Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 126003 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 630(@200wpm)___ 504(@250wpm)___ 420(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 126003 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 630(@200wpm)___ 504(@250wpm)___ 420(@300wpm)
Maeko and Budi bend down as well and they are hugging like long-lost family members.
“Who are they?” the woman asks.
I watch them. Paulo, with his brown skin and dark hair. Maeko, fair and Asian. And Budi, something in between. All contrasting with Irina’s glaring European features. I look back at the woman. “They’re her brothers.”
“I thought she was Russian, or something like that. She spoke some language. But then she didn’t talk again. Just… came in here and started signing using signs I’ve never seen before. I know Brazilian Sign Language.” The blonde woman looks at me, like she can’t make sense of things, and she desperately wants me to help her make sense of things. “That’s not Brazilian Sign Language.”
No. I doubt very much these signs have ever been recorded anywhere. And the little girl understood them. “Where did that little girl come from?”
“She was found in a warehouse down by the cruise ships about three weeks ago, huddling in a corner, cold and barely wearing anything. She was dehydrated and hadn’t eaten in days. But she refused to talk and didn’t respond to anyone. Not even the doctors. We tried to test her hearing, but she wouldn’t respond to that either. The school fosters all deaf children in Miami-Dade County, so she came here to live with us. This is the first time she’s acknowledged anyone, let alone spoken in signs. What language is that?”
The blonde woman looks at me, but I don’t answer. Not out loud, anyway.
Because it’s a camp language.
That little girl came from a camp.
CHAPTER 33
I understood that I couldn’t stay in the school. I did. I got it. But once I sat down in front of the little girl there was no way I was getting back up again.
She signed to me. She asked me for help. There was no way I was leaving her there.
So I just… pretended to be deaf. It was, after all, a school for the deaf. And I pretended not to understand the signs of the woman in white who brought me here. That wasn’t entirely a lie. I don’t understand all her signs. I understand some of them, but… it’s like we’re not really speaking the same language.
Then I start to wonder if it’s even a real language at all. The one I use, that is. The one this little girl uses. I never thought much about the sign language, to be honest. I haven’t made signs in years. It was just how we communicated with each other during the silent times on the Rock.
But she’s one of us, this little girl. She’s one of us. And her name is Jilly.
I didn’t ask her for her name. She offered it. She started signing to me with frantic fingers, like she had been starved of conversation. The woman in white, who introduced herself as Priscilla, kept bothering us, asking us questions. But Jilly really is deaf, she told me.
Priscilla did spill a lot of information about Jilly though. How she was found in a warehouse three weeks ago, dirty, and starving, and thirsty. Wearing tattered rags for clothes and unable, or unwilling, to communicate.
As Jilly continued to talk to me, and Priscilla got tired of trying, I started pulling out board games. This room reminded me so much of the game room on the Rock that I immediately knew what to do.
Play.
That’s what the game room on the Rock was meant for. And that’s what this room is meant for too.
I didn’t ask Jilly about her parents, just set up Hungry, Hungry Hippos and gave her the pink one. It’s an easy game to master. All you gotta do is flip the lever. Immediately she was laughing and smiling. It was like a cure.
When we got done with that, we played Trouble, which was a little harder for her because she can’t count. But she’s smart, and when I explained that the dots on the dice are how many spaces you get to move, she immediately understood.
This is exactly how Sergey explained it to me back when I first got to camp.
We tried a few more board games, but eventually we switched to books. I pulled some out, and put her in my lap, and I read them to her in signs.
When we got tired of books, we switched to puzzles. And that’s what we were working on when Paulo, Maeko, and Budi came up behind me.
I didn’t forget about them. I knew they were coming and I didn’t forget.
I just couldn’t leave the little girl behind.
“Irina.” Paulo bent down to whisper in my ear.
I closed my eyes, smiled, and then turned and hugged him. Then Maeko was there. And Budi. And we just hugged.
They didn’t cry, but I did. I feel like I’ve been doing a lot of that lately. But then I remembered Jilly and wiped my tears away as I introduced her. She was so surprised that we could all talk to her, she started crying too. And then Paulo picked her up, and patted her on the back, and whispered things into her ear that she couldn’t even hear, but that’s not even the point.