The Reluctant Memoirist: Breaking the silence on deaf identity

Abstract

She leaned across the picnic hamper, reaching out for my hearing aid in my open-palmed hand. I leaned back, batting her hand away from mine. The glare of the summer sun blinded me and I struck empty air. She was quick. Her tendril-fingers seized the beige seashell curve of my hearing aid and she lifted the cargo of sound towards her eyes. She peered at the empty battery-cage, flicking it open and shut as if it was a cigarette lighter, as if she could spark hearing-life into this trick of plastic and metal that held no meaning outside of my ear. I shouted, 'Don't do that!' Clenching my fist around the new battery I had been about to insert into my hearing aid, I imagined it speeding like a bullet towards her heart.