“Hello, I am Deaf,” said the young woman. Her voice was loud. Her words were enunciated.
Her grandfather translated our conversation in sign language.
We were in the hotel lobby. Eating breakfast. Three strangers in the dining room, nursing plates of lukewarm eggs. Hotel breakfasts—even on good days—taste like reclaimed sewage.
The woman was mid-20s. She wore a pink dress and high-top basketball shoes. Brunette. Brown eyes. Her personal style is one her granddaddy calls “funky.”
The young woman was reading my lips, eyes focused on my mouth. I tried to talk slow, but she was having problems understanding. So her grandfather began signing.
“I can read lips,” the young woman finally explained. “But not yours. You have a beard, your mouth is hard to see with all that hair.”
I told her that next time we met, I would make sure to give the old Chia Pet a trim.
She was born Deaf. Her biological mother was didn’t want her, so the girl was given away to one of her aunts. But her aunt didn’t
want her either. Her aunt was more concerned sustaining a lifelong pain-pill buzz.
So her aunt just left her in the crib all day, until the infant girl almost starved. A neighbor found the baby when they heard her screaming. A baby has to be crying pretty loud for neighbors to hear.
Someone rescued her. Within months, she was adopted by an older couple in their 60s. And this is where Grandaddy takes over telling the story.
“It was my wife,” said the old man. “She was the one who heard about her first. There was no way my wife wasn’t bringing this baby home.”
The young woman blushes when the story is told. She calls the old man “Grandpa,” and her adoptive mother used to be called “Grandma.” Grandma is deceased now.
I asked why she calls her parents by these names instead…