Hurt Go Happy

Wednesday was speech therapy and the one day her mother still picked her up, though at the hospital, where her therapist was, rather than at school. Since she hadn’t taken the bus home, it was still early when Joey jumped from the car at the top of their driveway to collect the mail. As far as she could remember, she’d never received a letter or even a card, though there were a few in a shoebox from her grandmother who died when she was five. Joey handed the stack through her mother’s window without looking at it. It was while she was getting plates down to set the table for dinner that her mother tapped her shoulder and handed her the envelope.

Joey turned it over and read her name and address. It gave her a strange sense of herself, as if she’d become an adult for the price of a postage stamp.

Having missed the chance to tell her mother about meeting Charlie and Sukari, she now found, with this letter in her hand, that she’d gone back to wanting to keep them a secret, but her mother waited expectantly. Joey stared again at her name and address, then put the envelope in the pocket of her sweater and began to set the table.

Joey started to turn away but her mother caught her chin. “A man, a woman, a child?”

Joey couldn’t hear her tone of voice but her mother’s face showed signs of growing anger.

Joey’s knees felt weak. “Because I’m deaf, Mom,” she snapped. “It’s hard to talk to me.” In that instant she knew why she wanted to keep their meeting from her mother. Charlie was going to be the one person with whom she wouldn’t feel ashamed of her deafness. He, unlike her mother, understood how she felt. And Joey knew that Roxy would tire of teaching her to sign, but Charlie wouldn’t.

“I don’t know. I haven’t read it yet.” She stared boldly back at her mother, but her stomach filled with butterflies. She wasn’t going to lose him to her mother’s suspicions and secret-keeping. She was thinking just that when Ruth snatched the plates away. “I think you should let me see it.”

“No. It’s mine. You can’t read my mail.” Joey whirled, headed for her room, but changed her mind, circled the sofa, and ran from the house.

She ran at first as if her mother were on her heels, then zigged and zagged up through the trees behind their house. About fifty yards up a slope, on the top terrace of their property, was the stump of a redwood tree that had grown there long before Columbus discovered America. The stump was over twelve feet across and had a burned-out hollow beneath it. When they’d first moved to this house, Joey, unsure of the kind of man Ray would be, found and kept the location of the tree a secret in case she ever needed to hide again. Now it was just her place to be alone.

On either side of the stump was a rectangular springboard hole where the loggers, who cut the tree in the early 1900s, before chainsaws were invented, plunged the end of a thick board into each side of its trunk. She’d seen pictures of men standing on these platforms, one on either end of a double-handled saw, cutting the tree off four feet or so above the ground. By putting a foot in one of the springboard holes, Joey could boost herself up onto the wide, flat top.

In the winter, she kept a small brown tarp hidden in the dry center of the hollow. Joey bent to retrieve it and felt the hair on her neck prickle. She whirled around, her heart racing, but as usual there was no one there. Sometimes silence gave her the creeps, especially in dim light with anger in the air.

She shook the daddy longlegs out of the tarp and pried the banana slugs off with a twig, then spread it across the soggy, spongy cushion of redwood leaves that blanketed the stump. She climbed up to sit with her back against one of the two trees that grew from the roots of the ancient redwood. She dug the letter from her pocket and peeled it open as carefully as she opened gifts at Christmas.

I wanted to write and apologize once again for the way I behaved when we met. With all the rain we’ve had, mushroom hunters have been traipsing in and out of here with little or no regard for the damage they do. I never collect them myself. They all look dangerously the same to me, but I love them and from now on shall depend on you to tell me which ones are good to eat. I admire you knowing the difference.

Also, I hope I didn’t upset you by ranting on the issue of research labs using chimps like hairy test tubes. Once you get to know Sukari and see how closely her thoughts and feelings match ours, testing on them becomes as intolerable as slavery is to us now. Those without voices, politically or literally, risk terrible suffering.

Anyway, I’m really writing to invite you to visit anytime. Sukari pouted for hours after you left and only relented after a bribe of an apple, two Oreo cookies, and a box of raisins—her favorite.

I went to the bookstore yesterday and ordered a present for you. It will be here by the end of next week. In the meantime, why don’t you come visit us on Saturday if you haven’t other plans. You are still welcome to bring your mother and your brother. I’m sure she’ll be fine, once she meets Sukari. If it’s nice, we could go mushrooming, then have a picnic on the deck.

