they also worked with students who came in voluntarily for occasional extra help.

Athena loved everything about this job. She considered it part of her responsibilities to help students understand that different was not strange, and that their struggles with their schoolwork or any other facet of their experience here were very normal. The idea that there was one ‘normal’ way to be in the world, that was the strange thing. More than strange. It was a lie.

Different was not strange, but to be Deaf in a hearing world was to be always aware of your difference. The world was not arranged for diversity; the lie of normality pervaded every corner. Public spaces from skyscraper office buildings to the restrooms in Walmart were designed with one kind of person in mind—one kind of body in mind: one with four functioning limbs, five functioning senses, medium weight and height, fair complexion, and so on. Anyone who diverged from that so-called ‘normal’ would be inconvenienced, or actually harmed, or simply excluded. And most of those who fit the narrow parameters of ‘normal’ didn’t recognize the privilege in their conformity. They just assumed that their way of being in the world was the way to be in the world.

Athena had been to exactly three films in a theater, and those only recently, because theatrical films weren’t automatically captioned. She had to use a stupid device with a tiny screen to get captions. It would be nothing to simply caption all movies, but oh no, can’t even slightly inconvenience the folks who would pout about there being a few words on their movie—as if they didn’t watch with captions at home half the time anyway.

Everything Athena did in the ‘normal’ world came with a little reminder that that world did not make room for her. It bugged the shit out of her—and she wasn’t alone in that feeling. She and her Deaf friends complained about it often. Being different from the conventionally accepted ‘normal’ meant overcoming obstacles that had no reason beyond simple thoughtlessness to be there in the first place.

Lots of people diverged from ‘normal,’ in lots of different ways. The only reason certain people thought they could claim the title of ‘normal’ was that they had enough power to create the world to suit them.

But within the Deaf community—and for Athena that was school—the world was arranged for the convenience of people like her. Here, she was normal. She didn’t have to think about her deafness here because it wasn’t an issue. From roof to foundation, this was a school for the Deaf. Instead of bells, there were lights. Instead of choir, there was percussion class, with a special floor so everybody could feel the beat, and music classes that focused on rhythm and rhythmic signing. Instead of whistles in the gym there were brightly colored flags. The halls and classrooms teemed with service dogs, and the school had a small ‘dog park’ so they could do their business, and offered water and treats during meal times.

There were students here who had cochlear implants or hearing aids. There were students here who spoke, and each wing of the school—Lower, Middle, Upper—had a speech program to teach that skill. But being able to ‘hear’ in the way those devices approximated whatever hearing was, or being able to speak, wasn’t an expectation here, and it didn’t create a hierarchy. Hearing devices and speech were deeply controversial within the Deaf community, and the teachers and administration here presented them as the right choices for some but not all.

There were, of course, differences among the students here, and there were bullies and drama and infighting in every community. Deaf children were no kinder to each other than hearing children; in fact, they tended to be even blunter. But even kid-on-kid cruelty was a kind of normal.

Socially, Athena had been a middle-of-the-road student herself, neither especially popular nor a target for bullies, but as a tutor she went out of her way to identify the children who were sliding downward on the social ladder and give them some affection and attention, and maybe some advice when she thought she had any worth sharing.

As a struggling student, Sean was one of those children. Getting pulled out for extra help was as stigmatizing here as at any other school. Athena did more than simply drill him on the answers. She wanted him, and all her students, to understand how to learn, not merely what to learn, so he could build up some skill and some pride in himself and maybe start succeeding on his own.

He found the correct section of the chapter; his finger traced each line as he read. Then he slapped his hand on the page and signed “Cell wall! Because it’s a plant cell! Animal cells don’t have cell walls!”

“Very good—and you learned that on your own. Well done!” She held up her hand, and he gave her an enthusiastic five.

Being at work was the best therapy Athena had yet found.

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~oOo~

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