Can She Hear Me Now?

"Am I allowed to be strict with Dante?" the very sweet, angel of a teacher asked me over the phone.

I immediately felt a bump rise in my throat. Uh oh, don't cry, don't cry, don't cry.

I had a sudden flashback from when Dante was 3, and we had tried to get her into a new creche close to home with small classes and a remedial teacher.

We had gone there to check the place out, Tommie and I, together as a unit, asking all the right questions, really trying to figure out if this was the school for our deaf little girl.

Please understand, yes, she has cochlear implants in both ears. Yes, she can hear now to some extent. Yes, fine, to a large extent, yes, it's a fucking miracle, yes, technology is amazing (crying a little on the inside by now), but she is still deaf! Yes, I realise I should be grateful, but I'm not, I'm pissed! Because it's not the same as hearing, dammit, and that's what I want for my child! She's still deaf when she's not wearing them and not really hearing when she is, not like people with working ears, anyway!

Does this make sense? It doesn't?

Okay, let's begin there.

When we first found out Dante was stone deaf at 18 months, it was such a huge shock, and all we could think was FIX IT, FIX IT, FIX IT!

The closest thing to a "fix" seemed to be cochlear implants. I mean, those are the things that cost more than a car and have the latest technology and whatnot, right?

Well, yes, but it is still as far from a normal hearing ear as a horse-drawn carriage is from a rocket ship.

You see, the cochlear implant is basically a string of 22 electrodes carefully placed inside the cochlea of the inner ear. These 22 electrodes are now supposed to do the same job as 15 000 hair cells... Well, of course, they can't.

What those 22 electrodes can offer my deaf child is enough access to certain sound frequencies to learn to recognise speech. That's it.

So that she can learn to speak the spoken language.

So that she can travel, go out by herself, and communicate with hearing people in a way that they can understand, so that she doesn't need to lug an interpreter with her everywhere she goes in order to be able to express herself to the vast majority of people in the world, which is the hearing.

I don't know if you've noticed a certain defensiveness to my writing here. The reason for this is that when we found out she was deaf, I immediately started doing extensive research into what the best possible choice would be for my little girl.

It's a huge decision, having something placed inside your child's head. Giving her a robot ear, in fact. Turning her into a cyborg, effectively.

There was much deliberation, all amid intense emotions and feelings of guilt and shame for having done something to my kid when I was pregnant with her. Surely, it was my fault; I should have taken better care of myself and her in that time, and I obviously didn't because, well, the neurologist said: "something went wrong in the pregnancy, and as a result, she has cafe au lait birthmarks under her arms and spots on her brain, and she's deaf.

These words echoed in my head as I lay awake night after night, tears streaming down my face and into the shells of my ears, me not even bothering to wipe them away, fuck it, let's grow mushrooms in the shells of our ears, make magic out of mold like lemonade from lemons.

It took me so long to stop blaming myself because honestly I had this feeling of, if I can just quickly rewind to my pregnancy and just undo that one day when I mowed the lawn and had a massive hay fever attack that turned into sinusitis that wouldn't go away and so for a week I took Panado every day all day (because I thought it was safe, but actually it wasn't Panado, it was Grandpa Paracetamol which I thought was exactly the same thing but what if it wasn't?!) and then had to go on antibiotics anyway (which the gynae said was safe but then a dentist told me that my other child has white stains on her teeth because I took antibiotics when pregnant with her, so is it even safe then, what the actual fuck?!) and that's obviously what caused the injury to her brain. 

If I can just quickly go back and not mow the lawn, she'll be fine. She won't be deaf and have a normal hearing life, and no challenges other than the garden-variety god-awful mind-fucks we all face.

Or was it the antidepressants? Which is supposed to be safe? Because I was terrified of going off the deep end again, as I did with the first one, because I refused to take my antidepressants even though it's supposed to be safe, I wasn't risking it with my precious firstborn. Or was it a virus I possibly caught in the first trimester because I didn't know I was pregnant yet, and the other little one was still going to a microbe-cesspool creche because mama was trying to build a new business, which also caused significant stress, which might also have caused it; HOLY FUCKBALLS will the voices ever stop?!

