Feathers (9 page)

I could see the smile starting to fall off of Sean’s face.

There’re lots of pretty deaf girls at your school,
I said to Sean.
Why even bother with hearing ones.

Sean looked away from me.
I know that,
he signed, getting annoyed like it was
my
fault those girls were walking away.

So why do you get all excited when the hearing ones try to talk to you. You know it’s going to end up stupid.

Sean shrugged, still looking away. I wondered if he was just ignoring me. But when he started signing again, his hands moved real slowly, like he was trying to make sure I understood.

Remember the bridge?

I shook my head.

You know. When we were sitting at the window that day and I said what if we could build some kind of bridge from every window.

I nodded, slowly remembering.

It’s like that, Frannie. The hearing girls are the bridges. They’re the other worlds. They’re the worlds I can’t just walk across and into, you know.

Kind of.

I mean, the deaf girls, they’re my world—we don’t even have to talk and we know each other. But I don’t just want my world. I want everybody else’s world too.

But they’re just some dumb old girls.

That day, when I said it, you just kind of looked at me like I was crazy. And you know why?
Sean looked at me and waited.

Yes,
I signed.
Because I didn’t understand what you were talking about.

Yeah. Because you already have both worlds, Frannie. You can walk wherever you want.

14

When Trevor came back to school on Monday, he’d written NY KNICKS all over his cast and wouldn’t let anybody write anything else.

“You ain’t messing up the Knicks!” he said, standing in the school yard like he was the king of it with his broken-up arm all crossed and all.

“Knicks already messed up,” Chris said. “Even the Cavaliers beat them.”

“Yeah—for the first time in history,” Trevor said.

“Still got their butts beat. I’m trading all my Knicks cards for Cavaliers. You got any?” Chris took a stack of basketball cards out of his pocket and held them out to Trevor.

Trevor scowled down at the cards and said, “Man, you better get out of my face.”

Lots of people had been mad when the Knicks got beat by the Cavaliers. Even though it was the first time in the history of basketball, people lost their minds. Sean read every single sports page he could get his hands on.

Everything is changing,
he’d said, looking a little lost.

It had snowed all weekend and the school yard looked like something out of a picture. Over where the little kids played, the jungle gym and slide and everything was all covered in white. Later on, they’d come outside and their tiny little feet would leave dirty prints everywhere. But now, it was just beautiful, the sky so bright over everything you had to shield your eyes. I stood there looking up at the sky, thinking about what Sean had said that morning. When we got to the place where he turned off to go to Daffodil, he punched me gently on the shoulder and signed,
I don’t care about those dumb old girls.
But he was lying and we both knew it. I watched him walk away, all dressed like a Black Panther but looking a little bit smaller than when we’d left the house that morning.

I didn’t see the Jesus Boy come into the school yard until he was standing right near us, his hands in his pockets, his pale face turned up toward the sky, his long hair hanging all curly down his back. He saw me looking and waved. Samantha waved back.

The pocks on my palms itched. Whenever I scratched them, I thought about the sign for Jesus—the middle finger of one hand brushing over the palm of the other.

Maribel came over to us and stood next to Samantha. I rolled my eyes. She was wearing a new pair of platform boots—the shiny leather kind with the buckle. When I’d asked Mama if I could get them, she’d given me a look and said,
You can’t even walk right in flat shoes!

“A penny for your thoughts, Jesus Boy,” Maribel said.

When me and Samantha didn’t laugh, she said, “Well, that’s all that boy seems to have. He came in with some more on Saturday. They must have a penny garden in their yard or something.”

“Copper’s supposed to be good for dirt,” I said.

Maribel made a face but Samantha smiled.

Jesus Boy walked slowly, his head still kind of lifted a bit. He went and stood by the fence. After a few minutes, Trevor and all of them went over to him.

“You still here?” Trevor said.

The Jesus Boy looked down at his boots. He was wearing a new-looking blue peacoat that was a little too big for him.

“You hear a brother talking to you?” Trevor said.

The Jesus Boy looked up again and sort of shrugged.

“Rayray, you think this white cat’s—”

“Leave him alone, Trev,” Rayray said, his voice trembling a bit. “He ain’t messing with us.”

