My Ex-Husband\u2019s Wife Took Away Our 9-Year-Old Daughter\u2019s $3,400 Hearing Aids as Punishment, So I Drove 60 Miles for Another Pair
\nMrs. Lund called me at 8:20 on a Monday morning in April, and the first thing she said was my daughter\u2019s name.<\/p>\n
Not hello. Not good morning. Just, \u201cAmanda, it\u2019s about Emma.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said it in that careful voice teachers use when they\u2019ve already decided how to say a hard thing.<\/p>\n
I was standing behind the front desk at Olson Family Dentistry with the second phone line blinking and a patient\u2019s insurance card in my other hand. I set the card down. Kim, who does our scheduling, looked up from her screen, saw my face and stopped talking mid-sentence.<\/p>\n
\u201cEmma isn\u2019t wearing her hearing aids today,\u201d Mrs. Lund said. \u201cI asked her where they were. She said her stepmom has them. She said she gets them back on Friday.\u201d<\/p>\n
For a second, I honestly thought I\u2019d heard her wrong.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the kind of joke the world plays on you when your child is hard of hearing. You start doubting your own ears instead of the thing you just heard.<\/p>\n
\u201cFriday,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s what she told me. She said it was for talking back at supper on Saturday.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mrs. Lund paused. I could hear children\u2019s voices somewhere behind her, the hallway noise of a school waking up.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had our spelling test first thing this morning,\u201d she said. \u201cI read the words out loud, like I always do. She sat there and cried through the whole thing. She couldn\u2019t hear a single word, Amanda. She wrote her name at the top of the paper, and then she just put her head down on her desk.\u201d<\/p>\n
I put my free hand flat on the counter. It was cold. I remember that. And I remember the little bell on the front door jingling as Mr. Peterson came in for his nine o\u2019clock cleaning half an hour early, the way he always does.<\/p>\n
\u201cI sent her down to the nurse once already,\u201d Mrs. Lund went on. \u201cNot because she\u2019s sick. Just so she could have a quiet minute. She came back and sat in the front row and watched my mouth the whole time I was teaching fractions. She\u2019s working so hard. She\u2019s exhausted, and it isn\u2019t even nine o\u2019clock.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThank you for calling me,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
My voice came out flat and polite. The voice I use for patients who are behind on their bills.<\/p>\n
\u201cThank you, Mrs. Lund. I\u2019m going to fix it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t know if I should call you or her dad,\u201d she said. \u201cYou\u2019re both on the emergency card.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou did right,\u201d I said. \u201cGive me a couple of hours.\u201d<\/p>\n
I hung up and stood there in my light blue scrub top with my gray fleece zipped all the way to my chin, because the office is always freezing in the morning. And I tried to decide what to do first.<\/p>\n
Kim came around the desk. She\u2019s worked with me for six years. She has two boys of her own, and she knows Emma, because Emma does her homework in our break room on the afternoons when the sitter cancels.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat happened?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cKendall took Emma\u2019s hearing aids,\u201d I said. \u201cOver the weekend. As a punishment.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kim\u2019s mouth opened. Then it closed again. She didn\u2019t say anything for a moment, which for Kim is a very long time.<\/p>\n
\u201cTook them where?\u201d she finally said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHome, I guess. She\u2019s keeping them until Friday.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe can\u2019t hear without them,\u201d Kim said, like I might not know.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d I said. \u201cShe can\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
We found out about Emma\u2019s hearing when she was four.<\/p>\n
She was a quiet little girl, and everybody told me that was just her nature. My mother said I was the same way at that age. Chad\u2019s mother said some kids are thinkers.<\/p>\n
But I noticed things.<\/p>\n
She turned the cartoons up louder than her cousins did. She didn\u2019t come when I called her from the kitchen. She didn\u2019t startle when the screen door banged shut behind her. At church, she watched the pastor\u2019s face instead of looking down at her coloring sheet like all the other kids.<\/p>\n
That spring, her preschool did a hearing screening. She failed it in both ears.<\/p>\n
They sent home a half sheet of paper that said, \u201cPlease follow up with your provider.\u201d I read it standing in the driveway with my car keys still in my hand, and I felt the whole world tip a little to one side.<\/p>\n
Our family doctor sent us to a pediatric audiologist in Sioux Falls, sixty miles down the road. It was the closest one who worked with young kids.<\/p>\n
The audiologist was a woman named Dr. Meyer. She sat Emma in a little soundproof booth with big headphones and had her drop a block in a bucket every time she heard a beep.<\/p>\n
I sat outside the window and watched. Emma missed more beeps than she caught. She kept looking at the window, at me, like she was waiting for me to tell her when to drop the block.<\/p>\n
The diagnosis was moderate hearing loss in both ears. Nobody could tell us why. Nobody in either family had it. Dr. Meyer said sometimes it just happens, and that the important thing was to get her hearing now, while she was still learning to talk and read.<\/p>\n
