Feathers

by Jacqueline Woodson

  Sean smiled, like it was all slowly sinking in and he liked what was becoming clear or something. A baby, he signed. Wow. He leaned back in his chair and stared out the kitchen window. Snow was still coming down hard. A baby, he signed again.

  I ran my fork through my rice, feeling all kinds of stupid feelings. I was the baby who had made it. It was sad, but each time one of those other babies didn’t make it, it seemed clear to me that I was the one who was supposed to be the baby in the family.

  “I don’t know why she has to be so tired about it all,” I said. “Doesn’t make any sense.” I didn’t say what I really wanted to say. What if you and Mama come home crying again, I wanted to ask. What if we think a baby’s coming but it doesn’t come all the way?

  Daddy looked at me. “Because you’re right, Frannie. She is old. And that makes it harder to be pregnant. And . . .” But he shook his head and didn’t finish what he was going to say. After a minute passed, he signed, So let her get some rest and try to grow you all a brother or sister.

  I shrugged. “Even if it’s a girl, I’m not sharing my room, that’s for sure.”

  Daddy ignored me. Sean, you wash tonight, he signed. Frannie, you dry and wipe everything down.

  I don’t want to wash! Sean glared at Daddy. I always have to wash.

  Because you always get them clean, Daddy said. Frannie, you wash the dishes then!

  I shrugged. I didn’t mind washing—the warm water felt good in the wintertime. And the bubbles were fun to squeeze through my hands.

  Forget it, Sean signed. She doesn’t know how to do it. We’ll be eating hamburgers and rice off our plates for a week. I’ll wash.

  Daddy put his hands up. “Ain’t that where we started?” he said. Come say good night to your mama before you go to bed, you hear.

  Me and Sean nodded. Then Sean got up and started in on the dishes. Somewhere, in another apartment, somebody was playing music—the same song over and over again. It never felt right, to be hearing the song and not have Sean hearing it too. I knew he had his own music going inside his head, music I’d never be able to hear, and maybe that made him sad. But still, sometimes when I heard music, even if Sean was right next to me, I missed him. I got up and took my plate over to the sink. Me and Sean didn’t even look at each other but I bumped him with my shoulder on purpose and he bumped me right back. For some strange reason, it was enough for both of us, just to be standing side by side.

  9

  Mama stayed in bed on Saturday, only getting up to go to the bathroom and to stop me from yelling at Sean for changing the television channel in the middle of my favorite cartoons. It was almost noon when she came into the living room. There were bags under her eyes and when she signed to Sean, her hands moved slower than usual. Sean was in a stupid mood and needed to be fighting with somebody.

  She’s been watching it all morning, he said.

  “I just watched—”

  Mama put her hand up. You two need to figure it out . . .

  “Forget it. Let him watch whatever he wants. I don’t care. I gotta clean the stupid bathroom anyway.” I was talking with my back to Sean so that he couldn’t see my lips. He hated when I did that but I didn’t care. I stomped down the hall and started pulling the cleaning supplies out of the hallway closet. I hated seeing Mama looking all tired and messy. It wasn’t fair. Let Sean watch whatever he wanted, it didn’t matter to me. I just wanted her to go back to bed and come out of her room looking better. Sean was so stupid sometimes. He acted like he didn’t even care.

  After a little while, I heard him flick the television off, head to his room and slam the door.

  The apartment got quiet and the quiet felt like something hot and sticky all over me. Something scary and all blurred up. I leaned over the edge of the tub to scrub it. Snow had piled up outside the bathroom window and the sky was silvery-gray—like something heavy was pushing down on the clouds. For some reason the Jesus Boy came into my mind. I wondered where he lived, what he was doing. I wondered if he had a window to stare out of and watch snow coming down. When I tried to picture his face, all I saw was the broken-up look he’d had that afternoon. I tried to think about the real Jesus, the one Samantha knew so well. All I kept seeing was hands, though—hands and feet with scars on them.