I thought I’d tell you a little about my parents and about living in Africa, but I’m quite tired now. Maybe you could think of questions you’d like answered.

Sincerely,
Charles Mansell and

Sukari

Joey read and reread her letter. She ran her finger over Sukari’s scribbled signature. This was the first invitation to anything that she had ever gotten, except to places with her mother and Ray. Whenever they went to someone’s house for a dinner party, they took a dish. Potlucks were a tradition on the coast. She wondered what she could bring to their picnic and what she would tell her mother. Bananas, she thought, suddenly. I can buy them in the cafeteria … and apples and Oreos and a box of raisins. I won’t have to tell Mom anything.

She carefully folded the tarp and placed her letter in the center of it before tucking it back into the hollow. When she turned around, Luke was trudging up the slope toward her.

“Are you a bear coming to eat me?” She trembled with mock fear.

Luke motioned for her to come, then turned to start back down the hill.

Joey cupped a hand over her right ear. “What’d ya say, bear?”

Luke turned and grinned, then humped his shoulders, held his arms away from his sides, and hulked toward her.

Joey covered her mouth with the back of her hand as if to stifle a scream. “Help. Lord help me,” she cried when Luke’s eyes narrowed and his pudgy little jaw set.

“Grrrrrr.”

“Please don’t eat me, Mr. Bear,” Joey pleaded. “I’ll give you honey if you won’t eat me.”

Luke stopped and straightened. “No honey,” he shouted.

“Oh yes, honey,” Joey said. “That’s what you need to make you a nice bear.”

Luke turned to run, his short legs pumping.

Joey charged down the hill and scooped him up before they reached the bottom of the slope. She kissed the back of his neck, making slurping sounds, while Luke bucked like a pony to get away. “Honey for a bad bear.”

Luke screeched to be let go.

Joey put him down and gave chase when he started to run again, but slowly so that he could beat her to the back door, which he locked once he was inside. Joey twisted the knob, calling, “Let me in, Mr. Bear, let me in,” until her mother appeared at the window in the door, pulled Luke away, and unlocked it.

Her mother’s face was still pinched with anger. She pointed to Joey’s place at the table, then turned away without saying a word—for Joey, the ultimate punishment.

The plates, silverware, and place mats were still stacked in the center of the table. Joey ignored her mother’s direction and began to set each place, but her mother caught her by the shoulder, took the plates from her, and again pointed to her chair.

“Why are you mad at me?” Joey asked.

Her mother’s face reddened. “It’s dangerous to keep secrets,” she snapped. “Why would an old man write to you? He might be a pervert, or something.”

“He’s not a pervert. He’s just a nice old man.”

“How do you know?”

Joey shrugged. It was her take on him, that was all. She’d known kind people and cruel people and there was a difference she could almost smell. “And even if he is a pervert, I’m taller than he is and he’s weak and sickly,” she said, taking a seat at the end of the table where she could see the TV. Since she couldn’t follow the conversation at dinner, at least she could practice her lip-reading watching the newscasters.

* * *

On Saturday morning, Joey woke at first light and checked her thumbs for dampness. They were dry. She smiled and rolled over to see what kind of day it would be. If it was going to be sunny, it was too early to tell. She wanted sun. She wanted to mushroom hunt and picnic. She’d spent the last of her allowance on apples, bananas, Oreos, and raisins for Sukari, and stashed them in her backpack, ready to go, along with her list of questions.

When she came into the kitchen, her mother was just lighting the stove. She turned and smiled. “You’re up early.”

“So are you. Are you working today?”

Ruth shook her head, adjusted the flame under the frying pan, then turned back to Joey. “It’s supposed to be sunny for a while. Thought I’d take Luke to the beach, let him out to run.” She grinned. “How ’bout it?”

Joey loved going to the beach with her brother, and her mother knew it. “I—I can’t,” she stammered.

“Why not?”

“I have to … too much homework.”

Though she did lots of homework just to keep up, Joey had never claimed to have too much to go to the beach. A V of suspicion formed between her mother’s brows.

“What kind of homework?”

For a moment Joey couldn’t think of anything. “General stuff,” she said, then remembered that she had chosen a mushroom project for her midterm science paper, similar to what her mother had done in her college mushroom class. “I’m going to start my science project,” she added, leaving out that it wasn’t due for a month and a half.

“What kind of project?”

