The Hearing Aids I Brought to Recess

Even if Chad agreed with every word I said, somebody would have to leave work, drive out to the house, find the case, and drive back in.

There was one more reason, and it is the one I am least proud of. I did not want to beg.

I did not 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 had fixed most things for Emma on my own for four years.

I also knew where Chad had been all weekend. Emma had told me on the phone Friday night that her dad was “fixing fence with Uncle Mike” and that she was going to help Kendall bake.

Early spring in eastern South Dakota, a man helping on a farm doesn’t come in from the yard until it’s too dark to see the fence line.

I would have bet the house that Chad didn’t know. I would have bet it then, and I was right, but I didn’t know I was right yet.

All I knew was that my daughter was sitting in the front row of a third grade classroom, watching her teacher’s mouth, alone in a quiet she couldn’t get out of.

So I called the audiologist instead.

I knew the number by heart. The receptionist, a woman named Deb who has been there as long as we have been going, picked up on the second ring.

I told her who I was and that Emma’s aids were unavailable for the week, and asked whether they had a loaner pair.

“Unavailable how?” Deb asked. “Lost? Broken? Is she all right?”

“She’s fine,” I said. “They’re just not with her. Somebody else has them, and I can’t get them back today.”

There was a short pause on the line. Deb has been answering phones at a pediatric clinic for a long time. I think she heard everything I did not say.

“We have loaners,” she said. “We 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.”

“I’m sixty miles out,” I said.

“Then you’d better start driving,” Deb said, and I could hear that she was smiling, a little. “We’ll be here.”

I hung up and went down the hall to Dr. Olson’s operatory. He was leaning over Mr. Peterson with a mirror and a scaler.

I stood in the doorway in my fleece and said, “I need to leave for a few hours. It’s Emma.”

Dr. Olson is sixty-two and has been fixing teeth in our town since before I was born. He did not ask a single question.

He just waved the mirror toward the door. “Go,” he said. “Kim can run the desk. Drive careful.”

Mr. Peterson, with his mouth wide open and a suction tube hanging out of it, gave me a thumbs-up.

I drove out past the grain elevator, where Chad’s pickup was parked in its usual spot by the scale house, and I did not slow down.

I took the two-lane west to the interstate and turned south. The fields were bare and brown on both sides, and tractors were out here and there, working ground with dust trailing behind them.