“Ruh ruh,” he says.
His mouth is bad-kissing-monster shaped.
“Ruh ruh.”
“Start again,” I say. But he won’t.
“Ruh ruh.” He stays on one word with his bad-kissing-monster shaped mouth, waiting for me to get it.
I reach for my pen in my bag.
He shakes his head.
“Ruh ruh.”
He holds up one finger. He thinks my lipreading him is a game of charades.
“Ruh ruh.”
“Can you remember your fingerspelling?” I ask.
Uh oh. He is angry now.
“RUH RUH.”
He’s still cloves and cinnamon and star anise like he was when we first met. Peeling wood and bark, soft around us. But a moulding lichen has grown and we are chewing cud.
“Ruh ruh.”
“Start again,” I say.
He reckons we don’t talk in sentences, a word should be enough. But I want a sentence.
“Ruh ruh.”
He’s never been a “Never mind” or a “Doesn’t matter”. He’s never been a casual dismisser. We wouldn’t have got this far if he was.
But the lichen’s really taking hold now.
“Ruh ruh?”
And he doesn’t scratch at his lips and nose these days. I’ll give him that. He learnt that much, even if he can’t remember his fingerspelling.
“Ruh ruh.”
Lipreading is predicting. You see the words coming.
“Nonsense?” I say.
And he smiles and nods and I pick at my tongue.
Lichen
William Davidson lives in York and works as an English tutor for deaf students.