Boogie Bass, Sign Language Star

by Claudia Mills

  When it came time to go around the room finger-spelling their names, Sally, the Deaf teacher, said each letter aloud as they spelled it. How could a Deaf person talk if she couldn’t hear? Peg told them that some people who were Deaf from birth learned how to make sounds by studying how hearing people held their lips and tongues. Sally’s voice sounded different from Peg’s voice—the sounds were harder to tell apart—but most of the time Boogie could understand what she was saying.

  “B–O–O–G,” she said as Boogie awkwardly held up his fingers, one letter at a time.

  “E–R!” called out a kid named James, who was always trying to be funny, often at Boogie’s expense.

  Some kids laughed.

  Flustered now, Boogie made the sign for E instead of for I, as if he really was spelling B–O–O–G–E–R instead of B–O–O–G–I–E, and then he forget which letters he was supposed to be signing.

  Quickly, Nolan held up his fingers for an I and E, so Boogie could copy them.

  “I–E,” Sally said, giving Boogie a reassuring smile.

  “Thanks,” Boogie whispered to Nolan as Nolan perfectly spelled out N-O-L-A-N without any hesitation.

  Nolan helped Nixie make the letters in her name, too. Nixie had been too busy learning the letters for D-O-G to get around to the letters for N-I-X-I-E.

  Boogie was lucky to have a best friend who was smart and kind and helpful to everyone.

  But was Nolan lucky to have a best friend who couldn’t even remember how to spell his own name?

  And who wasn’t a very good big brother, either?

  At home that evening, Boogie got ready to take Bear for a short walk around the block so the dog could do his peeing-and-pooping business. At the sight of the leash, Bear wagged his huge tail so hard it could have knocked over Gib or Bing—maybe even T.J., too. Usually Boogie played a keep-away game with the leash before snapping it onto Bear’s collar, but he didn’t want Bear to think he was forgiven for his crime against Doggie-Dog.

  “Bad dog!” he told Bear crossly, even though he knew Bear had no idea what he was being scolded for now. Besides, it had all really been Boogie’s fault, not Bear’s.

  Back from the walk, Boogie organized a game of build-a-tower-and-knock-it-down. It was T.J. and Gib’s favorite game, though it sometimes turned into knock-it-down-and-then-throw-the-blocks-all-over-the-place, which was his mother’s least favorite game. Bing liked the building part better than the wrecking part, but even Bing usually squealed with laughter when the blocks went flying. But today Bing gave a small sad smile.

  Was there any way to sew a new head on Doggie-Dog’s body and make him as good as new?

  Boogie could already think of three problems with this plan.

  1. He had no idea where to find a new Doggie-Dog head. Stuffed toys didn’t come with extra heads for dog-chewing emergencies.

  2. Boogie didn’t know how to sew.

  3. And where was Doggie-Dog’s body, anyway? Had his mom already thrown it away?

  Boogie tried to recall where he had last seen Doggie-Dog’s body. Bear had come into the family room carrying it in his mouth, while Bing had followed behind wailing. Boogie had managed to get the body away from Bear—and it was never easy to get any chewable object away from Bear—and then he had given it back to Bing and comforted him as best he could. Then the luge accident happened, and his mother saw Doggie-Dog-without-a-head, and carried Bing off to get bandaged.

  But what had happened next with the rest of Doggie-Dog?

  Now he remembered: he had stuffed it under the couch cushion so Bing wouldn’t see it and start crying again. Besides, a headless dog was too depressing for anybody.

  Sure enough, when Boogie lifted up the cushion, there it was, along with a remote for a TV they no longer owned, an empty potato chip bag, dried-out Silly Putty, around four thousand broken crayons, and his father’s lost set of car keys.

  Hiding Doggie-Dog’s body behind his back, Boogie slipped away upstairs. Then he tucked it into the bottom of his bureau drawer.

  Now all he needed to do was find a dog head somewhere.

  And learn to sew somehow.

