Muted

Nadine Clarke arrived at work a few minutes early. She sat down at her desk, fired up her computer, and sipped the coffee she’d brought from home. She had a Zoom meeting starting soon and needed to prepare. She didn’t understand why she had to come into the office in person to participate in a Zoom meeting, but she supposed she was used to it.

When it was time to join the meeting, Nadine clicked on the meeting invitation, and familiar faces filled the screen. She said hello, but no one responded.

“I must be muted,” she said, even though saying you’re muted out loud was always pointless. She chuckled to herself and checked her settings. She wasn’t muted. She checked her headphones, which seemed to be working. She turned her mic off, then on again.

"Can anybody hear me?" she asked. No one replied to her at all, but the meeting started as it normally did.

She could hear everyone else just fine. Nadine’s boss had the camera pointed at his forehead as usual, because he didn’t know how to adjust his camera. He made a joke about “zooming in” and everyone else fake-laughed. Nadine tried to weigh in with an update, but other people just kept talking.  

Why couldn’t they hear her?  

Oh well. She would just listen for the rest of the meeting. She planned to take detailed notes — at least that was something she was good at — but then Nadine realized there was an AI bot already taking notes. She tried to arrange her face to look like she was still participating somehow.

After the meeting ended, Nadine decided to venture out to get herself another coffee. She went to a café near her office. When she got to the front of the line, she ordered a latte with oat milk. The barista was a young man who looked like he was in his 20s. He didn’t respond to her request (the music was pretty loud in there), so she repeated herself.

“Excuse me? Could I please have a small latte with oat milk?” Nadine asked.  

Nothing.

“Or, sorry, do I have to call it a ‘tall?’” she tried. Still no response.

She turned to the person behind her, a man who looked like he was in his 30s and was wearing a suit.

“Can you hear me?” she asked him. It was a joke; of course, he could hear her. “I mean, it is just me, or is that barista completely ignoring me?”

The man didn’t respond, although he seemed to be very interested in listening to the conversation of the two twenty-something women behind him. Well, maybe he was just absorbed in eavesdropping on a riveting drama. Nadine walked over to where the coffee orders were waiting to be picked up.

“Latte with oat milk!” the barista said.

“Is this mine?” she asked, but no one answered. She shrugged. “I’m taking this!” she shouted as she took the coffee. “I didn’t pay for it. Sorry to whoever ordered it. They’ll make you another one, I guess?”

Nadine hoped maybe her petty coffee theft would at least trigger a response, but to her surprise, nobody did anything as she walked back outside with her coffee. Nadine was usually quite the rule follower, so this was very unlike her, but it seemed like it was the only way she could get a coffee, and she really needed one. A teenage girl was making her way into the coffee shop as Nadine was leaving.

“Excuse me,” Nadine said to her. “This might sound crazy, but can you hear me?”

The girl didn’t say anything, although Nadine realized that the girl had earbuds in. Nadine tried to gesture for her to remove her earbuds, but the girl didn’t pay her any attention whatsoever.

Nadine went back to her office. She said hello to one of her colleagues on the way back to her desk. He didn’t seem to hear her. Maybe he was deep in concentration and didn’t want to lose focus. Still, it seemed like a pattern was starting to emerge.

“What on earth is going on today?” she asked.

She managed to get through the rest of the day, communicating by email and text and staying silent during meetings. Everyone always talked over her anyway, so it wasn’t actually that different than most of her other days.

After work, Nadine went to the gym. She said hello to the receptionist, who didn’t greet her. While she was running on the treadmill, Nadine felt her stomach rumble. Wait a minute, maybe that barista had called out “whole milk latte” instead of “oat milk latte.” Uh-oh. Dairy did not agree with Nadine. She tried to hold in the gas that was bubbling in her gut. But then she remembered: no one could hear her. She let one rip, loudly. No one batted an eye.

When Nadine got home, her husband, Dave, was already there. She walked in and took off her coat.

“Hi,” she said to him.

“Hello,” he said.

“You can hear me!” Nadine said.

“Of course I can hear you,” he said.

