She tells it in cheap words. He is too young to hear the art.
Once there was a dog. The dog had a house. Behind its door, a bone. He has heard it forty times. He mouths the next bit half a beat ahead of her. She slows to let him.
Every day the dog went out. Came back. The bone was there. Good, said the dog. Good, good.
Every word is one she can afford to lose.
The block in the corner is nine years old. It drops the last word of anything longer than a sentence. She keeps hers short. The boy thinks this is how stories go.
The dear words stay in the tin on the shelf. Ferry. Grandmother. Ash. The name of the water. Always. Nine, saved since his birth. A tenth at the month's end, if the tin allows. Her back molar has hurt for a month. She answers it with her tongue. She tells the dog story around it.
On the first of every month she says all nine aloud. One at a time. Keeps the reading fresh. Her mouth low over the sink. The tap louder than her voice.
Is that the end, he says.
For tonight. Tomorrow the dog goes to the shop.
At school they sing which words are cheap. He knows the actions. He sleeps before the dog reaches the shop. The shop is the good part.
In the dark she does the sums. Two hundred and six words of proven retention in the household. Two hundred and forty on the board. Three hundred in the new year.
Two adults. One child. Somebody is not crossing.
Before bed she checks the nine she can prove twice. Carries the tin to the sink. Turns the tap. Says one word past the bad tooth, into the noise. Nine still. She closes the tin before turning off the water.
The school sends a note about his vocabulary, with a figure on it. It counts the dear words he has been taught. Not the ones he has been saved. She reads it twice and puts it in the tin.