Eaver Beaver

         Nanni made her way across the room, her bulging bag making a strong excuse for her plodding gait. She refused to look at me as she deposited the bag with a defiant thud at my feet.

         “Nanni, get out your English Reader please.” I kept my tone neutral, showing no sign of my acknowledgement of the thrown gauntlet. She was having trouble with her latest lesson, not being able to come to terms with the concept of silent letters.

         A mop of curly hair peeped over the sofa at me, it was her younger brother Ravi, trying to catch a sly glimpse of his sister’s potential discomfiture.

         “Ravi, come and sit down and I will set you some Hindi handwriting to do”. I thought I would thus be able to dissuade him from his purpose, handwriting being a bad word in his mind, and Hindi with its curlicues, a doubly distasteful task. The little imp was eager to garner some fodder for future sibling arguments and he slid into a position at my side with alacrity.

         I wrote out some words with consonant and vowel combinations within his skills, but yet designed to push his abilities. He gripped the pencil and poised it as if to pierce the offending book, and gave me a glance with distaste, comprehension of my schemes, and determination admixed. His head bowed before authority, he seemed taken out of the equation for the time being.

         Nanni had meanwhile opened her textbook to the troublesome chapter. My children had very expressive faces, or maybe eight years of being their mother had given me insight, she was obviously challenging me to drive sense into an unwilling receptacle. She hated English as much as I loved it, and for much the same reasons, its vast variety and flexibility. She was a neat orderly person who liked rules and logic; rules were something English had in plenty, but without logic.

         "Okay, let us start Nanni; you can read aloud."

         “Lambert was a frisky lamb,” here she pronounced lamb with the final ‘b’ sounded full and round. I interrupted her, producing a sullen I-knew-it expression from her.

         “Nanni, it is ‘lam’, not ‘lambuh’...the ‘b’ at the end is silent. Now begin again”

         This time it became 'Lammert the lam'. I spent some patient minutes explaining that it was only the ending ‘b’ in lamb that was silent; if it came in the middle of a word, it was to be sounded.

         She ran through that sentence for the third time at a sound-swallowing hurried pace and a I hope she doesn’t stop me again look rampant on her face. I let it go, since she had got the words right this time.

         We worked our way through other confusing words like ‘enough’ and ‘bough’, ‘houses’ and ‘mice’; with my not being able to produce any supportive arguments for them. She kept looking at me with this look of disbelief, as though to say You mean I have to just assume it is so because it is so? You can’t tell me why?

         I helped her struggle through the illness that strikes Lambert, all the while nervous because I knew it wasn't just a cold, it was that dreaded disease pneumonia. Dreaded, because I would now have to stumble through the mindless exclusion of the ‘p’ from pneumonia's spoken form.

         “Lambert had fever, he was ill, and he was weak. The doctor said he should not have played in the rain last week, because now he had...” here she hesitated and then plunged on ”pew..penew..pewnumoniya”

         A stifled snigger reminded me of the little jug within earshot and I shot Ravi an admonitory look. He subsided for the moment.

         “No, here the ‘p’ is silent, just say the rest of the word as though the ‘p’ is not there.”

         "Then why is it there?" Jaw jutted out in stubborn determination to find some logic, her lip trembled however in acknowledgment of defeat. Maternal instincts prompted me to ward off the threatened crying spell and I switched to the next lesson.

         “Dear shall we read about Barney then?”

         “Teacher has not taught us that yet” was the unyielding answer.

         “It’s okay sweetie, we’ll just read it for fun. See, here’s a picture of Barney...do you know what animal he is?” I turned the pages to the illustration and held it before her. She was determined not to co-operate and folded her arms across her chest as she looked away with lips pursed firmly together in disapproval.

         I tried to coax her, “he is a very attractive animal. He is small and has two large front teeth and he is very eager to do work...”

         She turned around to glare at Ravi who was bouncing about in his eagerness to name the animal. Only memory of past punishment had kept him quiet for the duration. But she was aware that he was not only a witness to her ‘humiliation’ but also perhaps had the answers she lacked. All her injured feelings prompted her to make a cruel remark; she gazed at his eager gesticulations and burst out ”Ravi?”

         Now Ravi’s baby front teeth had just been replaced with their permanent ones and they were overlarge for the mouth and face, rather like...Barney’s. I had allowed a fleeting smile to adorn my supposed-to-be-neutral face; and the acknowledged insult spurred him to retaliate by flaunting knowledge.

         “BARNEY IS A BEAVER” he shouted in triumph.

         Angry with myself for the inadvertent ‘taking of sides’ by smiling at Nanni’s small revenge, my voice rose in return, “BE SILENT."

         A puzzled expression came across his face rather than the cowed or repentant one I expected. He was silent for barely two seconds before he announced in now sure tones.

         “Barney is an Eaver!”

         Nanni finally understood the concept of silent letters and as the joke dawned upon her she burst into a happy laughter that Ravi and I echoed.


Word Count: 996 words