Catch a Star Read online

  Wise enough, I suppose. My hearing disorder had also left me with a bit of a speech problem—a mild lisp, but enough to make me seem even more different to others. Mom and Dad wanted me to get better at speaking English, rather than confuse me with another language.

  Once in Abilene, though, my “somewhat better English” didn’t help me with the other kids. That’s because there was a whole other language to learn here, the language of how to be accepted and acceptable. A language I didn’t know. So much of this language is unspoken, and though we’re all introduced to it, we can struggle all our lives to make peace with it.

  Even though Tauj, in third grade, and Kenyon, in fifth, went to the same school and we sometimes could have lunch together, I mostly felt alone in Abilene.

  Teachers didn’t help. Within the first couple of weeks of being set apart by other kids for how I looked and talked, I was set apart by the classes too. Someone decided, because I didn’t always hear my own voice well and struggled to hear and enunciate certain sounds, like in ch and sh and S words, that I should go to speech therapy class.

  The first day the therapist came to our classroom, she walked right in on a lesson, interrupting our teacher, whispering in her ear. My teacher nodded toward me, and all eyes riveted to mine as she announced, “Tamika, you can go now.”

  Go where? I wondered. I hadn’t been told about the speech therapy that would separate me two and three times a week from the other students. I didn’t know what to expect as I trailed the speech therapist out of the classroom, but I wanted to melt, disappear from all my classmates’ stares.

  One boy groaned and asked what all the other kids must have been thinking: “Why do you get out of class?”

  If any kids hadn’t thought I was so different before this, they did now.

  I wound through the desks, past the stares, and down the hall after the speech therapist. I should have welcomed the escape. Instead, I wished I could stay back at my desk, unnoticed, to hear what everyone else was hearing, learn what everyone else was learning. I loved learning at school. I just didn’t like being set apart, standing out, and being put down.

  Speech therapy classes became another form of weekly torment. The therapist was kind enough, but all through our sessions, she made me repeat certain sounds over and over. It was like she was teaching a baby to speak. Well, I wasn’t a baby. All the while I thought of my classmates getting to read books and write whole stories.

  The teasing got worse. My wish to fit in became my prayer every new day of second grade in Abilene. Instead of kids getting used to my differences, they got used to tormenting me. One day it was about the glasses; the next, about the speech therapy classes that must have seemed mysterious and secret to them. Later it would be the braces put on my teeth.

  Mostly it was about the awkward hearing aids.

  I hated those hearing aids. I was grateful for how they enabled me to hear, but I couldn’t stand anyone commenting on them or staring at them. I couldn’t bear going to school, and then couldn’t wait to get home.

  I knew Mom would be there. Our mom, Wanda, was always there.

  Dinner would be in the making, ready for us after whatever recreational activity we had for the evening. But, she always had a snack ready for us when we got home. She’d sit with us at the table, hear about our day, help with homework, and share in the small victories and challenges that make up grade school: acing a test, getting more homework, dealing with classmates.

  Her question was always the same when we walked into the kitchen where she’d be setting out the snacks: “How was school today?”

  My response was the same. For three months, the same. “Please, Mom, please. Don’t make me go back.” I stared down at the table. “The kids say mean things. I can’t do that anymore.”

  “Tamika.” She walked over to me and took my chin in her hand, turning my face toward hers. “You know you have to go to school. Ignore the bad things anyone says. You know what they’re saying isn’t true. There’s nothing wrong with you—you’ll get through this.” She smiled. “You can do anything you set your mind to do and work toward. The sky’s the limit.”

  I leaned my head against her for a minute. I’d heard her loud and clear. Somewhere deep inside I knew what she said was true. I really did believe I could do what I set my mind to do.

  I just wished there was a way I could show it and prove myself to the kids at school.

  3

  Lost

  Are you stupid or something? Uh-uh. Slow. She’s slow.

  Girls in grade school in Abilene, Texas

  My stomach kept rumbling knowing that dinner waited for us in the oven. I knew if I just said and did the right thing, right now, we could all go home and dig in. But how? Admitting what I’d done would mean more than a late dinner. I’d be in big trouble.

  We fumbled with flashlights in the dark as dusk turned to night. I could make out enough of Mom’s face to see she was beginning to realize what I’d known for a while. We weren’t going to find anything on this path to and from school.

  At least we weren’t freezing. November in Abilene was a lot more comfortable than up north.

  Mom glared at me again, then went back to her desperate search. My lost hearing aids were expensive. Very expensive. Her unspoken thought, keep looking, made me feel even deeper pangs of guilt. I turned my own flashlight onto the grass again, scouring it for what I knew we wouldn’t find.

  Earlier that afternoon, coming home from school, I’d lagged behind Kenyon and Tauja, crying the whole way after another day in another week of relentless teasing and torment at school. Kenyon and Tauj joked around ahead of me as I got more and more upset, but Tauja glanced back every now and then to check on me. She knew I was upset.

  The name-calling, the put-downs, all the being singled out and set apart was too much. I hated those big box hearing aids. No one else had to wear them, and even though they did enable me to hear, the way they looked made me feel like an alien or something.