\u201cWithout amplification,\u201d she told us, \u201cshe\u2019s hearing speech like it\u2019s coming through a wall. She gets the vowels. She loses a lot of the consonants. So \u2018cat\u2019 and \u2018cap\u2019 and \u2018cab\u2019 all sound exactly the same to her.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chad sat next to me in that little office and held my hand. We were still married then. He asked good questions. He asked whether it would get worse. Whether she\u2019d be able to play sports. Whether kids would tease her.<\/p>\n
He asked about the cost last. And he asked it quietly.<\/p>\n
\u201cThirty-four hundred dollars for the pair,\u201d Dr. Meyer said. \u201cThat includes the earmolds, the fitting and the follow-up visits for the first year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Our insurance through Chad\u2019s job at the time paid nothing toward hearing aids. Not one dime. I went home that night and found it in the plan booklet. They were listed under \u201cExclusions,\u201d right underneath cosmetic surgery.<\/p>\n
I thought that was just about the cruelest place on earth to put them.<\/p>\n
We set up a payment plan with the clinic. $142 a month for twenty-four months. I paid it off a little at a time, the last payments coming after Chad and I had already split.<\/p>\n
I never asked him for half. He offered once, and I told him to put it toward her school clothes instead. And he did. Every August, he took her to the outlet mall and let her pick out whatever she wanted, and she always came home with something purple.<\/p>\n
The first day Emma wore her hearing aids, we walked out of the clinic into the parking lot, and a semi went roaring by on the street.<\/p>\n
She grabbed my leg and screamed.<\/p>\n
Then she looked up at me with her eyes huge and said, \u201cMama, the cars are so loud.\u201d<\/p>\n
I sat down right there on the curb and cried in front of half of Sioux Falls.<\/p>\n
On the drive home, she made me pull over at a rest stop so she could listen to the birds. She stood in the grass by the picnic tables with her head tipped to one side for ten whole minutes. A trucker walking to the restroom asked if she was all right.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can hear the birds,\u201d she told him.<\/p>\n
He looked at me, confused. I just nodded, because I couldn\u2019t talk.<\/p>\n
She\u2019s had five years with them now. She\u2019s in third grade. She reads above grade level. She sings in the children\u2019s choir at church, slightly off key and very proud of it.<\/p>\n
She takes her hearing aids out every night and puts them in their little tan case on her nightstand. And every morning, she puts them back in before she even gets out of bed.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re behind-the-ear aids. Purple, because she picked the color. They have custom earmolds we replace every year as her ears grow, $180 a pair. They run on tiny batteries, size 312, and the battery doors lock with a little tool so a small child can\u2019t swallow anything. Emma\u2019s been changing her own batteries since she was seven.<\/p>\n
Chad and I divorced when Emma was five. It wasn\u2019t anybody\u2019s big villain story. We married young. We both worked too much. And somewhere along the way, we stopped talking about anything but bills.<\/p>\n
We split the furniture and the friends as fairly as we could. We sat in a mediator\u2019s office in the county courthouse and signed a parenting plan, eleven pages long, and we agreed that Emma came first. Chad pays $612 a month in child support. He\u2019s never been one day late.<\/p>\n
He has her every other weekend, Friday after school until Monday morning. On Mondays, he drops her at the school curb on his way to an early shift at the co-op elevator. She hops out before the truck has quite stopped. He\u2019d never once had reason to look at her ears.<\/p>\n
In spring, he also helps his brother Mike on the farm, because Mike\u2019s knees aren\u2019t what they used to be and somebody has to string the wire.<\/p>\n
Chad married Kendall two years ago. She\u2019s 35, four years younger than me. She works as a loan processor at the bank in the next town over. She\u2019s pretty and organized and keeps a very clean house.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d met her maybe a dozen times. Mostly in the school parking lot. Once at a Christmas program, where she sat next to Chad\u2019s mother and clapped politely.<\/p>\n
She was never mean to Emma, as far as I knew. She just never seemed easy around her. Emma said Kendall had a lot of rules.<\/p>\n
That didn\u2019t bother me. Rules are fine. Every house has them. I had my own list of rules, and Emma thought mine were just as bad.<\/p>\n
But there had been little things.<\/p>\n
A few months earlier, Emma came home from a weekend and told me Kendall said she \u201cused her ears as an excuse.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another time, Kendall told her she didn\u2019t need to wear her hearing aids at the supper table, because \u201cwe\u2019re right here, we can just talk louder.\u201d<\/p>\n
I mentioned that to Chad on the phone. The call went sideways fast. He thought I was picking at his wife. I thought he wasn\u2019t listening. By the end of it, we were both dragging up things from four years earlier that had nothing to do with hearing aids.<\/p>\n
And Emma was in the next room hearing every word. Because, of course, she had her aids in.<\/p>\n
After that night, I learned to let the small things go. Chad and I had worked so hard to stop fighting in front of her. I wasn\u2019t going to start again over a supper table rule.<\/p>\n
But this was not a supper table rule.<\/p>\n
I stood at the front desk with my hand still on the phone and thought about calling Chad.<\/p>\n
