Her World In Silence

Chapter 2

Normani was nervous. Dinah had called her cute and she wasn't sure what to think of it. Her past relationships had all failed, but at 35 she knew she wasn't getting any younger. She couldn't just be afraid to put herself out there anymore. She decided to register for the next round of Dinah's sign language classes. It had been two weeks since she was at the school and wrote the article about it.

The Tuesday classes were for beginners and the Thursday classes were more intermediate conversational sign language. She pulled into the parking lot and grabbed her purse before heading inside with a few other people. Learning sign language, or at least enough to get by would only be beneficial for her. She'd encountered deaf individuals in the past and had no idea how to communicate with them and she felt bad.

Normani found an empty seat in the classroom and placed her purse on the floor beside her before glancing around the room. Part of her worried that Dinah wouldn't remember her, but as the Polynesian came into the room and saw her, she smiled shyly and waved to her. Dinah wasn't expecting to see Normani sitting in her class, but she could admit to herself that it was nice to see the woman again. After putting her bag down, she got some papers out to hand to everybody. She lingered for a moment near Normani and smiled again to her. The paper that was placed in front of her only had a few lines on it, stating to everyone Dinah's name, that she was deaf and all communication with her needed to be in some form of writing. Once Dinah finished handing out the papers to the few people that were sitting in the classroom, she went up to write something onto the board.

Alphabets.

Normani made sure to pay attention as Dinah wrote something onthe top piece of paper from her next stack before she passed them out to the group of adults. Normani looked at the paper that was placed in front of her before looking up to meet Dinah's eyes.

'Stay after please?' Normani looked up at her and nodded before actually looking at what was on the paper. It was the alphabet and how to do each letter.

"Names." Dinah's voice came out, filling the room and causing Normani to look up. It wasn't often that Dinah actually spoke, but when she did, she always struggled to keep her volume under control.

Dinah took her time, spelling out her own name so the others could see each of the letters. Dinah started around the room, pointing to each person for them to spell out their names. When it was Normani's turn, she looked down at the paper before lifting her right hand to spell out 'Normani.'

"Good!" Dinah lifted her right hand to her lips before lowering it to rest on her left palm toward Normani. She'd done the same thing with all the others.

"Hi, my name is..." Dinah took things slowly with each sign and motioned for the others to follow her. Dinah kept everything simple for the first class, focusing on the alphabet and numbers, along with some basic conversations. When she finished, she wrote good night up on the board and signed it to everybody as they started to gather things up.

"Work on the alphabet for next Tuesday." Dinah sat at her desk and took her time to pack up her leftover papers. Normani watched as the others left before also taking her time with the papers Dinah had given to them. She folded them in half and slid them down into her purse. Once they were alone in the room, she stood up and moved towards Dinah.

"It's nice to see you again." She spoke and signed to the chocolate skin woman. Normani smiled at Dinah before pointing to her and holding up two fingers.

"You too." Dinah covered her mouth to giggle and shook her head. She really appreciated Normani trying. She held up her hand to show Normani how to properly respond.

"Same." She smiled when Normani copied her. The journalist decided to make a bold move then as she watched Dinah. Reaching out, she grabbed the marker from the board and wrote 'coffee?' on it. She looked back to see Dinah tilt her head, obviously thinking about it.