The day Jean realised her baby daughter could hear was the worst day of her life.
Vomit gathered under her long, painted nail as she scraped at yet another soiled babygrow, sending a dollop of pureed sweetcorn and stomach acid down the leg of her good jeans - and a sharp shriek from her throat. Only upon glancing up did she see it: her only child in floods of tears, cheeks puce and puckering behind the force of her sobs.
Shit, Jean thought. She can fucking hear.
***
Malorie reaches for the dish of butter between the two of them. A small, taloned hand shoots out from the end of her mother’s sleeve, apparently automatic, sliding it just out of her reach.
Across the table, despite her reactive hand, Jean doesn’t even look up - at a glance, distracted by the process of plucking croutons from her salad and carefully arranging the unsolicited carbohydrates around the chipped rim of the bowl. Malorie wants to roll her eyes - aches to do it, almost - but somehow, while her mother hasn’t heard a word she’s said in nigh-on thirty years, she always seems to ‘hear’ that.
Malorie’s throat smarts from today’s rehearsal, stretched and teased by big notes. Her mind wanders to Paolo, her castmate, who is right now likely propped on a high stool at one of those cool bars near the opera house, regaling a chic friend or handsome prospect with anecdotes from the rehearsal, his ever-so-slightly splayed teeth glinting under the dimmed lights. Only hours ago, they were on stage together, her soprano and his tenor weaving golden braids together through the air, the eyes of cleaning staff transfixed on the soft, ordinary bodies producing them.
Now, Malorie runs the cold edge of her fork across the cracked surface of her dish, trying to scrape up every drop of dressing. Her mother catches her and, feigning spontaneity, reaches over to scoop up the bowl and clear the table, with a firm nod as if to say, Enough. Resigned, Malorie sits back in her chair, eyes wandering across the faded frames that cover the cream walls of the apartment, spotlessly clean yet gently faded with time: a poster from a Goya exhibition in Madrid, a watercolour of a canal (possibly in Amsterdam), a starched dress of beige linen with ruby-red beading across the waistband, an embroidery of a galloping horse, a single dried leaf. She asked Jean about the origins of this mismatched collection once as a child, but was simply met with a dismissive shrug and a few signed words: Those? They’ve always been there.
Glancing to her left, she sees the small form of her mother, hunched over the sink and quietly scrubbing with unnecessary intensity. Malorie dares to let herself enjoy an eye roll now, while Jean’s back is turned, but she still keeps it brief, just to be safe.
***
Malorie’s eighth birthday was the best day of her life.
First came presents, perched on the end of her mum’s bed: a notebook scattered with purple sparkles, a bag of her favourite raspberry bonbons, and, nestled among a bundle of tissue paper in a brown paper bag, a teddy bear. All morning, Malorie laboured over the perfect name for the bear - something that felt warm and soft in her head, capturing both his soothing gentleness and the almost-regal spark she noticed in his eyes. It was around the time she and her mother arrived at the playing field that afternoon that she settled on ‘Arthur’, and she squeezed his furry hand for courage as she walked towards the waiting group of school friends.
The afternoon flew by in a joyful blur. There were games and Malorie’s favourite foods (buttery jam sandwiches, cheese and onion crisps, custard creams), friends and jokes and a pile of presents that she scooped up with a big, deliberate smile and placed into a shopping bag that Jean carried home under her arm. That evening, as they paced past the broken lift and up the stairs home, Malorie squeezed Arthur close, rubbing her chin and mouth against the woolly velvet of his head and itching with good feeling.
The good feeling was so intense, in fact, that usually-attentive Malorie failed to notice her mother’s quiet mood on the walk home, her snippy movements as she put down her keys and dropped the bag of presents onto the living room floor, the fact that she wasn’t making eye contact with her daughter - hadn’t in hours, in fact. Malorie had also failed to notice that, for the majority of the afternoon, as she’d been chatting with her friends and the other parents had been gathered together, gossiping about the latest updates in their respective households, Jean had sat alone beside her neat bags, quietly moving items from one to another with feigned thoughtfulness, as if occupied by some essential task.
