Pig Latin
Sonny slammed the front door shut and raced through the hall. In the living room he tossed his schoolbooks onto the sofa and called out at the top of his voice.
“Momma! Guess what?”
“Okay, I’ll bite,” Sonny’s mother said as she emerged from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron. “I guess you just slammed the front door even though you’ve been told not to. Right?”
“Miz Burnett sent us out this afternoon to clean the dead leaves out of the flower beds under our classroom window,” Sonny said excitedly, “and guess what we found.”
“Dead leaves?”
“No!... Well, yes. Those, too. But we found lots of baby turtles. Just hatched out of eggs. And she said we could keep them. I got one,” he drew a rumpled handkerchief from his pocket and unfolded it. Gingerly, he picked up between the forefinger and thumb of his right hand a brown disk the size of a silver dollar and placed it on the palm of his other hand. “Isn’t it swell?”
“Real cute. And don’t say ‘swell'.”
“What can I keep it in?”
“There’s an empty shoebox on the floor in my bedroom closet. You can use that. And you can feed it some of that hamburger meat that’s in the refrigerator. Take a little bit of lettuce for it. And some tomato, too.”
Sonny retrieved the cardboard box, punched airholes in the lid with a pencil, and put the turtle in it. He tried to coax it out of its tightly closed shell with a smidgeon of ground beef. After a few minutes, he grew tired of waiting. He put the lid on the box and placed the box on the desk in his bedroom. He returned to the kitchen.
“Can I have a piece of that spice cake you made yesterday?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“We’re going to have supper in less than an hour. It’ll spoil your appetite.”
“No, it won’t.”
“Have you filled your rats’ water bottle?”
“I will after supper.”
“You’ll do it now! You’re eight years old, going on nine. I shouldn’t have to remind you to take care of your pets. If you can’t remember to clean their cage and see to it that they get food and fresh water every day, I’ve a good mind to get Elizabeth to take them back to the laboratory where she got them.”
Her threat goaded him into reluctant action. He dragged himself to the garage, fed his white rats and filled their water bottle. After his interest in watching them eat had worn off, he returned to the kitchen.
“Can I go over to George’s?” he asked his mother.
“Have you taken care of your rats?”
“Yeah.”
“What have I told you about saying ‘yeah.’?”
“To say ‘Yes'.”
“That’s better. All right, then. But don’t go out of earshot and come right home when I call you.”
Sonny skipped across the lawn to the Pierce’s house and rang the front doorbell.
“Can George come out?” he asked when Mrs. Pierce opened the door.
“I’m afraid not today, Sonny.” In response to the unspoken question that appeared on Sonny’s crestfallen face, she added. “He has to stay in his room. He's being punished.”
“Oh.” Sonny turned to go, then thought better of it and faced George’s mother. “Thank you, Mrs. Pierce,” he said, not really knowing what he had to be thankful for. Rounding the corner of the house, he heard a hissing sound.
“Psst!” Sonny stopped and looked round. Seeing nothing, he started to walk again. “Psst!” sliced the air another time, louder. Looking up, he saw George climbing through a window onto the roof of the sunroom. George shinnied down the drainpipe and hurried to the back of the house, dragging Sonny with him.
“You’re gonna get it if your parents find out you left without permission,” Sonny warned.
“So what?” George said defiantly. Sonny felt a surge of envy-tinged admiration for George’s devil‑may-care attitude.
“Why were you being punished?”
“I bought some firecrackers with my allowance.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing. She wasn’t mad about that. But I dropped a lit one down the seat of Crawford Smith’s pants and his mother called my mother and got me into trouble. Crawford Smith’s a tattletale.”
“Have you got any firecrackers left?”
“No.”
“Too bad.”
“Yeah.”
“Let’s go over to Buddy’s. He’s got a new baseball. We can go over to the vacant lot and practice pitching and batting.”
“Buddy’s not home. He had to go get his hair cut.”
“Well, we could play kick the can.”
“I don’t feel like it.”
“What about going down to the stream and catching crawfish?”
“Naw.” Sonny thought George was a wet blanket. He knew what to do with crawfish even if George didn’t.
“Let’s go over to the big oak tree and swing on the rope,” Sonny said.
“Okay. I get first turn.”
“I’ll flip you for it.”
“Have you got a coin?”
“No. … Paper, scissors, rock… two out of three.”
George won. While he was swinging out over the deep gulley, Sonny sat on the hard earth and threw pebbles at the tree trunk.
“Whatcha you gonna take when you get to high school?” he asked George.