  * * *

  When Tuesday’s camp began, Boogie managed to finger-spell his name perfectly on the first try. But as Peg and Sally led the campers through the first few letters of the alphabet, it was clear he didn’t know any of them except for the B and E from his name. But it was equally clear most of the other campers hadn’t practiced, either.

  Vera knew every single letter, but she frowned so hard with worry over each one that it looked as if she was signing an ABC of owies. A for Ankle sprain, B for Bonked on the head, C for Cut finger…. What would D be for? Maybe D for Disaster while luging on the stairs.

  “Boogie, are you with us?” Peg interrupted his thoughts as Sally came to his desk to help form his fingers into the signs for F and G. At least Sally had been the one who helped him this time instead of Nolan.

  “Help me!” Nixie begged Sally, even though Sally couldn’t hear and wasn’t looking her way. Then Nixie tugged on Sally’s sleeve, and Sally turned around to face her. “I forgot H!” Nixie wailed.

  Boogie suspected Nixie hadn’t “forgotten” H, but had never known it in the first place. But as Sally helped Nixie make the sign for H, Nixie looked as pleased with herself as if she had known it all along.

  After J, Peg declared that was enough alphabet for one day. Boogie couldn’t have agreed more.

  He was relieved when Sally turned on a video of a Deaf family having breakfast together and signing the words for everything they were eating.

  The Deaf family in the video had a mother, father, brother, sister, and dog. They sat in their tidy kitchen at the neatly prepared table and politely asked each other to pass the milk, the juice, the eggs, the toast, the pancakes, the coffee. Even the dog politely lay on the floor patiently waiting until the boy in the video slipped him a piece of bacon.

  They couldn’t have been more opposite from Boogie’s family.

  Nobody grabbed.

  Nothing spilled.

  The parents didn’t yell.

  Well, Deaf parents would probably yell with their hands, not their voices. But these parents didn’t yell at all, and Boogie’s parents yelled with their hands and their voices.

  Boogie was amazed.

  Unfortunately, he was so busy being amazed by the Deaf family’s peaceful breakfast that he hardly paid attention to the signs for the different kinds of food they were eating. But as Peg and Sally explained the signs afterward, he was amazed by those, too. Whoever had thought up the signs was a total sign-thinking-up genius.

  The sign for milk was to open and close your fist like you were milking a cow—not that Boogie, or anyone else in the class probably, had ever milked a cow.

  The sign for egg wasn’t to make your fingers into a circle, as Boogie would have expected. It was to hold two fingers together on each hand, with the hands almost touching each other, and then move the hands apart in a jerky motion, like breaking eggs.

  The sign for coffee was a twisting motion of both fists, one on top of the other, as if you were grinding coffee beans.

  In the sign for “Good morning”—this family was so polite that they started breakfast by saying “Good morning” to one another—you showed morning by making your dominant arm rise up like the sun from the “horizon” of the other arm, held horizontally across your body.

  How many Deaf people had it taken to think up all these signs? That would have been a huge job.

  And who had thought up the English language words for milk, eggs, coffee, morning?

  It was strange to think there was a word for everything that ever existed, in every language including sign language. But the signs in sign language were a lot cooler than saying plain old words.

  Next Sally and Peg produced a crate full of toy food
, the kind that used to be in the toy kitchen at Boogie’s house until it had all gotten lost over the years. Boogie was surprised he hadn’t found a toy cheeseburger or toy ice-cream cone under the couch cushion where he had hidden what was left of Doggie-Dog. The teachers spread the toy food out on a table in front of the room, like a buffet at a restaurant.

  Peg told the campers to divide themselves into teams. Boogie’s team was Nolan, Nixie, and Vera, of course. Each team was supposed to pretend to be having breakfast together. One person would sign “I want an egg”; the sign for want was to pull an imaginary object toward yourself with both hands, palms up. Then the person sitting next to you would run to get that item from the table. If it was correct, you’d sign “thank you” by touching your chin and then moving your hand away. The first team to have a full breakfast would be the winner. Boogie saw a bag of candy on the teacher’s desk, so maybe the winning team would each get a piece of candy.