  While I was scrubbing, the sun came out—watery and cold-looking. I sat on the edge of the tub with my sponge in one hand and the can of Comet in the other. Just sat there like that, watching the sky until the sun faded back behind the clouds again.

  After I finished cleaning the bathroom, me and Daddy went grocery shopping. We got onto the elevator and Daddy took my hand. I knew I was too big for that but I let him take it anyway. When the elevator started moving again, I took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

  “What’s going on, star?” he asked. His voice sounded strange in the closed elevator. Sometimes I forgot how quiet it was inside our house with all that signing going on and all.

  I shrugged.

  “You worrying, aren’t you?”

  “Aren’t you?” I looked up at him. His eyes were red and puffy and he hadn’t shaved. “Those other babies . . . ,” I said slowly. “They . . . they died. Mama grew them for a while and then they were all gone again.”

  Daddy pulled me closer to him. “Here’s the deal,” he said. The elevator door opened and we walked out into the lobby past the weekend doorman. The lobby had mirrors and pretty tile floors and a fake fireplace with an electric log in it.

  “You don’t need to worry about what happened before. All you need to look at is what’s happening now.” He nudged my chin up so I would look at him. “And be happy about it. And if it means you only get to be happy for a month or two months or three months, so what. A month or two months or three months is a good long time.”

  I kept looking up at him. My head felt like it was all swirly inside. Felt like if somebody lifted the ground out from beneath me, I’d just float off somewhere. I shivered, took my hand out of Daddy’s and shoved it in my pocket.

  When I was a little girl, Sean would stand over me and sign songs. When my brother danced, it was like nothing else mattered anywhere. He danced and signed like there was music all around him all the time. Some days, I wished I could hear that music. And some days I wished I could climb inside all the quiet and stillness inside Sean’s head, curl up there and just rest awhile.

  Daddy opened the car door and I climbed into the back. He always promised me I would be able to sit up front next year. Every year was next year.

  He got in on the driver’s side and started the car. It was an old car and needed a few minutes to warm up.

  “This tiredness could just be,” Daddy said, “that your mama’s been working too hard and you kids—”

  “Been wearing her out,” I finished for him, rolling my eyes. With all the wearing out of my mama she and Daddy said we did, you’d think she’d be completely see-through by now. Like the old pieces of cotton sheets we used to dust with. I stared out the window.

  My grandmother always says that good things come in ones and twos and threes and bad things come however they can get here. I tried to close my eyes and picture the place where all the tiredness was coming from, the place where the baby was growing and wearing Mama out. I wanted to lift the tiredness up out of Mama with my thinking. I wanted powers like that. If I could walk through the world and just touch people and lift their pains right out of their bodies, I’d never stop walking. I looked down at the pocks on my palms. They were starting to itch.

  “What you thinking about, sweet pea,” Daddy asked.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  I kept staring out the window, silently scratching my palms.

  10

  I asked Daddy to drop me off at the rec center after we finished grocery shopping. I wanted to watch Sean playing ball.

  “You going there to play some games or you going there to bother your brother?” Daddy asked, pulling up in front of the gray building kids went to after
school sometimes and on weekends. The building always smelled sweaty and the sound of kids running around the gym and game room echoed all over the place, then got all muffled—like the noises were drowning in their own sound.

  “He won’t care,” I said. Once he got used to the idea that he’d have to walk home with me, I figured, he’d just have to accept it. It’s not like I followed him around that much.

  Daddy rolled his window down and I leaned in and kissed him on the cheek.

  “You two be careful,” he said, rolling up the window real fast so the snow wouldn’t blow in.

  I shivered, pulled my hat down over my ears, and ran inside.

  The minute Sean saw me, he frowned. Two of the guys he was playing with were deaf and one of them signed, Babysitting time.

  Sean signed a curse back. One that a lot of hearing people knew.

