I sniffed the air. “Shit, if your food tastes as good as it smells then he’s out of his mind to not make sure he’s here to enjoy it.” I rubbed my stomach.
“It’s fine. He ends up eating when he gets home. I always make sure I put him a plate up.” She turned back to the stove. My head tilted, watching her. Nakyra was somewhat of a mystery to me. I couldn’t get a clear read on her. She reached up and messed with her ear briefly. I didn’t know much about her disability, but I was sure she had been born deaf. She seemed well-adjusted to her surroundings though. I had never metanyone else who was deaf or hard of hearing but Nakyra didn’t seem like a person to let it get in her way.
Pushing away from the counter, I stepped closer to her again. “Anything I can do to help?”
“What? Oh no, I got it. The pasta’s finishing up now.”
“You sure? I don’t mind.” I pushed the sleeves of my shirt up.
“Oh, well… if you want to get the cheesy bread out of the freezer so I can put it in the oven then.”
I nodded. “I can do that.”
“You mind if I ask you a question?” I asked once the bread was in the oven and the stovetop was off. I leaned on the counter again, turning my body toward her.
“Sure. What’s up?” She gave me her full attention.
“I ain’t tryna be in your business or offend you or anything either but…”
“You wanna know about my hearing?” She cut me off with a small smile on her face.
My brows shot up in surprise. “Yeah, how you know?”
A small giggle left her mouth. “Most of the time, when people start a sentence like that, that’s where it’s heading.” She brushed her hands over her leggings then folded them in front of her. “I was hearing up until I turned four when I caught meningitis. After getting sick and losing my hearing, I eventually got fitted for hearing aids, which worked, thankfully. At first, they thought I might have needed to get cochlear implants.” She must have seen the confusion on my face because she snickered and continued, “Basically, I would have had to get surgery and they would have attached a device to my head that would help me hear and talk better. I had a lot of inflammation around my ears at first and my doctors were worried. Once they got everything under control, and I got the hearing aids, it took a while for me to get used to them, especially because I had grown accustomedto silence. I had to relearn how to function as a hearing person again after being forced into silence for a year.”
“Damn. Was it hard to readjust?”
For a second she looked to be in deep thought. “I guess you can say that. There was a lot of therapy, occupational and speech. Not to mention, I didn’t take to the hearing aids right away. So they thought I might not even be able to live with them, but my parents were determined to ‘make me normal’, and well… here I am.” This time the smile that formed on her face was forced and didn’t reach her eyes.
“Make you normal?” My brows bunched and my mouth turned upside down. “The hell is that supposed to mean?”
Her eyes diverted from mine. “It’s just—” Before she could finish the stove beeped, indicating the bread was finished.
That seemed to be the out she needed. Nakyra quickly turned and grabbed the oven mitts from the side of the oven and opened it.
I stayed silent, watching her. It had to be hard going from hearing to not hearing back to hearing. I didn’t know much about her hearing aids but from what I saw this morning, when she first woke up, it seemed like when she didn’t have them in, she couldn’t hear at all. My attention went to her ears. The aids weren’t too noticeable. If they didn’t contrast with her skin color, I probably wouldn’t have noticed them.
The conversation didn’t come back up, mainly because I sensed Nakyra no longer wanted to discuss it.
She ended up directing me to where the eating trays were, and once I set them up in the living room, she brought the food and we got comfortable. When we first sat down, she gave me an update on my brother, which wasn’t much different from yesterday.
“I think this is the first time we’ve ever hung out, just the two of us,” Nakyra mentioned after a while.
The TV was playingCriminal Mindsin the background while we ate.
“I think these past two days are the most we’ve spoken to each other the whole time you’ve been with my brother.”
Nakyra’s teeth scraped over her bottom lip. “You’re right. Honestly I was always kind of intimidated by you, so I never really knew how to talk to you.”
Chuckling, I looked at her, confused. “You thought I was intimidating?’
“Well maybe that’s not the right word, but I don’t know… You always gave off a standoffish mood, like you never wanted to be bothered whenever you came around. I think this is the first time I didn’t get that from you, making it easier to talk to you.”
I glanced down at my now empty plate. “Understandable. As you know I don’t fuck with my family like that. I guess I always assumed you were, excuse my language and don’t take offense, but a stuck up bitch, like his exes.”
Nakyra looked shocked by my words at first before bursting out into a fit of giggles. I smirked, enjoying the sound of her laugh.
“Were they that bad?”
