Jessi's Secret Language

by Ann M. Martin

  Anyway, Claudia doesn’t just love art, she’s a really good artist. Unfortunately, she’s a terrible student. Being a poor student is bad enough, but when you have an older sister who is a genius, like Claudia’s sister, Janine, it’s really tough. Claudia manages, though. She does as well as she can in school, and otherwise concentrates on her art and babysitting. She lives with her parents, her sister, and her grandmother, Mimi.

  Mary Anne Spier is the club secretary. She’s in charge of keeping the record book in order, except for the money stuff. (That’s Dawn Schafer’s job, since she’s the treasurer.) It’s hard to believe that Mary Anne and Kristy are best friends. This is because in a lot of ways they’re opposites. Oh, they look alike, all right. They’re the two shortest kids in their grade and they both have brown hair and brown eyes, but that’s where the similarities end. Kristy is loud and outgoing, Mary Anne is shy and introspective. (Introspective is one of my favorite words. It means thoughtful, looking inside yourself.) And Mary Anne is sensitive and caring. I notice that the other girls usually go to her if they have a problem. She’s a good listener and takes people seriously.

  Mary Anne, believe it or not, is the only club member with a steady boyfriend. She used to dress very babyishly, but now her clothes look pretty cool. She’s changing. Claudia says she’s becoming more mature. And I think that’s hard on Kristy. Mary Anne lives with her dad and her kitten, Tigger. Her mother died when she was a baby. I think Mr. Spier used to be really strict with her, but he’s lightened up lately.

  Okay. Remember that I said there used to be a club member named Stacey McGill? She was the original treasurer of the Baby-sitters Club, but her family moved back to New York City, where they used to live. Guess what. Our family moved into her old house! Anyway, when Stacey moved away, Dawn Schafer took her place as the treasurer. Dawn had moved to Stoneybrook from California several months after Kristy started the club. She got to be good friends with Mary Anne, and soon she had joined the club. I like Dawn a lot. She lives near Mallory, so I see her more often than the other older girls in the club.

  Dawn would be the first one to describe herself as a true California girl. She has long (and I mean long) hair that’s so blonde it’s almost white. She loves health food (won’t touch the junk food that Claudia’s addicted to) and always longs for warm weather.

  She’s going through a rough time right now. The reason she moved east was because her parents got divorced. She came here with her mom and her younger brother, Jeff. But Jeff was so unhappy that he finally moved back to California to try living with Mr. Schafer. As Dawn pointed out, her family is now ripped in half. I think Dawn is a survivor, though.

  The other club members are Mal and me. You already know about me. And you know that Mal has seven brothers and sisters. She loves to read, write stories, and illustrate her stories. She thinks her parents treat her like an infant, and she can’t wait for the day when her braces will be off, her ears will be pierced, and her glasses will be gone. She’s dying for contacts and wishes she could straighten out her head of curly hair. As Mal once said, being eleven is a real trial. Mal and I are junior club members since we are pretty much allowed to sit only after school and on weekends; hardly ever at night (unless we’re at our own houses taking care of our brothers and sisters).

  So those are our six club members. We do have two associate members, who don’t come to meetings. They’re people we can call on if we really get in a fix — if someone needs a sitter and none of us can take the job. One of those members is Logan Bruno, who just happens to be Mary Anne’s boyfriend! The other is a girl named Shannon Kilbourne, who lives across the street from Kristy in her ritzy new neighborhood.

  And that’s about it. At our club meetings, we mostly take phone calls and line up jobs. In between, we talk. We talk about us and what’s going on in school or in our lives or with the kids we sit for. Sometimes we get silly. For instance, during the meeting that was held after my ballet tryouts, Dawn announced that she’d heard that if you were able to touch your nose with your tongue, it meant that eventually (like when you were eighteen) you would need a very big bra. Well, this was pretty intriguing for all of us, especially Mal and me, who don’t need bras at all yet, and even though I didn’t see the vaguest connection between tongue-touching and bra size.

