Rabble Starkey (7 page)

"You give it a try, Albert," Mrs. Hindler said. "If you can't make it better, then make it
different,
at least."

"Can we change the same word twice?" asked Parker Condon, kind of shy. He didn't mean it to be rude or silly. Parker Condon always got all nervous,
trying to do things absolutely right. His father got powerfully upset if he didn't get all A's.

"I'm going to let you each use your own judgment," Mrs. Hindler said. "Maybe you'll find it a challenge to change the same word more than once, or maybe not."

Parker Condon started right in fidgeting. One thing I've observed is that people whose parents want them to get all A's all the time get nervous and fidgety if they have to use their own judgment about stuff. Because they worry that their own judgment might be a B instead of an A.

Other people asked questions, some rude and some not, but I quit listening. I read my own composition again, to myself.

MY HOME

My home has a lot of stuff in it that I like. It has: a dictionary which is mine alone; patchwork quilts made by my grandmother, who is dead, on the beds; a cookie jar shaped like a fat bear whose head comes off and that is the lid; a pillow filled with pine needles that make it smell good, bought at the church fair last winter; a toaster which makes your face look fat and odd if you look into the side of it; and a jar of pale blue glass which sits on the table and holds flowers all summer long.

My best friend can come there any time she wants, without even knocking, and she is always welcome.

At night, in my home, you can listen in the dark and hear stuff like doves, tree frogs, wind, or rain. That is all outside stuff. But there is inside stuff, too. Sometimes at night, after I am in bed, I can hear my mother, whose name is Sweet Hosanna, singing. She sings in a low voice, so as not to disturb me if I'm sleeping, and she sings hymns that she learned in her childhood, from her own mother.

All of those things combined give my home the good feelings that it has. Feelings are the most important thing in a home.

In the evening, after supper, in the Bigelows' kitchen, I read it again to myself and underlined in pencil the ten words I wanted to change. Veronica sat across from me and did hers at the same time.

Dead, I underlined. Smell. Good. Fat. Glass. Friend. Welcome. Dark. Disturb. Important.

Then I got out my thesaurus and began to work. My composition, when I finally finished, read like this:

MY HOME

My home has a lot of stuff in it that I like. It has: a dictionary which is mine alone; patchwork quilts made by my grandmother, who is dead (LIFELESS), on the beds; a cookie jar shaped like a fat bear whose head comes off and that is the lid; a pillow filled with pine needles that make it smell (GIVE OUT A SCENT) good (ATTRACTIVE), bought at the church fair last winter; a toaster which makes your face look fat (PLUMP) and odd if you look into the side of it; and a jar of pale blue glass (CRYSTAL) which sits on the table and holds flowers all summer long.

My best friend (COMRADE) can come there any time she wants, without even knocking, and she is always welcome (RECEIVED WITH OPEN ARMS).

At night, in my home, you can listen in the dark (BLACKNESS) and hear stuff like doves, tree frogs, wind, or rain. That is all outside stuff. But there is inside stuff, too. Sometimes at night, after I am in bed, I can hear my mother, whose name is Sweet Hosanna, singing. She sings in a low voice, so as not to disturb (DISTRESS) me if I'm sleeping, and she sings hymns that she learned in her childhood, from her own mother.

All of those things combined give my home the good feelings that it has. Feelings are the most important (VITAL) thing in a home.

Then I had to copy the whole thing over, and fix up some awkward-sounding stuff, like "give out a scent attractive," which didn't sound right. I changed it to "give out an attractive scent." I figured Mrs. Hindler would see that I was using my own judgment, like she said we should.

Then I helped Veronica with some of her words, since she wasn't done yet. It took a long time, and finally, just as we were finished, Sweet-Ho said, "It's late. You two had better get upstairs to bed."

"Are we sleeping here still?" I asked her.

Sweet-Ho said yes. "Mr. Bigelow thinks we should stay over here while Veronica's mother is away. You don't mind, do you, Rabble?"

I shook my head. I didn't mind at all. I liked it there. But it made my composition seem like a lie. "If
it's going to be for a while, can I move some stuff over from our place?" I asked her. "The blue glass jar, and my dictionary? Small stuff like that?"

"Sure. There are some things of mine I'll want to bring over, too. We can do it tomorrow."

