Rabble Starkey

by Lois Lowry

  "Lord, she's bringing us a molded salad, and it'll melt in the sun before she ever gets here," Sweet-Ho said. "I'll go meet her."

  She did, and when she came back with the dripping plate of Jell-O—it had marshmallows and grapes in it—she said, "She didn't want to come on in. Had to go home and watch her TV shows. But she says she's sorry for our trouble.

  "Maybe this'll harden up some before dinner," she added, and put the salad in the refrigerator. "Don't you worry, Gunther," she said, seeing his face, "you don't have to eat it, or the casserole. I'm going to heat up some nice spaghetti for you."

  Later, Veronica and me were sitting up in the oak tree at a place we had where the branches came together in a comfortable way.

  "We should call this the Family Tree," I said. "You could fit a whole family right up here."

  Veronica laughed. "Can't you just see my mother sitting up here, smiling and talking about the pure in heart?"

  It made me feel better, that she was talking about it without that anger. But I didn't know just how to answer, so I just got all jokey. "We could set Millie Bellows up over there on that limb," I said, "and all the Coxes—they could perch over there, even Norman with his supply of paper clips."

  Veronica grinned. "Norman could pelt people with paper clips, and Millie could grumble, and Mr. Cox could give a sermon, and Gunther could hiccup—"

  "Mrs. Cox could sing that horrible solo she always does at weddings," I added.

  "And my crazy mother could baptize everyone, and you and me, Rabble—"

  "We could laugh," I suggested.

  We did. We started in giggling.

  "It sure wouldn't be an apple tree," Veronica said. "A nut tree, that's what it would be."

  Secretly I was glad that Veronica was laughing again, same as before, because I surely didn't know what to do when she cried.

  6

  I find it powerfully amazing how things go on just the same even after some enormous change has taken place.

  Places where they have great earthquakes, when skyscrapers and hotels fall down and holes open up in the ground and swallow cows and cars? People go on living there, and after a while they build other buildings and buy new cows and cars, and talk about gossip and weather and such. Just as if the thing never happened.

  When Dorothy got back to Kansas after being in Oz? She probably just went back to school, same as always, and took spelling tests and played kickball at recess, I expect.

  I bet anything she had nightmares now and then, though.

  Me and Veronica, we went back to school on Monday morning, and she even handed in her original family tree with her mother's name. Nobody—not even Norman Cox—said nothing about what had happened, though they all knew. In Highriver, when there's trouble, everyone knows.

  Mrs. Hindler hung all the family trees around the room, right out there for everyone to see. Nobody objected, but I thought it was real tasteless to do that, exposing everybody's family like that. Maybe there was stuff people didn't want anyone to know. I didn't go up close to examine them or nothing, but just from my desk I could see some stuff I hadn't known before—like Diane Briggs had one time had a sister who died. There it was, on her tree: Shirley Ann, Dec., age 1.

  And over on the other wall—I couldn't see it real plain from my desk, and I surely didn't want to go up and peer intently at it—but it appeared that Parker Condon's grandmother had been married two times. Now wouldn't you think that should be kept private?

  I like Mrs. Hindler a lot, but I believe she doesn't understand about privacy very well. All those secrets were there hanging around the sixth grade room exposed, and for all I could tell, she planned to let them hang there all year.

  Corrine Foster's mother was expecting a baby around Thanksgiving. That surely wasn't a secret, what with all the baby showers people was giving for her already. Fifty people came to the one down at the Presbyterian church, and she got so many little jumpsuits that Sweet-Ho said she wouldn't even need to wash them, she could throw them away after each wearing, though of course it would be wasteful. I wondered if Corrine would climb on a chair with a crayon to add a new little-bitty apple to her tree when the baby came.

  There hung Mrs. Bigelow, the mother apple on Veronica's tree. Of course no one sneaked over to climb up and pencil in "Crazy" after her name, but I wondered if the thought might be in people's heads.

  There hung my tree, with the father apple crayoned in "Ginger Starkey" with his date of birth, and no one asked "Who's he?" (course they could see, he was my father) or worse: "Where's he?" I wondered if people thought it should be penciled in: Gone. Which is, of course, a form of dec.

  It was time for English, and we all sat there at our desks, expecting that Mrs. Hindler would say, same as always, "Get out your Understanding Grammar books, people." But she didn't. Instead, she picked up a fat book off her own desk and held it up.

  "Who here has heard of a thesaurus?" she asked.

  Stupid old Roger Watkins shot up his hand fast as anything. I laughed inside myself. Roger Watkins never listened; he always just shot up his hand and gave wrong answers.

  Mrs. Hindler looked around to see if anybody else wanted to answer. But Roger Watkins was the only one, and finally she called on him, though you could tell she didn't want to. He was waving and waving his grubby old hand in the air.

