True Biz

by Sara Nović

Charlie longed to find meaning in the arc of the woman’s hands, but that meant looking away from her lips, something she couldn’t afford to do. Not yet.

There was no reason assistive technology and sign language should be an either-or affair; time and again some of her strongest students proved that, when it came to language, more is more.

in between languages, waking, and sleep.

He was routinely taken aback by her willingness to slice right through someone they’d known their whole lives, the casual way insults glided off her fingers.

Here was the problem with an ASL conversation—it required eye contact and afforded little opportunity to hide one’s true feelings.

When she was younger, February had considered “boss” and “champion” ASL rhymes, because of their matching handshapes; these days the similarities between “boss” and “burden” were much more apparent.

CODAs still counted as “big D” Deaf,

Then there was the ream of paperwork for her mother’s admission to Spring Towers—questions about her needs and preferences so granular February was both heartened that they’d thought to ask and distressed that it had fallen to her to dictate her very opinionated mother’s answers.

Charlie had always been fond of curse words. In hearing school, kids would teach her strings of vile things to say and she’d parrot them back as best she could to make them laugh. She was willing to be the butt of this kind of joke if it diverted their attention from other ways to hurt her.

emoticons enfolded into signed puns

What a cruel disease, she thought, to steal from a person all their best moments, and make them relive the worst ones nightly. To force their loved ones to deliver these blows of memory until they, too, were subsumed by the echoing grief.

How quickly she’d become accustomed to understanding what was happening around her, where for years, she’d been resigned to drift in a low-tide quiet, letting conversation wash over her.

Her mother loved brunch—it was a soft spot in the dietary restrictions she imposed on herself. Once, at an Easter buffet, Charlie had actually seen her mother applaud a plate of quiche. She