Rabble Starkey (2 page)

"Molasses," Veronica and I said together.

"Right. Molasses, for my mother, because she needed it for the cinnamon cookies she was about to bake, and she thought she had some, but when she went to reach for it, it just wasn't there. She had a suspicion that Verna Cooper had come right into the house and borrowed it without asking when nobody
was home. Well, anyway, that must be fate, because if we hadn't needed molasses, and I hadn't gone down to Appleby's to get some at that exact moment—"

"—because the pickup was about to leave, right?"

"Right. Its engine was running, and Ginger Starkey was only just waiting for the fellow he was with, who was inside Appleby's buying some cigarillos. They were going to go to the stock-car races, Ginger and—I can't remember his name—"

"It don't matter. His name don't matter," I interrupted, knowing she would search and search for that name, but it would never be there.

"Then he saw you, and you saw him," Veronica said, all dramatic-like.

Sweet-Ho held the icy glass against her mouth. She licked its cold side. She smiled. "He saw me and I saw him, and that was it. I never even completed my errand before I was climbing into that truck and we exchanged a few smiles and a few words and then we was driving away and clean left his friend behind as well. And there I was only thirteen years old, and Ginger Starkey, he had finished tenth grade and been out of school for three years—he was probably twenty, even—"

"And you'd never been with a guy who drove his own pickup before, and next thing you knew—"

She took the story back from me. "Next thing I knew, we was already in the next county and I made him stop so's I could send a postcard to my mother."

"And the postcard said—" That was Veronica asking. Veronica always liked what that postcard said.

Sweet-Ho laughed. "'Dear Mama, I have gone off to get married and I forgot your molasses. By the time you get this my name will be Sweet Hosanna Starkey.'"

"She forgave you, though," I said with satisfaction.

"She forgave me because I came home with a ginger-haired baby," Sweet-Ho said, "and my mama, she was a pushover for babies of any kind, and she'd never seen one with hair like that before." She reached over and ran her fingers down through my hair. "It's still just as pretty as your daddy's was, Rabble."

But I pulled away. I don't care none about having pretty hair. "Tell how she named me, too, Sweet-Ho."

"Well, I was just young and foolish, you know? And Ginger Starkey, he didn't care. I didn't know it, but by the time you was born he was already making his getaway plans. Lord, he'd probably pulled up that pickup beside some other little girl with eyes for ginger-colored hair. So when you came and I asked him what to name you, he didn't say nothing or indicate any interest, and me, all I could think of was movie star names, and I couldn't even choose one for all that. So you went a month with no name, and then another month with no name and no daddy to boot, because Ginger Starkey was gone by then. And then I got on a Greyhound and went back home, and first thing Mama said after she saw you was—"

Me and Veronica said it together: "'Look at them sea green eyes. Look at that ginger-colored hair. Lord, lord, trouble lies ahead for this child.'"

"That's exactly what she said," Sweet-Ho went on.

"What did she mean, trouble?" I asked. "I never have no trouble."

Sweet-Ho grinned. "It was just her way of saying that you would grow up beautiful."

"So she gave me a Bible name."

"That's right. She said, "'We'll stave off what trouble we can with a Bible name.'"

"Parable Ann Starkey," I announced with pride.

"I have more syllables," Veronica said. "But you, Rabble, you've got the more meaningful name. And you've got your daddy's pretty ginger-colored hair. And once you fill out, Rabble, then, sure as anything, you're going to have—"

"Trouble and sorrow," Sweet-Ho said, but she was laughing. "Come on, you two, let's get at those family trees or you'll both of you flunk sixth grade."

"Shoot, Sweet-Ho, I don't have no brothers or sisters at all, just my one dumb apple sitting there all alone in the middle. I wish I could've been twins. Or that you and Ginger Starkey could've had one more baby. Or that you got married again, maybe, and—"

"Hush up, Parable. Don't ask for trouble," Sweet-Ho said, laughing.

"Anyway," Veronica said, trying to make me feel better, "I'm just putting Gunther in a little squinchy apple over here on the side, like on a twig, not a whole branch. See?"

I looked over at her family tree and saw what she meant: her brother's name was printed neatly on a little circle, nothing show-offy about it. Just "Gunther Philip Bigelow." And underneath, his birthday.

