The Pride – page 27
“That word is history, Momma.” Quantavianna had been helping her mother fill out job applications and other forms since she could read and write, which seemed like from the time she was born. Without her mother noticing, Quantavianna looked at Quantenerra and rolled her eyes skyward. Quantenerra mimmicked her sister and they smiled at one another.
“What does this sentence say?” Romina pointed to the sentence where history appeared. Quantavianna leaned over again and looked at the sentence.
“It says ‘Please include your job history for the last 10 years,’ Momma.” Quantavianna tried not to show her irritation. She preferred when Romina didn’t have paperwork to fill out, because she could get her homework done more quickly and go outside and play.
The kitchen was silent while Romina finished filling out the application. Quantavianna was bracing herself for more questions. Quantenerra was working on her math homework and Quantarius and Quantevisha, were practicing writing their names. Romina leaned to her right to look at the twins’ papers.
“You all are doing really good.” All her children had had a hard time learning to write their names. Romina hadn’t considered this when she’d given them all such long names. She just liked the fact the names were unique and started with “Qu.” She’d always liked the sound that “q” and “u” made when you put them together. The twins were four, and she insisted that they start learning to write their names. She wanted to make sure they were able to it flawlessly by the time they started kindergarden. Each day, before she started her homework, it was Quantenerra’s job to neatly print Quantarius’ and Quantevisha’s names on several sheets of paper, so the twins could practice writing and spelling their names.
The twins were both able to recognize every letter of the alphabet, even though Romina had refused to allow them to learn the alphabet song. She hated that song. She’d learned it, and it hadn’t helped her to spell or read well. It was a crutch, she thought. Even as an adult, she had to sometimes sing it to herself to remember a letter, but she never told anyone she did it that. With all her children, Romina had gotten flashcards, mixed them up and made her children learn their letters out of order. She was confident that when they saw a letter they actually knew what it was, as opposed to being about to remember them in the order of a song. Already, her twins were reading very simple books, and that pleased Romina. She’d always struggled with reading, spelling and even math in school, which is why she ended up in the slow classes.
“Quantavianna, look over this for me.” Romina handed her oldest child the job application and got up from the table to start dinner.