What Is Visible: A Novel by Kimberly Elkins Page B

chapped, maybe from riding in the wind. I am pulling open the lower lip with two fingers when he grasps my wrist firmly and pushes my hand down into my lap. I am too bold today; I have never tried to open Doctor’s mouth before. I can tell from the movement of his arm holding mine that he is leaning back and away from me.
    “Happy?” I ask him, and his fingers hesitate.
    “Of course,” he writes. “My family.”
    “I am still your daughter?”
    “Always.”
    My heart is full to bursting, but my temple has begun to ache. “Baby my sister?”
    “You can call her that.”
    “Play with her.”
    “Very tiny. Mrs. Howe will decide.”
    Mrs. Howe? I’m not calling her that. “Practiced with dolls.”
    “Baby not a doll. Very careful.” He pats my hand, and I know we are finished with this subject. For the moment. “Like Miss Wight?”
    “Very much. Very good.”
    “Excellent,” he says, and then pauses. “Swift talked about God?”
    “A little.” Not a tenth as much as I’d have liked.
    “Wrong,” Doctor writes. “You were not ready.”
    “Ready,” I write emphatically.
    “I am the judge, Laura.”
    “Thought God judge?”
    His fingers waver. “God trusts me.”
    “Blinds read Bible.” Anything I know I’ve gotten secondhand from Tessy or one of the others. Like the ridiculous idea that Doctor is a horse or a dog. I am tempted to ask him about that as well.
    “But you are special,” he writes. “You inspire others.”
    It always comes back to that. “Want God to inspire me .”
    “When the time,” he taps, but I push away his fingers.
    “He speaks to me.” This is not completely true, but when I try to pray, there is a voice that I am sure is not mine, that is louder than mine, except maybe when I’m angry. Then mine is very loud. “He wants me to know Him.”
    Doctor drums his fingers; he does not know how to argue this, which is what I’ve counted on. A long moment passes before he writes, “Make a deal.”
    I nod vigorously. Any deal should be worth this.
    “Mrs. Howe says noises scare baby.”
    I don’t understand.
    “Your noises.”
    Yesterday I allowed myself to yelp at Doctor’s return and to make all my naming sounds. I thought they would be happy.
    “Made baby cry.”
    That’s what they do all the time anyway, isn’t it? “Then teach me to speak.”
    “Deaf don’t speak,” he writes. “Too hard.”
    “I’ll learn.” I know I can. “What makes you speak?”
    “A tongue,” he tells me, “lips, vocal cords at the back of the throat.” Mine obviously work since I can already make noises. I trace the perfect heart of my lips, and then reach inside for the slick curl of my tongue and pull it. Good and strong and very quick. It even has the bumps on it that Doctor says help you taste, though mine don’t work; otherwise it is fine.
    I reach for Doctor’s mouth. “Touch tongue?”
    “No,” and he pushes me off.
    I only wanted to see if it feels the same as mine, so I’ll know mine is really working. That’s all right; Wightie will let me in her mouth later, I’m sure. But then Doctor says I need ears, ears that can hear. “Why ears?”
    “Need to hear yourself to speak properly.”
    I don’t think so. I would like to hear myself, but I don’t need to. I can’t hear my naming noises, but I can feel their vibrations in my throat. “No deafs speak? Ever?”
    I can tell he is impatient, but I keep tapping, and finally he explains. Many years ago, Reverend Gallaudet, the founder of the Connecticut Asylum for the Education of Deaf and Dumb Persons, went to Europe to learn their methods of teaching. Only the British and Scottish had found a way to teach the deaf to speak, but they said it was a secret and would not share it with him. I know that Gallaudet married a student, and she was just a boring deaf girl. If I had been sixteen as I am now, I think Doctor might have chosen me instead of Julia. But I was only thirteen when Doctor’s affection bump forced