Free Feathers by Jacqueline Woodson Page A

the rabbit fur hat Daddy had brought home for me. The hat had long straps with rabbit fur pom-poms at the end. Mama tied the straps beneath my chin and kissed me on the forehead.
    “That’s as good a reason as any,” she said.
    I was getting hot inside all that rabbit fur and wool, but I wasn’t ready to leave yet.
    “Remember when I told you about the poem Ms. Johnson read us?”
    Mama smiled. “Yeah, baby. I remember.”
    “I guess the writer was thinking about how light feathers are and they can just float everywhere. And I guess that’s how hope is too—all light and everywhere like that. There’s hope in this house. And at your church. And at OnePeople. At our school. Across the highway and on this side too. Everywhere.”
    Mama’s eyes got kind of shiny, but she kept on smiling. Then she leaned down and hugged me. Hard.
    She got up, put her hand against her mouth. I saw one tear slide down before she turned away from me and walked real fast down the hall. I heard her bedroom door close.
    The weekend doorman called up and said, “Someone is here for you.”
     
     
    Samantha’s father pulled up in front of his church and smiled. I took Samantha’s hand and squeezed it and she looked puzzled for a minute, then she smiled too. And when she smiled, I saw the hope there—the way her eyes got soft, the way her hand wrapped itself around mine . . . and held on.

13
    Monday morning, as me and Sean walked to school, two girls came up to us. One of the girls smiled at Sean and said, “What do you know good, pretty boy?” Sean’s hair was starting to get longer and that morning he’d picked it out into a short Afro. He was wearing a black turtleneck and his black peacoat, jeans and new boots. Earlier that morning, Mama had smiled at him, saying, You look like one of the Black Panthers, and Sean had given her the Black Power sign.
    “Huh, pretty boy?” the girl said again. “You with the pretty hair and eyes.”
    I didn’t know if I was more shocked by what she was saying or by the fact that they had just come up on us like that. I mean, girls looked at Sean all the time. And sometimes he tried to talk to them. But nobody had ever just walked up to us like that. And what if I had been his girlfriend? But Sean just smiled at her.
    “You gonna tell a sister your name?” the girl asked. Her friend giggled but didn’t say anything. Sean looked at me and signed, Tell them.
    “His name is Sean,” I said, not very loud either because I didn’t feel like being a translator to a girl who thought she could come out of nowhere and say all kinds of things to my brother.
    “What’s wrong with his mouth?” the girl said, rolling her eyes at me.
    I wanted to lie and say, “What’s wrong with your ignorant mouth?” but Sean was looking all happy about the girl, so I didn’t. “He’s deaf. Just deaf. Not stupid.”
    Sean made the sign of being deaf—his pointer finger moving from his ear to his mouth.
    The girl looked from me to him, then at me again.
    “He can’t talk either?”
    “He just did,” I said, getting mad. “You just didn’t understand what he said. He said the same thing I just said.” I put my hands on my hips, like I was daring her to walk away.
    “At least you don’t gotta worry about him arguing with you and stuff like that,” the girl’s friend said to her. “That’s what kind of boyfriend I need. Somebody who’s gonna just be quiet and let me talk.”
    I signed to Sean, They’re stupid. Even though I know you think she’s cute, don’t even waste your time. She seems dumber than a broken stick.
    “So, like, if me and him went out,” the girl was saying. “You’d have to come with us or something?”
    See, I said to Sean. Can we go now?
    I just looked at the girl.
    She grabbed her friend’s arm and started walking away. “Dang,” she said. “All that fineness wasted.”
    I could see the smile starting to fall off of Sean’s face.
    There’re lots of pretty deaf girls