“I want to make spore prints like you did,” she said, “and use them to identify mushroom families.”

Her mother looked pleased. She finished breaking eggs into the pan, added Tabasco and a little milk, then began to scramble them. “Do you have the paper ---------- them on and ---------- preserve them ----------?”

Joey missed part of the question but got the gist because she already knew she’d need small squares of paper with half-black, half-white circles, and squares of clear plastic to cover the powdery prints once the spores dropped. “I was hoping you had all that stuff somewhere, or I could make the circles with a Magic Marker.”

“I may have. I’ll check in a minute,” her mother said, dividing the eggs between three large plates and a small one. She shouted for Ray, then handed a plate to Joey, but didn’t let go. “I forgot to ask, did you want eggs?”

“Sure,” Joey said, a little too eagerly. But before her mother had time to realize that her enthusiasm for eggs was just relief that her fibbing seemed to have worked, she grabbed a clean fork from the drain-board and headed for the table.

* * *

Lugging mushroom-hunting paraphernalia and her backpack full of fruit, cookies, and raisins, Joey climbed the steps to Charlie’s deck and knocked on the sliding glass door. Sukari’s face appeared at the lower edge of the drapes. When she saw Joey, she grinned and signed, I-SEE-YOU. She began to twirl around, rolling herself up tightly in the curtains like a sausage.

“I hope now’s okay,” Joey said, when Charlie opened the door to let her in.

His hands flashed in welcome. FINE, FINE. “Now is fine. Come in.”

Charlie had picked Sukari up, drapery and all, before opening the door. “Ready?” he asked, before unfurling her.

Joey put her stuff on the floor and nodded.

Sukari came rolling out and scrambled into Joey’s arms. HUG, HURRY, HUG, she signed.

Charlie indicated with a raised finger that he’d be right back, then folded his three middle fingers into his palm and held his thumb to his ear and his pinky to his mouth. “I’m on the phone,” he said and went into his library, where he picked the receiver off the desk. The house had a pleasant musty smell, as if the old books in the floor-to-ceiling case that lined the wall were baking in the overheated house. More books rose in stacks on the floor. Papers were scattered everywhere, as if all the doors and windows had been left open during the last storm.

Sukari leaned back so Joey could see her hands and signed something, practically brushing Joey’s nose.

SORRY, Joey signed. “I don’t know WHAT you’re saying.”

Sukari signed again, then descended to the floor and swaggered into the office looking a lot like Luke as Mr. Bear. When she pulled on Charlie’s pants leg and signed, BOOK, he clamped the receiver between his left cheek and his shoulder, freeing his hands to sift through a pile of papers on his desk, where he found a book and handed it to her. Sukari scampered back, took Joey’s hand, and led her to the sofa.

She climbed into Joey’s lap and opened her animal alphabet book. “A” was an alligator. Sukari signed, TEETH BAD, and covered her eyes with her hands. She did, COW, then, DRINK GOOD, before scooting off the sofa and running to the refrigerator. She tugged at the handle, reached up, and pulled on the padlock. She turned and signed something Joey couldn’t interpret, then, WANT DRINK. Sukari suddenly looked past Joey, who turned around to see Charlie standing in the office doorway, the phone still clamped between his ear and his shoulder. SUKARI BAD, FRIEND GO, he signed.

Sukari slinked back to the couch and climbed up to sit beside Joey again. She turned a page and signed, DOG, then, BITE SUKARI, and covered the picture with both hands and glanced at Charlie. He had turned back to his desk. She flipped the pages to “T” and poked the picture of a turtle. “What is that?” Joey asked, just as she did when reading to Luke.

Sukari made a fist with her thumb on top then draped the cupped palm of her right hand over the fist, leaving her thumb to protrude like the head of a turtle. When Joey made the same sign, Sukari signed, GOOD GIRL, then jumped off the sofa and ran down the hall. A moment later she was back. COME HURRY, she signed and grabbed Joey’s hand to pull her along.

Sukari’s room made Luke’s look orderly. Fat hemp ropes, probably scavenged from the harbor, crisscrossed it at various heights and angles and gave the place a slightly fishy smell. Toys littered the floor: balls of different sizes and colors, a dozen stuffed animals, a tricycle, a red wagon, a set of drums, a horn, a xylophone with color-coded keys, and a playpen turned upside down. A plastic chair swung on a chain from the ceiling. Her bed was a mattress with a pillow and blanket on a platform built near the ceiling.