So the composition was okay after all. The feelings would be just the same, and it was like I said: Feelings are the most important thing in a home.
Vital.

One week went by after another, and I knew that summer had ended for sure when Sweet-Ho threw away the last of the chrysanthemums from the blue glass jar in our room, poured the water out, and put in a bouquet of dry red leaves from the big oak. The cool weather made Gunther's skin clear up some, so the scabs and rashes faded, and his cheeks turned rosy when he played outside.

Mr. Bigelow took Gunther downtown one Saturday afternoon for new sneakers, and he bought him a green corduroy jacket with a plaid flannel lining and a matching hat with earflaps. Wearing his new green outfit with the hat buckled under his chin, Gunther sat on his daddy's lap and helped steer the car all the way home. We could see him coming up the driveway, steering real careful with his daddy's hands atop of his, and his face all scrunched up serious.

When they got out of the car, Mr. Bigelow reached into the backseat and took out packages. He handed
one to Veronica, one to me, and one to Sweet-Ho. "Surprises!" he said with a big smile on his face.

We opened them up, back in the house, and found he had bought us each a sweater: blue for Veronica, bright yellow for me, and a soft pink for Sweet-Ho. Veronica said "thank you" all nonchalant-like—she was used to her daddy bringing her things because he did it all the time—but I just stood there, rubbing my hand over the softness of mine, and even though I said it, because I was brought up proper, "thank you" didn't seem enough. I looked over at Sweet-Ho, holding hers in her arms, and could see she was feeling the same way.

Nobody had ever brought Sweet-Ho and me presents when it wasn't even Christmas. It was the first time.

That night, after supper, Veronica said, "We have to plan Halloween costumes. For Gunther, too. Gunther's big enough to go with us this year."

Gunther's face lit all up when we explained trick-or-treating to him. We had to gloss over the candy part, knowing Gunther wouldn't eat candy. "They'll give bananas to you, Gunther, I'm sure of it," Veronica told him. And to me she whispered, "You and me, we'll eat his candy."

"When I was a little boy, I was a ghost one Halloween," Mr. Bigelow said. "My mother just hung a sheet over me."

"You wanta be a ghost, Gunther?" I asked. But Gunther shook his head no. He was opinionated about such things.

"How about a clown?" Sweet-Ho suggested. "I believe I could turn his red sleeper suit into a clown costume, and we could make a pointed hat to go with it."

But Gunther shook his head no to a clown.

"Maybe, Gunther," I said, "you could wear your new green coat and hat, and we could make you into a dill pickle. We could make it all warty looking somehow."

But he said no.

"I know!" Veronica said. "We still have all my old dance recital costumes. How about a ballet dancer, Gunther?"

And Gunther began to grin. "With dancing shoes, too," he said. "And a magic wand with a star."

So Sweet-Ho scooted up to the attic where the old clothes were, and she came back with the bag of old costumes. We dressed up Gunther right there in the middle of the living room, first in pink tights—they bagged at the knees because they was too big, but Sweet-Ho said she could tighten them up a bit with a needle and thread—and then in the little blue net skirt with a billion layers so it stuck out all around and he looked like a flower.

"It's called a tutu," Veronica explained importantly.

"Too-too," Gunther said, and wiggled his behind.

Then he sat on his daddy's lap and Mr. Bigelow put the old pink toe shoes on him, and laced the satin ribbons up his legs over the tights.

Gunther fell at first when he tried walking, because
the shoes was too big—and toe shoes are hard to walk in anyway, I know because I've tried it—but then when he got the hang of it, he held his arms sticking out the way he thought a ballet dancer should, and he pranced around the room.

"I have to record this for posterity," Mr. Bigelow said, after he was able to stop laughing. He went and got his camera and took pictures.

The flashbulbs went off again and again as Gunther posed, dancing and stumbling, in the foolish tutu. Then, after we took the costume off him, Gunther posed again, all serious, in his new green outfit. Next Veronica and me put our new sweaters on for pictures. And finally, even though she got all embarrassed, Sweet-Ho agreed to put hers on, too, and he took one of the four of us together: Gunther on Sweet-Ho's lap, and Veronica and me arranged one on each side.

Mr. Bigelow said we looked like a bouquet of flowers.

