Page 19 of Quiet Beautiful Things

Don’t wear shirts with busy patterns, they are distracting when signing.

Don’t speak as if your child isn’t intelligent. Your child simply speaks a different language than you do, same as if they were speaking Italian or French and you weren’t.

Don’t ask a deaf person to read lips for you in an attempt to eavesdrop.

And the most important thing… don’t pity your child. Deafness isn’t the terrible thing most hearing people assume it is. It’s a culture, and a beautiful one.

Blake looks dejected as his eyes meet the floor. Guilt oozes from his expression. He speaks, but he’s not looking at me.

I touch his arm, and I swear electricity jolts through me. His arm is strong. Muscular. Soft. His eyes snap to mine making me wonder if he felt the same jolt.

“Sorry,” he says. “I said I’ve already broken so many of those rules.”

Me: Well, you didn’t know them. You get a pass. Now, I have an important question to ask you.

“Okay.”

I show him the sign for ‘okay’ as I silently mouth the word. He does it back and I smile. Our eyes lock again, and I swallow at the squishy feeling I get inside.

Chapter Seven

Blake

Ellie: What are your intentions as far as school for Maisy? Technically, in the fall, she’ll be eligible for our residential program where kids live at the school during the week and come home on weekends.

I shake my head vehemently when I read her text, and I look up, disgusted. “Jesus, no. I mean, I’m sure it’s a fine school, but I wouldn’t want to only see her on the weekends.” I glance out the window, then back at Ellie. “Honestly, I’m not even sure she’ll still be living here in the fall.”

Ellie: Say that last part again.

I realize I might have been mumbling due to my disappointment over it. “I said I’m not sure Maisy will still be living with me in the fall.”

She studies me for a moment, starts typing, then deletes what she wrote. She wants to ask me more about that. More about why I just found out about Maisy yesterday. More about where her mother is and why she grew up the way she did.It’s only natural to be curious about these things. But she doesn’t ask.

Ellie: I’m happy you want her to live at home. While the school is amazing, I think the most important thing for both of you right now is to form a bond. Sending her to live at school would impede that. You’ll still have many choices to make. She can goto the Deaf school, or she can go to public school. I’ve toured the elementary schools here. They have a few resources, and an interpreter would be provided should you request one. And then there’s whether or not to try cochlear implants—a highly polarized topic in the Deaf community. And whether or not to teach her to read lips, which is not as easy as it might seem, by the way.

My head cocks to the side. “You seem to do it very well.”

Ellie: You just so happen to have easy lips to read.

She blushes. Goddamn it. Every time she does that it’s like there’s a tether on my dick that gets yanked. The redness across her face brings out freckles on her cheeks. They disappear as she starts texting again.

Ellie: In general, deaf people comprehend about 30% of lip reading. Those who grow up with hearing parents and who have taken advanced classes can achieve far greater comprehension than that. I’m pretty good at it, but by no means perfect. We rely on body language and context to fill in the gaps. Which reminds me, you are expressive, which is good, but you need to be overly-so. Whereas I don’t want you over-enunciating, I do want you over-expressing. It might seem strange at first and make you feel self-conscious, but it will be better for her. It will help her understand.

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