The classification of the three-student escape from River Valley school
The novel opens up with the news that three students from the River Valley school for the deaf have gone missing without apparent reason. The school’s headmistress February is worried about the students, but also the way this makes herself and the school look, namely like a “prison”. She is worried about how she should classify their being gone:
“They escaped, more like it, though that makes the school sound like a prison. “Runaways” is charged with a certain angst, suggests abuse. Eventually she settles on “gone missing,” the passive obscuring responsibility.”
Recipient of slow-acting poison
After February appoints one of her flames from her youth as a teacher at school, and after her wife Mel finds out about it, she becomes a victim of toxic temper tantrums. Despite the woman, Wanda, being happily married to another person and being nothing else but friendly and courteous, Mel can’t let go of her jealousy that slowly starts to feel like poison to her wife:
“And though she was stoic in the face of Mel’s arsenal of jabs (all crafted with a litigator’s precision), February began to feel like the recipient of slow-acting poison, each dose compounding the effects of the last.”
A voodoo doll
Despite Charlie’s hatred toward the hearing aid, and the discomfort and pain she feels because of it, her parents still insist on her using it. Her mother can’t let go of the shame that her daughter is different, that she’s not a perfect and a copy of her.
“There was no point fighting it. She was her parents’ possession for another two years, a voodoo doll on which to exorcise their sorrows.”
An alcoholic with just one more beer
Charlie’s mother makes it clear to her, in every way, that she is not okay with her being deaf. She doesn’t approve of her learning the sign language, and accepting herself as she is. Despite Charlie’s reluctance and complaints about the hearing aid, her mother drives all the way to her school to bring the new processor for the aid - which Charlie compares to an alcoholic having just one more beer:
“She handled it like a family heirloom, but for Charlie it felt more like watching an alcoholic have just one beer.”
