单项选择题

When I was 14 years old and very impressed with my teenage status, I set for myself a very special goal—that to differentiate me from my friends. My goal was a project that I undertook every day after school for several months. It began to when I stealthily made my way into the local elementary school—horror of horrors should I be seen; I was now in junior high. I identified myself as a graduate of the elementary school, and being taken under wing by a favorite fifth grade teacher, I was given a small bundle from a locked storeroom—a bundle that I quickly dropped into a bag, lest anyone see me walking home with something from the "little kids" school.
I brought the bundle home proudly. I walked into the living room, and one by one, emptied the bag of basic reading books. They were thin books with colorful covers and large print. The words were monosyllabic and repetitive. I sat down to the secret task at hand. "All fight," I said authoritatively to my 70-year-old grandmother, "today we begin our first reading lesson." For weeks afterwards, my grandmother and I sat patiently side by side roles reversed as she, with a bit of difficulty, sounded out every word, then read them again, piece by piece, until she understood the short sentences. When she slowly repeated the full sentence, we both would smile and clap our hands—I felt so pound, so grown up.
My grandmother was born in a rocky little Greece farming village where nothing much grew. She never had the time to go to school. As she was the oldest child, she was expected to take care of her brother and sister, as well as the house and acclimating exceptions, and her father scratched out what little he could form from the soil. So, for my grandmother, schooling was out. But she had big plans for herself. She had heard about America. About how rich you could be. How people on the streets would offer you a dollar just to smell the flower you were carrying. About how everyone lived in nice houses—not stone huts on the side of mountains—and had nice clothes and time for school. So my grandmother made a decision at 14—just a child—to take a long and sickening 30-day sea voyage alone to the United States. After lying about her age to the passport officials, who would shake their heads vehemently at anyone under 16 leaving her family, and after giving her favorite gold earrings to her cousin, saying "In America, I will have all the gold I want", my young grandmother put herself on a ship. She landed in New York in 1916. No need to repeat the story of how it went for years. The streets were not made of gold. People weren’t interested in smelling flowers held by strangers. My grandmother was a foreigner. Alone. A young girl who worked hard doing piecework to earn money for meals. No leisure time, no new gold earrings—and no school. She learned only enough English to help her in her daily business.
English came slowly. My grandmother had never learned to read. She could make out a menu, but not a newspaper. She could read a street sign, but not a shop directory. She could read only what she needed to read as, through the years, she married, had five daughters, and helped my grandfather with his restaurant. So when I was 14—the same age that my grandmother was when she left her family, her country, and everything she knew—I took it upon myself to teach my grandmother something, something I already knew how to do. Something with which I could give back to her some of the things she had taught me. And it was slight repayment for all she taught me. How to cover the fig tree in tar paper so it could survive the winter. How to cultivate rose bushes and magnolia trees that thrived on her little piece of property. Best of all, she had taught me my ethnic heritage.
First, we phonetically sounded out the alphabet. Then, we talked about vowels—English is such a difficult language to learn. I hadn’t even begun to explain the different sounds "gh" could make. We were still at the basics. Every afternoon, we would sit in the living room, my grandmother with an afghan converting her knees, giving up her crocheting for her reading lesson. I, with the patience that can come only from love, slowly coached her from the basic reader to the second-grade reader, giving up my telephone gossiping. Years later, my grandmother still hadn’t learned quite enough to sit comfortably with a newspaper or magazine, but it felt awfully good to see her try. How we used to laugh at her pronunciation mistakes. She laughed more heartily than I. I never knew whether I should laugh. Here was this old woman slowly and carefully sounding out each word, moving her lips, not saying anything aloud until she was absolutely sure, and then, loudly, happily saying, "Look at spot. See Spot rim."
When my grandmother died and we faced the sad task of emptying her home, I was going through her night-table drawer and came upon the basic readers. I turned the pages slowly, remembering. I put them in a paper bag, and the next day returned them to the "little kids" school. Maybe someday, some teenager will request them again, for the same task. I will make for a lifetime of memories.
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