Thank You

`She combed her fingers through her wild curls, tugging them straight and letting them bounce back into the wild jungle that was the hair on her head. She stared at the opposite wall, spinning slightly in her computer chair. She’d requested this room in the apartment because it already had the chalkboard wall installed. It had been a last attempt to feed her muse and rescue the creativity inside of her that had been waning for a while now. Instead, the wall was lined with tally marks. Her running count was 2,983. It’s possible she’d counted incorrectly, but it was incredibly unlikely.

Two thousand. Nine hundred. Eighty. Three.

That’s how long it had been. God, it felt like an eternity ago, but somehow it also felt like it had just been yesterday. She remembered vaguely the sound of his voice, deep with a bit of grizzled edge. Whispering in her ear. Giggling at her jokes, like he was a little kid. The padding of his feet across her apartment. He’s been gone for over eight years, but those memories still bounced around her head. Some of them were missing pieces now. She could recall the way his lips moved, but she couldn’t remember what he was saying. She could remember his dark brown eyes turning black when he was angry, but she couldn’t remember what it sounded like for a fist to meet plaster.

Why did she even still think about him? It made absolutely no sense.

Moving to Chicago from small town Illinois for her had been the equivalent to most people moving to Los Angeles to follow their dreams to fame. She’d moved there to study art and create masterpieces like she’d always dreamed of. So far, it had been nothing but a pipe dream. It was infuriating that of all the things he’d taken, he’d taken her ability to make art with him. She let out a breath.

Now, more than ever, she felt like nothing was going to ever be right. She worked as a freelance graphic designer, which was squashing her muse instead of nurturing it, and it was a highly competitive job, which meant that her lack of motivation did her absolutely no favors. 

She wandered to the kitchen. It was a nice apartment, one that she probably would not be able to afford very soon, if nothing changed in her career. On the counter, her roommate left a note:

-Jess

Dave is moving in today. Don’t be a bitch, please. We want this guy to help us pay rent (you know, the thing you pay if you want to keep living somewhere). Thanks, bitch.

Xoxo,

Sarah

She reread the note. Don’t be a bitch, please. She supposed that part wasn’t unwarranted. She’d been less than pleasant to be around for a while. Being unmotivated, unhappy, and unable to do anything about it turned you into a bit of a bitch. She felt a little grateful (and a little guilty) that Sarah even put up with her for this long. They’d been roommates and good friends ever since they moved into the apartment. Everything had happened pretty soon after, which meant that Sarah didn’t know the person that Jess could be. The person she was. The person she wasn’t anymore.

Dave. She vaguely remembered what Sarah said about his roommate interview. He was an artist as well, moving in from Portland. She couldn’t see why an artist would rather be in this cold city in the middle of the Midwest instead of on the West Coast, but then again, she’d never been anywhere except here. It lost its shiny quality after nearly 30 years of living here.

Too exhausted by the idea of having to introduce herself to a new person, she whistled and waited for Kitty the Dog to come running up to her. She grabbed his leash and clipped it, adding his service animal vest so that people wouldn’t approach her to pet him. That was her least favorite thing to do. She didn’t really need him as a service animal; she was perfectly capable of doing everything anyone else could do, but it was nice having something to care for that wasn’t herself.

She walked Kitty (or more accurately, he tugged her) down the stairs. She attempted to smile at a neighbor from one of the lower levels, but it came out as more of a grimace. Not too uncommon for her.

Jess loved taking Kitty to the dog park. Often, she would spend entire days there, and that’s what she did today. No one would bother her, to begin with, and if there were people, they often just enjoyed talking about their own pets. She could pretend to listen, nodding and smiling without making any effort to understand. It was also a beautiful park. There was a scattering of trees inside the fenced in dog area, with a larger amount outside. She could people-watch from her spot, sitting on the picnic table and throwing a tennis ball aimlessly for a very excited Kitty every couple of minutes. There were runners with headphones in, jogging down the path. There were kids playing on the playground. There were cars screeching by, and a single musician, strumming on his guitar by the fountain with a case in front of him to collect spare change from passersby. 

It felt like she wasn’t a part of this existence. It felt like she was watching a movie, like they were living their lives, and she was on the outside looking in. It felt lonely, and a cold breeze permeated her thick jacket, sending a shiver down her spine. 2,983 days and she still felt like this. When would she ever find some peace?

Kitty was reluctant to leave the park, even after spending most of the day there. He seemed to be frowning, despite being clearly tired as they left the park. She pat him, grateful that she wasn’t actually alone.

It was thankfully only a few blocks from her apartment. Maybe this loneliness would fuel some sort of artistic piece that would set her dream back in motion, but she was skeptical to say the least. They walked back up the stairs to her apartment, and she hung his leash, having completely forgotten about a stranger invading her home of record. Until she went into her room.

She was in tears before she could even process what had happened. She stared at her chalkboard wall, which became fuzzier with every tear that filled her eyes. The entire middle of her tallies had been erased, replaced instead with a chalk drawing. Every day for eight years, two months, and two days, she had placed a tally as a representation of what she’d lost. Someone had erased over half of that, so they could draw, what?