I started to laugh. "Remember old Gunther when he was first born, how homely he was?"

Sweet-Ho bit her lip. "Lord, lord," she said. "He was the homeliest thing I ever saw, bar none. I don't
mean any offense, Veronica, you know that, you know we all love Gunther."

But Veronica wasn't offended at all. "I always love homely things best," she said. "Kittens or puppies or anything, I always love the runt best. I don't care that Gunther's homely. And I know my daddy doesn't, my daddy thinks Gunther's just the best old thing ever. And he thinks that about me too, of course."

That was true. Mr. Bigelow loved both his kids more than anything.

"Look here, now, Sweet-Ho," I said. "I'm gonna put big swirly branches out here to both sides, for cousins. What's Liddie and Joth's last name? And tell me all the others, too. I'm gonna loan some to Veronica."

We bent over our papers, Veronica and me, drawing apple shapes on the branches, and Sweet-Ho gave us names to put in. Poor old dead Liddie—her whole name was Lydia Louise Jones, Dec., age five—I took her and her blameful brother Joth. But I gave Veronica some others that I didn't like much. Veronica got my cousins Marilyn Ann and Marissa, the ones with hair so yellow it was almost white, and their eyes were all pinkish, and their mama always made them wear those dumb old socks with lace around the edge. I hadn't seen them since I come to Highriver to live four years ago, but I was sure they was just the same, spiteful and mean-spirited with their rabbity faces. Veronica wanted them, anyway; she liked their fancy names.

Sweet-Ho couldn't remember anybody's birthdays
so we just put in the ages. Thirteen and fourteen, Marilyn Ann and Marissa would be, because they was a little older than me, so Veronica wrote that in.

I watched while Veronica printed in her mama's name real careful, and nobody, not me or Sweet-Ho or Veronica herself, said a word. Alice Mayhew Bigelow was the name of Veronica's mama.

And then, as if writing the name had made it happen, the door to the kitchen came open and Veronica's mama came walking in. It was her house, where she lived, of course, so no real surprise that she should be walking about the rooms in the evening. But somehow Mrs. Bigelow always came as a strange surprise anyway. And lately her strangeness had been getting worse.

She didn't say nothing, just walked through the kitchen, smiling real pretty. She looked down at the table where Veronica and me was working, but she didn't ask questions—you'd think she would ask questions, seeing those foolish trees and apples, and one of them with 'Alice Mayhew Bigelow' printed on it plain as anything. But she just walked past. She picked up a blue crayon off the table and held it in her hand, rubbing at it with her fingers, so that some of the blue came right off on her skin. She looked at that blue fingertip and smiled. Then she put the crayon into the pocket of her dress and went away.

"Good night, Mama," Veronica called after her, in a sweet voice. Her mama didn't answer and for a minute the kitchen was quiet.

"Now I'm going to do one for my grandma," I said,
to do away with the quiet because it was making me feel funny, the way I always felt when Mrs. Bigelow was around. Then I drew a nice round apple for my grandma, Sweet-Ho's mama, the one who gave me my name.

"How do I spell Gnomie, Sweet-Ho?" I asked. Gnomie was what we all called my grandma, and it always made me think of them painted clay creatures some people put in their yards, holding a fishline into a little pond, some of them, and wearing pointy hats. Gnomes. My grandma was little and squat, like them.

But Sweet-Ho spelled it out for me, and I was downright startled. It wasn't Gnomie at all. It was Naomi. All those years I had the thought wrong in my head.

I printed "Naomi Jones" in my grandma's apple, real careful. Under her name I printed in "Dec." Then I drew another special apple underneath.

"'Sweet Hosanna Jones Starkey.' There you are, Sweet-Ho. See how I did that? Now look, how I draw a line over, joining you up to this apple here. This one's gonna be Ginger Starkey."

"He could be dec for all we know," Sweet-Ho commented.

Veronica looked up from her paper. "Of course he isn't," she said. "He's out seeking his fortune somewhere. Someday he'll come back. You just wait and see."

Sweet-Ho and I didn't say nothing to argue with her. Veronica was the nicest person we knew, and if she wanted to believe old Ginger Starkey would come
back, that was okay. Me and Sweet-Ho knew better, though. We had talked about it lots, at night before we went to sleep, and we had decided long ago that we wouldn't be seeing Ginger Starkey again probably ever. Twelve years he'd been gone and no word. Sweet-Ho thought he might even be in Hollywood, with his name changed, he was that handsome; sometimes, she said, she watched all the unimportant characters in movies, thinking she might catch a glimpse of him.