Anybody would have. It was the obvious thing. And later, more than one person asked me why I didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the plain truth. A phone call would have started a fight. And a fight wasn\u2019t going to put sound in Emma\u2019s ears before lunch.<\/p>\n
Chad would get defensive. I would get sharp. He\u2019d call Kendall, and Kendall would tell her side, and by the time anybody drove anywhere, it would be the middle of the afternoon.<\/p>\n
And the aids were sitting at Chad and Kendall\u2019s house, eleven miles out of town on a gravel road. Both of them were at work. Kendall\u2019s bank was in the opposite direction. Even if Chad agreed with every single word I said, somebody would have to leave work, drive out to the house, find the case and drive back into town.<\/p>\n
There was one more reason. It\u2019s the one I\u2019m least proud of.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t want to beg.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t want to call my ex-husband and ask, please, could his wife let our daughter hear. I wanted to just fix it. The way I\u2019d fixed most things for Emma on my own for four years.<\/p>\n
I also knew where Chad had been all weekend. Emma told me on the phone Friday night that her daddy was \u201cfixing fence with Uncle Mike\u201d and that she was going to help Kendall bake cookies.<\/p>\n
In early spring in eastern South Dakota, a man helping on a farm doesn\u2019t come in from the field until it\u2019s too dark to see the fence line.<\/p>\n
I would have bet the house that Chad didn\u2019t know. I would have bet it then, and I was right. But I didn\u2019t know I was right yet.<\/p>\n
All I knew was that my daughter was sitting in the front row of a third-grade classroom, watching her teacher\u2019s mouth, alone in a quiet she couldn\u2019t get out of.<\/p>\n
So I called the audiologist instead.<\/p>\n
I knew the number by heart.<\/p>\n
The receptionist, a woman named Deb who\u2019s been there as long as we\u2019ve been going, picked up on the second ring. I told her who I was. I told her Emma\u2019s aids were unavailable for the week. I asked whether they had a loaner pair.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnavailable how?\u201d Deb asked. \u201cLost? Broken? Is she all right?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s fine,\u201d I said. \u201cThey\u2019re just not with her. Somebody else has them, and I can\u2019t get them back today.\u201d<\/p>\n
There was a short pause on the line.<\/p>\n
Deb has been answering phones at a pediatric clinic for a very long time. I think she heard every single thing I didn\u2019t say.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have loaners,\u201d she said. \u201cWe keep a few pairs for when kids send theirs in for repair. Her test results are on file. Come now. Doctor can program them to her numbers while you wait.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sixty miles out,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen you\u2019d better start driving, honey,\u201d Deb said. I could hear that she was smiling, a little. \u201cWe\u2019ll be here.\u201d<\/p>\n
I hung up and went down the hall to Dr. Olson\u2019s operatory. He was leaning over a patient with a mirror and a scaler.<\/p>\n
I stood in the doorway in my fleece and said, \u201cI need to leave for a few hours. It\u2019s Emma.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dr. Olson is 62 and has been fixing teeth in our town since before I was born. He didn\u2019t ask a single question. He just waved the little mirror toward the door.<\/p>\n
\u201cGo,\u201d he said. \u201cKim can run the desk. Drive careful.\u201d<\/p>\n
Out in the waiting room, Mr. Peterson looked up from his magazine. \u201cEverything okay with your girl?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt will be,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
He gave me a thumbs-up.<\/p>\n
I drove out past the grain elevator. Chad\u2019s blue pickup was parked in its usual spot by the scale house. I didn\u2019t slow down.<\/p>\n
I took the two-lane west to the interstate and turned south toward Sioux Falls. The fields were bare and brown on both sides. Tractors were out here and there, working the ground with long clouds of dust trailing behind them.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a drive I\u2019ve made more times than I can count. Every audiology appointment. Every earmold fitting. Every time a battery door cracked or a tube split.<\/p>\n
Emma and I used to play the license plate game on that road. She liked finding Minnesota plates best, because she said they looked friendly.<\/p>\n
That morning, I drove it with both hands on the wheel and the radio off.<\/p>\n
Somewhere around Madison, I pulled over at a gas station and called the woman who\u2019d handled my divorce. Linda Haugen. Her office is above the hardware store on Main, and she charges $200 an hour and is worth every penny.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t want to start a war. I just wanted to know where I stood.<\/p>\n
Linda listened without interrupting. When I was done, I heard her pull a file drawer open.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve got your parenting plan right here,\u201d she said. \u201cPage seven. Section four. \u2018Each parent shall ensure the minor child has continuous access to all prescribed medical devices, medications and treatments while in that parent\u2019s care.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
She read it slowly, so I\u2019d hear every word.<\/p>\n
\u201cHearing aids are prescribed medical devices, Amanda. Prescribed by a doctor, fitted to her specific hearing test. What happened this weekend wasn\u2019t a house rule. It was a violation of a court order.\u201d<\/p>\n