Sukari scrambled through the debris and climbed onto a chair beside the large aquarium beneath her window. She pointed at the abalone shell on the gravel bottom of the tank and signed, TURTLE.

“That’s not a turtle, silly,” Joey said. “That’s a seashell.”

Sukari drew her lips back and shook her arms. TURTLE HIDE, she signed.

Joey grinned. “If that’s a turtle, where are its head and legs?”

Sukari jumped up and down.

“Okay, okay.” Joey lifted the abalone shell. Beneath it was Sukari’s tortoise in a hibernating torpor. I-SEE-TURTLE, Joey signed.

From across the room came a flash of light. Joey looked up. Charlie had taken their picture with a Polaroid. He pulled the print from the front of the camera, glanced at his watch, then weaved through the chaos with his notepad on which he’d already written, Shall we go for a walk now? It’s supposed to rain later.

“Sure.” Joey grinned at him. “I signed a sentence.”

“I saw that.”

Charlie held off Sukari’s attempts to grab the picture. “Behave,” he snapped, before pulling the developed print from its backing.

He had caught Sukari standing on the chair, her hands forming the sign for “turtle,” her lips pursed as if blowing out candles, and Joey beside her holding the abalone shell in the air and smiling. Joey stared at the picture. How could she have imagined this moment? Would Roxy or anyone else believe her if she told them that she had a sign-language-using chimpanzee for a friend? “It’s wonderful,” she said, and moved to hand it back to Charlie.

He pushed it back. “It’s for you.”

Joey wanted to keep it more than anything, but where? It was too valuable to hide in her damp hollow tree, and her mother would find it anyplace else. “Could you keep it for me for a while?”

Charlie’s brow creased, then his eyebrows bobbed. “Did you tell your mother about meeting us?”

Joey missed everything but “tell” and “mother,” all she really needed to see.

She nodded her head. “She knows I met you; she asked about the letter, but I didn’t tell her about Sukari.” She stopped there and hoped that he’d let it go. Her mother was silly about animals, but it had dawned on Joey that if she found out Sukari signed, it would give her just the ammunition she needed. Ruth had convinced herself that sign language was shorthand for real language. If she knew a chimpanzee used it, that would seal it for Joey.

As if he’d read her mind, Still, secrets aren’t good, he wrote. They just make people think there is something to hide even if there isn’t.

Joey picked Sukari up. “I know. I’ll tell her,” she said, hugging the little chimp. “Do you want to see where I live?” Joey asked Sukari.

When Charlie signed, GO WALK. SEE FRIEND HER HOUSE, Sukari squirmed out of Joey’s arms, ran to the front door, signed, HURRY, HURRY, then climbed the coat rack and tried to put her coat on without taking it off the hanger.

Joey led the way along a fairly level Jug Handle State Park trail so that Charlie didn’t have to climb any slopes. Sukari rode draped over Joey’s head, a foot on each shoulder, her arms locked under Joey’s chin. Before they left, Charlie had asked her if she enjoyed birds, and when she said she did but didn’t know the different kinds, he’d loaned her a pair of binoculars and brought along a field guide to western birds.

Joey’s sharpened senses let her spot the telltale movements of birds before Sukari or Charlie saw them. She’d point them out and he’d find them for her in the field guide: two Stellar’s jays, a Varied thrush, a half-dozen Chestnut-backed chickadees, Oregon juncos, and an Acorn woodpecker. When they flushed a covey of quail, which flew into trees like a barrel load of bowling balls, Sukari screamed and jumped from Joey’s shoulders onto Charlie’s back.

BIRD BIRD. “You big sissy.” Charlie clicked her under the chin.

Joey took Sukari back from Charlie so that he was free to write. Something about having him for a friend made her feel like a baby bird teetering on the edge of its nest, craving flight. She took Sukari’s hands in hers, spread their arms, and swooped down a small hill, around a tree, and back up to join Charlie.

They walked a bit farther until Charlie stopped and put a finger to his lips, then smiled to himself. “A Winter wren.” He showed her its picture. “It’s this big.” He held his thumb and index finger about four inches apart. Tiny, he wrote, with a big, beautiful song.

“When I could hear I didn’t pay attention to bird songs; now I wish I had.”

