Sunny Days Inside Read online

  Jessica started learning ASL, American Sign Language.

  Nancy said, “Jessie, that’s smart. You can practice with Meena next door.”

  “Muy bien, Jessica,” Alan agreed.

  The first thing she taught herself was finger spelling. It turned out that you could talk to somebody in ASL simply by spelling all the words. And J was her favorite letter! You stuck out your baby finger and drew a J.

  It was like a secret code. Like something spies would use. If you knew ASL, you could talk to your friend on the other side of the classroom and nobody would know what you were saying. You could gossip and cheat on tests (not that she would!). It would be better than passing notes or secretly texting, because a note or a phone could be confiscated.

  Would they ever go to school again?

  Jessica practiced in the mirror, smiling. She wandered around the apartment finger spelling objects. Lamp. Table. Computer. Mom. Dad. Brother. Jerk. Fly-eater.

  Jacob ripped out his earbuds and said, “What’s the matter with you?”

  She printed out the ASL alphabet and, feeling shy herself, stepped outside. Meena’s balcony was about ten feet away.

  Even if Meena could hear, it would be weird to call her name when they’d never properly met. How to get her attention?

  Jessica remembered then that Meena’s mother could hear. She went back inside for the recorder, which had been left on the shelf when the family discovered just how unmusical they were. She sat on the patio chair and began to play “Oh, Susanna!” tunelessly.

  It worked! The third time through, Meena’s mom stuck her head out the door with an annoyed expression on her face. Jessica leapt up.

  “Hi! Is Meena home?” Duh! Where else would she be?

  She smiled. “You’re Jessica, right? I’ll go get her.”

  Meena appeared a moment later. Her curly black hair was in pigtails with barrettes to hold it out of her eyes. Combs restrained Jessica’s red mop.

  Today, Meena looked more curious than shy.

  When Jessica finger spelled H-I, the curiosity became surprise. Meena’s hands flew into the air and began moving fast. Meena was a very talkative person!

  Meena saw that Jessica wasn’t following her. She stopped and waved. She spelled H-I and waved again.

  “Oh. That’s obvious.” Jessica waved, too, and Meena dissolved in a happy laugh. She had a dimple on one cheek but not the other.

  Jessica pointed to herself and slowly spelled out her name.

  Meena placed her fingers just in front of her chin, like she was shielding it, then let that hand fall back into the palm of the other hand. And again, nodding and smiling. Jessica still didn’t get it, so Meena went and got her phone.

  She typed something and stretched her arm out so Jessica could read it. Good.

  Now Jessica had two real ASL words she didn’t have to spell: Hi and good.

  Before they finished talking, she had learned yes, no, please, Deaf, hearing. And when Meena hooked her index fingers together one way, then the other, Jessica could actually understand it.

  It wasn’t random. There was a beautiful logic to it.

  It was the sign for friend.

  •

  The second day that the two girls met on their side-by-side balconies, Meena’s mother came out with her. Meena looked most like her mom, who was South Asian. Her father was tall and blond.

  “You probably noticed that Meena didn’t spell her name out,” her mom told Jessica. “This is her name. The letter M, for Meena, tapped twice on her cheek where her dimple is.”

  Meena’s mom paused to sign what she’d said to Meena. Meena signed yes, and repeated her name, which in ASL was technically M-M dimple.

  “When a hearing person enters the Deaf community, you have to wait to receive a name. The community bestows it on you. It’s an honor. Meena has given you a name.”

  “Really?” Jessica said. She did feel honored.

  Meena grinned and showed her. There was baby finger J brushing her chin twice.

  As Jessica repeated it, Meena pointed to Jessica’s hair. The second sign meant red. M-M dimple: Meena. J-J red: Jessica.

  Both girls laughed and laughed. Then Meena pulled her phone out of her pocket and wrote: Can we text?

  •

  Now whenever Jacob irritated her, which happened several times a day, Jessica fled to the balcony. Sometimes Meena was already there. They both hung out there more often now. If Meena was inside, Jessica would text Come out. Meena texted Jessica, too.