  “I can do it! I can do it!” Kristy shrieked, but she had to calm down in the middle of her shrieking because the phone rang. Kristy, who always sits in Claudia’s director’s chair, wearing a visor and looking official, dove for the phone. So did Mary Anne, Dawn, and Claudia. Mal and I didn’t dive for it. We’re too new for that. We’re still in the middle of the fitting-in process.

  Kristy picked up the phone and said, “Hello, Baby-sitters Club.” She paused. “Yes? … Oh, I see…. Well, we’ve never sat for a deaf child before, but that doesn’t make a difference to any of us. I mean, if it doesn’t make a difference to you. We like all children.” (Long pause.) “Training? Well, that makes sense. Listen, let me talk to the other babysitters and I’ll call you back in a few minutes. Just give me your number…. Okay. Thanks. Bye.”

  Kristy hung up the phone and turned to us. “That was a new client. Her name is Mrs. Braddock. She’s got two kids. Haley is nine and Matthew is seven. The Braddocks have just moved to the neighborhood. There are two hitches here. One, she needs a regular baby-sitter, two afternoons each week. And two, Matthew is deaf. He uses Ameslan, whatever that is. So she needs a sitter who can come every Monday and Wednesday afternoon, and she needs someone who’ll be willing to learn this Ameslan thing. Mrs. Braddock says she’ll train the sitter. She sounds really nice.”

  The six of us got into a big discussion. Dawn and Mary Anne didn’t want regular afternoon jobs. They wanted their schedules to be more free. Claudia couldn’t take the job because she has an art class on Wednesday. Kristy lives too far away to be convenient to the job. That left Mal and me. Mal was interested, but she often has to watch her brothers and sisters on Mondays when her mom volunteers at Meals on Wheels.

  So Kristy called Mrs. Braddock back and I got the job! I was so excited. Working with a handicapped child sounded really interesting.

  The meeting was over then and we were all rushing out the door to our homes and our dinners when Mal cried, “Hey, Jessi, how did the tryouts go?”

  “Oh, fine!” I replied lightly. “But I won’t know anything until my next class.”

  “Well, good luck!” said the others.

  “Thanks,” I replied. But I was a whole lot more nervous than I let on.

  “And one and two and three and four and plié … PLIÉ, Mademoiselle Jones. Bend those knees!”

  Sometimes Mme Noelle gets a little carried away in ballet class. She has this big stick (Becca saw it once and called it a club, but it really isn’t) that she bangs on the floor in time to her counting. This is only when we’re exercising at the barre at the beginning of class.

  “And one” (bang) “and two” (bang) “and three” (bang) “and four” (bang). “On your toes. Up, up, up!”

  I wished it were the end of class instead of the beginning. At the end, Mme Noelle was going to announce the parts in Coppélia. Not everyone from our class would wind up in the ballet. Kids in all the other classes at the school had tried out, too, and there were simply not enough parts to go around.

  I looked at the students in the room. We are an advanced en pointe class, which means that we dance in toe shoes. I will never forget how thrilled I was when I got my first pair of toe shoes. That is absolutely the most exciting thing in the life of a young ballerina. But you know what? We work out so hard that we need new shoes constantly. We just wear out one pair after another. Mama and Daddy admit that this is expensive, but they know I’m serious about my dancing, even if I don’t want to become a professional, so they go along with it very nicely. I put quite a bit of my baby-sitting money toward shoes so that my parents don’t have to pay for all of them.

  In my class are eleven other girls.
I’m the youngest and the newest. The next oldest are two twelve-year-olds, and the others are thirteen and fourteen. Mme Noelle said I’m the first eleven-year-old to be in this class in a long time. In fact, she sort of made an announcement about it. Right away I could tell that Hilary and Katie Beth were upset. Hilary and Katie Beth are the twelve-year-olds. Until I came along, they were the youngest in the class.

  They do not like me.

  Well, I’m sorry I took their special positions away, but I couldn’t help it. I mean, I didn’t do it on purpose.

  “And one and two and three and — Pay attention, Mademoiselle Romsey!”

  Mademoiselle Romsey. I mean, Ramsey. That’s me! It always takes me a second to remember that.