  "Our bull is named that," he said. Everybody in the class burst out laughing, all but Mrs. Hindler.

  "Your what?" she asked, with her face all puzzled.

  "Our bull is named Taurus," Roger said. Everybody screamed with laughing. Dumb old Roger. That big old Taurus, he was the meanest thing. Once he bashed a dent in Roger's daddy's pickup; of course it was stupid as anything that Mr. Watkins drove the pickup right into the pasture where Taurus was laying in wait.

  Mrs. Hindler nodded politely. "Quiet, people," she said. "Roger, you weren't listening carefully. Class, what did I say?"

  Everybody called out different stuff. "Thossrus!" someone called, like a rhyme with rhinoceros. "Thorrus!" "Trocerus!" "Triceratops!" someone yelled, and we all laughed, because we remembered triceratops from third grade when we all studied dinosaurs.

  She wrote it on the board in her neat printing. "Thesaurus." She pronounced it slowly and we all said it after her.

  Then she explained how it worked. I was some startled that I never knew about a thesaurus before, because I've always been interested in words. I was only nine the year that I told Sweet-Ho the only thing I wanted for Christmas was a dictionary, and I wasn't showing off, either. She gave me a good one and I keep it right there on the table beside my bed, and consult it from time to time, or sometimes just read through it a bit for extra knowledge.

  But I have to confess that a thesaurus beats a dictionary, and now I know for sure that I want one of my own, to keep. Mrs. Hindler passed them out to the class, but just old cheap paperback ones, and we would have to give them back after we got finished with learning about them.

  Then, holding hers up with her pointy fingernails, she showed us how we could choose a word—almost any word—and look it up, and find all the other words we could use in its place.

  "Who would like to choose a word?" she asked, and lots of hands shot up, including mine and Veronica's. Mrs. Hindler called on Corrine Foster.

  "Love," Corrine said, and everybody laughed. Corrine blushed. She blushes real easy.

  Mrs. Hindler told us all to turn to the index in the back and look up "love".

  Right away I could see that it was an amazing thing, because I could see that there are all kinds of love.

  Desire.

  Courtesy.

  Affection.

  Those were just some.

  "Let's look at 'affection', class," Mrs. Hindler said. And she showed us how to find the number, and turn there in the thesaurus.

  Well, that was even more amazing. There was a whole page. You could hear everybody in the class murmuring out loud, reading all the words.

  Not me. I
read them to myself, feeling something like a shiver up my back at all the affection on that page.

  Fondness. Tenderness. Regard. Admiration. Devotion. Infatuation. Rapture. And those were only a few.

  Brotherly love. Maternal love. All different kinds.

  I felt a real true fondness and devotion to Mrs. Hindler for showing me this.

  We did a couple more words—though none was as exciting as love and affection—and then she gave us an assignment for homework. She handed back the compositions that we wrote last week. She had given us a choice for that assignment, and it had been a hard choice, at least for me. "My Ambition." Or "My Home."

  Veronica had chosen "My Ambition" and had written her two pages about ballet dancing. She had confided to me that she wasn't real entirely sure that ballet dancing was her ambition, even though she went to Miss Charisse Balfour's classes every Thursday after school for four years, and had done a solo called "Sleeping Beauty Awakes" at the recital last spring. She didn't say so in her composition, but Veronica had told me that the toe shoes hurt and she didn't really think she wanted to spend her whole entire adult life with mashed-in toes.

  Me, I have some ambitions, but they're all private ones, not things I want to tell the whole entire sixth grade. I was tempted to make one up, like "Female Spy" or maybe "Lady-in-waiting to the Queen of England." But I didn't want to appear foolish. So I wrote about "My Home," which was tough since my home was somewhat unusual, being a garage. But Sweet-Ho had explained to me, when I was biting on my pencil eraser and complaining about how hard the writing was, that "home" doesn't necessarily mean "place". It means feelings, Sweet-Ho said, about family. Realizing that made it easier for me to write those two pages.

  Now Mrs. Hindler handed all the compositions back, but they didn't have any grades on them, not even the usual comments about neatness and spelling.

  "I want you each to choose ten words that you've used in these compositions," Mrs. Hindler said, "and change them, using your thesaurus. See if you can make your writing more powerful, more colorful, more interesting."

  Of course lots of kids, mostly boys, felt compelled to call out dumb stuff. Sometimes I wonder how Mrs. Hindler manages to keep her patience.

  "Can we change 'and'?" yelled Norman Cox, the idiot.

  Albert Washington raised his hand and asked, "What if nothing needs changing? What if it's just right the way we wrote it?" Everybody laughed, even Mrs. Hindler. Albert Washington is this black kid with glasses, and he always has the highest marks in the class. He's the youngest one in sixth grade, too, because he skipped second and fourth both. Albert Washington could read when he was three years old.

  "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.

  7

  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 buckle
d 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."