I sat in that gas station parking lot and stared at a sign advertising two-for-one hot dogs.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo what do I do?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve got options,\u201d Linda said. \u201cYou could file a motion. You could ask the court to modify the plan, maybe add language that names the stepparent. Some people would.\u201d She paused. \u201cBut I\u2019ve known you a long time. What do you actually want?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI want my daughter to hear,\u201d I said. \u201cToday. And I want it to never happen again.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThen go get her those loaners,\u201d Linda said. \u201cAnd write down everything. Dates, times, what Emma said, what the teacher said. Every word. If it ever happens again, you call me, and we\u2019ll walk into that courtroom with a stack of paper so thick the judge won\u2019t need to hear from anybody else.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd if it doesn\u2019t happen again?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThen you\u2019ll have a notebook you never needed,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s the best kind.\u201d<\/p>\n
I got back on the interstate.<\/p>\n
I kept thinking about Emma sitting at her desk with the spelling words floating past her like smoke. I kept thinking about how she\u2019d walked into school that morning without her aids and without me. And how she must have known, right from the front door, exactly what kind of day it was going to be.<\/p>\n
And I kept thinking about Kendall.<\/p>\n
I tried hard to be angry at her, and I was. But underneath the anger was something else. Something more like confusion.<\/p>\n
Kendall wasn\u2019t stupid. She was a careful woman who processed other people\u2019s mortgages for a living. She checked every signature line. She read every fine print.<\/p>\n
How could she look at a child who couldn\u2019t hear, and take away the very thing that let her hear?<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t have an answer by the time I pulled into the clinic parking lot. I just had a sore jaw from clenching it for an hour straight.<\/p>\n
Deb met me at the window. She\u2019s somewhere near sixty, with reading glasses on a beaded chain. She came all the way around the counter and squeezed my arm before she said a single word.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s ready for you,\u201d Deb said. \u201cGo on back.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dr. Meyer had a pair of loaner hearing aids laid out on a paper towel on her desk, already hooked up to her computer by a thin cord.<\/p>\n
They were plain beige. Nothing like Emma\u2019s purple ones.<\/p>\n
Dr. Meyer has known Emma since that very first booth with the blocks and the bucket. She looked up when I came in and didn\u2019t smile. She just nodded at the chair.<\/p>\n
\u201cI pulled her last audiogram from March,\u201d she said. \u201cHer hearing\u2019s stable, which is good news. I\u2019m setting these to her prescription now. They won\u2019t be exactly like hers, but they\u2019ll be close.\u201d<\/p>\n
I sat down in the chair where Emma usually sits. I watched the numbers move across the screen. Dr. Meyer worked fast and didn\u2019t make me fill the silence.<\/p>\n
After a while, she asked, without looking up, \u201cDo you want to tell me what happened?\u201d<\/p>\n
So I told her. The weekend. The supper table. The talking back. Friday. I told it as plainly as I could.<\/p>\n
When I finished, Dr. Meyer stopped typing. She took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI see this more than you\u2019d think,\u201d she said. \u201cNot usually as a punishment. But grown-ups who don\u2019t understand. A grandparent who thinks she\u2019s faking. A stepparent who thinks the aids are like reading glasses. Something you only need now and then.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe can hear some without them,\u201d I said. \u201cThat\u2019s what confuses people. If you talk loud, right in front of her face, she gets most of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cRight. And so people think she\u2019s choosing not to listen.\u201d Dr. Meyer shook her head. \u201cShe\u2019s not choosing anything. Without these, she\u2019s guessing at half of every sentence, all day long. A school day like that is like running a race with a sack over your head.\u201d<\/p>\n
She tested the loaners in a little metal box that beeped and hummed. Then she snapped a pair of soft silicone domes onto the tubes in place of earmolds, because Emma\u2019s custom molds were back at Chad\u2019s house, sitting in a case with her own aids.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese will sit a little looser without her molds,\u201d she said. \u201cShe might get some whistling if they\u2019re not seated right. Push them in gently, and tell her to keep her hair tucked behind them. But she\u2019ll hear.\u201d<\/p>\n
She slid the loaners into a small clear pouch and set a card of 312 batteries beside it. Then she pushed a single sheet of paper across the desk.<\/p>\n
\u201cLoaner agreement,\u201d she said. \u201cJust says you\u2019ll bring them back in the same shape. Replacement value\u2019s $2,200 if they get lost, but nobody\u2019s ever had to pay it.\u201d<\/p>\n
I signed it. My signature looked shaky.<\/p>\n
Dr. Meyer pressed the pouch into my palm and closed my fingers around it.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo charge for loaners,\u201d she said. \u201cKeep them as long as you need them. And Amanda?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou did right, driving down here. A day matters at her age. Every day of words matters.\u201dPages:8<\/p>\n
Deb walked me back out to the lot. At the door, she held it open with one hip.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou tell that girl Deb said hi,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd tell her she still owes me a Minnesota plate.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was 10:10 when I got back on the interstate. I did the speed limit, maybe a hair over.<\/p>\n