At the dinner table, Malorie babbled about the day - the moment when Emily pretended her breadstick was a moustache, when Josh tripped over just before winning the egg-and-spoon race, when she drank so much pulpy orange juice that she thought she might be sick! - caring less about the fact that nobody could hear her and more about articulating the fizzling magic of the afternoon, in hopes that it’d stay alive for longer. All the while, she slurped down soup with Arthur pressed under her chin, bobbing on the spot from the intense pleasure of the day; after a few bites, she lifted her spoon to Arthur’s mouth, offering him a sip. At this, quick as a flash, Jean’s hand shot out across the table, grabbing the bear from her daughter’s happy grip and tossing him across the room onto the sofa.
Stop being so childish.
Malorie felt sick. I am a child, she thought, confused, as she put down her spoon and stared through a blurring film of tears at Arthur, who was now propped at an uncomfortable angle on the sofa cushions. Realising an effort was needed to divert an oncoming storm, Jean swiftly moved to pick up the bag of presents waiting on the living room floor and plopped it on the table beside Malorie’s dinner. Malorie perked up, certainly, but all the while she was peeling off paper and marvelling at her gifts, she kept one eye on poor Arthur, whose blood must certainly all be in his head by now, and who was probably feeling concerned that his new owner was the sort to leave him stuck in such a ghastly position.
When Malorie awoke the next morning, Arthur was pressed against her cheek. On her belly was propped a folded letter, which she stretched a sleepy arm to pick up and unfold; inside, her mother explained why, from now on, Malorie was no longer to speak at home - after all, there was nobody to hear her, which meant that to talk would be rude, and we wouldn’t want that, would we? Malorie read and re-read the lines, her first thought not one of anger or upset, but of bemusement. Clearly, her mum had forgotten about at least one person who could hear her: Arthur.
***
Three days until opening night - and twenty-three years since Malorie last spoke in her own home - when she opens her mouth, gathers breath and finally breaks her silence:
“Oh, please just stop”.
Beside her on the sofa, Jean doesn’t look up - at a glance, distracted by the process of extracting pesky chocolate chips from the bowl of trail mix they’ve been sharing, which Malorie bought as a treat and now wishes she hadn’t bothered buying at all. In reality, though, Jean missed her daughter’s momentous outburst entirely (if a gentle muttering can ever constitute an “outburst”). Had she heard, in fact, or even been aware of Malorie’s insolence, Jean would have reacted wholly differently; knowing this, Malorie is now fighting to keep her eyes from flicking to the hot wax of the candle on the coffee table in front of them, should she somehow give the game away.
With Jean now satisfied at having created a sufficiently joyless snack situation, the pair sit back and each chew slow bites - Jean’s small and selective, her daughter’s curdling with residual anxiety as they hit her stomach. They sit in quiet silence, not looking at one another, no effort to converse but instead a stale, years-old silence that has now rushed back in like a tide, inevitable and departed only for the briefest of retreats.
***
“She says, ‘There is nothing wrong with my daughter.”
The teacher winced at Malorie’s interpretation of her mother’s impatient signing. Beside Malorie, Jean folded her arms and raised an eyebrow, as if challenging the young teacher to continue with her point.
“I’m certainly not suggesting there’s anything wrong with Malorie, Ms Lee; on the contrary, Malorie is a total gem to have in my class,” the teacher shifted in her seat, visibly uncomfortable. “All I’m saying, if you don’t mind me doing so, is that Malorie displays many common symptoms of autism seen in young girls. In order for her to give her - you, Mal - the best support we can, a diagnosis can be hugely beneficial. I– Mal, my love, would you mind… translating that for me, please?”
Malorie’s cheeks had flushed a shade of warm raspberry, her hands clammy and eyes clinging to every patch of the room that wasn’t her favourite teacher’s face. She started counting the divots in the cornicing, one, two, three, four, five…
“Mal? Would you mind, please, love?”
“I–,” Malorie forces herself back to reality. “I’m not sure it’s worth talking about. I’m sorry. I just don’t… I don’t want to cause any trouble.”