  On the walk home from school, I pulled them from my ears, wadded them into a ball, and threw them as far as I could into the grassy vacant lot.

  They never weighed much, and though I was used to wearing them, it still felt like a big weight taken off my shoulders to get rid of those hearing aids. Taking them off, tossing them, I felt suddenly lighter. Free.

  At home, Mom had our usual snack waiting and I was hungry. I dug into the food and my homework the same way. The whole day seemed better. I hadn’t smiled this much after school since we’d moved to Abilene. I plowed through my homework with a renewed mission. After our homework was finished, we headed to the field for softball practice. I loved playing catcher and left field. The day’s torment was beginning to fade a bit as I thought about how much I loved pretty much every sport, being outside, running, getting dirty. I was a tomboy, and the field was where I felt most at home.

  Mom eyed me all through practice. I knew why.

  “What’s different about you, Tamika?” Mom stood in front of me, studying my face.

  I waggled my head, smiling. “I don’t know.” Maybe being happy would be enough to keep Mom from figuring it out.

  “Tamika,” she said as we all piled into the car, “I just can’t place it, but something looks different about you.”

  I watched her face. Even with the hearing aids I sometimes read lips. I shrugged my shoulders. Act cool, I told myself. “I don’t know,” I told Mom.

  The truth was I did know, but I wanted to buy more time. I didn’t want to give up this freedom, for once, of not being different from everyone else.

  Mom looked straight at me and gasped. “Tamika! It’s your hearing aids. That’s it. That’s what’s different. You don’t have on your hearing aids. Where are they?”

  Busted.

  “Oh my goodness . . .” I felt around each ear, acting surprised. Play along. “I don’t know.” That was technically true. I didn’t know, not exactly. They were somewhere in that vacant lot of tall grass
. I just didn’t know exactly where.

  “Where did you last have them in?”

  “I remember them on the whole day at school. I must have lost them.”

  “Lost them?” Mom jumped out of the car and grabbed my hand. She was mad. She pulled me toward the field, yelling over her shoulder for Kenyon and Tauja to follow. “Well, we’re going to find them. I want you to think of everywhere you went today.”

  I knew my hearing aids weren’t there, but I followed. It seemed Mom wasn’t entirely sure whether or not I knew what happened to the hearing aids, but she was determined to find them. The field grass had been dry and hot hours before practice, but now, as dusk settled in, it was cool with the impending dew. I knew neither the damp grass nor the cracked clay of the infield could give away secrets they didn’t hold.

  If those hearing aids had gotten knocked off without me noticing, it made the most sense that it would have happened while playing softball. After a while, though, my stomach rumbling louder and louder, I wanted to stop playing along with the search. But I couldn’t.

  Eventually we packed back into the car and headed home. All I could think about was dinner, but as we jumped out of the car, Mom told us to grab flashlights. “We aren’t giving up yet. Let’s retrace your steps to and from school.”

  “Do you remember falling?” Mom kept searching for answers as much as the hearing aids. “Could they have been knocked out on the way home from school?”

  “No . . .” I wondered if she was putting together what happened and she spoke as if reading my thoughts.

  “Tamika, you know where those hearing aids are. They don’t just fall off.”

  I tried to look innocent and concerned and cool all at the same time, studying the ground between the sidewalk and the street. My hearing aids required a careful process to put on and properly take off. Mom knew it, but I think she was desperate.

  We walked back home, passing the lot with the tall grass a second time. I scoured the sides of the walkway. Of course, nothing.

  I walked over to Mom, who looked ready to give in too.

  She straightened up from searching the ground and stood in front of me to ask (for what must have been the thirtieth time) if I could mentally retrace my steps from the entire afternoon.

  I was tired, but still not ready to give up the truth. “Mom, I don’t know exactly where I went.” I was careful to keep my exasperation in check. Neither of my parents tolerated a lack of respect. I looked to Tauja. “I was right behind them,” I said. “We came home the same way as always.” Tauja was playing cool about this. If she knew, she wasn’t going to give up my secret.

  “Well, I don’t think we’re going to find them here.” The resignation in Mom’s voice was clear, all the anger and frustration turned to disappointment, and something else too: worry. She turned slightly away and was talking to herself as much as me when she said, “It doesn’t make sense. Softball practice seems like the likeliest place you would have noticed them coming off.”

  I didn’t like seeing her so upset, not telling the whole truth, knowing I was the reason we were all out here in the dark missing dinner. I knew by daylight I could probably find my hearing aids in the vacant lot of tall field grass. I knew the general direction I’d thrown them. To not say so wasn’t like me. This had gone on long enough. I had to set things straight, even though I knew I was going to be in big, big trouble.

  “Mom, I—”

  She never heard me. I stopped as she turned.

  “Tamika, we can’t replace them right now, not yet. We’ll just keep looking tomorrow.” She hesitated, a tinge of the frustration back in her voice. She knew I understood how expensive the hearing aids were—she and Dad had always been on me to be careful with them, take care of them, put them in the same spot every night before I went to bed. “C’mon,” she said, nodding to me and Tauja. “Let’s go eat dinner.”

