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reading—support her so she could listen, so she could hear?
    As Bill drove the car, I stated what I wanted:
    I wanted Sophia to be safe.
    I wanted her to hear.
    I wanted to hear her.
    I wanted to be heard.

California, November 2000
    DAY AND NIGHT, I STUDIED Sophia’s searching eyes, her pouty lips, her tiny hands. Her fingers were long and delicate, her nails translucent pink. Maybe she could learn to talk, to have whole conversations, with those hands. But would we ever be able to understand her? Could we master enough sign language to truly communicate, to share complicated feelings, discuss complex ideas? I feared our interactions would be over-simplified and artificial. I feared we wouldn’t be close or connected if I was fumbling to communicate in a second language. It could be Greek or Mandarin or Arabic. I wasn’t adept.
    I struggled each day to practice and learn Sign, but it came too slowly. I now had a stack of instruction books, index cards, a dictionary, a CD-ROM. I was inspired by the beauty of the language—the sensuality, the sense of it. I labored to build up a small vocabulary, but then I found myself forgetting signs, or mixing signs up. The sign for
“summer” is similar to the sign for “black” and to the sign for “because.” And these are all difficult to distinguish—if you lack the proper flourishes—from “don’t know” and “forget.” In the midst of new motherhood, I couldn’t imagine forging my relationship with Sophia in this foreign language.
    I tried to envision Sophia’s future as a toddler, a teenager, an adult. Things we took for granted—whispering in a friend’s ear, talking on the telephone—how could these things be closed off for her? Would her opportunities for friendship, for love, for work, be limited if she were never to hear or speak? On her blue and pink flecked baby blanket, Sophia batted her arms like an orchestra conductor, as if marking out a concerto’s time with an invisible baton. I scooped her up and held her. Just held her and breathed her in. And breathed her out. And breathed her in again.
    Everywhere we went, my own ears burned with what she missed—a snippet of Mozart through a neighbor’s window, the tap-tap of a woodpecker on the forest path, the soft trickle of water at the stream. On our walks, I shifted Sophia from the stroller to the baby carrier so that she could feel the vibrations of my voice. Then I’d force myself to speak about the scene around us.“See that bird? That’s a robin. Robins eat worms. And they sing, Sophia. They sing beautiful bird songs.” A lump would rise, then, and choke
my throat, and I’d struggle against it, worrying that Sophia could feel the vibrations of my sorrow as I swallowed.
    I’d be silent, after that, and my mind would occupy itself with fighting philosophers. Kant’s view that Deaf-Mutes could never attain concepts: it was wrong, premised on the false belief that the signs the Deaf use are incapable of universality. Modern linguists recognize Sign as a complete, natural language, not just a system of mere gestures . . .
    In the midst of my internal rants, I’d look down at Sophia, and see her huge seal-pup eyes locked on me. My hopes for Sophia always buoyed when I caught her watching me. She stared at my face, especially at my mouth, with intensity. I’d start up again, speaking to her, pointing out the redwood trees, the streams, the striated rocks. Maybe she was hearing me when I spoke, at least partially?
    I thought of Pearl as I walked on. Did she think that her deaf daughters could hear her at first? I’d had so little time with Sophia before the news of her hearing loss. Just hours before that hatted lady strode into our hospital room with that cart. How I’d wished for a full day, a week, a month with my baby, unworried by the news. It seemed a curse and a blessing now, to be beset by research and tests and findings. In Pearl’s day, before there was hearing
technology, it