Julia Weimerskirch, Silent Lunches

JULIA WEIMERSKIRCH

Silence. I remember looking at those around me and watching what the other students were doing. The girl in front of me would pick up her milk carton, take a very large gulp, and then sit the carton back down in exactly the same place. I watched as she did this for her entire meal and often found myself wondering if her carton of milk was different than mine because it seemed as though hers was never ending.

The boy sitting to my right had a sandwich that smelled strange. It was overfilled and overflowing with a grey, mushy substance. With every bite he took, I watched as more and more of this substance sloshed out and fell, splattering on the table. I didn’t know what it was, but I knew I wanted nothing to do with it.

Silently, my fellow students would open their lunches, examine what sandwiches their parents had packed them that morning, and even turn to those next to them and swap snacks. Apple sauce for fruit roll ups, gummies for gushers, you know, all of the important things that every kid should have in their lunch box. They did this all without making a single sound. I didn’t know how, but it seemed as though the entire world was silent to me. I looked down and examined my brown paper bag that had my name written carefully in black cursive on the front. The careful flow and curl of each letter was obviously the work of my mother. Because my mother packed my lunch for me that day, I knew there would not be any Debby cakes, only carrots. I pulled out my sandwich, two pieces of toasted bread, slightly burnt, with several thick slices of cracked pepper turkey between them. My favorite sandwich, another sign that my mother packed my lunch that morning. A Strawberry Kiwi Caprisun, and like I knew there would be, the slimy carrot sticks with nothing to dip them in. Not even hot sauce. A small lunch, but it was just enough to get me through the day before I went home to an even better lunch that I would get to share with my mother as we watched The Doodle Bops. I placed everything on the grey, sticky lunch table in front of me and looked to the teacher that always sits with me, Linda. It seems as though she follows me everywhere, to all my different classes, to any meetings, and even when I need to go to the nurse’s office. Why didn’t other students have a Linda?

Looking around the prisonesque room, I noticed there were students staring at me. This was not out of the ordinary for me, but I guess I didn’t understand why. “What’s happening?” I asked. “What do you mean?” Linda replied with a smile that seemed to stretch from one ear to the other across her face, revealing perfectly white teeth. “They’re all looking at me.” I said, my hands shaking. The idea

of being stared at, even now sends a chill down my back and makes me break out in a cold sweat that seems to exist only under my armpits. “I think they just don’t understand,” she said. “Understand what?” I replied. “They don’t understand that you can only talk using your hands. You’re the first deaf student to ever come to this school! It’s actually very exciting, but because you are the first, they haven’t learned about you and they’re seeing you at lunch for the first time,” she said this and gave my arm a reassuring squeeze. “I don’t think I like lunch very much.” I said then opened my sandwich bag and began to eat, allowing myself to slip back into my silent world and pretend that everyone around me hears exactly the same things I do. Nothing.