“Sweetie, you’re no trouble at all,” the teacher started, but her gaze then shifted to the stern face of Jean, staring directly at her. She hesitated. “Okay, okay. Let’s leave this to one side, for now. Please thank your mother for coming to meet with me.”
Malorie quickly translated, relief visible in the softening of her shoulders. Jean looked from her daughter to the teacher, giving a stern nod, and the pair rose from their respective seats, Malorie not daring to glance back over her shoulder in case her mother detected some unwanted comradery between them.
Total waste of time, Jean signed when they reached the bus stop. They’ll call anything a ‘disability’ these days.
***
Malorie may not speak at home, but boy, does she sing. Gazing from the living room window onto the concrete below, she closes her eyes and opens her throat, notes loud and proud emerging from her lips and vibrating through the flat. Her ribs expand as she fills them with air, as much as she can, swirling it around inside her belly before propelling it out in great swoops of noise.
Often, Jean will wander into the room as her daughter rehearses. Occasionally, she’ll sit down and watch, giving a firm nod of her head from time to time as if pleased that her own offspring is working hard. In these moments, Malorie feels a rare sense of power, not in the unlikely idea that she might be making her mother proud, but in the fact that music is the one thing her mother has never experienced - can never touch.
***
Monty Lane was the dreamiest boy in school - and twelve-year-old Jean Lee was smitten.
Seated beside one another in maths lessons, the two would communicate by writing notes on scraps torn from the corners of their exercise books. Jean was obsessed with the pretty swoops of Monty’s handwriting, and with the way they echoed the pretty swoops of his pretty hair, which hung low and loose over his pretty eyes and pretty cheeks. When he smiled, she smiled, and this would make him smile again, and so they’d spend the hour of each class in a sickening cycle of grinning, as their teacher gazed on in fond despair. Often, Jean would forget she was in a maths lesson all together, but she didn’t mind that, because this wasn’t just a pretty boy; this was love. Sometimes, he’d ask her for help with questions, so she’d spend hours each evening poring over the upcoming pages in her battered textbook to ensure that she was fully prepared to impress him the next day with her understanding of velocity and long division. His exercise book was filled with loopy rows of his preferred blue ink, interrupted frequently by marks of crisp, black ballpoint where she’d chimed in with suggestions.
It was at the start of summer term when things changed. Eileen Sims was the new girl and, because Monty was his class’s representative on the student council, it was decided that Eileeen would be seated on the other side of him in maths. At first, Jean wasn’t worried - after all, what she and Monty had was special - but that certainty soon faded when Eileen would whisper something to him and the pair would giggle, chatting back and forth as the ink dried on Jean’s latest note.
The school year closed with a class trip to the outdoor swimming pool. Exhausted teachers sat back and dozed in the sun as two dozen excitable pre-teens divebombed, gossiped and slurped hungrily at sticky ice lollies. For Jean, however, the focus lay on spending as much time as possible with Monty ahead of the endless summer break that stretched ahead of them - after all, her mum would never knowingly let her spend time alone with a boy.
Dressed in her navy swimsuit and clutching her faded horse towel, Jean paced barefoot around the pool, among the deckchairs, even tiptoeing outside the boys’ toilets in the hope that he might appear… but nothing. She knew he had to be there somewhere - she’d watched him board the other minibus outside the school gates - but in the interim half hour, it was as if he’d vanished. A jolt of panic churned her stomach, but this was quickly allayed by peering nervously into the deep end of the pool and seeing that no, he wasn’t lying bloated on the bottom. But where was he? Perplexed, she wandered along the paving slabs in front of the shower block, chewing her lip and distracted from the intense heat on her feet by the effort of scanning every face present, just in case she’d somehow missed his pretty one.
She didn’t hear their flirtatious giggles, the whispering of youthful sweet nothings or the cruel, cruel comments about her… but when she turned the corner and saw Eileen’s lips pressed to Monty’s ear, the expression of panic on Monty’s face and, in turn, how Eileen smirked, rushing a hand to her lips in faux embarrassment as her eyes darted from Jean’s confused face to the snug fabric on Jean’s soft belly and back, it was as if she’d heard every breath. She felt her cheeks flood red and, for the first time in her life, she moved to cover her body, the dull horse’s face on her towel pressed against her stomach.
