A Final Valentine

I signed, trying not to look below her eyes. "I am not your maid or your laundry service. I am not going to do your laundry for you."

"Ok," the girl signed back meekly. And then just stood there, looking at me.

"That means you'll have to do it," I signed finally.

The girl glanced at the clothes in the tub and looked back at me.

"How? I thought the washing machine doesn't work?"

"It doesn't. So, you'll have to do it by hand."

"How do I do that?"

Oh, brother.

"How do you wash your hands?"

Gradually, bit by bit, I walked her through washing her clothes by hand in the tub with her kneeling beside it and me sitting on the toilet and trying to ignore her nudity.

Maybe I should get her another set of clothes?

No. I was pissed. I had given her one set and she had just figured I would give her another. Let her stay naked. Maybe that would teach her not to take me for granted.

"This is hard," she signed when we were about halfway through.

And proceeded to arch her back with her hands behind it.

Which I carefully ignored.

"Yes, it is. That's why you don't want to wear clothes once and then wash them if you didn't actually do anything while wearing them to get them dirty. These were filthy. They hadn't been washed in a long time with you wearing them every day. Those, you had put on clean from a shower and then slept in them and that's all. There was no reason they had to be washed. Unless you soiled them in your sleep."

"So, why do people wear clothes once and then wash them?"

"It depends. When I worked, I could only wear my clothes once and then have to wash them because they got dirty, sweaty, and bloody. Some people do it because they think they're dirty. Some people do it just because they have a washing machine which makes it easier, so they don't think about it."

While I had tried not to notice her breasts the size of apple halves or her ass that wasn't a whole lot bigger, her back had seemed safe enough and what was most visible anyway as I had watched her progress. And I'd noticed a pattern of old scars across the skin rippling over the outline of her prominent ribs and shoulder blades. Since she didn't seem to be ready to get back to it just yet, I decided I would ask her about them.

"Lots of places," she signed. "When I do bad, people hit me. Sometimes even when I don't think I did bad, they hit me. Sometimes I think people just like hitting me."

I was raised under the old discipline of "spare the rod and spoil the child" and had my fair share of spankings growing up. In fairness, probably fewer than I had earned. But, my parents hadn't left a mark other than on my psyche. What had been done to this girl wasn't discipline. It was abuse. Systematic, long-term abuse from what I could judge.

"Who hit you? Your parents?"

"No. My mother died when I was five and I never knew my father. I was passed around between group homes and foster homes. I don't remember my mother ever hitting me. In those places, though, I got hit a lot."

"I'm sorry," I signed. And I was. No child should have to go through what it looked like this one had endured.

She just knelt there looking at me. I didn't know what else to say. And what would she have said? "It's okay?" It obviously wasn't. I hadn't done it. But, still, I felt bad that someone had.

"Are you going to finish or kneel there all day?" I asked.

"Knees hurt."

"Stand up and stretch them a bit. Then get back to work."

I looked away as she stood in all her naked glory and tried to remember pi out to sixteen decimal places as she bent and stretched and moved in ways that wouldn't have been provocative if she hadn't been naked while doing it.

Or if I hadn't been interrupted before I could dump hormones I'd allowed to build too long.

"You are strange," she signed.

"Why do you say that?"

"You don't look at me. I have never had a man not look at me when I'm standing in front of them like this. Am I ugly to you?"

"No. Not ugly."

"Then why do you not look at me?"

"Because I don't think of you that way. I don't want to think of you that way. Even if you are eighteen, you are younger than a daughter I might have had. And besides, we don't know each other. It would be wrong."

All true, as far as it went. But, the most important reason went unsaid. Because I loved my wife and I didn't want to cheat on her ever again. Because I wanted to be faithful to her after her death even though I hadn't always managed in life.

My ear gave out a spasm of pain that made me wince and clap my hand to it.

I opened my eyes again to see the kid studying me with her head tilted to one side.

"What's wrong?"

"My ear hurts," I signed. "I think something bit me."

"Let me see."

Before I could object, I found my head turned to face the shower while her hands touched my ear and my head.

"Not a bite," she signed once she'd finished her inspection and I was allowed to turn my head back. "Do you have a needle or something sharp?"