Other times, she said he could be just a dumb old bum somewhere by now, maybe with all his teeth fallen out. But I don't think she believed that, and I know I didn't.

Sometimes me and Veronica, in thinking about things, used to wonder if Sweet-Ho ever got lonely for a man around. We asked her once, but she said no. She said she had some boyfriends now and then after I was born and she left me at my grandma's. She said she had some good times and all.

But then she got tired of it, and she missed me, she said, and finally Gnomie—I have to call her that still, because the thought was so strong all those years, I don't expect I will ever adjust to the startlement of it being wrong—died after being sick with poisonous kidneys for a while. So Sweet-Ho she came and got me and brought me here to the Bigelows' garage to live.

She'd been working as a waitress, see, down to Buddy Rivet's Seafood, and she'd met Mr. Bigelow, Veronica's father, there. His real estate office was
right there, downtown, and he used to come into Buddy Rivet's for lunch. Mr. Bigelow is the kind of man who takes an interest in people—all kinds of people—and he knew all the waitresses at Buddy Rivet's. He knew that Leona Harrison suffered from varicose veins and a husband with a fondness for drink. He knew that Carol Sue Brown had been Miss Elkins County in her prime a few years back, and now was selling Mary Kay products on the side, hoping to win a pink car.

And he knew that back with her family in Collyer's Run, Sweet Hosanna Starkey had a little girl named Parable Ann, the same age as his own little girl. Me and Veronica was both eight years old then.

It was right at the time that Mrs. Bigelow was expecting Gunther, though of course she didn't know it was Gunther she was expecting; it might have been just about anybody, but it turned out to be Gunther, the homeliest baby in Highriver, West Virginia, bar none.

And Mrs. Bigelow wasn't up to snuff. She'd been having a lot of these emotional problems for some time, see, and Mr. Bigelow was worried about would she be able to care for the new baby that was coming. So when Gunther was born, he hired Sweet-Ho to come there and help out, pointing out to her that it was a way she could have her little girl there with her, something that Sweet-Ho surely did appreciate.

While Mrs. Bigelow was still in the hospital, Sweet-Ho came to Collyer's Run to get me and we both showed up at the Bigelows' with everything we
owned in two suitcases with busted locks and a couple of giant trash bags, the four-ply kind you see in them commercials. Mr. Bigelow didn't blink an eye. He just said, "How do you do, Parable Ann," when we was introduced, and he said he had a little girl just my age and he would go to find her right that minute. Then he handed Sweet-Ho the scrawniest baby in the world, and it was Gunther, with his face all scrunched up homely and his little drumstick legs sticking out straight from them big diapers.

Veronica's mother, she had to stay in the hospital longer than Gunther, see, because she had all these emotional problems, which they was trying hard to fix. And also she was getting herself all sewn up shut so she wouldn't have no more babies. Anyone would do that if they gave birth to something as homely as Gunther, if you ask me, so I don't fault her none and neither does Veronica. What we can't figure out is how she ever goes to the bathroom, all sewn up shut as she is. But shoot, you can't ask somebody that, not somebody who smiles all the time but doesn't talk none, like Mrs. Bigelow, and who seems to have some kind of serious trouble going on.

Me and Sweet-Ho, we settled right in and been here ever since, right in two rooms up top of the garage. For a while, when he was a baby, Gunther, he lived here, too, even though he was technically a Bigelow.

"Rabble," Sweet-Ho said, that first day after she set that homely baby down on the drainboard of the sink
and looked around. "Right here is what you and me is going to call home."

Now I'd been at my grandma's for all them eight years, excepting for the past few months when Gnomie had the poisonous kidneys, and I went round and stayed with cousins here and there. I never lived up over no garage before. But it didn't look too bad. Needed scrubbing, but shoot, I was good at that.

"We don't gotta keep that here with us, do we?" I asked Sweet-Ho, pointing at Gunther. He was sound asleep right there on the drainboard beside a can of Ajax. If we'd wanted to we could of shot him with the rubber squirting hose on the sink. I kind of wanted to, but I didn't say it.