Free How to Read an Unwritten Language by Philip Graham

Donners, famous for school assemblies alerting us to the dangers of current infectious diseases, we dubbed Happy. Miss Milbane’s habit of crinkling her nose as she corrected homework assignments at her desk earned her the title Sneezy.
    â€œWhat about the popcorn lady at the movies?” Laurie asked to our anticipatory laughter. “What about Tommy Vickers?”
    â€œWhat about Dad?” Dan asked.
    We fell silent at this deliciously forbidden thought.
    â€œBashful?” Laurie suggested.
    â€œNo—Grumpy!” Dan countered.
    They both looked to me, the possible tie breaker.
    â€œSleepy,” I said without thinking, and Dan snorted with disgust. “Sleepy?” he said. “It’s no fun playing if you don’t even try.”
    â€œI am trying,” I protested, but Dan turned away, suddenly concerned with the bits of lint that clung to the blankets.
    â€œYou’re Dopey,” he murmured offhandedly.
    I refused to be provoked, refused to allow Dan’s tightly coiled emotions to release again. At school he pushed classmates off swings, threw his milk carton against the hamster cage, and he spent so much time on the principal’s bench that already, in October, there was talk of his repeating third grade. At home he probed the edge of Father’s patience, risking an enforced early bedtime or withheld dessert.
    Laurie sighed, disappointed that our new game had ended so abruptly. I said nothing, content to mull over the aptness of my choice: Dad was Sleepy, and I wanted him to wake up.
    Interrupting my thoughts, Laurie asked, “What about Mom?”
    â€œWhat about her?” I replied.
    â€œWhich dwarf was she?”
    I shook my head. “Game’s over, Laurie.”
    â€œC’mon, guess.”
    Dan, his interest rekindled, abandoned the little ball of lint he’d begun and waited for my reply.
    â€œI don’t want to guess,” I said.
    â€œBecause you don’t know. But I know.”
    â€œWell?” Dan asked.
    â€œShe was all seven of—”
    â€œNope,” he interrupted, eyes bright with challenge, “she was the Seven Hundred Dwarfs!”
    When Laurie giggled I decided to up the ante: “Seven thousand.”
    â€œSeven hundred thousand,” she added, and we continued this bittersweet, liberating disrespect to the edge of our mathematical abilities, yet still our addition and multiplication added up to less than one mother.
    *
    Schoolwork now afforded me an escape much like my household chores, and I plunged into the class assignments as if every correct answer bestowed a mysterious, healing grace. But I was hindered by my teacher, Mrs. Lawler. She always rushed through Today’s Lesson, leaving little time to consider the hurried facts we’d just been offered, facts which then threatened to simply vanish in the air.
    One morning I tried to keep up with a lesson about whales that, typically, brimmed with sociology, history, ecology, music, art and more. After a breathless few minutes devoted to What is Language, Mrs. Lawler set the needle down on a record album she’d brought from home, a recording of a symphony featuring whale songs. After a woozy rasp for a moment or two, violins and horns announced their alternating melodies above scratches and crackles. This was a record that had been played too often, suggesting a secret about my teacher I didn’t have time to consider, because a distant whale moan grew out of the speakers, joined by another moan, higher pitched, and then another, barely audible. More eerie voices entered at a stately pace, rising above the distortion of the record and so entrancing us that no one laughed when Joey, the class clown, slumped back in his seat and silently pursed his lips to the whale songs as if he were a dog howling at the moon.
    Those large creatures gliding deep under the water spoke to each other in strange, slow tones. They also spoke to me, and in the