Feathers by Jacqueline Woodson Read Free Book Online Page B

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 . .