Rhythmic silence

Part 1

The bus lurches forward and my elbow jabs into the the tall middle aged woman standing in front of me.  She turns towards me, holding her side with a look of pain on her face. I want to apologize, but she's already speaking angrily. Her mouth snaps open and shut in quick motions, and I can't catch anything she says. She looks at me, waiting for a response or something. Just as I'm about to try to respond, she continues, clearly pissed off, she points up, to the intercom probably. This time I try to focus on reading her lips.

"When— driver says—-bump coming up—- hold on—- listen." I miss some words but get what she's saying, I should have listened when the driver announced through the speakers to hold on, even though I couldn't freaking hear him. She gestures to her side, as if to say this is what happens when you don't listen.

I sign. "Sorry, I'm deaf." I watch her face drop.

It's my favorite thing to watch rude people who think I was being rude on purpose (there's surprisingly a lot of them) get all flustered and sorry when I tell them I'm deaf. Extra points if there's other people around to embarrass them further.

I smile at her while she transforms into a tomato. Obviously, she had been talking pretty loudly before and we had some onlookers, now they're all looking at her disapprovingly. Mission accomplished successfully.

My stop comes up and I get off.

Georgie's sitting at the bus stop, waiting for me when I get off (one of my strict parents rules for me: I can't take the bus unless someone is with me or waits for me at the stop). She's deep in conversation with a guy around our age leaning against the bench.

The bus moves off and Georgie waves me over. I look back and forth between their lips but can't seem to follow the conversation. I give up, starting lip reading from the middle is too hard. Georgie is practically glowing and I can tell why. She usually sucks at lipreading but she seems to be keeping up really well with this guy.

She's deaf too, but hasn't been for as long as me. She went deaf from meningitis two years ago. With a lot of tutoring, she's now almost as fluent as me in ASL (American sign language), and can lip read as well. The difference between me and her though, is she's confident in speaking out loud, and hates telling people she's deaf. She'd rather pretend to understand what someone said instead of asking them to repeat themselves. I'd rather mime and charades my way through a conversation. I went deaf at 5 years old so talking aloud isn't as natural for me as it is for her.

When the two of us are the together, a conversation with someone else goes something like this.

Someone else: "where are you guys going?"

Me (if I'm lucky enough to catch everything they said): relays the question back to Georgie in sign.

Georgie (because she sucks at lip reading but not talking): responds out loud.

It's a weird system but it works. It also works in her favor most of the time, because people assume I'm the only deaf one and she's interpreting for me.

The guy turns towards me and says, "Who's your friend?"

Gigi doesn't catch what he says because he's turned towards me, I can tell because of the momentarily panicked looked on her face. Rookie mistake, but I assume she hasn't told him she's deaf, so I don't ruin her moment by signing. It's a easy question, the way he gestured to me, so she can probably guess.

"That's my friend, Malina. I was here waiting for her." I give a little wave.

If he's wondering why I need a chaperone from the bus stop, he doesn't show it. He smiles at me and holds his hand out, "Finn." I shake his hand.