  “Ready, set, go!” Peg called out.

  Nixie brought Nolan coffee when he had asked for milk. But she raced back with the correct beverage after Nolan made the sign for no, which was not shaking your head, which would have made sense to Boogie, but tapping two fingers against your thumb in a sort of snapping motion.

  Nolan brought Vera her orange juice. Boogie hadn’t expected any mistakes from those two.

  Vera brought Boogie his toast. So he must have done a good job of making two fingers on his right hand look like a fork quickly poking into each side of his left hand, as it was a piece of bread. It was so cool that someone could know exactly what you were saying without anybody speaking aloud a single word.

  When it was Boogie’s turn to take Nixie’s order, Nixie signed that she wanted two eggs. First she held up two fingers, then she made the sign for egg. Two eggs, coming right up!

  James was at the table as Boogie dashed over to it.

  “What are you getting?” James asked him, even though there wasn’t supposed to be any talking during the game.

  Boogie knew he should have ignored James, but instead he signed two eggs in the same way Nixie had.

  Bad mistake.

  Peg and Sally were both busy helping campers who had forgotten the signs for orange juice and pancakes.

  “Catch!” James said.

  Boogie tried to catch the eggs as James tossed them to him, but one struck him in the arm and the other rolled across the floor.

  “Boys!” Colleen, who as head camp person was in charge of discipline, appeared out of nowhere. Her scolding voice made it sound like the egg disaster was Boogie’s fault as much as James’s. Then again, Boogie was the one who had dropped an egg on the floor during cooking camp. He was the one who had knocked a cup of juice all over the work table during comic book camp.

  That was the trouble with being a klutz. You got blamed for things even when you weren’t being klutzy. Though maybe if Boogie had been better at catching, he would have snagged both eggs and raced back to his team with them already.

  Peg switched the lights off and on.

  “We have a winner!” she announced.

  She tossed a piece of candy to each member of the team that came in first—not James’s team and certainly not Boogie’s.

  Every single person caught their pieces of candy with no problem at all.

  “Guess who just peed in his pants?” T.J. asked at breakfast the next morning.

  This was definitely not how breakfast began in the Deaf family video.

  Boogie wondered what the sign for peed in his pants would be. He didn’t suppose they’d learn something like that at sign-language camp.

  His mother didn’t even need to guess. “Oh, Bing,” she said. “You’re having a potty accident every day now.” She scooped Bing up and carried him off to change him out of his damp jeans and underwear.

  “Catch!” Boogie’s father said as two frozen waffles popped out of the toaster.

  “Me!” shouted T.J.

  “Me!” shouted Gib.

  Their dad sent a waffle flying through the air to each of them. T.J. caught his; Gib missed, but at least his landed on the table, not the floor.

  “Dad?” Boogie asked as his father put two more waffles in the toaster. He wanted to ask his question while Bing was out of the room. “Do you know anyplace where I can buy a new head for Doggie-Dog?”

  “A new what for who?” his dad asked.

  His dad worked such long hours that he didn’t even know the name of Bing’s favorite stuffed animal. This was the first time his dad had been home for breakfast in ages.

  “A new head for Bing’s stuffed dog. Bear ate the old one,” Boogie explained. “All that’s left is the body.”

  “Maybe if you buy a whole new stuffed dog, this time Bear will eat the body,” his dad suggested with a chuckle. “Then all that’s left will be the head. So you’ll have one body without a head and one head without a body. Problem solved.”

  This sent T.J. off into gales of giggles, followed by more copycat giggles from Gib.

  “What’s so funny?” Boogie’s mom asked, coming into the room with Bing, now dressed for the day in clean, dry clothes.

  “I just wanted”—Boogie lowered his voice—“to find out how to get a new you-know-what for you-know-who.” He gave a meaningful look in Bing’s direction.