  We turned toward the house and she gave one more admonition before we fell into silence. “For now, Tamika, you’re just going to have to do your best without hearing aids. Do you understand me? Do you think you can manage to do without?”

  If Mom meant this as punishment for what she decided was carelessness, if not an outright defiance, it wasn’t working. Taking away the one thing that set me apart from a physical standpoint gave me one more way to fit in with everyone else, and it gave me hope. School tomorrow might not be so bad.

  Yes, I nodded. In fact, I truly felt guilty for what I’d done. Every worry line on Mom’s face etched into me the awareness of the importance to her and Dad of the hearing aids, their cost and purpose in helping me overcome my disability. But they didn’t know—and no one knew, except perhaps Tauja—how they had made me the target of kids’ ridicule.

  And maybe even then, at that young age, I was making a decision about my life. I wasn’t going to let others tell me who I was. I wasn’t some lost, stupid, disabled kid. I had thoughts, feelings, and abilities.

  I smiled in the darkness.

  “Huh?” I looked from face to face on the playground.

  Three girls stared, blank, bored, unbelieving, eyebrows raised in question.

  I tried again, smiling. “What?”

  “Don’t you pay attention? Don’t you ever listen? How many times do we have to repeat ourselves?”

  “Are you stupid or something? Uh-uh. Slow. She’s slow.”

  I hadn’t worn the hearing aids for at least a week and no one seemed to notice, not these kids who picked on me for needing the devices, not my teachers. But I was far from getting my wish to fit in. One problem going away just opened the door to another. The hearing aids that drew the most stares and meanest remarks were gone, but the taunts, the digs, still sounded loud and clear. The meanness on some kids’ faces, the sneers and stares, spoke volumes too.

  I’m sure Mom called and searched for my hearing aids more than I did—calling up to the school, circling the softball field, and more than likely walking the path to and from school. So, I wouldn’t dare now to ask Mom and Dad for new devices, but I was struggling more than ever to hear. Even when focused and face-to-face, having a one-on-one conversation was a challenge if there were other people and noise in the background. The creak of swings, slap of jump ropes, bounce of balls on the cement, kids’ squeals and yelling—all typical playground noise—became an indistinguishable whirr. I couldn’t distinguish any one sound from all the others, not even the voice closest to me, in order to focus.

  So like anyone says when they know they’ve missed something, I asked “Huh?” and “What?” a lot. After a while I started to smile and laugh at what I couldn’t quite make out but knew was said to or about me. For a while, that worked. Then it became one more thing for the bullies to pick on.

  I’d traded one “different” for another “different.”

  That the other kids thought I wasn’t smart, or was disengaged, hurt the most. I didn’t understand why something I couldn’t help should be such a matter of conversation or focus.

  Stupid? Slow? Not listening? I was none of these things.

  Something inside me shifted. I wasn’t going to let those labels or anyone else define me. I would show people who I was; I’d prove to them what I could do. I began then what I still do now when I’m faced with a challenge. I dug in with determination. I adjusted. I worked harder. I prayed. I took each of these steps, one at a time.

  I figured out a way to go through school on mute.

  Even with hearing aids, I’d always compensated a bit by consciously observing more and reading lips. In those first couple of weeks without devices, I became proficient. I watched people’s mouths and expressions. I learned to read the curl of a lip, the furrow of a brow. I became hyperaware watching body language, looking for cues and clues. If other kids slammed their textbooks shut, I knew the teacher must have said this lesson was done, or the bell had rung for recess. If they shuffled papers, I could tell it was time to turn in homework or switch to something new.

  I sat in th
e front row. There, I could hear somewhat clearly and I could see the teacher better to read her lips. This worked fine until she turned to write on the chalkboard or get items from her desk. I studied the chalkboard, gripped my pencil, ready to catch whatever was needed. I looked around, tried to see what other kids were writing, get some indicator of where we were going next.

  You can guess how that worked. My notebooks told the story. There were pages and pages of meticulous, lengthy notes, then long blank stretches, the places where the teacher had turned and I missed what she said. I looked at those blank spots and knew I had to fill in the gaps, so I stayed after class. I asked the teacher to go over lessons and fill in what I’d missed. I made sure I understood, and asked about what we’d study the next day too.

  My teacher loved a student being careful and engaged, diligent and mindful. I don’t think she knew these were coping devices, a way of making up for the lost hearing aids. I was glad she liked my efforts, but my goal wasn’t to get into her good graces. I wanted to learn and get ahead—getting ahead was my way of keeping up.

  One of the best getting-ahead tools I discovered was how to anticipate. I had to make a plan for what to do about the silences and gaps. So I began to come to school early, prepared for what was ahead as a way of getting through. Because I loved to read, I read multiple chapters in the textbooks prior to my classes the next day. I never looked at this as a chore. Reading ahead inspired me to check out library books that related to what we were studying. A lot of these books fed my curiosity, too, so I often read widely on various topics. I asked a lot of questions in and out of the classroom. I had Mom and Tauj go over homework with me. If there was an extra credit opportunity, I took it.

  I realized, despite all the teasing and bullying, that I really did love school. I loved learning. I was curious. Challenges motivated me.