  In Mme Noelle’s class, you don’t apologize when she scolds you. You just shape up and work extra hard. Which I did.

  But not until after I noticed Hilary and Katie Beth gloating at each other. They were happy to see me in trouble.

  We finished our barre work and started in on some floor exercises. Tour jetés and stuff like that. We practiced head work, too. When you turn, you have to spin your head around faster than your body. It’s sort of hard to explain. Anyway, then Madame began to teach us a complicated routine that involved groups of four girls dancing with their hands crossed and joined.

  Nobody wanted to hold my hands.

  Oh, okay. That’s not true. It’s just that Hilary and Katie Beth were in my group and neither of them wanted to hold my hands. The only solution was for me to dance at the end of the line, holding the hand of the fourteen-year-old in our group who was mature enough not to care about petty little things.

  Mme Noelle finally ended class five minutes early.

  “Okay, mes petites,” she said, which is French for “my little girls.” Considering the fourteen-year-olds in the class, mes petites seemed sort of odd, but she calls us that all the time.

  She banged her club on the floor and said, “Gother ’round, please. I am going to announce those of you who have earned parts in Coppélia.”

  My heart began tap dancing in my chest. On the day of tryouts, all I had cared about was not doing something stupid. Since I hadn’t done anything stupid, I was hoping that maybe, just maybe, I would be given a teeny little part, like one of the townspeople.

  Mme Noelle cleared her throat as my classmates and I stood before her nervously. Most of us were nervous, anyway. But Hilary and Katie Beth looked smug. They thought of themselves as Madame’s favorites, so I guess they weren’t worried about getting good parts.

  Madame began by announcing the smaller roles.

  “In this closs,” she said, “Mary Bramstedt and Lisa Jones will be two of the townspeople. Carrie Steinfeld will participate in the Donce of the Hours. Hilary, although the Chinese Doll is usually played by a male doncer, you have been given that part. I think you can do it. Katie Beth, you will play Coppélia herself.”

  Madame paused.

  I nearly died. I wasn’t even one of the towns- people. How humiliating. And Hilary and Katie Beth were gloating up a storm. The Chinese Doll. What a role. And Coppélia herself. Oh, well. There probably weren’t any black people in little European towns hundreds of years ago anyway. How could I have thought I’d get a role in Coppélia?

  I was so busy feeling sorry for myself that I almost missed the next thing Madame said: “One role more. I am very pleased to announce that the part of Swanilda” (she’s the star, remember?) “has been awarded to one of the students in this closs.”

  Just about everyone in the room gasped. I’m surprised there was any oxygen left to breathe.

  “Swanilda,” Mme Noelle said, “will be played by Mademoiselle Jessica Romsey.”

  Jessica Romsey? Oh, Jessica Ramsey. That was me. ME! I was going to be Swanilda, the star?

  “I admit,” Mme Noelle went on, “that Jessica is a bit young for the role, but I think she can hondle it. Jessica, your audition was wonderful. That is all. Soturday rehearsals will begin this weekend for those in the performance. Closs is dismissed.”

  I walked into the changing room in a fog. I wasn’t sure how to feel. I was delighted, thrilled, scared to death. It was encouraging that Madame didn’t seem to mind a black Swanilda, but could I really learn the part? I began to imagine myself on stage in Swanilda’s lovely costume.

  First I saw myself pirouetting and tour jetéing to beat the band.

  Then I saw myself leaping through the air toward the open arms of Franz, missing, and sailing into the scenery, which comes crashing down, knocking three dancers unconscious, and ruining the performance.

  With a little shudder I slipped off my shoes and leg warmers and searched around for my jeans.

  “Congratulations, Jessi,” said Mary Bramstedt and Lisa Jones.

  I shook myself out of my fog.

  “Thanks,” I said, looking up gratefully. I smiled.

  They crossed to the other side of the room and began sorting through their clothes.

  “Congratulations, Jessi,” said two more voices, only this time my smile faded. The voices were not friendly. They were nasally, mimicking what Mary and Lisa had just said. Imagine somebody noticing that you’ve totally botched something up, and saying, “Oh, that’s nice. Real nice.” That was exactly how those voices sounded.