For a moment, her eyes met Monty’s, and she saw what she thought was regret… but he wasn’t moving. And so, she walked away, back to her neatly folded clothes and flip flops, back past the screaming kids and sleeping teachers, back up the pavement where she trudged her way home in the midday sun and spent what remained of the afternoon quietly crying to herself in her bedroom. At least, she thought, I’ve learned a lesson today.
***
Malorie has always found it easy to disguise her pain. She does so like she does with any other emotion: learns how to display it correctly, pulls it from her repertoire at appropriate moments, then pops it away in her social dressing-up box to keep clean and crisp when it’s not needed.
Occasionally, though, it isn’t so simple. While keeping her engine in neutral feels a comfortable default most of the time, on rare days, she’s no longer the one driving. It takes something small - damp socks, the lights of a too-bright cafe, a change to the recipe of her favourite ready meal - and suddenly, she’s a passenger in a vehicle destined to crash. It’s an internal itch that manifests itself as screaming, stamping, white heat. It’s dreadful and shameful and brief. It’s a grim inevitable. Nobody needs to know.
On this particular day, Malorie is tired. When her friends are tired, it’s no big deal - I’ll be fine once I’ve had my coffee! I’ve pulled plenty of all-nighters in my time! Sleep is for the weak! When Malorie is tired, it fills her with a profound dread at the idea of how her body might react, a werewolf’s human host fearing the moon. Today, severe menstrual cramps and her mother’s aversion to ‘unnatural’ medicines mean that Malorie has had three hours of sleep fewer than she ordinarily does, and now, attempting to chop leafy greens while her mother watches over her shoulder and her mind is heavy from a long, difficult day of rehearsals, her head feels like it might explode. The sound of the knife through tough, chewy kale is irritating. The echoes of Paolo saying, Can I suggest just one note, please? is irritating. The clacking of her mother’s tongue against the back of her teeth as she tsk, tsk, tsks is irritating, and suddenly, Malorie feels that familiar itch creeping up her spine and flooding the space behind her eyes.
In the damp bathroom, Malorie tenses every fibre of her body, braces herself and silently screams - except suddenly, the screams are no longer silent, and she’s screeching and wailing and pummelling her fists against the soft flesh of her thigh, against her chest, the crown of her head, desperately seeking relief, and then it’s the cracked sink, the bundles of towels folded neatly on a chair, the tiled wall beneath the window taking the full force of her body until her knuckles split and bleed. Hot tears swell and blur her whitened vision. An electric hum has overridden her senses, and she’s barely present for the wretched howl that pours from her throat as she raises and slams down her tensed arms into her sides, over and over and over again until suddenly, it’s gone.
Back in the kitchen, Malorie picks up the knife and continues chopping. Jean resumes her tsk, tsk, tsks. All is as it should be - or at least, as it always has been.
Then, the doorbell rings.
“Sorry to bother you - is everything okay here?” The man from next door is standing in the doorway, his wife (anxious, nosy or both) looking on from their own entryway.
Jean materialises behind Malorie, irritated first at the disappearance of her daughter from kale-chopping duties and then at the sight of the stranger disturbing their peace. What’s going on here? she signs, but Malorie keeps her eyes locked on the strange man.
“Oh, all okay here - what do you mean?” Malorie feigns innocence, but the gentle tremor in her throat betrays her - if not to her mother, then at least to the concerned neighbour, whose wife is now holding her landline in front of her ready to dial, as if a threat. The man looks towards Jean for an explanation, but Malorie intervenes, “This is my mother. She’s deaf.”
Confusion seems only to further motivate his enquiries. “Okay. Well, I’m sure you know exactly what I mean. The terrible screaming. It sounded like–”
“It sounded like somebody getting murdered,” his wife interrupts from across the hallway with poorly-concealed glee, confirming herself to be, most definitely, nosy.
“Murdered? Well, that– that sounds silly. I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Malorie persists, but the man is now stepping towards her, hooking thick thumbs through his belt loops and puffing his chest in grim determination as he cranes his neck to peer over her head and into the apartment. Furious, Jean begins elbowing her daughter to make him leave.
