Irina has hazy memories of a family before the Red Room. Of a mother and father, of a little sister that she loved so dearly. She doesn’t remember their faces or names but she remembers the love she held for them.
She doesn’t remember if they gave her kind touches. Irina had been taught that touches are meant to hurt her. Her madame’s favorite was to grab her hair and wrench her head back to get her attention.
One hit to the head with a thick bamboo cane when she was already concussed from a mission was all it took for the world to go silent.
She wildly struggled to learn to read lips. There was a lot of guesswork and punishments before she learned how the lips curl around certain sounds and she could make out words. She spent a lot of time handcuffed to her bed at night, running her fingers over her lips and whispering words to feel how her lips moved around certain sounds.
They called her Widow 1. That was her name. She know she had another name but she can’t remember it. She thinks she lost it along with her hearing.
Being rescued by Yelena was terrifying. She didn’t dare breathe a word about her inability to hear until Yelena tried to call her name and she didn’t reply.
Yelena sat her down. She wrote everything down onto a notebook. Irina confessed to everything. Yelena suggested that she picks out a name.
There were too many choices. Irina tells her to pick. So Yelena chooses the name Irina.
The name means peace. It was something she didn’t have until she was freed.
Along with her name, Yelena gave her a way to communicate.
Yelena gave her tapes and books and they practiced side by side until Irina could communicate with the wave of her hand. Yelena gives her kind touches and soft smiles and never touches Irina’s neck or hair.
Her fellow Widows, her sisters, don’t exactly understand her at first. Some speak too fast or forget to face her when they speak. Some get frustrated when she can’t understand what they said or keep asking them to repeat themselves.
Irina finds herself falling close with Daria. The young Widow didn’t breathe a word and used a notebook to communicate. She preferred to write letters with her finger on people’s hands rather than sign but with Irina she’d sign everything she wanted to say, never touching her book.
It’s nice but…
Irina always had to give in order to take. She never earned anything that Yelena had given her. She wanted more and she felt so selfish for wanting that. She’d do anything just to have Yelena cup her face or praise her.
But she starts to run out of things to do. So Yelena told her to go to the creek and find the flattest stone the size of her palm and bring it back. It’s such an odd request but Irina obeys. She brings it back and Yelena takes it, smiles, and gives her what Irina was craving.
Irina doesn’t know why Yelena wanted the rock but the next time she needed the touch she goes out and picks through the rocks until she finds another and brings it back.
Again and again, she will bring them back.
She starts spending more time crouched by the creek picking through rocks. She starts to notice their colors and shapes. Then she finds one that is round like a baseball but doesn’t weigh as it should. It feels like it would be hollow inside and Irina had never heard of a hollow rock.
So she sets it onto a large rock and picks up another one and strikes it over and over until it cracks open.
There inside was filled with purple crystals. Irina runs her fingers over them carefully in awe. She doesn’t know what she just found but brings it home to Yelena. She finds out that it’s an amethyst geode.
She never would have noticed it if she hadn’t taken the time to look through the rocks for the perfect one for Yelena. It looked just like all the other rocks. Had she not picked it up to move it to look under it then she never would have looked inside.
This starts Irina’s love for rocks. She will seek out rocks just like that one but will also bring back ones that she likes.
A red one that looks like a ladybug. A small black one shaped like a heart. One shaped like a gun. One that fits in her hand just right.
Eventually, she goes out into the world. She will meet other deaf people and she will learn to accommodate for the world around her. She will free Widows with her sisters. She will bring home postcards and souvenirs of places she’d been for her sisters.
But for Yelena, she will bring home a rock. Some of them will be geodes but some will be just rocks she picks up off the side of the road or a beach. They all have a story to them.
Yelena keeps them in a jar on the mantle of the fireplace. They’re just rocks to everyone else but they’re important to Irina.
Rocks are useless to people. They’re insignificant and worthless. Nobody looks at them twice.
Irina likens them to Widows. She thinks of herself as a rock, lost in the sea of others exactly like her.
Yelena was the first person to stop and look at the vast stretch of rocks and pick one up to bring home with her. She doesn’t smash the rock with a hammer. She taps it gently until the cracks gently form and then finishes breaking it apart with her hands. She’s gentle and cautious.
Nobody but Yelena would understand why Irina likes rocks. She was the one who stood by Irina through everything. Who gave her a name and a home. Who loved her despite everything.
Widows are rocks.
And Irina is a geode.