  His mother sighed. “Let’s not start that all over again. I’ve spent half of my life this past year looking for you-know-what every time he was lost, or forgotten somewhere, or left under a tree. I’m starting to think all this fuss about stuffed animals is more trouble than it’s worth.”

  She whirled around to see two more waffles flying through the air.

  “Brian!” she scolded her husband. “You’re as bad as the boys!”

  “Worse,” Boogie’s dad said with a grin.

  It was clear to Boogie that if a new head was going to be found for Doggie-Dog, Boogie was going to have to find it all by himself.

  * * *

  At camp that afternoon, the Deaf family in the video was eating lunch, with no food objects flying through the air. Sally and Peg had brought another crate of toy food, featuring lunch items. This time they organized a scavenger hunt, where one camper, with Sally’s help, would sign a particular food, and the other campers would dash around the room to find it.

  Peg had to switch the lights off and on several times, as James and another boy had a tug-of-war over a plastic cheeseburger and Vera tripped when another kid mowed her down in search of a slice of plastic watermelon.

  Boogie would never have guessed learning a new language could be so violent and dangerous. Practicing the ASL alphabet was boring, but definitely caused fewer scuffles and injuries.

  On Thursday the Deaf family talked with their hands about getting dressed. The best part was when the boy in the video put a hat and scarf on the dog. Nixie was thrilled with the sign for dog: you tapped your thigh and then snapped your fingers with the same hand, as if you were calling, Here, boy! or Here, girl!

  The Deaf family didn’t have a cat, but Sally taught the campers the sign for cat: tracing imaginary whiskers on your face. Life would be so much more interesting if everybody talked in sign language!

  “Now I can tell my parents I want a dog in four different languages,” Nixie said as they practiced the signs from the video afterward. “I already know how to say dog in French and Spanish: chien and perro. And in English, of course: dog, dog, dog, dog, DOG! And now: tap your thigh and snap your fingers. Tap and snap! I’m going to keep on tapping and snapping until they can’t take it anymore.” Nixie gave a few more taps and snaps, as if her new dog would come bounding up to her any minute.

  Across the room, Boogie could see James rolling his eyes as other kids were signing, as if it was the dumbest thing in the world to touch the top of your head twice for hat, or tap your two fists together twice for shoes. James alway
s acted like everything they learned in all the after-school camps was silly.

  But Boogie thought James was the silly one for thinking that.

  * * *

  “Today is feelings day,” Peg said out loud on Friday afternoon, while Sally signed the same thing. Peg told the campers sign language was especially good at showing emotion, because emotions were always communicated best through facial expression and gestures.

  Sure enough, when Sally made the sign for happy—rubbing her hands up her chest with a circular motion while giving a huge grin—she looked happy. For sad, she ran her spread fingers down in front of her face like tears. What could look sadder than that? For scared, she held her fists near her chest, then opened them up suddenly and crossed her arms at the same time. The fright showed in her face as well.

  “Practice feelings signs for a while in your usual groups,” Peg told them.

  Vera made the happy hand motions, with a worried face.

  She made the sad hand motions, with a worried face.

  She made the scared hand motions, with a worried face.

  “What’s the sign for worried?” Boogie called over to Peg.

  She came to their cluster of desks and made her fingers into B-letter handshapes, moving them around as if swatting pesky flies away from her face. As she did it, she furrowed her forehead in a worried way.

  “Do that one, Vera,” Boogie told her with a grin.

  Vera jabbed him in the shoulder. “I don’t look worried all the time, do I?” she said, looking worried as she said it.

  Nolan was the best—of course—at remembering exactly how to make each sign, but his happy, sad, and scared faces looked stiff and wooden, more like someone pretending to feel those things.

  Nixie’s problem was that she started giggling after every feelings sign. Boogie could tell she wasn’t making fun of sign language, the way James sometimes seemed to be doing. She was just laughing because she felt silly making the faces.