Jays are noisy, but they can mimic other birds, especially hawks, and there’s a secretive little bird called a Wrentit in the forests here that sounds like a ping pong ball bouncing away. Once, on a trip to New Zealand, I heard the dawn chorus of the Bellbirds. They sounded exactly like hundreds of bells ringing high in the treetops. That’s my favorite memory of a sound. Do you have one?

The note was so long that they stopped in a patch of sunlight while he finished it. Joey looked up at the redwood leaves moving silently against a patch of blue in a slowly graying sky. She thought first of the wind in pines, but when she opened her mouth to answer, that’s not what she said. “We always seemed to live near railroad tracks. The places were ugly, but I loved the wail of a train coming. I suppose that isn’t a pretty sound to have as a favorite one.”

Trains affect a lot of people that way.

She could feel him watching her read. When she handed the pad back, he wrote, The wail is so lonesome-sounding and the tracks so straight, maybe trains offer a way out of places people don’t want to be anymore.

A chill ran through Joey. She looked at him. “That’s it, isn’t it? One of the trailers we lived in was the nearest in the park to the tracks. From my room, it seemed like I could see for miles in both directions. I remember wishing Mom and I could slip out one night and just start walking, one way or the other.”

Charlie looked at her, thoughtfully, and it seemed as if he wasn’t going to let what she’d said end there, but something Sukari was doing got his attention. She sat with her back to them, probing the rotting end of a log with a stick. “What are you doing?” he asked.

Sukari turned and pulled her lips back. A sow bug crawled out from between her teeth and dropped to the ground. Charlie rolled his eyes and shook his head. She likes how they crunch.

Joey laughed. “No more kisses for you,” she said.

Is there a sound you’ve never heard that you’d like to? he’d written when she turned again.

“The ocean.” Then something else occurred to her: “And my own voice.”

He nodded understandingly. “You have a nice voice.”

“That’s what my mother says, but I must sound funny to people because sometimes they don’t understand all of what I say, and I get teased at school. They mimic me by talking through their noses. I can tell by the way their nostrils spread.”

Do you go to a speech therapist?

Joey nodded. “On Wednesdays.”

Didn’t your therapist explain?

“Yeah, but not so I understood. She doesn’t like to write to me. She makes me practice reading lips and hers are hard to read.”

Charlie shook his head, then walked to Sukari’s log and sat down. Why don’t you use hearing aids?

“They’re pretty expensive, and since I haven’t quit growing yet, we’re waiting to get permanent ones. I have an FM system I use at school. That helps, except I hate wearing the earphones.”

You should wear them as often as you can. We learn words by imitating their sounds. To pronounce new words correctly, you need to hear them and have them spelled phonetically. That’s why people miss some of what you say. It’s easy to mispronounce new words. My mother never learned to speak. My father tried but no one could understand a thing he said but me. Thank heavens for sign language.

“But hardly any hearing people know sign language, so even if I learned, who would I talk to?”

Charlie grinned and scribbled, Well, this runt of a chimp and me, for two.

“That’s true. I’m sorry.”

He took the pad back and wrote, How do you do in school?

“Okay, I guess.” Joey shrugged. “I mostly try to get by with lip-reading ‘cause I get called bug-head when I wear the headphones.”

We all get teased about something. They called me Twig when I was in school. Hard to believe now. He patted his stomach and smiled. How well do you communicate with your stepfather and brother?

Joey shook her head. “Not at all with Ray. He has a long mustache. I brought a sign language book from the library this week, to teach my brother so we could talk, but Mom really wants me to lip-read.”

For an instant the expression on Charlie’s face reminded her of the fury he’d been in when they first met. “Can you read Luke’s lips?” he snapped.

“Well, no, not yet, but then he—”

So you’re just supposed to wait until he can speak his words clearly or learns to write? he slashed across the pad.

Joey flinched. She hadn’t meant to make him mad. When she took a step back, his expression changed. He shook his head. SORRY, he signed, but he was still mad enough to break the point off his pencil and have to fish for another one before he finished the next note.

If you went to a school for the deaf, you’d get a wonderful education and could go on to college and do just about anything you wanted. Without an education, you will be cut off from making a good life for yourself.

“My friend Roxy is teaching me to sign,” she said hopefully.

“Ump. That won’t last.”

Though Joey knew he was right, still she asked, “How do you know?” Her tone was a little defensive.

“She’s thirteen, right?”

“Fourteen.”

“She’ll get bored.”

Joey bit her lip. “I know she will. Her mother’s deaf and she’s mad at her all the time.”