That night before I went to bed, I put my yellow sweater, folded up, into the drawer where I keep my specialest things. In it I have a dried-up flower from Gnomie's grave; Sweet-Ho let me take it with me after the funeral back at the Collyer's Run Baptist Church. (I only got a B+ on my "My Home" composition after I handed it in. I would have got an A but it was dumb of me to say that my grandmother was lifeless. If I had used the thesaurus better, I would've chosen something else. There was lots of good stuff for "dead". "Depart this life", for one, or "Take one's last sleep". I'm certain I would've got an A if I had said my grandmother had taken her last sleep.)

Also in my drawer was my dictionary, and the thesaurus that Sweet-Ho got me down at Highriver Books and Cards when I begged. I have the blue ribbon I won for fifty-yard dash at the school track meet last spring. And two photographs of Sweet-Ho with Ginger Starkey, sitting with their heads close together, one with both of them smiling, the other with their tongues sticking out, looking foolish. There was four in the strip, which they posed for in a Wool-worth's booth right after they got married, but Sweet-Ho cut it in half and gave me the bottom two. She kept the top. One of hers shows them kissing.

After I put my sweater in with all those other treasures, I put on my nightgown and got into bed. I looked around the room. Now it was filled with our stuff, Sweet-Ho's and mine, that we had brought over from the garage. Even the patchwork quilts that Gnomie made—they were on our beds instead of the plain white spreads that were the Bigelows' guest room spreads. My schoolbooks were piled in a chair. Sweet-Ho's old blue robe hung on a hook on the back of the door, and her hairbrush lay on the dresser.

She was still downstairs, and I could hear her and Mr. Bigelow laughing. She had gotten out the sewing box and was stitching up the pink tights so's they would fit Gunther's little legs, and I knew that they were laughing about that, about the thought of homely old Gunther being a ballerina.

In his little bedroom, Gunther was sound asleep,
probably dreaming about trick-or-treating in his tutu. And down the hall, I could hear Veronica still moving around in her room while she got ready for bed.

A night breeze was blowing, and I could hear the oak tree—the one Veronica and me called the Family Tree—with its last few leaves rustling, waiting to be blown off to the ground. The tip of one of its branches touched the window now and then. I turned off the light, and thought about all of that, and about the gift of the yellow sweater that was folded in my drawer.

It gave me such a strong feeling of belonging.

Trick-or-treating night was a school night, a Thursday. We was all ready. Mr. Bigelow had brought home stuff he got at the dime store: for Gunther, a pink mask of a lady's face, with bright red smiling lips, and a wig of golden curls. For me and Veronica, just plain old eye masks, which was what we wanted. We was gypsies, with bright scarves tied around our heads, shawls over our shoulders, and a lot of junk jewelry, some borrowed from Sweet-Ho and some from Mrs. Bigelow's jewelry box. She hadn't worn no jewelry for a long time, but she still had fake golden earrings, real gypsy-like, which Mr. Bigelow said we could wear.

"Is my magic wand ready?" Gunther asked, all anxious, after we had him dressed in his outfit.

It was. We had painted a cardboard star with gold paint and glued it to the top of a long stick from his Tinkertoy set with Elmer's glue. He took it from us
and waved it about, dancing in his toe shoes. Sweet-Ho had stuffed them with cotton balls in the toes to make his feet fit in better. At first he couldn't see good through his mask, and kept bumping into things. But Mr. Bigelow got the idea to cut the mask eyeholes bigger.

So's he wouldn't get cold, we had painted his old blue flannel pajama top with marking pens, and now it was covered with red and yellow moons and stars, which suited his outfit just fine, and he could wear a sweater hidden underneath. It didn't even make him look too pudgy because old Gunther, he was so scrawny starting out.

Me and Veronica helped him down the back steps, because it was hard going in the toe shoes, and we started out, each of us carrying a big paper bag for treats. When we got down into the yard and stood there in the dark, Gunther shivered, looking around at our neighborhood in the nighttime and at three pumpkins with faces cut out and candles inside so's they glowed on our porch. But it was from excitement, not from being scared. He was already shivering from excitement back when we was still in the warm house.

We whispered to each other about should we go to the Coxes' house. If it was just me and Veronica, we wouldn't. We didn't mind Mr. and Mrs. Cox—they were really pretty nice—but somehow the thought of Norman rubbed off on the whole house and gave it a bad feeling, at least to us.