But she had never heard its patter.
Jenny was deaf. When she was young, people often looked at her with soft, sad eyes, as though someone had forgotten to give her an important piece of the world. But Jenny did not feel that way.
She noticed things other people hurried past.
She noticed the way an old woman's hands trembled when she held a cup of tea. She noticed the exact colour of the sky just before a storm. She noticed that every person smiled differently, and that sadness sometimes lived in the corners of people's eyes even when their mouths were laughing.
And Jenny painted all of it.
At first, she painted on scraps of paper. Then on the backs of old calendars her father brought home from work. Her mother would sometimes find blue skies painted across grocery lists and tiny flowers blooming on old bills.
Jenny! her mother would sign with mock annoyance. Jenny would grin and sign back, It needed more colour. As she grew older, life became less whimsical. Paint was expensive. Canvas was expensive. Art classes were expensive. And there were people who told her that painting was a lovely hobby but not a sensible future.
How will you make a living? they asked. Jenny didn't know.That frightened her.
For a while, she worked small jobs. She helped at a shop. She painted signs for a bakery. She decorated children's bedrooms. At night, when everyone else slept, she painted.
She painted until her fingers cramped. Sometimes she sold nothing for weeks.
Sometimes customers asked her to make something quick and cheap, as though art were like instant noodles. Sometimes people praised her paintings but walked away without buying them. Still, Jenny continued.
She learned how to paint walls, portraits, shop boards, wedding backdrops, and tiny watercolour cards. She learned how to speak to customers through messages and gestures. She learned how to manage money, negotiate prices, and say no when someone offered her far too little.
Slowly, people began to remember her. The deaf girl who painted the beautiful café wall. The artist who made that portrait of my grandmother.
The one who painted the bookstore window.
Work came little by little, not like fireworks, but like the first drops of rain. Years later, Jenny still wasn't famous.
No one stopped her on the street for photographs. Her paintings were not hanging in grand museums. But she had a small studio above a tailor's shop, with paint-stained floors and sunlight pouring through two wide windows.
Every morning, she unlocked the door. Every morning, she painted.
Her art paid her rent. It bought her food. It helped her care for her parents when they grew older. It became her bread and butter. And sometimes, when a child visited her studio and asked why she painted so much, Jenny would smile.
Then she would point to the world outside, the birds flying, the traffic moving, the clouds changing shape, and sign:
Because there is so much to hear, even when you cannot hear a thing. And then she would dip her brush into colour and paint the silence.