“Ladies, I don’t mean to cause a drama, but I’m going to have to call the police,” he says, his wife already dialling the numbers with relish behind him. He juts out a wobbling chin, his decision ossified.
“Sir,” Malorie’s breath is straggling, but she lowers her voice and forces herself to look him directly in the eye. “Sir. We didn’t hear anything. There was no noise.” The man looks confused. “Please.”
“But we heard–”
“No, you didn’t. Please.”
Finally, something new enters his expression, as his gaze moves from Malorie to her scowling mother, then back again: there is something happening here, and it’s a thing he will never understand. Reluctant, he nods (to his wife’s visible disappointment) and takes a slow step back.
“Okay, ladies. I– I’m sorry to have bothered you. Goodnight.”
***
Having sworn off love at age twelve, twenty-nine-year-old Jean initially saw meeting Lou as an inconvenience. His hair did not fall in pretty loops - in fact, it was surprisingly thin, given they were the same age - but he did dredge up that long-forgotten feeling of addictive affection with his stocky frame and broad, toothy grin, and she eventually had to concede. They met while he was working at the corner shop down the road from her parents’ house and, although his initial effort at flirting took the form of a long, nervous ramble (only for him to find out that it had, quite literally, fallen on deaf ears), the connection was undeniable, and daily excuses from Jean to buy yet more milk turned into the pair spending nearly every evening and weekend in one another’s company. Their first official ‘date’ was in autumn, and they walked through the park, Lou initially nervous to hold Jean’s hand, then gripping it slightly too tightly once he’d built up the confidence, as if terrified to ever let go. He did let go eventually, but only to bend over and pick up a fallen leaf swirled with burnt reds and electric pinks, which he held next to Jean’s face, admiring the two, before handing it to her. Once he’d said goodbye, she hurried home and pressed the leaf in an old encyclopaedia, vowing to keep it forever and knowing with certainty that something very special was about to happen - was happening already.
Jean had never been fond of cliches, but she would have described the early days of their relationship as a ‘whirlwind’. They’d ambitiously scrape together their meagre salaries to fund trips to France and Spain, Germany and the Netherlands, where they’d amble around free art galleries - or sneak into paid ones - arm in arm, Lou often making Jean laugh with jokes about how he could “totally speak the language - you just can’t hear it”. Occasionally, she’d hear a quiet nagging to slow down - we know what happens when we open up like this - but it’d take a single look from Lou, a warm hand on her hip, and she’d cast the nag aside with a soft laugh.
On their one-year anniversary, Jean arrived at the shop to meet Lou for a “surprise dinner date”. Eager to be clothed appropriately for the occasion (but strapped for cash after a recent trip to Dublin), she’d secretly been using any time not spent working or in Lou’s company to make herself a new dress. Constructed from an old pair of beige, linen curtains and red beads from a broken necklace, she worried he’d think it was silly.
“Wow,” he said when he first saw her, and she promised herself in that moment to never doubt him ever again, because he didn’t think she was silly; he thought she was magic. Quietly, he passed behind her to lock the doors of the shop, slowly and carefully rolling down the blinds, before disappearing behind the counter to produce a red gingham tablecloth, which he spread out beside the tills with a proud grin. Then, with a rusty shopping basket on one arm and Jean on the other, he began parading proudly around the store, pausing to pick out ingredients for their ‘date’ - a bag of salted crisps, a punnet of plums, a dusty bottle of red wine - with mock discernment.
After dinner, one thing led to another and, as Jean lay in Lou’s arms in the sweaty aftermath, blinking lights from the street outside casting constellations across the shop ceiling, she calmly dismissed the passing feeling that she was forgetting something.
***
You didn’t tell me there were going to be drinks after the show.
Sorry?
After your debut at the opera. There are going to be drinks after the show.
Who said there would be drinks?
Your phone did. A man called P-A-O-L-O.
Mum, I asked you to stop reading my texts.
Are we going to the drinks? Do I need to reschedule our taxi? Malorie?
No.
Why not?