Wiping tears from her eyes, she looked closer. It was a chalk drawing of the city of Chicago. The Cloudgate was in the picture, along with the diamond-shaped building behind it and what looked like it could be the Aon Center and the Two Prudential Plaza, although they didn’t quite seem properly-proportioned or positioned in the drawing. Next to The Bean, there was a small figure with a dog next to her. 

It was beautiful. It was. It was also a disaster. In the heat of the moment, she went to storm out of her room and found a man standing in her doorway. He was tall, tall enough that he had to slouch to fit in the doorway. He brushed his unruly black hair out of his eyes, which were the brightest green eyes she’d ever seen, practically yellow. They were especially dazzling in the middle of a field of freckles across his nose and cheeks. He was speaking to her, too quickly, glancing from the wall to her with what looked like excitement and curious.

She burst into tears again, squatting on the ground. Kitty immediately. She was confused, from the erasing of her tally marks, to the beautiful sketch of her and her trusty companion in her city (in her home), from the gall of some newby to invade her privacy and draw on her wall without her permission, to the beauty of his face that made her want to forgive him immediately. What the actual fuck?

He was now kneeling before her and saying something. She tried to look at him, to understand, but through her tears and the way his mouth moved in a way she didn’t quite recognize, she had no idea what he was saying. 

Although she was reluctant to break out her voice intentionally, she pushed through the shame. “I’m deaf. I don’t know what you’re saying.” 

He stopped talking, apparently stumped by this. He looked at the wall and then back at her. She was squatting on the ground with her head between her hands and her elbows on her knees. She was crying, unable to keep her gaze away from the wall.

The guy (Dave, presumably, although they hadn’t been properly introduced) walked over to the wall and erased more of her tally marks. He wiped it off with the sleeve of his hoody, taking the chalk and writing something.

I made this for you. You don’t like it? 

She stomped over to the wall, erasing his sentence and writing her own:

I was keeping count and you erased all of it.

His eyebrows furrowed in confusion. He looked at the marks with horror, realizing finally that he’d undone something very intentional. He began talking again, looking very apologetic. Probably apologizing. 

“I still can’t hear you,” she said, irritation in her face. She hated using her voice, changed now by lack of use, and was annoyed that she'd used it so early in what would clearly be a not-great relationship. She turned a cold shoulder from him. “But it’s fine. Thanks for the drawing.”

It was a clear dismissal, or so she’d presumed because he followed her, coming back into her line of sight. He erased her sentence, replacing it with a lone question mark.

In wobbly handwriting, as she was beginning to cry again, she wrote out the simplest version that she gave to friends or acquaintances who were nosy.

2,983 days since my hearing was taken from me.

His eyes were wide. He had such long eyelashes that it made her even more angry. His face was like a little kid’s; he hadn’t meant any harm, but someone his age shouldn’t possibly look that wide-eyed and innocent. Had he not seen what she had seen? Had he not gone through what she had? 

She remembered the memory of losing her hearing. Of him, getting angry like he always did. He didn’t like her new apartment. He thought she was going to wait so they could get one together. He sneered at her dream of making art, of selling it and showcasing it. He was furious for what seemed like no reason. He’d never hit anything except the walls, which could be fixed. Until one day, he hit her. He hit her hard enough, not realizing the impact his fist would have on her small figure. He hit her hard enough that her body hit the ground, but not before her head hit the floor. 

Sarah had taken her to the hospital after hearing her scream. She had picked up Jess’s body, yelling and crying hoarsely at him to leave, to get the fuck out of their apartment. She’d driven her through Chicago traffic, which was stressful enough not in an emergency situation. Jess had been so out of it, she hadn’t realized anything was wrong with her hearing. She was confused. She was asking for him, to call him, to tell him to meet her at the hospital.

Sarah had been unable to respond, instead weeping at the red light, which was well enough because Jess hadn’t seemed to comprehend exactly what happened.

She had a concussion, and the fall had caused damage enough to her hearing. Enough for her to be pronounced deaf. At first, she had barely processed it. She was like a child, being led from place to place. To doctor’s appointments. To the police station to file a restraining order. To a local deaf school, where they were giving lessons in sign language. After her first class, she had sobbed with Sarah in her car for an hour, awkwardly embracing each other in the front seats in the car. Sarah attended every single sign language class with her.

Well, she should be grateful. For her friend. For the fact it was her hearing and not something else. For the fact that the Deaf Community was so welcoming and kind that they embraced her immediately. They were so patient teaching her, not patronizing her or pitying her. She was one of them immediately. They gave her tips and tricks, alarm clocks that buzzed to wake her up, and a flashing light to let her know when someone rang the doorbell. She was thankful.

She was also so incredibly miserable and bitter, so full of conflicting feelings about a man she loved who did not love her gently, who thought he had the right to treat her like that, and she’d paid the price. Being deaf wasn’t the most difficult thing to navigate; the most difficult thing was processing that she could love and continue to love someone who clearly didn’t give a fuck about her.

Looking back at her chalkboard wall, some sort of switch flipped in her. Maybe this dumb guy had done her a favor. She’d been holding onto this resentment for so long, filling a board that was supposed to be filled with doodles and drawings instead with proof that every day since then, she’d let him affect her. Maybe this was a blessing in disguise, a release from her past that she’d desperately needed.

Dave grabbed her attention, with very sloppy fingerspelling signed the letters: S-O-R-R-Y. 

“No….no, thank you.”