  I didn’t have to glance up to see who the voices belonged to.

  Hilary and Katie Beth.

  What was I supposed to say?

  I decided to ignore their tone. “Congratulations to you, too,” I replied. “The Chinese Doll. That’s a great part. And Coppélia, Katie Beth. That’s terrific.”

  “Oh, come off it,” replied Katie Beth nastily. She had unpinned her long hair and flipped it over her shoulder. “Coppélia barely does anything. She just sits there. She’s a doll, for heaven’s sake. They could put a dummy on stage, and it would be the same thing.”

  “No, it wouldn’t,” I told her.

  Katie Beth just tossed her head. Then she took Hilary by the arm, and they sat down not far from me.

  It was while I was pulling my shirt on over my leotard that I heard it.

  “Teacher’s pet,” Hilary whispered to Katie.

  They were talking about me.

  “She just got the part because she’s Madame’s favorite. And she’s the favorite because she’s the newest and youngest,” agreed Katie Beth.

  “Yeah, just wait until another girl joins the class,” Hilary added. “Then she’ll see.”

  Were they right? Had I gotten the part of Swanilda because Madame favored new girls, not because I was a good dancer? If that were true, I couldn’t stand it. That would be worse than not being in the production at all.

  When I was dressed, I slunk out of school like a dog with its tail between its legs.

  I didn’t worry about my role in Coppélia for long. In our house, it’s hard to keep worries inside. Everyone notices when you’re brooding. Even Squirt, who tries to make you laugh by blowing raspberries.

  I hadn’t been home from class for more than ten minutes before Mama dragged the whole story out. Then she began talking some sense into me. “Didn’t we agree that the Stamford school was the best ballet academy in the area?” she asked me.

  “Yes,” I replied.

  “And didn’t we look into its reputation, and even the reputation of Madame Noelle?”

  “Yes.”

  “And did we find anything that wasn’t professional?”

  “No.”

  “So,” said Mama, who was really being a lot gentler than this sounds, since she was sitting close to me on the couch and smoothing back my hair as she talked, “do you believe what those girls were saying? Do you think Madame Noelle would risk the whole show, would cast the starring role with a dancer who wasn’t the best for the part, in order to play favorites?”

  “Nope,” I replied.

  “I don’t think so either,” said Mama, and she pulled me close for a hug.

  “Thanks, Mama,” I whispered.


  And that was the end of that. Hilary and Katie Beth were jealous, and I’d just have to live with that. It was their problem, not mine. The only way for me to feel bad about it was to let them make me feel bad. And I wasn’t going to do that. Why should I?

  I concentrated on Matthew Braddock, my new baby-sitting charge. I was supposed to go to his house for my first training session. I decided that before I did, I should at least know what Ameslan was. So the night before I met Matthew I went into our den and looked up some things in our encyclopedia. It turns out Ameslan is sign language and that signing is a way of talking with your hands — so that deaf people can see you talk, since they can’t hear you. The book says signing is a lot easier than reading lips, because so many spoken words “look” the same. Stand in front of a mirror. Say “pad” and “bad.” Do they look any different? Or try “dime” and “time.” Do they look any different? Not a bit.

  But signing is a language especially designed for the deaf, in which words or concepts are represented by different signs made with the hands. Actually, there are different kinds of sign languages, just like there are different spoken languages. American Sign Language (or Ameslan) was the language Matt had learned.

  When I thought about it, even people who can hear use signs pretty often. We have always accused Daddy of “talking with his hands.” He absolutely cannot hold them still when he talks. If he’s talking about something big, he holds his hands wide apart. If he’s trying to make a point, he pounds one hand on the table. If he wants to show that something is unimportant, he sort of waves one hand away. If he says your name, he points to you at the same time.

  Well, I couldn’t imagine a different sign for every word in the world, and I couldn’t imagine the sign for a word like “shoe.” Or how, for instance, would the sign for apple be different from the sign for orange?

  I would find out soon enough.