“Shop.”
“What shop?”
“Wood shop.”
“Why?”
“So I can build things.”
“My sister takes algebra.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s real hard math. Even harder than geometry. She takes French… and Latin, too.”
“I can speak Latin.”
“No, you can’t.”
“Yes, I can.”
“Can’t.”
“Can.”
“Can’t either.”
“Can, too.”
“Okay, then. If you’re so smart, let’s hear you say something in Latin.”
“Eyeyay ankay eekspay igpay atinlay.”
“That’s not Latin.”
“Yes, it is. Just because you don’t understand it doesn’t mean it’s not Latin.”
“You’re just making it up.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Are, too.”
“Am not.”
“Bullshit!”
“Horseshit!”
“Elephantshit!”
“Whaleshit!”
Sonny thought hard but couldn’t come up with a cuss word big enough to top George’s. “I’ll bet you can’t even say it again just like you did before,” he said.
“Sure, I can.”
“Okay, then. Go ahead. Do it.”
“Eyeyay ankay eekspay igpay atinlay.”
“That’s not the same.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Bullshit!”
“Dogshit!”
“Catshit!”
“Ratshit!
“Batshit!”
“Gnatshit!”
“Okay, then. What does it mean?”
“It means ‘I can speak Latin.’”
“You’re just saying that.”
“No, I’m not. It’s Pig Latin. It’s real easy. All you have to do is take the first letter off the word, put it at the end and add ‘ay.’ ‘Speak’ is ‘eekspay.’ ‘Latin’ is ‘atinlay.’ Get it?”
“Gee, that’s swell. You mean like this? ‘I peaksay…’”
“No, you jerk. ‘Eyeay eekspay.’”
“But there isn’t any first letter to take off ‘I.’”
“So what? Just fake it. If you don’t, anybody can understand it. That’s what’s so neat about Pig Latin. It’s a secret language you can use so nobody’ll know what you’re talking about.”
A shrill whistle split the air.
“I gotta go,” Sonny said. “My mother’s calling me.”
“Okay. See you tomorrow.”
“Maybe if you sneaked back in your room, your mother wouldn’t find out.”
“Who cares?”
Another piercing whistle rang out.
“I’m coming,” Sonny yelled. “So long, George.”
“So long.”
Sonny walked home slowly, repeating over and over under his breath ‘eyeyay ankay eekspay igpay atinlay.’
* * *
“Know what, Momma? I can speak Latin.”
“You can? That’s nice.”
“Wanna hear me?”
“I’m listening. Go ahead.”
“Eyeyay ankay eekspay igpay atinlay.”
“Arvelousmay! Eyemay airivay oudpray uhvay ooyay.”
Non-plussed by his mother’s heretofore unsuspected erudition, Sonny paused and pondered.
“It’s Pig Latin,” he specified at length.
“I know.”
* * *
Sonny switched off the light and padded in his bare feet across the bedroom floor, peering through the darkness to find his bed in the shadowy landscape. He bumped against it and slipped between the cool sheets.
The bed bounced softly when Thomas, his cat, jumped up on it. Thomas put his cold nose against Sonny’s cheek and purred, massaging the bedcovers with his front paws while Sonny mulled over the day’s main events.
It had been a swell day. On the way to school, he had found a pocketknife with only a small piece of the bone casing chipped off.
In math class, he had made Doris, sitting in the desk in front of his, think a fly was on her neck by tickling her. She, in turn, had shown that she was not indifferent to him by whirling round suddenly and socking him on the nose with her fist when Miz Burnett turned her back to the class to write the homework assignment on the blackboard.
Playing dodge ball during morning recess he had stayed in the circle longer than Phillip Carter and almost as long as Laura Duncan, even though Laura Duncan was two years older.
In the afternoon he had found a baby turtle and Miz Burnett had let him keep it.
After school he and George Pierce had had fun making up new cuss words and swinging on the rope the gang had tied on a branch of the big oak tree by the gully. George had taught him Pig Latin. Pig Latin was swell.
For supper he had had hamburgers and French fries with lots of ketchup and a piece of spice cake with milk.
Thomas curled up in a ball on Sonny’s stomach and his purring tapered off. A scratching sound let Sonny know his new pet had stuck its head and legs out of its shell at last and was trying to get out of the shoebox.
Sonny wormed down under the covers and practiced his newfound skill. ‘Orrisday uvzlay eemay.’ He was asleep before he got to ‘eemay’ for the sixth time.
~ The End ~