So while I was giving myself a deluxe lashing with a cat-o'-nine tails, I was also raking myself across the coals for considering subjecting my 2-year-old baby to a huge operation wherein a hole is drilled into her skull, to access the inner ear.

Then I spoke to someone who supposedly represented the Deaf community (notice the capital letter D, these people communicate using sign language only and seem to shun hearing aids of any kind), who told me I am an "audist," which is almost like a racist but against deaf people. Audists believe that they are superior because they can hear, and they believe that deaf people have a disability which should be "fixed."... This individual also told me that chances are that my child would die under general anesthesia and that I don't have the right to make this decision for her without her consent.

I was changing her nappy that same evening, very much without her consent and in-fact completely against her wishes, she was screaming her little deaf head off and kicking at my face like a tiny, pink-assed kangaroo, when I thought to myself, I do almost everything without her baby consent. She's just a dumb little infant; she doesn't even realise she's covered in poop and needs changing. How about I have her implanted bilaterally with cochlear implants while I'm at it, and if one day she wants to come shove those babies up her mama's backside because I went ahead in my audist delulu, well then I'll be ready.

I am even busy learning South African Sign language and teaching it to her in bits and pieces, as a second avenue of communication and possibly a direct link to a community that would hopefully embrace her with open arms if she ever chose to approach them, even though she has been implanted and exposed to the biased world of sound by her cruel, audist mother.

Even though I'm sure we have a lot to learn from the Deaf community, and I'm sorry for admittedly being an audist,  I can't seem to see it any other way. That little conversation really didn't help my internal dialogue at all. In fact, for a few days there, I was as close to a raving lunatic as I have ever been in my life. And that's saying a lot because in my late 20's I was literally a raving lunatic who had to have myself institutionalised in order not to commit suicide. Oh boy, because I thought I had problems back then, not being able to leave the mind-altering stuff....pffffft.

Ergo, the defensiveness.

Okay, so there we were, checking out the school. The owner was very friendly, very helpful, answered all our questions patiently, and honestly, I thought we had it in the bag.

Dante was going to attend for one day to see how she fared, and then we'd get the paperwork done.

Very good. I dropped Dante off, and they sent updates throughout the day, and I fetched her again late afternoon without incident. Or so I thought.

When the next week came around, I sent the owner a little message asking when Dante could start attending full-time and whatever. 

"How does this work? Do we just bring her now, or when would be best?"

"Actually, yes, when can you come in so we can discuss everything?" she'd asked.

I still made nothing of it. Luckily, my husband, who I sometimes fear might be clairvoyant, sensed something was up even though he hadn't even spoken to the lady directly.

"I'm coming with you," he'd said, and I was mildly surprised. 

"Okay, let's go," I chirped back cheerfully. Like a baby puppy about to have its first flea dip, completely and blissfully unaware.

When we sat down in the owner's office, she took out a list. Turned out this was a list of all the reasons they were rejecting my child. Yes, the answer was a firm no; they cannot take her.

Some of the reasons were: she "doesn't listen", and here I am quoting them verbatim, honestly, you can't make this shit up, and "she's aggressive towards the other kids".

Here I stopped her and asked what happened, and she told me that Dante had hidden behind the curtains, and when the other kids tried to get her to come out, she pushed them away.

At this point, I was ready to do a live demonstration of what actual aggression towards another human being really looked like, but to my abject horror, I instead burst into noisy, messy tears and sobbed uncontrollably for what felt like eons while this woman's mouth dropped open and the blood drained from her face.

