• Sound at the tables on the pier outback was muffled by the background slur of surf and wind. With the waves, the sound was not reflected at all, but fractured it in all directions. On the back deck, a customer’s words disappeared as if they had never been.

• The kitchen itself was all hard wood and metal, the water in the sinks running and the clang of a pan on the stove, the chopping of a knife. Here at least it was easier to read the situation, people’s body language, complete with props. She could make a good guess at what had been said.

Over the years, she’d learned to prefer being on her own. Alone, she didn’t worry she’d misheard (handing someone the check when they’d asked to move to the deck). The way she got stared at when she made a mistake made her feel so much more lonely.

So, she took long walks on the island, exploring. Away from town, the dirt roads moved from patches of jungle to bright clearings with small cabins, goats and red dirt.

Aside from a few beaches near town, the shoreline was deserted. Mile after mile of boulders and sand and lizards, donkeys blinking in the shade of the palm trees. She’d walk until she found a quiet cove, then she’d place her hearing glasses on her folded towel and wade into the waves to snorkel. The water was clear, and fish flitted about, whimsical and shimmering. What she enjoyed the most however was that, with her head underwater, she could truly hear again.

Most of her hearing had disappeared overnight when she was eight. She’d had a bad ear infection (she used to get them a lot), went to bed feverish and aching. She woke the next morning, a Tuesday in May, to a pillow wet with pus and a world eerily quiet except for a small hissing noise like a deflating tire in her right ear (what would later turn out to be her good ear).

Since that day, the only place she could hear well without gadgets was in the dense medium of water. There, sound somehow bypassed her middle ear. Perhaps it was because the human body, after all, was mostly water. Any sound down here just continued unimpeded through her body to vibrate deep in her skull, reaching whatever was left of her hearing.

In the sea, sound had clarity and complexity and range. The susurrus of the waves, the hiss of tiny creatures, the tumbling of pebbles, it was all crisp and immediate, no static from the hearing aids. Since the sickness took her hearing, she thought of the sea as Oz or Narnia, some vivid world where strange creatures glittered and floated and magical powers were granted for a limited time. She thought of herself as the little mermaid, who suffered on land and felt at home in the sea.

The only negative part of swimming was that when she had to step out onto dry land, she returned to something worse than before, because, wading back onto the beach, she couldn’t put her glasses on until her hair dried. Seawater could short-circuit the electronics.