I frowned at her for a moment. Other than the fact she had to sign where Angela spoke, this incident was too much like some from the past. I got up and went to the bedroom to retrieve the pin Angela had kept on her nightstand and brought it back to the stranger in my home.

I was pushed back to the toilet and had my head turned to the side again while she went after the back of my ear with that pin.

I bit back a scream when the pin went in and sagged with relief when the pressure back there lessened. Then, I nearly gagged when the smell hit me. I tried to reach up but got my hand slapped for my trouble. I felt her fingers work and an alternating pressure and relief as the smell just got stronger.

Finally, it was over and I all but melted to the floor as she let me go.

"I need to clean that," she signed. "It was badly infected. Do you have any hydrogen peroxide or anything?"

I pointed at the medicine cabinet where a few remaining shards of silvered glass still hung. The girl delicately opened it, but a shard still fell to join the others behind the sink.

"What happened?" She asked, speaking since her hands were busy pouring peroxide in a washcloth.

"I didn't like what I saw," I signed.

"I know that feeling," she said aloud.

For some reason, I thought back to her trying to write on that paper when she had first stopped me. After she had found out I could sign, she had mostly communicated that way. But, now she was speaking to me in that flat, atonal, nasally voice you get used to if you spend any time with a deaf person who is willing to speak. Not all deaf people I had encountered were willing to. I had thought this girl to be one of those considering the notepad. So what had changed?

True. She had said the one word, "sorry," repeatedly when the bags had broken. But, nothing more until today. It meant something, but I didn't know what.

The thought fled as I felt the familiar sting of a rough cloth and the cold of the hydrogen peroxide as she cleaned the back of my ear.

When she was done, she threw the washcloth in the sink.

"Done," she signed.

"Thank you. It was really bothering me. Now. About these clothes."

She wrinkled her nose and crossed her eyes at me before kneeling back beside the tub. But, she was smiling when she did it.

She had a nice smile with a small dimple hardly visible in her left cheek.

I didn't like it.

Rather, I didn't like that I did like it.

Eventually, she got her clothes finished. I walked her through wringing them out and we hung them on the backs of a couple of dining room chairs to dry.

Something bugged me as she hung them. There were no panties or underwear of any type. Just an ace bandage, hoodie, jeans, and socks.

"Why the bandage?"

"I had some cracked ribs a few years ago and had to wear it. Then when other girls my age were getting bras, I didn't get one. I was told I didn't need it. So, I just kept wearing that."

That didn't make much sense to me. The kid wore an ace bandage because she was too modest to go without a bra? Where was the rest, then?

"What about panties and a shirt?"

"The shirt was torn off me in Alabama, I think. The panties one of the guys from Lousiana kept."

I was sorry I had asked and changed the subject to one less uncomfortable.

"Are you hungry?"

"No. Just cold."

"Well, I guess you could stand next to the heater," I signed. "Other than that, I guess you could get back in bed."

"I can't go back in there. It's too cold."

"Sorry. I mean the bed. Not the couch."

I didn't have to tell her a third time as she disappeared around the corner.

I blew out the candle on the table since we wouldn't be using it, and the one in the bathroom on my way by. In the bedroom, she was huddled under the covers, obviously shivering. Bitty had followed when she left the room and was lying in the middle of the bed.

"I need to blow the candles out," I signed. "We need to save them. And if we fall asleep we could burn the house down."

"Ok. But, I don't think I'm going to sleep. Too cold. And not really sleepy."

As I was about to blow out the last candle, I paused and looked at the cheesy rose I had gotten to put on Angela's table. It was supposed to have an LED in it, but I hadn't tried it. I unwrapped the plastic around it and pressed the button. It lit up as bright as a flashlight, making me wince.

I blew out the candle and handed the fake rose to the girl who looked at me curiously.

"Use it like a flashlight," I signed. "That way, you can have a light when you need it, and we won't have to keep lighting the candles."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome. Now, turn it off until you need it."

I maneuvered my way around the bed in the dark and sat on the side to light a smoke, the last in that pack. The light from that rose came on and I glanced back to see her clambering back out of the bed to scamper to the other room.