The pouch sat on the passenger seat where I could see it. Every few miles, I reached over and touched it to make sure it was still there. The way you check on a sleeping baby in the back seat.<\/p>\n
I called the school office from a gas station at the edge of town. The secretary, Gail, told me Mrs. Lund\u2019s class would be out for late-morning recess until 11:30. That\u2019s the one the third graders get before lunch, and Mrs. Lund had playground duty that week.<\/p>\n
I pulled into the school lot at 11:15.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a one-story brick building, the same school Chad and I both went to as kids, with the gym at one end and the playground out back by the ball field. The flag was snapping hard in the wind. I could hear kids shrieking all the way from the parking lot.<\/p>\n
Mrs. Lund met me at the side door before I could even push the buzzer.<\/p>\n
She\u2019s in her fifties and has taught third grade in our town for almost thirty years. She had her graying brown hair pulled back and was wearing her green cardigan, the same one she wears every spring.<\/p>\n
\u201cThank goodness,\u201d she said. \u201cCome on. She\u2019s out back.\u201d<\/p>\n
She didn\u2019t ask what I was carrying. She walked me down the hall past the art room and the lost and found box, pushed open the back door, and we stepped out into the spring daylight.<\/p>\n
The grass along the edge of the playground had finally turned green after a long brown April. The blacktop was warm, and the four-square lines were faded almost white. Kids were swarming all over the climbing set and the big red slide. A few boys were arguing over a kickball out on the grass.<\/p>\n
And Emma was standing at the bottom of the red slide in her purple jacket.<\/p>\n
All by herself.<\/p>\n
She wasn\u2019t playing. She wasn\u2019t even trying to. She was standing very still with her back to the slide, watching the other kids\u2019 faces. Turning her head from one to the next. Trying to catch what they were saying by reading their lips. Her brown braid hung down over one shoulder.<\/p>\n
She had something clutched in both hands, held tight against her chest.<\/p>\n
It took me a second to see what it was.<\/p>\n
It was her little tan hearing aid case. The one that sits on her nightstand at her dad\u2019s house.<\/p>\n
It was empty.<\/p>\n
She had carried an empty case to school and held on to it all morning long.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever moved as fast in my life as I moved across that blacktop.<\/p>\n
She saw me when I was halfway to her, and her whole face changed.<\/p>\n
She ran. The empty case still in her hands, her braid bouncing. By the time she got to me, she was crying a little. That tired kind of crying a child does when she\u2019s been brave for too long and finally sees somebody she doesn\u2019t have to be brave in front of.<\/p>\n
I knelt down right there on the blacktop. I didn\u2019t care about my scrubs. I opened the pouch and shook one of the loaners out into my palm so she could see it.<\/p>\n
She looked at the tiny beige hearing aid lying there. Then she looked at me. I could see her trying to decide whether she was allowed to believe it.<\/p>\n
\u201cAre those mine?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n
She said it too loud. The way she talks when she can\u2019t hear her own voice.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re borrowed, baby,\u201d I said, slow and clear, so she could see my mouth. \u201cDr. Meyer loaned them to you. Yours are coming home.\u201d<\/p>\n
She held out her hand. I put the first one in it.<\/p>\n
She held it the way you\u2019d hold a baby bird that fell out of its nest.<\/p>\n
Mrs. Lund had come up behind us and was standing quietly a few steps back. Two little girls drifted over to see what was going on. Mrs. Lund turned them gently back toward the slide with a hand on each shoulder.<\/p>\n
I helped Emma tuck her hair behind her ears. Her fingers were shaking. So were mine.<\/p>\n
She knew exactly how to put them on. She\u2019s done it every morning for five years. But the soft domes were new to her, and she fumbled the first one.<\/p>\n
I pushed it in gently, the way Dr. Meyer showed me. Then the second one.<\/p>\n
I closed the battery doors. And we waited.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a little chime when they turn on. Then a few seconds while they wake up.<\/p>\n
And right at that moment, the bell rang for the end of recess.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a loud old bell, mounted on the brick wall by the back door. The same bell that rang when I was nine years old.<\/p>\n
Emma jumped about a foot in the air.<\/p>\n
Her eyes went wide. And then, before I could even ask if she was all right, she laughed.<\/p>\n
She threw her head back and laughed out loud, right there on the blacktop.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s so loud, Mama!\u201d she said, laughing and crying at the same time. \u201cI forgot it was that loud!\u201d<\/p>\n
I pulled her into my arms and held on.<\/p>\n
The other kids ran past us to line up at the back door. Sneakers slapping on the blacktop. Somebody yelling that it wasn\u2019t fair. Somebody else yelling that it was.<\/p>\n
Emma heard every bit of it. I could feel her listening, her whole body still against mine.<\/p>\n
\u201cCan you hear me?\u201d I whispered into her hair. Barely a breath.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes,\u201d she whispered back. \u201cYou smell like the dentist.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mrs. Lund crouched down beside us. Up close, I could see her eyes were wet too. She was doing her best to pretend they weren\u2019t.<\/p>\n