  But Jessica didn’t want only to text. She really wanted to learn ASL. To speak to Meena she used a mixture of miming, finger spelling and actual ASL words that Meena had taught her, or that she’d looked up herself on the app. She probably communicated at the same level as Nancy in Mandarin, or Alan in Spanish, or Jacob in Serbo-Croatian (he had given up on Icelandic and Swahili).

  Somehow they seemed to communicate perfectly! When Jessica thought back on their conversations, she even remembered them as that — conversations. It was like when Nancy and Alan forced her and Jacob to watch a movie with subtitles, or in black and white. In her memory it was always in English and in color.

  One afternoon Jessica texted Meena. When she appeared, Jessica signed, “What are you doing?” She loved that sign with its pinching fingers.

  And Meena answered, “Reading.”

  Jessica actually hadn’t learned that sign yet, but she got it instantly: Meena brushed two fingers against the flat of her hand twice, like the gaze of a pair of eyes scanning a page.

  Meena disappeared and returned with the book she was reading, Harriet the Spy. The Harriet on the cover looked shaggy and sloppy, like she was sheltering in place, too, dressed in her red hoodie, spy notebook tucked under her arm.

  “That’s one of my favorite books ever!” Jessica gushed, babbling on until she caught herself and began to finger spell, “F-A-V-O—”

  Meena already understood. She was nodding and signing, “Good.”

  Meena made the H sign. Then she pointed one finger at herself and two at Jessica.

  H-1: Meena. H-2: Jessica.

  Harriet 1 and Harriet 2.

  By then, Jessica knew that ASL used more than the fingers and hands. It involved the whole face.

  A sneaky look crossed Meena’s. She glanced furtively around, then signed something else, which Jessica understood as perfectly as if she’d shouted it out.

  “Let’s be spies!”

  •

  Both girls started carrying notebooks to record their observations, just like Harriet. Luckily, their apartments were at the front of the building, so they could monitor who came and went, and when. If they woke up early enough, they also watched the hospital workers at morning shift change. In the evening, after the pot banging that both families participated in, the two Harriets would stay behind to sign to the other where they’d hidden their daily reports.

  These were the day’s observations torn from their spy books and hidden around the building — under doormats, behind lobby plants, in the laundry room. They could have texted, but that wouldn’t have been authentically Harriet.

  Like the hospital workers, Harriets 1 and 2 spied in shifts.

  Together, they were able to monitor what happened most of every day.

  6:55 Nurse from 3A crosses street for work. Everybody 6 feet apart. Workers start coming out. They look tired. New shift goes in.

  7:18 Old lady leaves building with shopping buggy. Striped socks.

  7:21 Dad on 3rd floor comes out on balcony to smoke.

  7:40 Ambulance.

  7:55 Ambulance.

  8:25 Building manager sweeps front walk. Picks up garbage with tongs. Candy wrappers. Cigarette butts! A face mask. (Yuck!) Black and white cat comes out. Rolls around on sidewalk.

  8:32 Ambulance.

>   8:40 Ambulance.

  9:10 3rd floor Dad smokes again. (He smokes too much!)

  9:15 Old lady comes back. Full buggy. Toilet paper!

  9:16 Family from 2nd floor leaves right after. Mom, baby in stroller, two boys. Boys acting weird. Why??? Scratching themselves.

  9:27 Boy from 1st floor leaves to walk dog.

  9:32 Ambulance.

  9:43 UPS delivery van. Man in brown buzzes, leaves package. Small box. Books? Drops tissue on ground and doesn’t notice. (Yuck!)

  9:45 4th floor man, bald. Blue bathrobe, plastic sandals. Picks up parcel.

  11:01 2nd floor family comes back. Boys still acting weird.

  11:04 Ambulance.

  11:05 Spy takes break …

  •

  “Where are you going?” Nancy asked the first time Harriet 2 got caught sneaking out to find Harriet 1’s report.

  “Just downstairs. I’ll wear my mask. Meena left something for me.” Of course she didn’t call her Harriet!

  “Left what?”

  “A letter,” Jessica said.

  That excuse completely satisfied Nancy. “I wish Jacob could get off his phone like you do.”

  Harriet 2 skipped off. What a great spy!