Because here is what I heard: "Ma'am, I'm sorry to have to inform you, but your child is fucked. Not just now, in that this school can't take her, but also fucked in the long run. As in, she will never be okay out in the big, cruel world. Fucked. Sorry. Goodbye"

The owner was trying to console me, she even looked like she wanted to come over and hug me, which would have been the worst decision she has ever made in her entire life because even though I was a blubbering mess, leaking ooze out of every orifice in my head, I was also filled with a white hot, impotent, rage that was very close to exploding into the face of the next person who tried to hug me.

Which turned out to be my husband.

But instead of killing him with a supernaturally charged karate chop of anguish, a sudden, intense calm wafted over me like icing sugar drifting over a freshly baked pastry. This wasn't supposed to be her school. If it were, they would have seen immediately what a sweet little kid she was, how much she cared for those around her, how quick she was to see if someone was scared or hurt, and how she would not hesitate to decapitate whoever had caused it with a machete.

This just wasn't The One, school-wise.

I came back to the present day, cellphone in my hand. The teacher was telling me how Dante would roll her eyes at her and remove her coils from her head so she couldn't hear her anymore, or how she would simply ignore her and stubbornly refuse to do whatever instructions had been given to her or go out of her way to do the exact opposite.

Luke-warm tears were once again flowing freely down my face and into the shells of my ears, where I am sure I could have grown 10 cubic tons of mushrooms throughout the last 3,5 years if I knew where to get the spores and wasn't actually still much too vain to walk around with fungi sprouting from my head. I kept quietly gasping away from the phone so the teacher wouldn't hear and prayed that she wouldn't ask any follow-up questions soon, because if I had to answer her now, she would immediately know I had been crying hysterically throughout the conversation.

Your child is fucked for life, for life she's fucked, so fucked, oh my good lord, fuckedy fucked fucked fucked, goodbye.

"So what I've been trying is using a firm voice and counting to 3, and I've seen an improvement, and I just wanted to check with you if it's okay if I continue that way going forward?" the teacher said.

I swallowed painfully on the giant lump gathered in my throat and stifled the heartbroken sobs long enough to scrape together an answer: "I'll be frank with you, I am very strict with her, and I do find that it works best."

She sounded relieved by this answer, but also as if she intuitively sensed my pain because she prattled on happily, assuring me that Dante was not the only one in class who "doesn't have ears, haha." and I quietly kept crying into the air, allowing the lancing pain in my heart to flow into the apathetic ether of the day around me.

I am crying again as I write this, because I have seen in Dante's eyes how much she wants to please whoever is giving her instructions. How important it is to her that this person approves of her and accepts her. But also how little she really understands. She is an incredibly gifted little actress. She reads people like picture books and knows exactly how to charm (or, in this case, bedevil) her way out of difficult situations.

Here is her inner dialogue as I see it: 

"Okay, teacher wants me to do something and for the life of me, I don't know what it is. If I let on that I don't understand, I will look like a fool, and everyone will think I am stupid and look at me with those awful pity-eyes. 

Or god forbid, laugh at me. So instead, I am going to pretend to have a choice here and just say no. 

I will push out my little chin, roll my eyes at you, and remove my coils from the magnetic patches under my scalp so that I can't hear you. 

I will do this in a spectacular show of defiance, and it will make you see red, which is good because as long as you are mad at me, you will not see the real me, a scared little girl, trying desperately to save face while very often having no clue what people are expecting of her. 

A little girl who takes pride in the smallest things, getting herself dressed, carrying her own backpack, and getting out of the car by herself, without mommy's help, because she is now in her big sister's school and is therefore also a big girl now. That little girl can't afford to look stupid. So she looks obstinate instead."

How am I supposed to convey this to the teacher when I myself fail miserably every single day at staying patient, at finding new and different ways of communicating with my frustrated child?

The truth is, I can't.

So be strict. Count to 3.

Hopefully, one day soon, she can tell us to go fuck ourselves for speaking harshly to her when she was little and lost and confused.

And on that day, I will be the first to reach her in the biggest bear hug a mother could give, and cry into her curls as I tell her, very firmly, not to speak to her mother or her teacher that way...but also that I am so very grateful that she can speak at all.