\u201cAmanda,\u201d she said quietly. \u201cI hope you don\u2019t mind. After I talked to you this morning, I called Chad myself. At the elevator.\u201d<\/p>\n
I looked at her.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought he ought to know what kind of morning his daughter had,\u201d she said. \u201cFrom me. Not secondhand. He asked if he could come see her. I told him lunch recess, at noon. He said he\u2019d be here.\u201d<\/p>\n
I stayed.<\/p>\n
Kim texted that the afternoon was quiet and Dr. Olson said to take the whole day. I sat in my car and ate half a granola bar and watched the clock on the dash.<\/p>\n
While I sat there, I took a little notebook out of my purse. The spiral kind I keep for grocery lists. I flipped to a clean page and started writing, the way Linda told me to.<\/p>\n
Monday, April 14. 8:20 a.m. Mrs. Lund called. Emma at school without hearing aids. Said stepmother took them Saturday for talking back. Return Friday. Emma cried through spelling test.<\/p>\n
10:10 a.m. Loaners from Dr. Meyer. Signed agreement.<\/p>\n
11:20 a.m. Found Emma alone at slide holding empty case.<\/p>\n
My handwriting got worse with every line. I kept writing anyway.<\/p>\n
At five minutes to noon, Mrs. Lund walked Emma back out to the playground. I went and stood with them by the chain-link fence.<\/p>\n
At noon exactly, Chad\u2019s pickup pulled into the lot.<\/p>\n
He got out still in his elevator clothes. A tan canvas work coat. A seed company cap. He came across the grass and onto the blacktop so fast he was almost jogging.<\/p>\n
He took the cap off before he reached the fence. Chad always did that when something mattered.<\/p>\n
Emma let go of my hand. She walked straight up to her father and stood there looking up at him, with the beige loaners tucked behind her ears.<\/p>\n
\u201cKendall said I could have them back Friday, Daddy,\u201d she said. \u201cI couldn\u2019t hear my spelling words.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chad went very still.<\/p>\n
He looked at me over her head. And I saw that Mrs. Lund had told him the truth, and that it had gone all the way in.<\/p>\n
Then he knelt down on the blacktop so his eyes were level with hers. My ex-husband is a big man. It took him a second to get down there. One knee, then the other.<\/p>\n
\u201cTell me about it,\u201d he said. \u201cTell me the whole weekend. I\u2019m listening.\u201d<\/p>\n
So she did.<\/p>\n
She told him about Saturday supper. How Kendall asked her to clear the table, and how she said, \u201cIn a minute, I\u2019m not your maid,\u201d which she\u2019d heard a girl say on a TV show.<\/p>\n
She told him how Kendall said she had a smart mouth and needed to learn there are consequences.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe said, \u2018You can have them back when you learn to listen,\u2019\u201d Emma told him. \u201cI said I can\u2019t listen without them. She said that was exactly the kind of talking back she meant.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chad\u2019s jaw moved. But he didn\u2019t say anything. He just kept nodding, slowly, so she\u2019d keep going.<\/p>\n
She told him about Sunday. How the TV was too quiet and nobody would turn on the captions. How church was just mouths moving. How she sat in the pew next to Grandma and didn\u2019t know when to stand up for the hymns, so she just watched everybody else and stood up late.<\/p>\n
She told him she cried in the bathroom so nobody would get mad.<\/p>\n
She told him about the spelling test. The empty case. Standing by the slide.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was going to tell you,\u201d she said. \u201cBut you were fixing fence with Uncle Mike, and you came home when I was asleep. And this morning you were in a hurry.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chad put one big hand on each of her shoulders.<\/p>\n
\u201cEmma,\u201d he said. \u201cListen to me. I didn\u2019t know. That\u2019s not an excuse. I should have known. I should have asked why you weren\u2019t wearing them this morning. And I didn\u2019t even look. I\u2019m sorry, honey.\u201d<\/p>\n
He took a breath. A long one.<\/p>\n
\u201cNobody takes those off you,\u201d he said. \u201cNot Kendall. Not me. Not anybody. Ever. For any reason. Those are your ears. You hear me?\u201d<\/p>\n
Emma nodded.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hear you,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
And then she giggled. Because it was a little bit of a joke, and she knew it.<\/p>\n
Chad laughed too. A rough, broken sound. He pulled her in against his canvas coat and held her a long time. Over her shoulder, he looked at me.<\/p>\n
I nodded. And that was all either of us needed to say about it right then.<\/p>\n
When he finally stood up, he turned to Mrs. Lund first.<\/p>\n
\u201cThank you for calling me,\u201d he said. \u201cI mean that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019s a good girl,\u201d Mrs. Lund said. \u201cShe works harder than any child in my room. She deserves to hear what she\u2019s working for.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then Chad turned to me.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou should have called me, Mandy,\u201d he said quietly.<\/p>\n
Nobody else has called me Mandy in four years.<\/p>\n
\u201cWould it have gone well?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t say it mean. I meant it as a real question.<\/p>\n
He thought about it. Honestly. I watched him do it.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d he said. \u201cProbably not. I\u2019d have defended her before I listened. That\u2019s on me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cChad,\u201d I said. \u201cThere\u2019s something else. I called Linda Haugen on the way down.\u201d<\/p>\n