“Thank goodness,” Nadine said, feeling relieved. “I’ve had a really crazy day! You won’t believe what happened. No one could hear me! Not at work, or the coffee shop, or the gym. I even farted loudly while I was on the treadmill, and no one even gave me the side-eye. It was so odd! I was starting to think I was losing my mind. I’m so glad you can hear me. What do you think is going on?” Nadine asked.

Dave turned on the TV but didn’t say anything to Nadine.

"Dave? Can you hear me?” Nadine asked.

”Yes!” he shouted.

“Oh, good,” Nadine said.

Dave didn’t say anything back; Nadine realized he was watching football, and the team he was rooting for had just scored a touchdown.

Nadine poked him in the arm. Dave turned to her. “I’m sorry. Did you say something?”

”Never mind,” she mumbled.

She walked upstairs. Her son was playing a video game where he was trying to kill a bunch of zombies. If she yelled at a zombie, would it hear her?  

"Hi, sweetie,” she said to him. He ignored her.

Nadine showered and put on clean clothes. Her son paused his video game and looked at her.

“Mom,” he said.

"Hi. Can you hear me?” she asked.

"Of course, I can hear you. What’s for dinner?” He asked.

"Well, we’re going to have chicken and a vegetable.”

At the mention of the word “vegetable,” her son’s eyes glazed over, and he resumed playing his video game.

"Did you finish your homework?” Nadine asked him.

He didn’t respond; he could no longer hear her.

Nadine saw her daughter sitting on her bed in her room.

"Hi, honey,” she said to her daughter.

Her daughter was scrolling on TikTok and didn’t answer. Then she looked up for a moment.

"Mom, can you give me twenty dollars so I can go to a movie with my friends tomorrow?”

“Sure,” Nadine said.

“Thanks, Mom.”

“Did you do your chores?” Nadine asked. But her daughter had gone back to TikTok scrolling and could no longer hear her.

The next morning, Nadine decided to take a day off from work so she could get checked out by a doctor. She called her doctor’s office to make an appointment, but she realized after going through a phone tree for 15 minutes that, of course, the person on the other end of the line couldn’t hear her. So she scheduled an appointment online.

When she arrived at the doctor’s office, she was able to check in with her smartphone. She took a seat and waited to be called. A nurse finally called her name. Nadine stood up and followed the nurse, who weighed Nadine and took her blood pressure.

“The doctor will be with you in a few minutes,” she said, leaving the room.

Nadine waited, and when the doctor appeared, he cleaned his hands and sat down in front of a computer, looking at Nadine’s chart.

"Your bloodwork is normal,” he said. He hadn’t even looked directly at her or asked her why she was there.

“I’m experiencing something strange,” Nadine said. “It seems like some people can’t hear me at all, or they can only hear me some of the time. I think some people don’t even see me. Is this really happening? Or is it all in my head?”

He peered at her chart more. “You could stand to lose some weight,” he said. “Your BMI is a little high.”

“I work out four times a week, and I have a very healthy diet. I don’t even drink any alcohol any—”

The doctor didn’t let her finish her sentence. “It’s a simple matter of calories in, calories out,” he said. “Stop by the front desk, and they’ll give you a pamphlet about proper nutrition.”

He stood up and walked out.  

Nadine left the doctor’s office feeling humiliated and no closer to getting any answers, tears threatening to spill from her eyes and ruin her supposedly tear-proof mascara (although there really was no such thing). What. Was. Going. On?

Maybe she needed some retail therapy. She stopped by a boutique clothing store on her way home. The clothes in the window had always appealed to her, but she’d never gone in. That day, when Nadine browsed the racks, nothing was in her budget or her size. She saw a sales associate and walked over to her.

“Excuse me, but do you have anything in this store larger than a size four?” Nadine asked. The sales associate breezed past her. Nadine felt like an invisible buffalo. She knocked over a tray of dainty jewelry as she stormed out.

She saw a hair salon nearby with a sign outside that said they took walk-ins. Nadine decided to get a haircut.

“What would you like to do today?” the cool, young stylist asked Nadine.

Nadine was relieved that the woman could hear her.

“Just a trim, please,” Nadine said.

She took her glasses off while the stylist cut her hair. Without her glasses, Nadine couldn’t see her reflection in the mirror as the stylist snipped. When the stylist was done, Nadine put her glasses back on. She was stunned to see that her below-shoulder-length hair had been chopped into a bob. Her hair now only reached her earlobes.