  He chucked the ball to another guy and took a time-out, coming over to me. He was wearing a pair of old blue shorts and a T-shirt that had this cartoon guy walking down the street in a long robe. Underneath the guy, it said KEEP ON TRUCKING. The shirt used to belong to Daddy but somehow Sean had inherited it. There was a big dark patch of sweat under his collar.

  What are you doing here? he asked.

  I shrugged. There wasn’t anything to do at home.

  Sean looked at me. One of the guys was waving for him to come on and Sean signed for him to wait.

  Can’t you see he’s talking, I said, and Sean gave me a look.

  Sit down, he said. I’m almost done. He tapped me on the head and ran back over to his game.

  The tap on the head meant he wasn’t mad at me for coming. I climbed onto the bleachers and sat down in front of some girls who were watching the game.

  “That’s your brother?” one of them asked me.

  I looked at her and nodded, then turned back front.

  “He can’t hear anything?” I heard her asking my back.

  I knew what was coming, so I didn’t turn around again. “Nope.”

  “Dag,” she said. “That’s messed up.”

  I heard another girl say, “And he’s a fine brother-man too.”

  I rolled my eyes and felt my hands clinching inside my coat pockets.

  “No wonder he’s not trying to talk to us.”

  I wanted to say, “He’s not trying to talk to you because he’s not interested in you!” But I didn’t say anything. What was the use? Instead, I watched Sean and his friends play full court. Sean took a shot and missed, then looked over at me and shrugged. Then he looked at the girls behind me and ducked his head a bit before taking off down the court.

  “Those other two guys are deaf too,” another one of the girls said.

  “Yeah—but they’re not as cute as her brother.”

  There were three hearing guys playing against Sean and his friends. From the looks of it, the hearing guys were winning. I didn’t want to see that. Not with those dumb girls behind me. Not with the deaf guys trying so hard and all. I got up after a few more minutes and signed to Sean that I’d meet him in the hallway. He nodded and I left the gym. Kids were running around and there were a few grown-ups trying to get them to use “walking feet.”

  I leaned against the wall, watching it all. There was a poster across from me listing all the rules of the rec center. Next to each rule, instead of a number, there was a big yellow smiley face. Next to the rule that said NO GRAFFITI, somebody had Magic-Markered their name and a frowning face.

  I was smiling over that when I saw the Jesus Boy coming out of the boys’ locker room, zipping up his coat, his hair wet and curling over his shoulders. I stopped smiling. Maybe he felt me staring because he looked up suddenly.

  I just kept staring at him.

  “Hey,” he said when he got a little bit closer.

  “Hey yourself.”

  “What’re you doing here, Frannie?”

  It felt strange to hear him say my name.

  “It’s a free country.”

  He moved a little bit closer to me. “That’s what they say.” He signed the word say.

  “How come you know sign anyway?”

  The Jesus Boy stopped smiling, thought for a minute, then shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said slowly, like he was really trying to understand.

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “I just know it,” he said. “I just do. Maybe from when I was a baby or something.”

  “Well, it’s not something a person’s born knowing,” I said.

  “Well, how come you know English?”

  “Because my family knows English and that’s what they taught me.”

  Jesus Boy shrugged again. “So maybe it’s the same for me. Maybe somebody in my family knew it one time.”

  I shook my head. “That doesn’t make even a little bit of sense.”

  “Does to me,” he said.

  “Do they sign now?”

  He made the sign for maybe and smiled at me.

  I signed back, Maybe you’re crazy.

  “Well, what made you sign to me the other day?” I asked.

  “I saw you walking with that guy who signs. You two were talking to each other.”

  “That’s my brother,” I said. “Sean.”

  “Yeah,” Jesus Boy said. “I was kinda far away when I saw you, but y’all look alike.”

  “No we don’t,” I said. Sean was beautiful. Everybody could see that. I was just regular.

  We just sort of stood there for a while, watching people go by.

  “I’m waiting for my dad,” Jesus Boy said. “Maybe I should be waiting outside.”

  “Well, good-bye then,” I said.

  The Jesus Boy looked at me sideways but didn’t move.

