Without any preamble, the specialist said, ‘Your daughter is profoundly deaf.’
Just like that, he delivered his verdict.
We were dumbfounded. We kept staring at this stranger in the white coat and then at our child, thinking this could not be true. Li tried to speak, but nothing came out. I was speechless too. We were in total shock. We felt our perfect world had fallen apart. A bomb had exploded in my head. I couldn’t comprehend what had just happened, or what it all meant.
Eventually Li said, ‘Can we fix this?’ His voice sounded so hopeful and yet so hollow.
How? I thought. I knew nothing could fix it. I had seen the movie about Helen Keller. I knew what this meant.
The doctor left the room after advising us to go to the nearest deaf school and have Sophie fitted for hearing aids. He was so matter-of-fact and unemotional. There were no brochures given, just a few little words and facts exchanged. He spent less than five minutes with us. We were completely blindsided. Soon I would learn that appointments involving the hearing booth would always cause me great agony.
‘Stunned’ is not a strong enough word. I couldn’t speak. The blood drained from my face. I felt like I was going to faint. Li took hold of my arm but I couldn’t look at him, I was in too much shock. My mind went into a spin. So many thoughts and questions flooded in. I couldn’t think fast enough or clearly enough. In an instant, I could see some of the scary reality of what lay ahead. For a heartbeat I had flashing thoughts of rewinding and going back to my life of no responsibility in London. Then I was struck by all the things Sophie would never hear.
In that moment, the world that I knew collapsed.
AFTER
PART FOUR
Houston
1991–95
Our mother–daughter relationship was completely changed. The mother I thought I was and the daughter I thought I had were taken away from me.
8
We had walked into that hospital with our little girl and a very special life, but Li and I knew everything had changed in that instant. That was it. There was no way for us to communicate with Sophie.
We drove home in silence, dumbfounded. My mind was a jumbled mess. Sophie was in her car seat but we both kept looking behind at her. I knew from her expression that she felt something was going on – she was quite intuitive in that sense. How could someone so beautiful and responsive have no hearing! I thought.
Li carried Sophie from the car, and then we laboured up to the front porch with the heaviest of hearts. As we went through the door, Sophie darted towards her nana and yeye. They were having tea in the sunny front room. Their faces lit up when they saw her. Sophie ran into their arms, giggling, while tears began to well in my eyes and I couldn’t stop them. I watched Li deliver the most devastating news to his parents in their Qingdao dialect. I could see their happy expressions turn to shock, then disbelief and incredible sadness.
‘Wu de tian na!’ Oh my God! said Niang, holding Sophie close. Dia shook his head incredulously and stared from Sophie to Li and back again. They were completely stunned. It broke my heart to see their distress. I couldn’t speak, and just sobbed. Niang continued to murmur in Chinese as tears welled up in her eyes, too. Sophie could sense the new sadness in our home and walked innocently from one to the next staring at our faces, completely lost. She knew something was wrong, but didn’t realise that she was the reason.
Sophie had never heard their voices, or anything, ever. She’d never heard us say ‘I love you’. Would we ever hear her say ‘Mum’ or ‘Dad’, ‘Yeye’ or ‘Nana’? The only way she had read the world was from our faces. Niang and Dia were distraught for us and for her. Like us, they had been waiting to talk to Sophie – to have another Chinese speaker in the family.
Li’s parents heated up some leftovers for lunch, but nobody had any appetite except Sophie. Afterwards, I took her for her nap, feeling so hollow, so helpless. I tried hard to stop my tears in front of her, but as soon as her eyes closed, I went to my own bed and curled into a ball, unable to hold back. Li came in to try to comfort me.
‘Leave me alone!’ I blurted. Poor Li. I knew he was also in pain. But I couldn’t help it. All I wanted to do at that moment was to have my own space. My own space to cry and try to cope with my extreme distress.
Li went back to work that afternoon. He didn’t know what else to do. He told Ben the news about his goddaughter, then word spread quickly throughout the company. Everyone was stunned.
Next I had no choice but to share the news with our friends. I walked mindlessly to Maria’s house. The Mad Mothers group had arranged for our children to play there that afternoon. As we watched the children play, I turned to the mothers. ‘Sophie’s profoundly deaf’ was all I managed to say. They looked at me, speechless.
As I watched, I noticed for the first time that the other children were saying occasional words: ‘Mine!’ ‘Mama!’ My ear tuned immediately to their toddler language. As I walked the few blocks home, an incredible sorrow overwhelmed me. In the space of one morning our perfect world had turned into utter devastation. Now we were trying to imagine a completely different future for ourselves. A musical world with dancing and laughter was no more.
When Li returned from work that evening, I was still numb and didn’t know what to do next. ‘Mary, chi fan ba.’ Mary, let’s eat, Niang said, peeking her head into our bedroom. I took one look at her red eyes and knew then that she was suffering a great deal, too. She had cooked a delicious dinner, but I still had no appetite. For the first time in my life, I felt sorry for myself. ‘Mary, guo le!’ Enough! Niang said sternly as she gently slapped her hand on my shoulder. ‘What’s the use of crying? Get up and get on with your life. Help your daughter.’ There were no tears in her eyes now.
I sat up, wiped my eyes and followed her to the dining table. Niang’s words shook me to the core and my initial response was to reject her. At the same time, deep down I knew that she was right. I had to somehow shake off my self-pity and sorrow. Yes, this is my lot to deal with, I said to myself. Sophie is my daughter. I’m her mother. I have to help her. There’s no other way.
Niang and Dia continued to be an amazing source of strength and courage. They just got on with it. Food kept coming, the washing was done, the house cleaned, the vegetable patch tended, while Li and I walked around dazed, trying not to think about the future, going into rehearsals as usual. Each night, we all tried to keep up appearances for Sophie – playing and laughing with her as we’d always done. Li was much better at pretending than I was. A few days later he went to see Charles Foster to share the news and cried on his shoulder. He admitted it was the first time he’d broken down about Sophie’s diagnosis.
I couldn’t face calling my parents. Giving them the news and knowing how upset they would be just added to the burden of grief I was already feeling. I knew we had to get Sophie fitted with hearing aids as soon as possible, as her diagnosis was very late. I had to stop my weeping if I was to ring the Houston School for Deaf Children. So I did. We were invited to come in for a meeting with Sophie on Monday.
Li met us outside the school. ‘I think I’m going to throw up,’ I told him. He just held me tightly while I pulled myself together and in we went – our first steps into the deaf world. We met with the head of the school, an audiologist and two speech therapists, all sitting in a circle on the floor with Sophie on my lap. I could hardly take in what anyone was saying, and didn’t have a clue what the professionals were talking about when they spoke of what ‘profoundly deaf’ meant in terms of development and language. All I knew was that Sophie was eighteen months old and couldn’t hear.