The Orange Houses (7 page)

A flock of pigeons leaped from a power cable, tumbling into the sky and away.

Mik read Mom's lips: “Stop. Breathe.”

Mik realized she was screaming.

 

The next morning Mom said, “You sure you don't want me to go with you?”

Mik signed, MA, I'LL GET THE INFORMATION, OKAY? TRUST ME.

“Huh?”

Fatima waited for her outside the school doors. They went to the doctor. He gave Mik a hearing test. “You're not a candidate for a cochlear implant. You don't have enough hearing loss to justify it. But you knew that already.”

Mik nodded, signed, MY MOM WANTED ME TO ASK ABOUT THE PROCEDURE THEY'VE BEEN WORKING ON OVERSEAS THE LAST FEW YEARS.

“Artificial cochlear replacement. It's still highly experimental, but the results are promising. We could get you into the next trial. The surgery is subsidized by the manufacturer but not one hundred percent. It's expensive. In your case they would replace your left cochlea, the weaker one. They operate on only one side because—”

SOMETIMES THE SURGERY DOESN'T WORK, Mik signed.

The doctor nodded. “Let me see your hearing aids for a second? Yeah, these are terrible. I can prescribe you much better, much less obtrusive aids. Your hearing loss is sever est in the high frequency range, but your low frequency reception is pretty good. Those aids you have now blocking your ear canals must drive you crazy when you speak. You hear a fuzzy echo when you talk, right?”

“She does not talk much,” Fatima said.

“That's a shame,” the doctor said. “I heard you out in the waiting room. You speak beautifully, Tamika. You would do really well with hearing aids where the sound receivers are in the ears. These are much smaller machines, quite comfortable, and you'll have far fewer ear infections. The new aids would let you keep your ear canals open and maximize your natural hearing. You won't have those plugs stopping up your ears.”

SO I WON'T BE ABLE TO BLOCK OUT THE SOUND ANYMORE? Mik signed.

The doctor squinted. “No.”

“What did she say?” Fatima said.

“How much?” Mik said.

“Ten thousand. That's about twenty-five thousand less than the surgery.”

That was twenty-five thousand Joe Knows dollars she could put toward an immigration lawyer. “Ten G's, huh? You know insurance doesn't cover hearing aids.”

“Tell me about it. Look, you can go either way, surgery or new aids. It's up to you.”

 

Fatima's landlord kept the basement heat at legal minimum, fifty-five degrees. The girls kept their coats on as they made dinner. “But why would you not want to hear?” Fatima said.

It would be too much,
she wanted to say.
So many people making noise, so much garbage getting into my head. Folks like Shanelle, that idiot Jaekwon, dumping their nastiness on me. And the other folks, the ones crying out with complaints, trying to hitch up their problems to me, as if sharing their sadness will lighten their burdens instead of doubling them. As if I can do anything to cure their ills. Making me realize I'm powerless. I can barely get by with all that craziness blunted. Reality straight up? No thank you. Connecting to full-blown reality is tapping into full-blown insanity.

She said none of these things. She said, “Spending that much money on aids is wrong. I'd rather put it to helping your sister come over here.”

“That is not what this money is for,” Fatima said. “You must honor Joe's wishes and put it toward your future. Besides, I am saving my money and my sister will be here soon enough.” She read Mik's mind, part of it anyway. “No, still no word from her. But the mail is terrible over there with all of the displacement. Mik, the sign language teacher I told you about?”

“The one from the UN?”

“She said when Beethoven moved into deafness he held a tuning fork to his skull and compared it to what was vibrating up his fingers as he searched the piano keys.” Fatima grabbed the clock radio from the shelf, put it into Mik's hands.

“This isn't Beethoven.”

“No, but it is beautiful.” Fatima cranked the volume.

Mik cradled the old radio. A hip-hop symphony throbbed in her arms, rib cage, spine, neck, popped and crackled in her old aids. The low frequency notes soothed her before the song started to fade. Mik cranked up the volume, but the music slipped further and further away. Her hearing aid batteries were dying.

A world without Joe Knows.

What kind of a world was that?

But if Joe were around, he would have said,
Kid, you can't give up. You gotta get back out there. Life's too short to waste time mourning. C'mon now, Jimmi, straighten up and fly right
.
Let's get to work.

Jimmi tried. He showed up for his janitor gig, but he was such a mess his boss sent him home. “Jimmi, you're MIA how long, no call, no nothing, and now you come in looking like you slept in a Dumpster. Seriously, what's your problem, kid? You on drugs?”

“My problem is I'm
not
on drugs,” Jimmi said.

The guy wanted to walk Jimmi to the emergency room, but Jimmi took off. He wandered into the middle of the O Houses courtyard.

He stopped in a slant of sun, long and soft in the late afternoon. It felt like a kiss on his forehead.

“Jimmi.
Jimmi.
” Just aside the sunbeam, the angels called to him, Mik and Fatima.

Fatima yelled, “Wait there. We will come down to you.”

He sat on a bench and watched folks rush around him to get home for dinner. Being in the middle of the sunny swirl felt great. The girls sat with him. “Then if you won't let us take you to the hospital,” Mik said, “will you at least come up to the apartment for soup and a hot shower?”

“Your Moms won't like that.”

“She at work.”

“I don't think I ever heard you talk so much, Mik. You got a nice voice. What you two working on?”

“You mean art stuff?” Mik said.

