Page 100 of The Sign for Home

I pushed the door open and was stunned by what I saw and smelled. A rank decaying effluvium wafted from the dimly lit room. A tray filled with what looked like breakfast and lunch dishes was stacked on a table against the wall. There were at least two empty Ensure cans on the floor. While the sheets looked clean, the room had very little character, with no photographs or posters on its walls. And the window faced another cinder-block wall, letting in very little light. But most shocking of all was the figure in the bed. Shri’s body looked too thin and at the age of twenty-two looked the size of a twelve-year-old. Her legs were disproportionally small, atrophied from lack of use. Because she faced away from the doorway, all I could see of her head was a pile of thick black hair on the pillow.

“Shri seems to be sleeping,” I signed, containing my reaction. “I think she might be sicker than we thought. She’s very thin.”

Arlo smiled. “Ha ha. High school, Shri always smaller and skinny. Wow. Still small? Okay. I go in now. See you later.”

I gave him directions to the bed, and Arlo nudged Snap forward. Her nose was going crazy with the smells. I wanted desperately to follow them, but just as Arlo arrived at the edge of the bed, that cleaning woman came up behind me and pulled the door closed.

“Is best if crazy deaf-dumb kid doesn’t even see two people,” she said in an Eastern European accent. “She is very dangerous.”

“Actually, Shri is a grown woman,” I said. “And just a heads-up, you should never use the word ‘dumb.’ The proper word is—”

Before I could finish talking, the housekeeper shrugged her shoulders and moved on.

I stood outside Shri’s room for fifteen minutes, making sure I didn’t hear any screaming or glass breaking. I quickly texted Molly and Hanne.

The eagle has landed! They are in the room together. All seems cool. However, this place is not at all set up to work with the Deaf. The people I’ve met seem a little clueless. Cultural mediation time. Gonna go find a manager and make sure they get good interpreters and understand about Shri’s language needs. Wish me luck.

49IN YOUR EYES

Shri’s room is too dark to see anything. Standing at the edge of the bed, you touch the cool sheets. A slight vibration means a living body lies there, inches from you. On Judgment Day, Jehovah God is supposed to bring the dead back to life. That’s what this feels like. Only Shri is real. Shri is true.

You take a big breath and let the tips of your fingers slide across the bed until they meet the warmth of Shri’s back. Gently, gently, you let your fingers touch her shoulder. Bones and skin. Much thinner than you remember. Still her warm body rises and falls with each breath.Alive. Shri is alive.

Wake up. Wake up, Shri!You tap her small shoulder. Nothing. You tap again, harder. Shri’s body jolts awake. You are so happy that you throw your arms around her. A split second later you feel a small fist hit you in the side of your head. The blow, more shocking than painful, makes you stumble backward. Snap scratches your leg and tries to pull you to the door, but you pull her back to the bed. When you reach out for Shri you feel the slaps and punches of tiny hands like the beating wings of a furious butterfly. Shri is too weak to cause any real pain, except to your heart, which is in agony.

“Shri, please!” you sign. “Why hit? Don’t you recognize? Remember? A-r-l-o. Name-sign Arlo! I understand you angry. Before I didn’t know. If know… I run here fast. Please, punching me, stop! Talk with me!”

You press your crying face into the sheets as her blows continue on your head and back, and you raise your hands in case Shri wants to speak to you. After the longest moment, the punching stops and Shri’s thin, dry fingers sign angrily into your hands.

“Where? Where?! I waiting, waiting for you. So long! Many years! You never come! All alone! I hate you! Go away!”

But you don’t leave. You pull your body farther onto the bed and Shri’s tiny, crying body pulls itself into your lap and you wrap your arm around her. Her bony back is like a basket of sticks. Her hair is still thick, and longer than before.

Sniff.

You breathe in. All you can smell is the hard soap used to clean Shri’s hair, the strong detergent used to disinfect her sheets and pajamas, the scent of medicine on her breath.Gone? Is Shri still gone?No. Underneath it all, Shri is there, in the shape of her fingers, the cadence of her signs, and your own longing to protect. Ghost child is here. You are crying, Shri is crying. Snap puts her front legs on the bed and licks the tears from both your faces.

“You dream?” Shri asks. “You dream or real, which? Tell me!”

Over the next hour, you tell Shri the story of your last five and a half years. You tell her about being pulled from the Rose Garden School and sent to live with Brother Birch, about their lies, about trying to forget, about writing the essay, about getting in contact with Big Head Lawrence who is now called Larry, about Cyril and Hanne (but not everything about Hanne). The words will not stop flowing. It is just like your nighttime conversations back at the Rose Garden School.

When you finish signing, Shri’s fragile hands, like wild horses freed from their pens, buck and twist beneath your fingers. What ofherfive and a half years?

“Five years and one half ago I sent hospital. Stay how long? Onemonth, two month, three month. Almost die, but not die. C-O-M-A. When I wake up, I look around. Recognize nothing.Where?Rehab hospital. Can’t move. Why? Whole body covered bandages, braces. Shocked. Everyone ask: Why you fall from roof? I say, I don’t remember. Psychologist tell everyone I jump, try kill myself. Not true.”

“Truth… what?”

When Shri tells you the whole true story, the one to replace all the made-up stories that have filled that spot in your brain, it doesn’t start on the Day That Changed Everything. Her story starts months before. She reminds you about that day when Crazy Charles attacked you after you peed in his locker, and how Shri confessed that she let Crazy Charles kiss her behind the gym if he would agree to leave you and your friends alone.

“Yes, yes. I remember,” you say.

“But before I didn’t tell whole truth,” Shri says, her hands shaking and growing cold. “When I kiss Crazy Charles, he want more. He says,I love you, I love you. You my girlfriend.I say,No, no.But Crazy Charles not accept so…”

She couldn’t tell Crazy Charles about you and her being sweethearts. If she had, he and the Deaf Devils would have hurt you again. So Shri lied to Crazy Charles and said that her mama made a promise to the Blue God and the Elephant God that she would not date anyone and by even kissing Crazy Charles that one time she was doing a very bad thing.

“Crazy Charles very sad,” Shri signs. “Crazy Charles said,Okay, okay, I understand.But he heartbroken and express himself—can’t. No words. After that, I frightened to let other people see you and me together. Dating, we must secret. Then what happened? Marla, very jealous, she video you and me kissing behind cafeteria and show Crazy Charles. She tell him,Arlo and Shri sweethearts long time. Sex together.That night Crazy Charles and Deaf Devils want to beat you. They go looking for us in Secret Forest.”

A tornado of feelings swirls inside your body as Shri continues the story: fury at what Crazy Charles might have done, fear for what Shri is about to relive, and utter humiliation that you are unable to go back in time and protect Shri. But underneath it all is unbelievable joy that the fingers telling you the horrible story, at this very moment, belong to Shri, not a ghost, not a demon, but a living breathing human.Shridevi Mukherjee is alive.

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