The room she had said was too cold for her to go to. However long I lived, I doubted it would be long enough to understand women.

Bitty didn't follow, although she lifted her head.

In a moment, the girl came scampering back, holding a book.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm bored," she signed. "I thought I would read."

I sighed and rolled my neck around my shoulders, making it pop.

This is why it just doesn't pay to do anything anybody might construe as nice.

"Fine," I signed back. "But, when that runs out, that's it. No more light."

I noticed she was holding her hand strangely as if she were concealing something. Whatever it was, it didn't seem large enough to be dangerous, so I shrugged mentally and went back to enjoying my smoke.

When I was finished, with nothing else to do really, I laid down under the covers and started stroking Bitty absently while I studied the ceiling by the light of the rose the kid was using to read. I was still a bit tired from the work that morning, not to mention the trek the day before. Not sleepy. Just weary.

Eventually, that damn LED flashed in my eyes causing me to wince and turn my head to look at the girl that really shouldn't have been in my home, much less on my wife's side of the bed.

Much less with her nipple tipped scoops of flesh showing above the thick stack of covers.

Maybe I should get her some more damn clothes since it didn't seem to be bothering her at all. Much less as much as it was bothering me.

"What?"

"What are you doing?"

"Lying here," I signed back.

"Aren't you bored?"

"No. I'm not fourteen."

"Eighteen!" She said verbally then switched back to sign. "I'm eighteen."

"Whatever. My point is I'm enough older that I don't get bored as easy."

I carefully did not add I also wasn't female. Angela, with her sharp left elbow applied as needed to my ribs, had taught me to keep my observations on that to myself.

Hoping to end the conversation, I looked back at the ceiling. The light moved and I might have thought she was back to reading except it moved too far. I glanced over to see it pointing at the framed collage on the wall and Angela's bed table shrine.

The light turned back right into my eyes so I had to blink away spots before I could see her hands moving.

"She was very beautiful."

"She was," I signed back. "Inside and out."

"How did you meet?"

Oh, dear God. It was going to be one of those. I sighed and sat up to reach for another smoke.

"We worked together," I signed once I was lit and puffing away. Then waited for the next question I was sure would follow. While I had no idea what it would be, I knew there would be one.

"How did she die?"

"They don't know."

"Really?"

"It's right there on the death certificate," I signed. "Cause of death, unknown."

Angela had to have a hysterectomy due to cervical cancer in her forties. She suffered from osteomyelitis, the precursor to bone cancer, after having her left knee blown out by a shotgun blast before she graduated from high school. Her blood pressure was high and she had a family history of heart disease. We had fought a rearguard action against hypoglycemia for decades. Her vertebrae had eaten a hole in her spinal cord thanks to the damaged gait she hadn't allowed to slow her down, allowing spinal fluid to leak out. And they had found a mass in her brain. It was anyone's guess and flip a coin just which had finally been that one straw too many.

"My mom was in a car wreck they tell me," the kid signed.

What the hell do you say to that? "That's nice," even I knew didn't fit. God, but I needed Angela. I fell back on misdirection. Maybe if I could get her talking about herself...

"Where are you going? What are you going to do when you get there?"

"I'm going to California to be a movie star like Marlee Matlin."

Well, that was marginally better than the usual, "I want to be a model," I supposed. But, I had a feeling that I knew how that was going to end up. The kid, if she survived and made it all the way to California, would end up drugged up on a porn set. And not even one of the stars, but one of the extras they marketed for the special needs consumers.

Not my problem.

I felt a pain in my ear and my annoyance flared.

Whether it was just an infection or the ghost of my wife flicking it, it was not my place to tell the kid her dreams were stupid and reckless. Every single day people made dumber choices and for worse reason than because it was a dream. And, hell. Even the big name A-list actresses usually had regrets about making it big and losing their privacy or the things (and people) they'd had to do to get there or something.

And who and what was I to think I could make a difference anyway? A tired old man with too many scars including where my heart had once been. A waste of space and a drain on society who hadn't contributed anything worthwhile in a decade at least. Three if we counted my professional years where I hadn't done a damn bit of good I could ever tell. Five if we counted my childhood and adolescence. I was nothing more than a drone who turned perfectly acceptable food into shit. Who and what was I to tell her that her dream of becoming an actress was a bad one?

