“Now, she’s just a girl like all the others here”

“Only her mother can remember the time before any sound: the time when, for My, the rain fell unheard, the scooters out on the street coughed and spluttered in complete silence, and steps remained as soundless as all laughter, crying or screaming. She screamed a lot back then, had fits of rage, her mother occasionally recalls, but My has no memory of this. She has no desire to relive the silence in the eye of this hurricane of sounds, those inaudible, alien sounds. She only wants to remember the last few months, the last few weeks, today; she wants to stamp in puddles and listen to the rain drumming on the plastic tarpaulins. She wants to wave to every scooter that comes her way and stroke palm leaves until they begin to rustle. 

Sometimes, her mother can hardly believe that My can now say “blink” and “blue” or “ship” and “short”, but it comes as no surprise to My. She is now five and has always been able to speak and has always heard, ever since she has been able to think, ever since she can remember, as if the time before the operation had never existed. Now, she’s just a girl like all the others here in Ho Chi Minh City, on the banks of the Saigon River. She can curl up with laughter when her girlfriends tell her a joke, she sometimes dances giddily through the streets to the music in her head, and she looks up when her mother calls her – as if all these things were nothing special at all.”