“Maybe some people think a hearing device shouldn’t be a fashion accessory,” I said

The first thing I noticed was her Chinese braids — two braids,
with colored strands running through them, and here and there a crystal bead. Between the braids was Batya’s smile.
There was something a bit odd about those braids. I looked again.
“Hey,” I said, “those are the cables from your cochlear implants!”
“You like it?” Batya smiled with delight. “My sister did it for me. We took the longer cables, because the regular ones were too short to weave into the braids.”
I looked closely to see how it was done. The cable came out of the magnet that was attached to Batya’s head. Then it was woven into the braid. Two blue crystal beads were strung on it along the way. Finally, the cable exited the braid and was attached to the processor behind Batya’s ear.
“You’re so funny,” I said. “I like it.”
“A girl in my class asked me if it was okay with my mother,” Batya said with a little laugh. “Why wouldn’t it be okay with my mother?”
“Maybe some people think a hearing device shouldn’t be a fashion accessory,” I said. I didn’t add that my mother would never, never allow that. And with crystal beads! I knew that without asking her.
“Why not?” Batya said. “I have a few different covers for the magnet, in all different colors, and colored springs for the cables. Just like people wear nice-looking glasses, why shouldn’t I wear a pretty hearing device?”
When Batya was a year old, she told me, they went to get her an American passport at the embassy. Her mother put a little American flag sticker on her hearing device in honor of the event. “Back then, they didn’t have all the accessories you can get now,” Batya explained. “So my mother would use cute stickers, or cut out designs from contact paper. One time she stuck on a smiley face, another time a butterfly, and she even drew some Hello Kitty stickers for me herself.”
In our house, it’s different. My parents would rather not make a big deal out of things like that. They believe in playing it down. Not talking about it. “It” is not an issue.
“So what was it you wanted to talk to me about?” Batya asked, suddenly curious.
“I have to decide whether to have the surgery or not,” I said. “My father is supposed to hand over NIS 30,000 tonight as an advance — if I tell him I want to go ahead with it.”
“Whew, that’s a lot of money.”
“It sure is.” For that amount of money, Ima has to work five months without spending a single shekel. I know, because once I heard her say she makes 6,000 a month after deductions. “We’ll get the money back from Kupat Cholim, but only if we go through with the surgery. Otherwise that’s it — my parents lose the money.”
“And why would you not go through with it?”
“Because I’m so scared.”