“There you go, a nice, stylish, age-appropriate bob,” the stylist said, looking pleased with herself.

Nadine wanted to protest that she had just asked for a trim, but she kept her mouth shut; she didn’t want to offend the stylist. Besides, what would be the point? She had a feeling the stylist wouldn’t listen to anything Nadine had to say.

That night, Nadine was supposed to go to a meeting at the local library, where she volunteered on the Friends of the Library board. Nadine was worried that no one would be able to hear her (or maybe even see her) at the meeting, but she figured she’d at least go and listen so she could keep up with what was going on at the library. Maybe she could live out the rest of her days as a ghost haunting the library. That actually didn’t sound so bad.

She arrived a few minutes before the meeting was supposed to start. Several board members were already gathered in a meeting room. Nadine walked into the room and braced herself for no one being able to hear her, but instead, she was greeted warmly.

“Hi, Nadine!” Anne, the Chair of the board, said.

“Oh! Hi, Anne,” Nadine said. “You can hear me.”

“Of course, I can hear you. My hearing’s not that bad,” Anne said.

“Even I can hear you, and my hearing IS bad,” said an eighty-something woman named Lou Ellen. Many of the board members were ten, twenty, or even thirty years older than Nadine.

“You can all hear me?” Nadine asked.

Everyone assured Nadine they could hear her.

“All of you?” she asked.  

“Oh, it’s happened to you,” Anne said. The others all nodded their heads and murmured in agreement.

“Wait, you know what’s going on?” Nadine asked.

“You’ve been muted,” Anne said.

“I have? Who muted me? And how do I un-mute myself?” Nadine asked.

Everyone in the room laughed.

“You can’t,” Anne said.

“What?! How did this happen?” Nadine asked.

“It happens to all of us, sooner or later,” Lou Ellen said.

“Even me,” Robert, another board member, said. He was one of the few board members who was a man (most of the other board members were women). “To a lesser extent than to the women, but when I tell people I’m retired, their eyes glaze over.”

“This has happened to all of you?” Nadine asked.

“Let me guess,” Anne said. “No one can hear you at work, or out in public. Your family hears you when they want something from you, but at other times, they don’t seem to hear you. Your doctor doesn’t really listen to you. I’m guessing from your haircut that your hair stylist didn’t listen to you, either.”

“That’s exactly right!” Nadine said. “But I still don’t understand how it happened.”

“It’s called aging, dear,” Lou Ellen said. Everyone else nodded.

“You’ve become a Woman of a Certain Age,” Anne explained. “For some of us, it happens at 40, or 50, or even 60 or 70. Sometimes it happens when our hair turns grey, or when we hit menopause.”

“There’s no way to fix it?” Nadine asked.

“Some people try,” Anne said. “They wear loud lipstick or funky outfits, or start yelling or posting outrageous things online, thinking that will fix it. But none of it really works.”

Nadine felt like crying again — partly out of frustration, and partly out of relief that other people knew what was happening to her, and heard her, and accepted her. They would show her the way forward. “So I just have to get used to people not listening to me, or in some cases, not even seeing me?”

“There are some people who will always listen to you. Your therapist. The members of your book club, more or less. Sometimes they get distracted; they’re only human, and they all have their own stuff going on. But they’ll always see you. A handful of your friends.”

Nadine nodded. “Okay. I understand,” she said.

“There are upsides,” Anne said. “You can walk right by a construction site and not get a single catcall!”

“But don’t be tempted to shoplift. It won’t work. I learned that the hard way,” Lou Ellen said.

“And I suppose I can really multitask during Zoom meetings,” Nadine said.

“That’s the spirit,” Anne said.

Anne called the library meeting to order. Several times during the meeting, Nadine contributed ideas for fundraising events. She was thanked numerous times for her creativity and her efforts. She was proud to be part of this group of people who were kind and cared deeply about the community.

She left feeling appreciated and understood. Even if it was only for a moment, she’d take it.

After all, she’d be spending the rest of her days walking through the world in a semi-invisible state. She knew she had to get used to it.

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