  Back on their balconies, they pored over the details of each other’s report. Harriet 2, who knew everybody, filled in some blanks for Harriet 1. The names of the tenants, what they did, the names of their pets. The black-and-white cat, Bill, belonged to Mr. Chu, the building manager. Sweet Pea was the dog.

  Harriet 2 used the ASL dictionary, but she knew a lot of words by heart now. She finger spelled Mrs. Watts. Signed old. It was like pulling on a long beard. She looked up the sign for England, which was where Mrs. Watts had come from centuries ago. She was like the building’s grandmother.

  “Grandma,” she signed.

  Meena nodded.

  They wondered why Conner’s dad smoked so much. They speculated on whether or not the bald man from the fourth floor ever got dressed, and what was in all the packages he ordered. Maybe he was building something. Maybe a D-R-O-N-E? Harriet 1 made the question mark with her elastic eyebrows.

  Maybe he was a spy, too, working for a sinister organization!

  And what was up with the boys from the second floor? Harriet 2 looked up “twins.”

  “What’s wrong with them?” Harriet 1 signed. “Do they have fleas?”

  They laughed.

  The two Harriets often noticed different things. Harriet 1 included tiny details: the patterns on people’s socks, if something fell out of somebody’s pockets. She seemed to have Super-Vision. She was fascinated to learn about the arguments from 3C, or the building manager’s opera music warbling right below her, which Harriet 2 reported on.

  Often people talked in front of the building, loud enough to hear because they were standing six feet apart. Harriet 2 transcribed what they were saying for Harriet 1, but most of the conversations were boring. Who got laid off, or sick. What was, or wasn’t, in the store. Toilet paper was an obsession. Also flour. (Boring in ASL was a finger twisted on the side of the nose, like nose-picking. Jessica revenged herself on Jacob with it, signing, “Boring, boring, boring,” whenever he spoke to her.)

  The only remotely interesting incident was when a budgie escaped from one of the apartments. Harriet 2 heard somebody outside singing “Happy Birthday” over and over. She looked down on a middle-aged woman holding a cage, the door open.

  “Have you seen a blue budgie?” the woman called when she noticed Harriet 2 on the balcony.

  Harriet 2 shook her head just as Harriet 1 stepped out. Harriet 2 finger spelled B-I-R-D.

  Harriet 1 pointed to where it was perched in a tree.

  “There it is,” Harriet 2 called down, pointing, too.

  Then both spies watched as the woman lured the budgie back by cooing, “Namaste, Namaste,” over and over.

  •

  At dinner Nancy announced with a grin, “I have something to tell you all.”

  Jessica and Jacob shrank down, expecting some new activity.

  Instead she said, taking quite a long time to get the sounds out,“Woah djow Nan-cee. How she woo!”

  “Huh?” said Jessica and Jacob.

  “I just said ‘My name is Nancy. Good food,’ in Mandarin,” she told them, beaming.

  “In your dreams,” Jacob muttered.

  Alan clapped. “My turn. Me nombray es Alan. Bwena comeeda.”

  Nancy clapped, then Jessica did. They all turned to Jacob, who said something that sounded like, “Eeny meeny ack steen kook.”

  “What’s that supposed to be?” Jessica asked.

  “Pashto. They speak it in Afghanistan.”

  “It’s not Pashto,” Jessica said.

  “It is. It’s a well-known Pashto fart joke.”

  “It’s not!”

  “Like you’d know Pashto if you heard it. Let’s hear your language then.”

  Jessica’s ASL had improved so much by then that she could understand some of Meena’s conversations with her dad on their balcony. She lifted her hands in the air now and let them sign every word she knew. Yes. No. Hi. Nice. Who? What? Learn. What are you doing? Good. Spell. Red. Blue. Dimple. Friend. Deaf. Hearing. School. How many? Door mat. Plant. Laundry Room. Front. Back. Over. Under. Big. Small. Like. Don’t like. Old. England. Grandma. Reading. Bird. Breakfast. Dinner. Mom. Brother. Father. Bathroom. Socks. Ambulance. Toilet paper. Sick. Twin. Flower. Bird. Cat. Flea ...

  Her family gaped.

  Jessica finished with: I’m a good spy!

