Free Jessi's Secret Language by Ann M. Martin Page A

he’s deaf and you have to use sign language to talk to him. But look. Look at Matt right now.”
    Matt, Nicky, and Adam were jumping up and down because their team had earned another run. Matt stuck his fist in the air like a proud athlete. Nicky and Adam imitated him.
    Haley couldn’t help grinning. “I really love him,” she said. “And I’m proud of him. He’s smart, he works hard, and even though he’s different, he tries to make himself as not different as possible. And he’s only seven! But, boy, sometimes I wish … I know this is really, really awful, Jessi,but I guess I can tell you. I’ve never told anyone else, though.”
    â€œWhat?” I asked her.
    â€œSometimes I wish he’d never been born.”
    I was a little surprised at what Haley had said, but when I thought about it, it made sense. I tried to be matter-of-fact. After all, her feelings were her feelings. They didn’t make her a bad or a good person. Still, she had surprised me.
    â€œWell,” I said slowly, “I can understand that. I really can. I’ve wished the same thing sometimes about Becca and Squirt. More with Becca, maybe, since she’s so close to my age. But I’ve felt it with Squirt, too. Sometimes I think, boy, wouldn’t it be great to be an only child. I’d have Mom and Dad all to myself, and no one would ever interrupt me while I was practicing or trying to do my homework, and no one would ever snoop in my room or take my things without asking. But then I think, if I didn’t have Becca, who could I giggle with late at night? And who could I complain to? Sometimes the kids at school tease me because I’m black, and no one knows how that feels the way Becca does.”
    Haley nodded thoughtfully. “I guess you do understand,” she told me. (She sounded very grateful.) “You know, all I really want is a familywho talks with their mouths, not their hands. A little brother who doesn’t make wild-animal noises, who walks to Stoneybrook Elementary instead of riding that dumb van to Stamford everyday.”
    â€œWho doesn’t embarrass you,” I added.
    â€œRight. And then sometimes … sometimes I don’t know what I’d do without him. Look at this.” Haley reached under her blouse and pulled out a gold chain. Hanging from it was a wobbly-looking round pendant painted red with an H scratched in it. You could tell the pendant had been made from clay. “Matt made this for me in art class,” she said. “He gave it to me for Christmas last year. I always wear it. This is really weird but, like, I’ll be totally mad at Matt for embarrassing me or something, and then I’ll remember the necklace and I can’t feel mad at him at all. I’ll just want to, you know, protect him and stuff.”
    I did know. “Yup,” I said. “Once I was mad because Becca got sick and Mama made me miss a ballet class to watch Squirt while she took care of Becca. I wanted to kill Becca … and Squirt. Then Squirt put his arms around me and said, ‘Dur-bliss?’ and I started laughing and wasn’t mad at all.”
    Haley giggled. We stopped talking for a while. I felt like I was finally beginning to understand the Braddock kids.
    We watched Matt hit a home run and that was when Haley said to me, “You know, if Matt had to be handicapped, I’m glad he was made deaf. If he was crippled or blind he probably wouldn’t be playing baseball right now. I think he’d be able to do a lot less. Being deaf, well, maybe he can’t talk well or hear, but think what he can do. Almost anything. He can even watch TV. With closed-captioned TV you get this special decoder, and then you can read some shows: The words the people are saying are written on the screen. It’s like watching a movie with subtitles. So really the only thing Matt can’t do is go to a concert or a play or