His face changed. \u201cYou called a lawyer?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t hire her for anything. I just needed to know where we stood.\u201d I took a breath. \u201cPage seven of our parenting plan says both of us have to make sure Emma has her prescribed medical devices. Her hearing aids are prescribed. What happened this weekend broke a court order.\u201d<\/p>\n
He stared at me. Then he looked down at the blacktop.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not filing anything,\u201d I said. \u201cNot today. I don\u2019t want to. I just want you to know that I know. And I want it in writing somewhere that this happened. In case it ever happens again.\u201d<\/p>\n
He nodded slowly.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt won\u2019t,\u201d he said. \u201cBut you write it down anyway. You should.\u201d He put his cap back on. \u201cI\u2019m going home to get them. They\u2019ll be at your house before supper.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cChad,\u201d I said. \u201cKendall.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI know,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019ll talk to her. She\u2019s coming with me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Emma went back inside to eat her lunch, chattering at Mrs. Lund about the bell the whole way to the door.<\/p>\n
I went back to work for the afternoon, because the bills don\u2019t stop. I checked my phone about every four minutes.<\/p>\n
At 4:40, a little after Emma and I got home, Chad\u2019s pickup pulled into my driveway.<\/p>\n
I watched from the kitchen window.<\/p>\n
Chad got out of the driver\u2019s side. Then, after a long moment, the passenger door opened.<\/p>\n
And Kendall got out too.<\/p>\n
She was still in her bank clothes. A navy skirt and a cream blouse with a little name badge still clipped to it. Her eyes were red and swollen.<\/p>\n
She was holding Emma\u2019s purple hearing aids in both hands, cupped together. The same careful way Emma had held the loaner at recess.<\/p>\n
I went out onto the porch. Emma came out behind me and stood holding on to the back of my shirt.<\/p>\n
Kendall walked up to the bottom of the porch steps and stopped there. She didn\u2019t come up.<\/p>\n
I think she knew she hadn\u2019t been invited. And she was right.<\/p>\n
She looked at me. Then she looked down at Emma.<\/p>\n
\u201cEmma,\u201d she said. \u201cCan I talk to you? Your mom can stay right there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Emma looked up at me. I nodded.<\/p>\n
She came down two steps, so she was eye to eye with Kendall.Pages<\/p>\n
\u201cI took something from you that I had no business taking,\u201d Kendall said.<\/p>\n
Her voice shook. She took a breath and tried again.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I was your age and I talked back, my dad took away my clarinet. It was the thing I loved most in the whole world, and he locked it in his truck for a month. I hated it. I hated him for it. But I grew up thinking that\u2019s how you teach a kid. You take the thing she loves most.\u201d<\/p>\n
She swallowed hard.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t understand that your hearing aids aren\u2019t a toy. Or a treat. I thought you could hear fine if you just tried harder. Your dad told me today what Mrs. Lund said. About the spelling test. And standing by the slide.\u201d<\/p>\n
She stopped and pressed her lips together tight.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m so sorry, Emma. I was wrong. And I\u2019m not ever going to do it again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Emma looked at her for a long time.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve learned to wait when she does that. She\u2019s nine years old. But she\u2019s fair.<\/p>\n
\u201cDid you play the clarinet good?\u201d Emma finally asked.<\/p>\n
Kendall let out a breath that was almost a laugh.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot very,\u201d she said. \u201cBut I loved it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI love hearing,\u201d Emma said simply.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know,\u201d Kendall said. Her voice broke. \u201cI know that now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Emma held out her hand. Kendall put the purple hearing aids in it.<\/p>\n
Emma took off the loaners and handed them back to me. Then she put her own back in. One, and then the other. She did it without even looking, the way she does every morning, the custom molds sliding right into place.<\/p>\n
Then she frowned.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey need batteries,\u201d she said. \u201cThey died Saturday.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kendall looked stricken. All the color left her face.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t even know they had batteries,\u201d she whispered.<\/p>\n
Chad was standing back by the truck with his hands shoved in his coat pockets. He didn\u2019t say a word. But he didn\u2019t look away, either.<\/p>\n
He\u2019d made her come. And he\u2019d made her do it herself. And he stood there for it.<\/p>\n
I haven\u2019t always been fair to Chad. I\u2019ll say that plainly. But he did right that day.<\/p>\n
I went inside and got the card of 312 batteries and the little battery door tool out of the junk drawer.<\/p>\n
When I came back out, Kendall was sitting on the bottom porch step. And Emma was sitting right next to her.<\/p>\n
\u201cHere,\u201d I said, and I held them out.<\/p>\n
Not to Emma.<\/p>\n
To Kendall.<\/p>\n
Kendall looked up at me, surprised. Then she took them.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe door locks,\u201d Emma explained. Very serious. Leaning over Kendall\u2019s hands. \u201cYou use the little thing. Push here. No, the other way. And you have to peel the sticker off first and wait a minute so it wakes up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kendall\u2019s hands weren\u2019t steady. She dropped the first battery in the grass. All three of us got down on our hands and knees and looked for it.<\/p>\n