  •

  After dinner and pot banging, the two Harriets told each other where they’d hidden their reports. Both slipped out to retrieve them. Then they met on the balcony again. Harriet 1 got back first because Harriet 2 had left her report right under Harriet 1’s doormat.

  Harriet 1 made the beard sign that meant old. She signed, “Where’s Mrs. Watts?” then held up two of Harriet 2’s reports — yesterday’s and today’s.

  Harriet 2 read her reports, written by Harriet 1, and confirmed it. Mrs. Watts hadn’t left the building in two days. Normally she went to the store every morning, probably for the exercise.

  Harriet 1 signed that Harriet 2 should investigate. She signed door. It was one of the more obvious ones: two hands held palm out like double doors, one opening. She signed knock. Also obvious.

  “Now where are you going?” Nancy called. “You just went out.”

  “I’ll be right back.”

  “Jessie? Where are you going?”

  Jessica beat it down the two flights of stairs, putting on her cloth mask as she went. She knocked on Mrs. Watts’s door.

  No answer. Maybe she was in the bathroom.

  She waited a minute, then knocked again louder.

  “Mrs. Watts? Are you there?” she called.

  Nothing. When Jessica turned, Meena was on the stairs. It seemed strange to see her there instead of on the balcony. Her eyes looked huge over her mask. She pointed to the door across the hall from Mrs. Watts’s — the building manager’s.

  Jessica knocked. She stepped six feet back.

  When Mr. Chu opened the door, his cat shot out into the hall. “Bill! You get back in here!”

  Jessica blurted, “Do you have Mrs. Watts’s phone number? Can you call and see if she’s okay? She hasn’t gone out in two days.”

  “Jessie? What’s going on?”

  It was Jacob, standing higher on the stairs, a safe distance from Meena, but maskless.

  Mr. Chu came striding across the hall with his phone to his ear. He knocked twice on Mrs. Watts’s door, gave up and slipped the phone in his back pocket. He shooed Jessica away.

  Out came his jangling key ring. He opened the door and called, “Gladys?”

  A faint groan sounded fro
m inside.

  Jacob looked from Meena to Jessica. “How did you know?”

  Before Jessica could tell Meena what Jacob had said, Mr. Chu let the door close again.

  “Go home,” he ordered. Then he took the phone out again and dialed 9-1-1.

  •

  They watched from the balcony — Jessica and her family, Meena and hers. Meena was signing to her parents so fast that Jessica knew she must be telling them what had happened.

  “How terrible,” Nancy said when she saw the paramedics below.

  They didn’t bother with the ambulance. They just ran across the street like astronauts in pale yellow jumpsuits, rubber gloves, goggles under the face shields, masks over their nose and mouth. The stretcher glided along between them.

  Mr. Chu opened the door of the building to let them in.

  Nancy phoned a few other people in the building to tell them Mrs. Watts was sick. Soon everybody on the hospital side came out to watch as the old woman, strapped down on the stretcher, oxygen mask over her face, was wheeled down the walk.

  After a long solemn hush came a sob. Jessica had never heard anything but laughter from Meena. Now she was bawling her head off, her parents comforting her. Meena broke away and turned to Jessica with a fierce expression on her face. Her hand went up to her mouth, then flew into the air like she was flinging something. Again, again.

  “Yell!” she was telling Jessica.

  “MRS. WATTS, YOU’RE GOING TO BE OKAY!!!” Jessica called.

  She started off a chorus. More voices rained down.

  “WE’RE ROOTING FOR YOU, GLADYS!”

  “HANG IN THERE!”

  Jacob tore inside, came back with the recorder and started blasting it. The pot lids banged again.

  “WE LOVE YOU, GLADYS!”

  By the time the stretcher reached the other side of the street, it sounded like the whole building was cheering Mrs. Watts on.

  Mrs. Watts must have heard them because she made a sign. One hand lifted slowly in the air, fingers curled. Up went her thumb.

  7

  The Incredible Escaping Bra Man

  If you lived with a superhero, you lived with sound effects.

  They were hardest for Claudia to bear in the morning, when Spidey Max’s high-pitched eeeeee woke her way too early. When he levitated three feet in the air and — whoosh — landed in a crouch on the bed, grabbed the skipping rope tied to the headboard (his Spidey line) and leapt to the floor with a thud.