“Rayray’s talking back to Trevor?” Maribel whispered. “You know it must be snowing.”

But Samantha smiled. “He’s taking up for Jesus Boy. Bible says when Jesus Christ came back, there were miracles everywhere.”

“Nah,” I said. “I think he just lost his mind. He was always a little bit crazy, so it’s not some miracle or anything.”

Trevor turned to Rayray. “I know you ain’t trying to tell me what to do now.” He tapped his ear with his good hand. “I just know that ain’t what I’m hearing.”

“Why you gotta be so . . . so mad all the time, Trev,” Rayray said, taking a step back.

Trevor was quiet for a moment; he looked a little bit confused. Then he shook his head, laughed and turned back to the Jesus Boy.

Me and Samantha and Maribel stood shivering across from them. For some reason, I knew something was coming that I didn’t want to see. I saw the way Trevor’s face got angry again when he talked to the Jesus Boy. I saw the way the other kids were starting to move in closer.

“Well, it’s just a bit too cold out here for me,” I said to Samantha. “I’m heading inside.” But just as I started walking away from them, I heard Trevor curse the Jesus Boy and tell him to throw up his hands. I turned back then.

The one fight I’d ever had was back in second grade. A boy whose name I didn’t remember anymore had tried to take the money Mama had given me for an after-school snack. The boy didn’t get the money—he’d knocked me down and I’d kicked him hard in the knee. I didn’t like fighting. Not seeing them. Not having them. After I’d had that fight, even though nothing really hurt and I still had my money, I cried and cried and cried.

Jesus Boy stood there. He had a long red string of licorice wrapped around his finger. “Why do you want to fight me, Trevor?” he said, then put the licorice in his mouth and chewed slowly, not taking his eyes off of him. “Is it because I have a daddy? And you don’t?”

I stopped dead. Nobody talked about Trevor’s daddy. The whole school yard seemed to get quiet. Some of the kids said, “Oooh.”

“I know this cat ain’t say what I thought he said.” Trevor took a step closer to the Jesus Boy.

“You heard me right,” the Jesus Boy said quietly, but there was a hardness inside the quiet that made me shiver even more. I watched the Jesus Boy’s face. It seemed so calm, like it knew some next thing was coming and was more than ready for it.

“White boy, you must—”

“I ain’t your white boy,” the Jesus Boy said. “You color-blind?” He stepped away from the fence. A step closer to Trevor. Trevor didn’t back up, though.

I took a deep breath. I couldn’t believe he was standing up there, trying to tell them he wasn’t white. Even if he did have a brown daddy, there wasn’t anything about him that looked Not White.

“Yeah,” Chris said. “He’s spirit-colored. Ain’t that right, Rayray?”

Rayray just stared at the Jesus Boy like the rest of us—trying to find the Not White part of him.

Standing there in the snow, with all those kids standing around, it came to me—his calmness, his hair, the paleness of his skin—he’d always had to walk through the world this way, push through. Maybe he’d met a whole bunch of Trevors in his life. Maybe he’d go on meeting them.

“My mama isn’t white and my daddy isn’t white and as far as I know it, you’re the one with the white daddy living across the highway.” He took another step toward Trevor, but even as he said those words, his voice stayed quiet. But then I looked at his hand, watched it close into a fist.

“I saw his daddy on Saturday,” I whispered to Samantha. “He’s brown like us brown. Not even light-skinned.”

Samantha’s eyes went wide, then she frowned, trying to figure it out.

“I bet that isn’t his real father,” she said after a while. “The way Joseph wasn’t really Jesus’ father.”

“Girl,” Maribel said. “This world is just too many things.”

“Okay, Miss Parrot,” I said. “Did you hear your mama or your grandma say that?”

“I heard
your
mama say it.”

“Don’t talk about my mama,” I said.

“Shush, y’all,” Samantha said. “Enough fights in this school yard already.” She closed her eyes a moment and I knew it was to pray silently. When she opened them again, the Jesus Boy’s hand was still in a fist, opening and closing. Opening and closing.

I looked at Trevor standing there, his face looking like it was trying to figure out what to do next. I looked at his broken arm. At the cast climbing all the way up to his shoulder, at the way his too-small coat couldn’t quite cover it. The fence in the park faced the highway. Maybe he’d hoped he could jump and keep on jumping—through the sky and across the highway, on and on until he landed right back in his daddy’s arms.

