How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Line)
Quote #1
The boy just looked up at all of them. Then he did something amazing. He took his hands out of his pocket and signed, No I'm not deaf. Then he looked over at me and smiled—like he'd known all along I was standing by the fence, watching him. (2.53)
How does that Jesus Boy know just how to communicate with Frannie without anyone else being able to listen in, anyway? It's sort of surprising that he knows sign language—since he's not deaf—but it also creates a bit of a bond between them.
Quote #2
He can't hear, so you have to use sign language with him. He can talk a little bit, but most people don't understand what he's saying. I guess that's because you have to listen real hard and most people don't want to spend a lot of energy on listening to people. (3.17)
Just because Sean is deaf doesn't mean that he's stupid or incapable of holding a conversation. He's just as conversational as anyone else—he just does so differently.
Quote #3
Hearing girls were always looking at him. But most times, when they saw his hands flying through the air, they stopped looking, which was stupid to me. Sign language is just another language and if they weren't so dumb, maybe they could learn to speak it. (7.14)
Sean isn't the stupid one, according to Frannie—the girls who act like he's the stupid one are the real stupid ones. They're the ones who are incapable of learning another language when they want to talk to him so badly.
Quote #4
Nobody's experimenting on my child, Mama said. If that's the way he came into the world, that's the way he's staying. It's us we need to change. And she and Daddy started learning sign language. By the time I was born, Sean was two and a half years old. I grew up learning how to speak and sign. (8.42)
Sean's family doesn't treat him any differently because he can't talk; instead they just resolve to learn sign language so that they can all communicate freely as a family. It doesn't make things any more complicated when you've grown up with it all your life.
Quote #5
"I just know it," he said. "I just do. Maybe from when I was a baby or something."
"Well it's not something a person's born knowing," I said.
"Well, now come you know English?"
"Because my family knows English and that's what they taught me." (10.40-43)
When you're a baby, you pretty much pick up on whatever language you're around—and Frannie and Jesus Boy both learned sign language seamlessly that way. They don't even really recall learning those signs.
Quote #6
She always said she was too old to learn another language by the time Sean came along, but most times, when I tried to translate, she already knew what Sean was signing. And she had a way of signing back that only her and Sean understood most of the times—a kind of secret language that just about burned me up. (11.7)
Grandma and Sean have their own private language. It may not be the official American Sign Language, but they understand each other just fine—and that's what matters.
Quote #7
"He can't talk either?"
"He just did," I said, getting mad. "You just didn't understand what he said. He said the same thing I just said." (13.9-10)
Frannie's pet peeve is when people say that Sean "can't talk." This is totally untrue, and he does talk all the time. He has long, introspective conversations with his family about the different sides of the highway, even.
Quote #8
Our old mama's returned, I signed behind her back, then headed to the bathroom. (17.29)
For Frannie, sign language isn't just a means of communicating with her deaf big brother. She uses it when he's not around, too—it's a language that she's taken on as her own, just like she's taken on English.
Quote #9
Ms. Johnson says everybody has a story. She said some of us are afraid to tell ours and that's why when it comes time to write something, we say we have writer's block. Ms. Johnson says there's no such thing as writer's block. (20.1)
Writer's block doesn't signify that someone has absolutely nothing to write about in their head—or at least that's what Ms. Johnson says. It just means that someone doesn't want to write about what's inside of them. It's a twist on this classic feeling of stuckness.
Quote #10
The first word I ever learned was now. Sean said I was not even two years old when he showed me the word—middle fingers against your palms, thumbs and pinkies up and your hands moving down.
I lifted my head and took a deep breath.
My brother taught me to speak, I wrote. I grew up inside his world of words… (20.26-28)
Frannie has never thought of one of her languages being superior to the other. And that makes sense, because she didn't even start out with English like the rest of her peers—she learned ASL before anything else.