Chad found it with the toe of his boot.<\/p>\n
She got it on the second try. Then the other one.<\/p>\n
Emma smiled at her. She clicked the battery doors shut. She tipped her head and listened.<\/p>\n
\u201cOkay,\u201d she said. \u201cNow you know.\u201d<\/p>\n
I drove the loaners back to Sioux Falls that Saturday morning, since the clinic keeps Saturday hours twice a month.<\/p>\n
Emma came along. She found two Minnesota plates and one from Nebraska. She marched right up to the front window and reported all three to Deb, who wrote them down on a yellow sticky note like it was official business.<\/p>\n
\u201cThree plates,\u201d Deb said. \u201cYou\u2019re paid in full, young lady.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dr. Meyer checked Emma\u2019s own aids while we were there. They were fine. Emma told her the whole story about the recess bell, start to finish. Dr. Meyer listened to every word like it was the best thing she\u2019d heard all week.<\/p>\n
On the way out, Dr. Meyer slipped me a little packet of printed pages. \u201cHearing Loss: A Guide for Families.\u201d On the front, in pen, she\u2019d written: \u201cFor the stepmom. Page 4 especially.\u201d<\/p>\n
I gave it to Chad the next week when he picked Emma up. He looked at the note on the front and nodded.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe\u2019ll read it,\u201d he said. \u201cShe reads everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
Two weeks later, it was Chad\u2019s weekend again.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ll admit I didn\u2019t sleep well that Friday. I lay awake listening to the house creak. Around nine o\u2019clock, my phone buzzed on the nightstand with a text from a number I didn\u2019t have saved.<\/p>\n
It was a picture.<\/p>\n
Emma at Chad and Kendall\u2019s kitchen table in her pajamas, grinning ear to ear, with her purple hearing aids lying on a paper towel next to a card of batteries and the little tool.<\/p>\n
Under it, Kendall had written:<\/p>\n
\u201cChanged them myself. She says I did it right. Thought you\u2019d want to know.\u201d<\/p>\n
I looked at that picture for a long time, standing in my kitchen in my socks, before I wrote back.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t say anything big. I said thank you. I said goodnight. And I saved her number.<\/p>\n
The next week, I put the little spiral notebook in a manila envelope, the one with every date and time from that Monday written down. I sealed it and put it in the gray fireproof box in my closet with Emma\u2019s birth certificate and my copy of the parenting plan.<\/p>\n
Linda Haugen sent me a bill for her twenty-minute phone call. $67. Across the bottom, in her handwriting, she\u2019d written, \u201cHope you never need that notebook.\u201d<\/p>\n
I paid it the day it came.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve never opened that envelope since.<\/p>\n
Emma is ten now.<\/p>\n
She still sings off key in the children\u2019s choir. She still jumps every time the school bell rings, and then she laughs about it. Last fall, she wrote a report for school called \u201cMy Ears,\u201d and she read it out loud in front of the whole class. Mrs. Lund sent me a copy.<\/p>\n
In the last paragraph, Emma wrote: \u201cSome people think hearing aids are like glasses you can take off. They are not. They are like your ears. If somebody takes them, you are alone even in a room full of people. That is why you should never take somebody\u2019s ears.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chad hasn\u2019t missed a weekend. He also turned on the captions on every TV in his house. And he left them on.<\/p>\n
A few months after everything, I found out from Chad\u2019s mother that Kendall had bought a clarinet. A secondhand student model, off the internet, for $85. She practices in the back bedroom on Tuesday nights. Emma says she\u2019s still not very good.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut she loves it,\u201d Emma told me, very serious. \u201cSo that\u2019s what matters.\u201d<\/p>\n
And on the Monday afternoons after her weekends at her dad\u2019s, when Emma comes banging through my back door and drops her backpack on the kitchen floor, her hearing aids are always in her ears.<\/p>\n
And the batteries are always fresh.<\/p>\n
Kendall learned to change them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My Ex-Husband\u2019s Wife Took Away Our 9-Year-Old Daughter\u2019s $3,400 Hearing Aids as Punishment, So I Drove 60 Miles for Another Pair Mrs. Lund called me … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17417,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,9,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-family","category-inspiration","category-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailystoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailystoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailystoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailystoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailystoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19970"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dailystoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19970\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19971,"href":"https:\/\/dailystoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19970\/revisions\/19971"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailystoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailystoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailystoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailystoryus.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}