  “You really lived across the highway?” I asked.

  Jesus Boy nodded.

  “What was that like? To live over there.”

  “It would have been okay for me. But it wasn’t okay for my mom and dad,” he said. “It was hard for them. People can be so stupid. Once this cop stopped us and asked me if I knew my dad. Me and my dad were fooling around, kinda wrestling and stuff. He thought my dad was hurting me.”

  He looked at me, then said, “I don’t look like him, I guess.”

  “How come.”

  He stared at the poster with the smiley faces. “Just ’cause. It doesn’t really matter. I used to wish that I would wake up and look just like him. I still do sometimes. I look at him and he’s so cool and . . .” He stopped.

  I watched him, waiting for him to say something more, but he didn’t. Just put his hands in his pockets and stood there.

  Two little kids ran by us but slowed down to stare at him. At us.

  “Take a picture,” I said. “It lasts longer.” The little girl stuck her tongue out at me, then she and her friend ran off.

  Jesus Boy smiled. His eyeteeth were kind of fangy.

  Someone pulled the rec center door open and a group of boys came in making a lot of noise. I could see Trevor in the middle of them, his coat hanging off the arm that had the cast on it. When he saw us, he stopped.

  “If it ain’t Mr. and Mrs. Jesus,” he said. The other guys with him looked at us. One of them laughed.

  “You still here?”

  The Jesus Boy looked at him. “I’m still here.”

  One of the guys said “C’mon, Trev” as they started walking away. Trevor told them to go ahead, he’d catch up.

  “You know I don’t even like you,” Trevor said.

  “You don’t even know me, man.”

  “I ain’t your man, white boy!”

  The Jesus Boy looked at him calmly and said, “Well, I ain’t your white boy, man.”

  “We could take this outside,” Trevor said.

  “You go ahead,” the Jesus Boy said. “I’ll meet you there.”

  Trevor looked at him, his blue eyes getting smaller and more evil.

  I wanted to ask him what he planned to do with his arm in a cast and all but then the door opened and a
tall, dark-skinned man came in, looked around, then saw us.

  “You ready,” he said to the Jesus Boy.

  The Jesus Boy nodded. “This is Frannie. Frannie, this is my pops. That’s Trevor.”

  I felt my eyebrows lifting up and tried to make them go down again.

  “Hey Frannie.”

  I managed to say hello but Trevor just stood there a moment, staring at the man. Then, without saying anything, he turned and took off down the hall.

  The little girls were back, staring at all three of us now.

  “Let’s get moving,” Jesus Boy’s dad said. “We got things to do.”

  As they were leaving, I heard him ask the Jesus Boy how his swim was. I couldn’t hear the answer.

  “Is that white boy your boyfriend?” one of the little girls asked.

  I had forgotten they were standing there.

  “Oh, scat out of here already,” I said, waving my hands at them. They squealed and ran off again.

  But later on, when Sean came out of the gym all sweaty and pulling on his coat, I was still thinking about the Jesus Boy and his daddy.

  You’re always following me, Sean signed.

  You like it, I signed back.

  How come you didn’t watch the whole game? We went crazy on those guys. They didn’t know what was happening to them once we got warmed up! You missed my winning shot. He took a jump shot, throwing his basketball into the air and catching it.

  I thought about the stupid girls in the bleachers, then brushed the thought out of my head.

  It got too hot in there, I signed. And stinky.

  Sean laughed and chucked me on the head again.

  Down the hall, I could see Trevor and his friends standing around in a circle. I heard the guard telling them to get out of the hallway and saw Trevor give the guard a mean look.

  “You can get out of my hallway or you can leave,” the guard said.

  “Let’s go play some pinball,” one of the boys said, and the others followed him down the hall to the game room. “C’mon, lefty,” he said, looking at Trevor. “Let’s see what you got with that one good hand.” Trevor smiled and his face looked almost normal—soft and happy.

  Isn’t that kid in your class? Sean asked.