And maybe because Trevor didn’t have anything to say back to the Jesus Boy, maybe that’s why he took a swing at him with that one good arm, missing and stumbling, then falling. And maybe because Trevor had always been on the evil side, maybe that’s why kids starting laughing when he fell, instead of running to him and helping him up out of the snow.

“You
crying
, man?” Rayray said. He looked confused and surprised. He was standing just a few feet away from his friend. But he didn’t move toward Trevor. Didn’t try to lift him up out of the snow. “I can’t believe you’re
crying,
” he said.

“I ain’t crying!”

I went to Trevor. The minute I saw him falling, I went toward him. It was automatic. Something inside me just said, “Go!” And I did. Because Trevor was falling and then he was in the snow. And in the snow he looked smaller and weaker and more human than any of us. When I looked up, the Jesus Boy was on the other side of me. And we were both lifting Trevor even as he tried to shake us off him and keep from crying.

Then Trevor was standing again. Standing but cursing both of us. But his curse words sounded strange—hollow and faraway. Like he was just learning them. Like he was practicing at being some kind of tough kid. Instead of truly being one.

Then he just stopped cursing and stood there, his head hanging down, his one good hand in his pocket. He didn’t look like Trevor anymore. Standing there all pale and sad and shivering, he looked like he was somebody else.

15

Hope is the thing with feathers.
After Ms. Johnson had read us that poem, she asked us why we thought the poet wrote that. Trevor was the one who had said,
Maybe because she wanted to fly.

Like a feathered bird,
he’d said. And then he went back to staring out the window.

Or maybe,
I’d said,
because, like those yucky pigeons, hope is always all around us.

 

 

As me and the Jesus Boy walked away from Trevor, I saw Samantha watching us as we headed into the school building.

“Hey,” Rayray said, coming up behind us. “Y’all okay?”

“He’s fine,” I said, thinking he was asking about Trevor.

“Not Trevor. You. You and JB.” I turned then. He was looking at me—his face softer and more serious than I’d ever seen it before.

Jesus Boy smiled and shrugged.

“We’re cool, Rayray,” I said. “Why you asking?”

“I ain’t scared of Trevor anymore,” Rayray said. “I’m not going to let him hit me in the head anymore either. I bet none of us gonna be scared of him. He’s just like us. Just a kid. You don’t need to be scared of no kid.” He looked at the Jesus Boy. “You all right, my man,” he said, giving the Jesus Boy the Power sign. “You think you gonna stay at Price?”

Jesus Boy took another piece of licorice out of his pocket, put half of it into his mouth and chewed slowly. He looked calmly over the school yard. “Don’t have no place else to go,” he said. “Gotta stay.”

“I hear that,” Rayray said. “This is the end of the line.” Then he turned away from us, did a Michael Jackson spin, winked at us, said, “Or the beginning. Or
something.
” And walked off again.

I looked over to where Trevor was standing. He was still there, leaning against the school yard fence now, his good hand still stuffed in his pocket. He shivered and stared up into the falling snow.

“Look how fast,” I said. “One minute you’re one thing.” I snapped my finger. “The next minute you’re another.”

And the Jesus Boy stared at Trevor, then looked down at his own hands. “The bad thing is, a part of me wants to go over there and hit him and just keep on hitting him, you know.”

“Why?”

Jesus Boy shrugged. “Just because. Because I could do it and everybody would probably cheer. Everybody would think I’m some kind of hero. I could be the new Trevor around here—with people being scared of me and all. It would be that easy.”

“But then,” I said, “who’d Trevor be?”

The Jesus Boy thought for a minute. “He’d be me,” he said. “Trevor would be the Jesus Boy.”

Jesus wept,
Samantha had said. That was the shortest verse in the Bible. But Jesus hadn’t wept. Trevor had. Jesus had seen something other kids hadn’t seen. Not because they couldn’t. Because their hearts were kinder. But the Jesus Boy had gone right to the soft hurting spot in Trevor. And he’d peeled the skin of that hurting back to show us all the scar that was there.