I Can Hear You Whisper Read Online Free PDF Page A

quotes had made it into the press coverage precisely because they were extreme and, therefore, attention-getting. But child abuse?! Me? What charged waters were we wading into? I just wanted to help my son. It would be some time before I could fathom what lay behind the objections. Like a mother adopting a child from another race, I realized my son might have a cultural identity—should he choose to embrace it—that I could come to appreciate but could never truly share. Yet I felt strongly that our family had a claim on him, too. First and foremost, he belonged to our culture.
    We might have to take sides.

3
H OW L OUD I S A W HISPER?
    A lex stood with his nose pressed against the arched plate-glass window watching the traffic go by on Second Avenue. Mark and I stood with him, pointing out the yellow taxis, the size of the trucks, the noise of the horns. Talking to your child is a hard habit to break, even if you know you can’t be heard. On this day, we were hoping for clarity. Instead of doing another hearing test in the doctor’s office, we’d been sent to the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary, where there is a battalion of audiologists on hand at all times. The door into the waiting room opened and a young woman with a broad, friendly face and long brown hair stood on the threshold. She glanced at the file in her hand and then looked up.
    â€œAlexander? Alexander Justh?”
    From the moment she called his name that first time early in February, Jessica O’Gara told me later, she was evaluating Alex. “It starts in the waiting room.” Like detectives, audiologists use every possible clue to figure out what’s going on with a child. Is he engaged with his parents? Did he turn his head when his name was called? What toy is he playing with? Is he holding a book upside down? Can he turn the pages? Could there be a cognitive delay? Can this child hear?
    Jessica and her colleague Tracey Vytlacil ushered us down the hall. Alex was shy and, of course, quiet, but Jessica’s energy was infectious.
    â€œHey, buddy, we need to figure out what’s going on with you,” she said, “but first I think I have something you will like.”
    She pulled out a box of stickers, the mainstay of medical offices everywhere, and let Alex pick out a handful. While we went through his history, he occupied himself putting stickers on his shirt and arm and then on my shirt and arm. Like every audiologist and doctor we would see in the years to come, Jessica had a plastic model of the ear on display and some wall charts to boot. Later, these cross-sectioned models became one of Alex’s favorite playthings during waits for appointments.
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    Unlike the eyeball, which is bigger inside the skull than what we see in the face, the many parts of the ear get smaller and more intricate under the surface. In the plastic models, the outer ear, the part that’s visible, reminds me of Dumbo’s enormous ear compared to the tangle of circles and snaking tubes that make up the middle and inner ears. In her marvelous A
Natural History of the Senses
, Diane Ackerman likened the inner workings of the ear to a “maniacal miniature golf course, with curlicues, branches, roundabouts, relays, levers, hydraulics, and feedback loops.” The design may not be streamlined, but it is effective, transforming sound waves into electrical signals the brain can understand. It is also particularly well suited to the human voice;our keenest hearing is usually in the range required to hear speech. That makes evolutionary sense.Prehistoric ears had to contend primarily with human and animal noise and the occasional clap of thunder. Modern noise dates only to the Industrial Revolution and the invention of gunpowder.
    When I call Alex’s name, I’m pushing air out of my throat and making air molecules vibrate. They bump into the air molecules next to them—how fast and how