Page 112 of Fostering Chemistry
“Are you okay?”
He nodded, though he appeared to be thinking it through.
“Are you… do you… do you want some space?” I didn’t know what else to ask. Now that I thought about it, I realized he’d been moody at dinner tonight. I hadn’t really registered it because I’d been so excited about being with him tonight.
Finally, he spoke. “I’m trying to figure out how to… talk to you.”
I pulled the sheet up against my chest, bringing my knees up and curling up. I had the sense that he didn’t just mean in general. He had trouble talking to everyone in general. He meant right now. “You can tell me anything.”
He gave a faint but somehow bitter smile. “I think I’ve proven that I can’t.”
Again, I knew what he meant… he wasn’t saying that in the way some other man might, like there were certain topics he felt he couldn’t discuss with me. He meant he couldn’t always tell me the things he wanted to.
“Could you just… try? I can be a good listener. I can even be patient if I’m well fed.” That last part had been an attempt tomake him smile. We’d all had a large dinner, at a steakhouse this time. “Would it be easier with the lights out?”
He shook his head sharply at that. “I don’t like to talk in the dark.”
That seemed like a bit of an odd thing to say, but this was Cody, after all.
“All right.” I reached out, patting his thigh lightly. “I’m here. I’m listening. So you can talk if you want, or not. It’s up to you.”
Cody’s gaze fell to my chest, and I realized that the neckline of the flimsy little chemise had shifted lower, but the way he was looking at me wasn’t heated. Wasn’t full of desire. I almost wished it had been. Then I could distract him from his struggle to express himself.
Finally, he sighed. “Do you know what a CODA is?”
“A musical term?” It seemed like a pretty safe bet.
“No, it’s—well, yes, actually it is—but I’m talking about the acronym. It means… shit, I never talk about this.” He raked a frustrated hand through his hair, making it stick up even more, and then he slid down on the bed, coming to rest on his side, a foot away from me.
To me, it seemed harder to talk now that we were face to face, inches away from each other. It was like his blue eyes had captured me, entranced me. But it probably would’ve felt like that even if we were across the room from each other.
“You don’t have to tell me. And if you do want to, it doesn’t have to be today.”
He glanced around, as if suddenly noticing we were both in bed together—and not wearing very much. “I’m ruining our night together.”
“No, you’re not.” Finding his hand, I squeezed gently.
He studied me for a long moment, as if deciding whether I meant that. Then he sighed again. “CODA means Child of Deaf Adults. That’s me. That’s what I am. Both my birth parents were deaf. The sign language I learned from them, it felt like my first language.”
There was a pause, and I did my best to not rush him. It meant a lot that he wanted to share his story with me. I just wished I could make it easier for him.
Finally, he continued. “They sent me to pre-school and hired a hired a nanny to talk with me, but speaking aloud... it kind of felt like a game I would play with others, not like my real method of communicating.”
I waited, barely breathing, my chest tightening painfully as I anticipated the tragedy that was obviously coming
“They’d always have the TV on, knowing I could listen to people talking there, but I’d always change it to music when I could.”
He took a deep breath, his fingers tensing in mine.
“They died in a car crash when I was six.”
He said it in a matter-of-fact way that nearly broke my heart. To me, that had always been the worst reason to enter foster care. Over the years I’d heard tragic tales of abuse and neglect, but it always seemed that the absolute worst thing was to have loving parents who were tragically taken from you. My heart ached forhim, but I sensed he wasn’t done with his story, and I knew how hard it was for him to talk about it.
After a long pause, he continued. “My foster parents, they didn’t know any sign language, and that was the way I felt most comfortable communicating, so I just didn’t… talk. At all. For about two years, maybe. The psychiatrist called it selective mutism.”
He studied my face and then thumb brushed along my cheek. “Don’t cry.”
I couldn’t help it. It just hurt so much to think of that little boy, thrust in that situation. He no longer had his parents. He no longer could communicate with people the way he needed to.