"I'm sure you'll be great whatever you do," I signed. "Have you ever acted before?"

"No. I always wanted to. But, there were never any parts I could play."

"Where did you go to school?"

"A lot of different places in Florida. They moved me from family to group home to another family a lot. Twice a year, I think."

So, she was from Florida. And she had somehow made it all the way across Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and almost all of Texas in about a month and a half. Hitchhiking from the sound of it. I wasn't sure whether it was sad it had taken her that long to make it this far or if it was impressive she had made it that far at all, much less in so little time.

I finally saw the cover of the book she had chosen. And I was a little startled. A gentleman by the name of Stanley Coren had made quite the name for himself in psychology and neurology, even writing most of the textbooks college courses in those fields used, until he retired and turned his attention, and his expertise, to his favorite hobby; his dogs. In the library we had built together, Angela and I had collected ten or so books about dogs and dog training, three written by him. And his were dense enough many college students I had known in my checkered past would have had trouble parsing them.

"You like dogs?"

"Love them," she signed. "I couldn't ever have one once I went into the system. But, I had a dog when I was little with Mom. He tried to follow us when they took me away and I saw him get hit by a car when he ran out into the street behind us."

Jesus Christ! Was there nothing I could say to this girl or ask her that didn't have some hidden booby trap?!

"One of the families I stayed with for a while had a son a little younger than me," she signed. "He had a toy farm he never played with. I took this because it reminded me of Lucky and I've kept it ever since."

She held out her hand and I opened mine beneath it for her to drop something. It was a small black and white figurine of a dog. A dog with three legs.

"What happened to his leg?" I asked, more for something to say.

"I snapped it off so he would have three just like Lucky."

A three-legged dog named Lucky who had ended under the wheels of a car. I should have seen that one coming. Probably one ear, one eye, and no nuts too.

I dropped the small toy back into her hand.

"If you like animals, why don't you want to be a veterinarian?"

"Oh, I couldn't," she signed. "I only ever was allowed to take the dummy classes because I'm deaf. And you have to take college and all kinds of stuff to be a veterinarian."

Yet, she was reading that book? If there is anything sadder than a smart person who doesn't realize they are, I don't know what it would be.

"You know Marlee Matlin went to college," I signed.

"No! Did she? In what? Acting?"

Oops.

"Law," I guessed. I couldn't really remember. I did remember it was something having to do with the law since she credited that for helping her get the part as the D.A. in "Reasonable Doubt" back in the 1990s.

"No way! How did she do that? She's deaf like me!"

Now that I did remember. "In her words, 'I have always resisted putting limitations on myself, both professionally and personally.'"

The girl's brow furrowed as she worked that little dog in her hand, turning it over and over and over.

"But, she's deaf," she signed finally.

"Yes, she is," I admitted. "I've always thought what she meant was that she didn't let being deaf, or what other people thought about her being deaf, keep her from doing what she wanted to do. Even if it meant she had to work harder than a hearing person to do it."

Communicating through sign language was easier for me than speaking anymore. But, it was still tiring. I stubbed out my smoke and moved to lay down.

"I need to rest," I signed. "Talk later."

She nodded and went back to the book. I checked the inside of my eyelids for cracks just in case she might look over and decide she wanted to talk more. Wisely, it turned out, as more than once I saw that light play over my closed eyes.

I didn't sleep. At least I didn't think I had. When Bitty shifted, I opened my eyes and got up to take her outside.

Maybe I had actually rested a bit. Unless the laundry lesson early on had taken longer than I had thought. The sun, still hidden behind a thick layer of clouds, seemed to be almost on the western horizon. I hadn't eaten. And if the girl had eaten since breakfast, I wasn't aware.

The true ruler of the household finished her constitution and took her evening meal of 9 Lives Hearty Cuts with Real Chicken and Fish with all of the regal aplomb one might expect from Queen and Mistress of All She Surveyed. Until that is, her head servant wandered off instead of sitting to await her pleasure.