“As a team?” Fatima said.

“Nothing just yet,” Mik said.

“Nothing, huh?” Jimmi smiled. He hopped onto his board and skated away backward, bowing to them as he rounded the corner. Out of the sunlight he felt sick.

“Yo woman, not for nothin', but the way you
talk
, dag. Deaf is sexy.” Jaekwon cornered Mik as art ended, after everybody else had run out.

“Get over yourself.” Mik tried not too hard to sneak out of his pin job. “Lemme go before I scream.”

He licked his lips and lowered his face to hers, cinnamon on his breath. Mik rarely chewed gum because it played hell with her ears when her aids were in, but when she did chew, cinnamon was her favorite.

He was too much, that extra hunk of cake they tempt you with after your stomach aches full. You know it'll make you sick once it's in you, but how good it tastes in your mouth, going down. She hated herself for a shallow shell of a woman as she closed her eyes, waited, lips soft, ready.

The kiss never came.

When she opened her eyes he was out the door. Shanelle, back from suspension, stood in his place. She had her phone in Mik's face, a snapshot of Mik, eyes shut, puckered up for a big air kiss. “I'm-a e-mail this to like a thousand people.”

Mik took in the crowd of howling kids, grateful she remembered to turn off her hearing aids at the beginning of class. She pushed through the mob.

Jaekwon chased after her, got in her face for her to read the lips she'd tried to kiss. “Yo Mik. I just kiddin', yo. Shanelle dare me to do it. Here.” He slapped ten dollars into her hand. “That's my winnings. I want you to have it, dig? C'mon, take me to Taco B.”

She shoved him. “Punk.”

“Why you gotta play it so mad serious all the time, yo? It was a
joke
, girl. You can't laugh at yourself a little, yo?”

She pushed on, flipping up her palm, talk to the hand style.

“A'ight, be like that then.” Jaekwon shrugged, headed back to Shanelle. He was cold to her until she grabbed his jaw and tongued him deep.

Mik slipped out the cafeteria door to hit the park for some clear air, maybe to cut the rest of her classes too.

The G chased her, tripping over his low-slung jeans. They fell to his knees. His boxer shorts were two sizes too big. He yanked up his pants and pulled near-dead flowers from his backpack.

“For?” Mik said. She clicked on her aids.

“Saving my lame butt from Shanelle the other day. I been holding 'em since, afraid to give 'em to you. Spilt the water cup in my locker. My math's dumb plus wet now. Spent, like, four dollars on those. Deli's getting mad expensive.”

She grabbed his hand, pulled him behind the Dumpster, kissed him. She pulled back to look at him.

“Like, why you crying?” he said.

She kissed him again. He kissed back, his teeth chattering. She caught her lip on his braces. He fumbled hard at her breasts. His want for her enchanted her. She felt slippery and fevery and as if she were falling backward, and she jumped up and went.

“Wait,” he said.

“I'm sorry, G,” she said.

“I love you,” he said. “Serious, Mik. I'm-a die I don't marry you.”

“What's G stand for?”

“Gale.” The kid was breathless. “Like the wind. I can't believe I got to kiss Mik Sykes.”

“Gale,” she said to herself. His name made her love him all the more, but friends style. You can't be
in
love with somebody when you feel sorry for him. “You're too good for me.”

“Yo, I can be
bad
, woman. It's because y'all are like two inches taller than me, right? I'm on'y four
teen
, yo. I'm-a be growing soon, girl. I'm-a grow a
foot
for you.”

“I'm so sorry.”

“That was the best thirty seconds of my loser life. I
love
you, baby.”

She backed away, feeling worse about this kiss than the one that hadn't happened.

Fatima leaned against the mailbox to write her sister a letter.

Two weeks now and no word from the east.

She dropped the letter into the box as Mik hurried from school.

“Good day?”

“Perfect,” Mik said.

“You are a fantastically bad liar. Show me your sketch.”

Mik pulled a roll of drawing paper from a cardboard tube.

Fatima studied the drawing topped with a teacher's writing:
Fabulous work, Mik.
“More empty streets.” Fatima dragged Mik uphill by the hand.

“Where we going?”

“I think you will be a remarkable artist someday very soon, but only if you learn to do one thing first. You must let
people
into your dreamworld. Come, I will show you something. Something you don't know about you.”

Fatima introduced Mik to the dude who ran the volunteer programs. He was all military with his creased khakis and dry-cleaned button-down. “Friend of Fatima's, friend of mine.” Firm handshake, hard, cold face. “I got no problem with you hanging with Fatima in the classroom.”

Mik hadn't thought there would have been. Dude was creepy.

In the classroom: a bunch of kids around a table, adults in the background.

“Hello, my little ones.” Fatima tickled the kids. “This is my friend Mik. She is very cool. Make my friend feel welcome, please. Say hello.”

They did. The littlest boy said, “What's those things on your ears?”

“She is hard of hearing,” Fatima said.

The boy said, “My Pops got hurt in the desert. He's upstairs. He's sleeping. Someday he's gonna wake up, though.”

Mik sat next to the kid.

“Can we make giraffes, Fatima?” a girl said.

“Can we? We must.” Fatima handed out sheets of newspaper. The kids copied her as they folded, ripped and crimped the newspaper into a herd of giraffes.

The little boy, the one whose father was upstairs, was lost. His giraffe had two legs and two necks.

Mik showed him where he went wrong.