Because I didn’t RSVP to the invitation. I didn’t think you’d want to go.
Why wouldn’t I want to go? What made you think that?
It’s–
Malorie.
It’s too complicated.
***
Six weeks and four days after celebrating her first anniversary with Lou, Jean realised she was pregnant.
After the initial panic of a missed period (and the ensuing stress of having to take the bus to a neighbouring town to buy a pregnancy test without anybody who knew her parents finding out), Jean experienced what she considered to be ‘bliss’. As she sat on her parents’ bathroom floor, positive test in hand, she pictured the look of ecstasy on Lou’s face when she’d tell him the news; she pictured holding his hand as they saw their baby for the first time on the ultrasound - and squeezing that hand to within an inch of its life when she pushed their baby out into the world; she pictured the years of birthdays, Christmases, nights in front of the telly and family caravan holidays, arguments and tearful make-ups they’d enjoy for as long as they were lucky enough to live; and she pictured lying on her deathbed, gazing into his eyes and knowing she’d been truly blessed.
That afternoon, she headed to the corner shop to catch Lou as he finished his shift. He grinned as she entered the store, but instead of heading towards the counter, she casually picked up a basket with a playful smirk, filling it with a few essentials - bread, her usual milk, a small bar of chocolate - before disappearing into the far corner. Eventually, she walked up to the counter, heart hammering behind her cardigan as she raised the basket to the counter to reveal among its contents: a packet of nappies. She couldn’t stifle a huge smile, breath held and chest vibrating, as she looked up at Lou’s beaming face…
…which wasn’t beaming it all. Instead, he had started to sweat profusely, looking with mounting panic from the nappies to Jean’s face and back, over and over and over again. He began to shake his head, and Jean could read his lips: "No, no, no, oh God, no, shit, shit." Her blood ran cold.
What’s wrong? She began frantically signing to him. I thought– I thought you’d be happy! It’s good news! It’s good news… no?
But she could see that it was too late, and all she could do was stand back and watch the man she loved spiral, dragging their relationship with him. This lasted a while, and she ended up passing him bottle after bottle of water from the nearby fridge as he tried to cool himself down, to sober up from the shock, to fix the sandy dryness that had overtaken his throat. Eventually, minutes of agony having passed, he settled his breathing, wiped away the residual sweat from his face with his sleeve, and looked her in the eyes.
“Jean, I can’t. It’s too complicated.”
The moments that followed were torturous. Lou quietly gathered his possessions from behind the counter and led her outside into the cool autumn evening. Hands still gently shaking, he reached past her to lock up the shop, maintaining a distance from her as if her pregnancy somehow made her contagious. Then, finally, he walked away with neither a glance nor a word.
After that day, Jean didn’t see Lou again. A few desperate visits to the corner shop informed her that he’d quit his job with immediate effect, and asking his friends got her nowhere. Soon, it was just her alone, Jean and the bump, and she asked herself in the silence what about raising a child with her really was so “complicated”, deep down feeling she knew exactly what it was.
***
One dark, biting night in late November, the opera house debuts its latest production, and Malorie Lee takes to the stage as the lead.
In the third row, there sits her mother, hands in her lap clutching her small, beaded purse as she gazes up at the dazzling gold lights, and at her daughter, who is hungrily pulling in air and pressing a hand to her diaphragm to make sounds Jean cannot begin to imagine. From the stage, Malorie sees her mother watching her intently, giving the occasional firm nods of her head and, for a moment, as Malorie tenses her quaking abdomen and projects centuries-old lyrics of hurt and longing directly towards the older woman, she allows herself to imagine that her words are heard and that finally, finally, her pain is understood.
Meanwhile, Jean is not understanding at all. Instead, she’s allowing herself to imagine that the balding, stocky man beside her with the broad, toothy grin is Lou - her Lou - and that, in this sparkling flicker of an alternate universe, they’ve travelled there together to watch their daughter’s debut. For a moment, she presses her forearm against his on their shared armrest and allows the heat to lull her as she smiles, closes her eyes and begins to gently sway.
For the first time in my life, Malorie thinks at her mother’s peaceful face, I’ve made her proud.