Girl in the Shadows (Shadows 2)

"Well, perhaps you'll know very soon then." I replied, and ate my sandwich. I had intended to avoid the bread and cookies, but his arrogance and his aloofness riled me up and I ate more out of frustration. He watched me reach greedily for the food. I thought he looked so smug in his evaluation of me and his expectations. He thinks I'm just some fat, lazy girl taking advantage of these people, I concluded. I couldn't say why what he thought was so important to me all of a sudden, but as much as I hated to admit it to myself, it did.

I didn't return with them to the office to watch him finish his lessons with Echo. Instead. I located the book on signing and went up to my bedroom to read it and practice before a mirror, determined to impress him the next time I saw him. I was up there so long and concentrating so hard. I didn't realize how much time had gone by nor did I hear him leave. A little while after he had. Echo came looking for me. I had left the bedroom door open and suddenly realized she was there watching me go at it in front of the mirror. I heard her laugh.

"Oh," I said. turning. "I didn't hear you come in."

How silly that sounded. I didn't hear her? Lucky Tyler wasn't present. He would surely make me feel like some sort of an idiot.

She came over to me and began to help me with some of the signs, moving my fingers so they would be more accurate in depicting words and phrases. I worked with her for a while, looking into the mirror at the both of us as we practiced. She had sweet lips and tiny freckles under the crests of her cheeks. Her face was tightening and shaping. Those high cheekbones will make her stunning one day. I thought, and looked at my own bloated cheeks. My face should be in the dictionary next to pIump, I thought.

Echo assumed I was growing bored. She began to look again at some of Uncle Palaver's magic tricks. The ones I had brought in were collected in the corner by the windows. I showed her the self-tying handkerchief, the cut and restored string, and the coin through an elbow. It all delighted her and she asked me to do each one again. Finally, I communicated the idea that she should learn them herself. I thought she would enjoy performing them for her grandmother and especially for Tyler Monahan. She didn't seem to understand when I explained and when I referred to Mr. Monahan, even when I pronounced his name slowly so she could read it on my lips.

Why was it so easy for her to read his lips and not mint?

I flipped through the book and found the sign for tutor: both T hands with the palms facing were to be placed against my temples and then moved forward and back several times. It said to add the sign for individual. which was to open my palms and trace my body down to my hips. She finally understood and laughed. Then she signed back. but I didn't

understand. Frustrated, she wrote on the pad on my table: "I call him Ty. not Mr. Monahan."

Oh, so that's it. I thought.

"He wants me to call him that." she wrote. and smiled proudly.

Having a more personal relationship with him was obviously very important to her.

I watched her look about the room and then reverently touch things that had been her mother's. Even something as ordinary and simple as a hairbrush intrigued and fascinated her. She fingered a strand of hair in the bristles and I wondered what the separation had really been like for her even at that young age. She couldn't recall her mother's voice, but I was sure she could recall the scent of her hair, the image of her face, and the warmth of her touch. After all. I knew what it was like to lose your mother and cling to such memories. Sometimes, the sound of similar laughter, the familiar scent of a perfume or even some familiar gesture brought back a movie fill of sweet

remembrances.

Gazing about the room through Echo's eyes. I suddenly realized that there were no pictures of Rhona, either by herself, with Mrs. Westington, or with boyfriends or girlfriends. Surely there had been some. Where were they? Had Mrs. Westington removed them in a fit of anger? Did Echo have any pictures of her mother in her room? I thumbed through the ASL book on signing and located the word for photograph. If I avoided writing things out and forced myself to use sign language. I would learn it much faster.

To say photograph the right C hand was to be held in front of the face with the thumb edge near the face and the palm facing left. The hand was to be brought sharply around to the open left hand and struck firmly against the left palm, which was held facing forward with the fingers pointing straight up. I pointed to the brush and then did the sign again.

She understood immediately and reached for my hand to lead me out of the bedroom down the hallway to her room. I scooped up the ASL book on sin language and followed her. Although it was smaller than the room I was in, it had a similar canopy bed and matching dressers. I saw she had placed Mr. Panda on her bed exactly as I had the teddy bear placed on mine, between the two pillows. I smiled and nodded my approval.

There was a school desk in the left corner with

books and notebooks on it. I saw a few dolls on shelves and some treasured souvenirs from places she probably had visited either with her mother or with Mrs. Westington. I didn't see any pictures of her mother on the shelves, dressers, or her desk, but she opened the bottom drawer in one of her dressers, cleared away the socks, and produced a four-by-eight photograph of a pretty, dark-haired woman in an abbreviated two-piece bathing suit holding a beach ball on some beach and posing like a model.

Echo handed it to me and distinctly pronounced the word "moths,"

"Mother," I repeated. Did I dare take her hand and put it on my neck to get her to say it better? Not yet. I thought. Maybe I'd do something wrong.

I gazed at the picture. "She's very pretty." I said, and then realized I wasn't facing her when I had said it. Immediately. I thumbed through the ASL book and found the sign for very pretty. I put the fingers of my right hand over my right thumb, held it just under my mouth, and then made a counterclockwise circle, ending in the same position, and pointed to the picture.

That brought a smile to her lips. I thumbed through the book again and then I put my two outstretched forefingers together, pointed to her and to the picture, and did it again, telling her she was like her mother. I meant just as pretty.

She shook her head. I nodded emphatically, but she shook her head again, this time just as

emphatically as I had nodded, and then she cried, "No," and looked like she was going to burst into tears.

I hadn't meant she was like her, but just that she looked like her. Had she misunderstood?

"You look like her." I repeated, and she continued to shake her head. Language is so complicated and signing so imperfect. I thought. This could be very frustrating. From what well of tolerance did Tyler Monahan draw the patience? I was sure what he did took years and years of training. Perhaps I wasn't up to this and he was right. I would grow tired and disgusted and leave sooner than I planned. I sat there, musing about it, considering my options. How long could I last out there on my own? What would I do to earn money? Would I go back to live with Brenda?

"What's going on in here?" I heard, and turned to the doorway to see Mrs. Westington standing there. "I called for you to come down."

"Oh. I'm sour, I didn't hear you."

Echo quickly took the photo from me and buried it again in her dresser drawer. I could see from the look in her eyes that she didn't want her grandmother to know she had that picture.