They came out of the pygmy forest onto the hill above her house. Joey put Sukari down. “This is my tree stump, where I come to read, and that’s where I live,” she told Charlie. “How do I tell Sukari that’s my house?”

Charlie signed something, then lifted Sukari onto the stump. Joey put her foot in the springboard hole and boosted herself up to sit beside her. Sukari crossed her legs, folded her arms across her chest, and grinned.

I told her it was new-word time, he wrote. It’s time we give you a sign-name, a short way of referring to you. This is Sukari’s sign-name. Charlie brushed his chin several times with his first two fingers, then wrote, It means “sweet.” Did I tell you her name is Swahili for “sugar”?

“Yes, sir,” Joey said, mimicked the sign, then poked Sukari in the ribs. “That’s you,” she said.

TICKLE ME, Sukari signed.

NO TICKLE, Charlie said, signing quickly. LATER. NEW WORD.

TICKLE, Sukari signed, standing up and shaking her hands angrily.

NEW WORD. FRIEND NAME, Charlie signed to Sukari, then repeated it for Joey.

Sukari looked at Joey and puckered up, blowing little puffs of sow-bug breath through her long lips. NAME YOU? she signed by placing the first two fingers of one hand over the first two fingers of the other like swords, then pointing a bony finger at Joey.

Joey grinned. MY NAME J-O-E-Y.

VERY GOOD, Charlie signed, said “very,” then showed her the sign again. With his little finger he cut a “J” in the air, then added his thumb to make a “Y” just below it. J-Y.

Joey grinned and turned to Sukari. MY NAME J-Y, she signed smoothly.

“Sukari, look,” she said, pointing to her house. HOUSE THERE, J-Y. UNDERSTAND?

Sukari looked at Charlie, who repeated the signs for her.

HOUSE YOU, Sukari signed, poking Joey’s shoulder before she began to twirl atop the stump, keeping her balance with her knuckles.

* * *

When they were back at Charlie’s, Sukari let him tie her bib on, then took the spoon full of peanut butter he handed her and climbed into her high chair to eat it.

They’d found chanterelles and Joey stood at the stove, cooking them in butter, green onions, and lots of garlic. She could feel Charlie watching her as he sliced bananas and apples into Sukari’s bowl. When he finished, he came to stand beside her, and when she didn’t look at him, he tapped her shoulder.

“Why didn’t you tell your mother you were coming here today?”

Joey understood enough of what he’d said to answer, but she shrugged instead, then grinned. “I didn’t thank you for the letter. That’s the first one I’ve ever gotten.”

Charlie smiled. “I used to love to write letters. It will be fun to have an excuse again.” He must have thought she’d missed most of what he’d said, because he left and came back with his notepad, on which he’d written, Do you want to talk about why you didn’t tell your mother you were visiting us?

Joey read what he had written but didn’t answer. “These are ready,” she said, turning the flame off under the pan. They were having chanterelles and tuna-salad sandwiches, with Oreos for dessert. The early arrival of a drizzly rain had driven their picnic inside.

After they sat down at the table, Joey tried to answer his question: “I didn’t tell her I was coming here because I want to learn sign language, and, you know … Mom doesn’t want me to.” She knew that probably wasn’t a clear answer but couldn’t think of how to explain why one thing was the reason for the other.

Charlie picked up his pencil but wrote only, The mushrooms are delicious, and it’s a treat to have butter. I’m not supposed to have butter or eggs or anything else that tastes good. Bland, fat-free, salt-free, flavor-free food, that’s my lot in life.

“You should have told me,” Joey said. “I could have cooked them in water.”

“Ugh,” Charlie said and made a face, then wrote, Your mother wants you to fit into the hearing world, but like most hearing people, she doesn’t understand the isolation you feel.

As Joey read what he’d written, she felt the burn of tears and squeezed her eyes shut. He patted her hand and took the pad. Would you like for me to talk to her?

“Maybe,” Joey said, then changed her mind and shook her head. “I don’t think so. It will make her mad that I told you.”

Sukari banged her empty Coke can on her high-chair tray for attention, then signed, MORE DRINK.

NO MORE DRINK, Charlie signed, then wrote, All that sugar makes her hyper.

Sukari started to scream and bang the can on the tray. Charlie grabbed it away from her. SUKARI BAD, J-Y GO HOME, he signed, but Sukari continued to scream and shake her hands until Joey stood up and began to collect the dishes.

