How to Read an Unwritten Language Read Free Page A

flour while I heated the pan and watched the butter bubble.
    â€œCareful,” Margaret said, “don’t let it go brown.”
    I lowered the heat. Dan and Laurie, miraculously cooperative, took turns pouring the batter onto the hot greased pan, and I flipped over each irregularly shaped cake. And so, in our mother’s absence, we had our first cooking lesson.
    When the pancakes lay waiting on our plates, we passed around the maple syrup, one by one pouring it over our portions as if this were the most solemn act in the world. Taking small, cautious bites, we discovered that those pancakes actually tasted good. Margaret ate a bit too and praised our cooking. “If your mother were here she’d be so proud!”
    We heard a car pull into the driveway. We sat still before our empty plates, listening to the car door slam and then the muffled rattling of keys. At the whoosh of the opening front door Margaret said, “Let’s put those plates away, Daddy’s home.”
    We stared at her. Margaret was gone, and now Mother led us to the sink as Father entered the room, the heavy Sunday paper tight under his arm. He watched us lined up, handing the plates to Mother, our faces still sloppy with syrup, and he smiled, surely pleased by our industry, by this postcard of a happy family. Yet we said nothing about our private game, which from the very first seemed to exclude him.
    Father pointed to me. “Hey guy, we have some shoveling to do.”
    Wiping my face, I nodded and wished the futile wish that this was the last time in my life I’d ever have to dig paths through snow. Mother bent down to kiss me good-bye, and instead of trying to wriggle away I offered my cheek and held her. “Good-bye, Margaret,” I whispered. Then I quickly turned away, for I didn’t want to see her reaction. Something about this game unnerved me: was she Mother, pretending to be Margaret, or was she Margaret, pretending to be my mother?
    *
    Keeping to the sidewalk’s thin path through the latest deep snowfall, I walked home late from school, having lingered in the library for a social studies report on Brasília, a strange, monumental city surrounded by a rain forest that even in black-and-white photographs seemed to seethe with green life. Now, gazing up at the trees’ bare branches, I longed for leaves, for spring’s distant warmth.
    A car horn rang out, and I turned to see Mother at the wheel, easing over to the curb behind me. She rolled down the window: Laurie and Dan sat scrunched together on the front seat beside her—a treat seldom offered—and, though she never wore such things, a blue scarf covered Mother’s unruly hair. She was someone else again. “Hey, kid, want a lift?”
    â€œNo thanks,” I replied, coolly regarding my brother and sister. “My mother told me never to ride with strangers.”
    She laughed. “You’re a good kid. Toodle-loo!” Waving the tail of her scarf like a handkerchief, she drove off, and Dan and Laurie turned around in their seats and made foolish faces at me.
    What’s your name? I almost called out, but the car had already slipped around the comer, disappearing behind a snowbank. Angry that I’d been left alone for being so safety-minded, I turned in the opposite direction and thromped through the deepest drifts I could find until icy chunks encrusted my pants. My shoes damp and socks thickened, I eventually found myself at the edge of a mall’s slush-stained parking lot, thoroughly chilled and farther from home than I’d planned on.
    When I finally returned and peeled off my stiff clothes, I could hear the faint sounds of Mother in the kitchen, now herself again and preparing dinner. I sneezed, and Laurie and Dan ran up to let me know what I’d missed: a woman named Dot had driven them to a stationery store in a distant neighborhood, buying them comic books and all the candy they wanted. I nodded,