Language 

Kathleen Spivack 

“Bette, Bette, why isn’t the child speaking proper German?” my grandfather grumbled at my mother. Outside, the apple trees were in bloom. Huge puffy clouds floated in the blue sky. From far away came sounds of friends’ voices as they played happily, oblivious to the plight of the immigrants.  

“You are corrupting her style. She’ll never speak properly if you don’t keep after her. Bette, if there’s one thing I know, that I’ve learned in all these years, it is most important to respect the languages.”  

“Ja, Ja, Ja,” my mother said, trying to look through him and at the same time trying to appear to be listening. I sat between them in the room, in front of my grandfather, with the dead smell of an enormous book of Goethe’s dramas rising up, and felt more and more hopeless. My grandfather had taken it upon himself to tutor me in literature, one hour a day. For that hour I entered his room, where he sat in his silk smoking jacket, and we discussed “literature.” I had an assignment each day: Goethe; Schiller. And I was expected to discuss what I had read with Grandfather in German, intelligently.