She got quiet. GOOD ME, WASH DISH, she signed.

“She loves to wash dishes,” Charlie said, getting up to lift her out of the high chair. When he put her down, she ran across the room and pulled a small step-ladder from the space between the refrigerator and the pantry. Sukari jumped up and down until Charlie opened it and placed it in front of the sink, then she climbed up to sit on the edge.

Charlie ran the sink full so that Sukari could flick the suds with her big toes. She scrubbed and scoured the plastic plates, then rinsed and rinsed them again while Joey waited to dry. “This always takes a while,” Charlie said as he put them away.

It had stopped raining by the time they finished. Sukari watched quietly as Joey put her coat on, then went into her room and came back with her little pink plastic coat, one arm already jammed into the wrong sleeve.

“You’re not going,” Charlie said, taking the coat away from her.

Sukari shrieked and signed, ANGRY, BITE.

“You do and you’ll go to jail,” Charlie snapped, then scribbled a note to Joey: Jail is the upside-down playpen in her room. Take your coat off. I’ll take her to the bathroom in a minute, then you can make a run for it.

As soon as Joey took her coat off and returned it to the rack by the door, Sukari grinned, spun, did a somersault, then ran to bring toys from a box in the hall. A moment later she rounded the sofa, pulling a wooden train by a string and carrying poor Hidey like a rag doll.

“Is it potty time?” Charlie asked her, signing “toilet” with a shake of the “T” hand, his thumb jammed between the first two fingers of his fist.

Sukari drew up short and looked at him. J-Y, SUKARI GO TOILET, she signed.

TURTLE, SUKARI GO TOILET, Charlie signed. “You little monster,” he said, taking Sukari’s hand and leading her down the hall toward the bathroom. Just before he closed the door, he gave a little wave and Joey waved back.

Joey had her coat on and the front door open when Sukari scampered back into the room wearing a toilet-paper stole around her neck. When she saw Joey at the door, she screamed and lunged for her, catching Joey around her legs.

Charlie came around the corner carrying a clean diaper and scolding Sukari, though Joey couldn’t tell what he was saying because of the two big safety pins squeezed between his lips. He untied Sukari’s arms but she held on tight with her legs.

Charlie caught Sukari’s flailing arms in one hand, spit the pins into the palm of his other hand, then put them on the foyer table. He reached down to grab a leg and Joey bent to help him. Sukari let go, but she caught Joey’s jacket collar in her little iron fist, and when Joey stood up, the top three buttons popped off and arced away, rolling out of sight beneath various pieces of furniture.

Charlie snatched Sukari up, carried her to her room, shoved her under the upside-down playpen, and set the timer on her dresser.

Sukari grabbed the bars but didn’t move.

“Can’t she lift that up and get out?”

Charlie nodded. He found his pad and wrote, She’s in it for the raisins. If she stays put for five minutes, she’ll get a handful. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll move the sofa.”

“No, don’t worry,” Joey said, “I think my mother has one of every button ever made.”

* * *

No one was home when Joey came in from Charlie’s. She took the stairs to her mother and Ray’s room three at a time and came back with a needle, thread, and some buttons. She pulled the stool over to use the light above the stove so she could watch the driveway but not be seen herself. One of the buttons was too large and she went to find another. When she came back, Ruth, her arms loaded with groceries, was standing in the kitchen staring at the jacket. She turned to face Joey.

“How did this happen?” she asked, hoisting the bags onto the counter.

“I … snagged it on a limb.”

Ruth looked at her for a long minute, then said, “Let’s see your spore prints.”

“I—I didn’t do them yet,” Joey stammered.

“Where’s the homework you did do?”

“In my room.”

“Get it,” her mother snapped.

Joey knew she was sunk, but she dug the hole deeper. “It was just reading. There’s no actual written stuff.”

Her mother’s eyes narrowed, then she jerked open the drawer beneath the phone and got out the directory. She opened it, flipped some pages, then ran her finger down a column. Before she dialed, she turned so Joey could see her mouth. “Mansell, right?”

Joey didn’t answer. Her heart pounded as her mother’s fingers jabbed the numbers. When Charlie answered, Ruth turned her back so Joey couldn’t see what she said, but she saw her mother grow tense and her hold on the receiver tighten. She hung up and turned around. “A chimpanzee?”