Coda

She signed before she spoke. That is ordinary, all children sign before they speak, except that hers never stopped.

There is a word for it, in English, because in French there is none: coda. Child of deaf adults. A hearing child of deaf parents. Salomé learned it at twenty-three, in a corridor of the interpreting school, from a girl from Rennes who said to her “oh, are you a coda too?” the way you recognise somebody from your own village.

She cried that evening, alone, in a student room, and she never quite knew why.

The first memory is Doctor Vialle's surgery, rue de Marseille, with the brown carpet and the smell of disinfectant.