My dad picked up his phone, saw Denises face on the screen, and started signing, and Brandis laugh caught in her throat, because the bank had pulled the March lobby video, and Denise was about to interpret for my father what Brandi had really made him sign.
For years I was my Deaf fathers hands, and Brandi counted on the fact that he could not hear a word said around him. This time the truth reached him in his own language, because Denise, a certified court interpreter, watched the bank tape with me.
In March, Brandi took my father to the bank and pretended to interpret, telling him he was signing a birthday card for me, when what he actually signed was a power of attorney giving Brandi control over his accounts, and the banks lobby video caught her fake signing, three minutes of it, clear as day.
The copy of that video was in my bag. Denise paused the tape at the bank and told me the truth: Brandi never told my dad what the document was. My father, who trusted the woman living in his house, signed away control of his own money believing it was a card for his daughter.
Brandi dropped two years of my practice videos into a glass of Coke and told me to sign that, sure my Deaf dad would fall apart without me. She did not know the bank was already placing a video relay call, with Denise interpreting, to tell my father in ASL exactly what he had signed.
My dad read Denises hands on that screen, and I watched his face change, and then he looked at Brandi, and for the first time she could not hide behind the fact that he could not hear. He understood everything.
Kyle finally looked up and asked what was going on. I told him to ask his girlfriend what she told Dad he was signing in March. Brandi went white.
I did not stay. I drove to Denises, and at nine the next morning I sat my ASL interpreter certification performance test, and I passed, because Brandi could ruin my recordings but not twenty years of signing since I was four.
I am a certified interpreter now. The power of attorney Brandi tricked my father into signing has been revoked, and the bank and a lawyer are handling what she tried to take, on paper, where he will fall apart without you means nothing.
My father moved Brandi out. He and I are the two of us again, the way it was, only now I interpret for strangers too, for pay, and come home to sign with my dad at his kitchen table.
She told him it was a birthday card, Denise signed to my father. It was not. And Brandis laugh caught before the phone finished lighting up, because for once the truth reached my dad in his own hands, before she could keep it from him.