2
"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.
"Shoot, no," Sweet-Ho said. "His mama'll be coming home any day now. We can stand him till then. And you like that girl okay, don't you?"
"Yeah." I had liked Veronica right off. She was kind of shy when her daddy introduced us, but she had piercy eyes and curly hair and I could see she was wearing a big diamond ring, the kind you get from a candy machine if you hit it just right.
"Which bed you want?" Sweet-Ho asked. There were two, side by side, metal frames sagging in the middle and smelling of mildew. One was by the window and I chose that.
Sweet-Ho had the one by the closet then, and she stuck some of her stuff on the wall there for decoration, using thumbtacks that we found in a drawer, and the heel of her waitress shoe for a hammer. She had a lot of leftover stuff they give her from Buddy Rivet's when she quit: IN GOD WE TRUST, ALL OTHERS PAY CASH, for one. TODAY'S SPECIAL: SALISBURY STEAK, $2.99, that was another, and to me it didn't make much sense to put that one on the wall of your home where you live. But Sweet-Ho liked it; she said it made her feel nice memories of her days at Buddy Rivet's, plus a certain satisfaction that she didn't have to be a waitress no more, even though the tips was good. And she had a poster of Willie Nelson in concert.
I didn't have nothing to stick up on the wall by my bed except a Mammoth Caves bumper sticker that my cousin traded me once for a Bible verse card I got at Sunday school. And I had a magazine picture of whales leaping up out of the sea, which I tore out of a magazine Sweet-Ho bought me to read on the bus when she brought me to Highriver. So I stuck that up, too. And after I shook the blankets outside they didn't smell so mildewy when I put them back on the beds. Sweet-Ho covered them each with one of the quilts that Gnomie had made.
About that time there was a funny sort of squealing noise from the sink in the kitchen, and at first Sweet-Ho and I thought, uh-oh, the plumbing's busted. But then we both remembered at about the same time. She went and picked up Gunther from the drainboard, and we noticed that when he was awake he was cross-eyed.
But when Sweet-Ho set down and started to feed him from the bottle Mr. Bigelow had left in the icebox, she said she kind of liked him, even in spite of his homeliness. Gunther, I mean. She set there in an old straggly wicker rocking chair that needed paint, and Gunther lay in her lap, just all relaxed and homely and cross-eyed and sucking away. And she said, "Parable Ann, I do believe I'm settling down for good. I believe this is all I need."
That made sense, because what you got to realize is that by then, with all the traveling around Sweet-Ho had done while I was with my grandma and all, a lot of years had passed and she was middle-aged, or at least almost. Twenty-two is what Sweet Hosanna Starkey was when she brought me to the Bigelows' garage to live.
3
All those things happened when Veronica and me, we was both eight. I came to Highriver to live, Mrs. Bigelow got herself sewed up tight, and Sweet-Ho decided to give up her waitress life and settle down to take care of Gunther, who had just got born and dumbfounded everybody with his homeliness.
And loud. Sweet-Ho was accustomed to loud, working at Buddy Rivet's where they yelled in the orders to the cook through a cutout hole in the wall, like this: "VEAL SPECIAL, GO EASY ON THE GRAVY, AND A DARK BEER!" But even Sweet-Ho, she said she never heard nothing like that baby.
"I believe he regrets being born," she told me one afternoon when he was yelling away, with his face all purple.
"Was I like that when I was just born?" I asked her, after I peered into the drawer where we kept him, and observed him all scrunched with his little drum-sticky legs pulled up and his mouth open.
"Shoot, no," Sweet-Ho said, looking at me surprised. "You was a quiet little thing. Sometimes I used to poke you awake just to make sure you was alive. Young as I was, I didn't know how else to tell except to poke till you jumped. And even then, mostly, you didn't cry. You just blinked your eyes like you was startled."
"I didn't regret being born, Gunther Bigelow," I told the baby, leaning over the drawer and shouting so that he could hear me above that screaming. "Z was a quiet little thing." I poked him with one finger.
"Me too," announced Veronica Bigelow, who appeared at the top of the stairs. She never knocked, just came up the stairs and right in. Me and Sweet-Ho, we didn't care; we liked Veronica. "I was a quiet little thing, too."
She flopped herself down on a kitchen chair and fanned herself with a magazine that was lying on the table. It was hot. Already Gunther had heat rash across his scrawny shoulders even though Sweet-Ho sprinkled him three times every day with cornstarch. "My mama's home," Veronica said. "My father brought her home from the hospital, so I came to tell you to bring Gunther over to the house so Mama can see he's okay and begin to take care of him herself."
We all stared at the drawer where Gunther was. It was jiggling, he was screeching so hard. Sweet-Ho went over and looked in and made some kissing noises at him. "Shhhhhh, you sweet thing," Sweet-Ho said. "You're going home to your mama." And sure enough, Gunther shushed some at the sound of her voice. He was getting to know her a little even though he'd only been around for two weeks. He liked Sweet-Ho. Everybody did.
But it was a mistake, sending him back home to his mama. Turned out that Gunther didn't like his mama much. Or maybe she didn't like him. She shook all over when she held him, and commenced to cry, Veronica said. So Gunther ended up back in his dresser drawer next to Sweet-Ho's bed and disrupted my sleeping habits for months on end, screeching as he did. But one night when Gunther was about seven months old I woke up like a shot in the middle of the night and saw through the dark that Sweet-Ho, she was sitting up too. But Gunther just lay there. He was too big for a drawer by then, and Mr. Bigelow had brought a crib down to the garage and wedged it in between Sweet-Ho and the wall. Gunther was laying silent in that crib with his backside sticking up in the air and his eyes were squinched closed tight.
"Well, shoot, Sweet-Ho," I whispered. "He's dead. We're really in for it now. What're we going to tell the Bigelows?"
But Sweet-Ho said, "Shhhh," and she got up on her knees so's she could lean over and peer into the crib, through the dark, at Gunther. "He's breathing," she whispered. "He's asleep, Rabble. It's three in the morning and he's asleep." She said it in a voice of awe, as if some
miracle had appeared standing at the foot of her bed, maybe Jesus all aglow and with his hands bloody and a forgiving smile, you know?
And I didn't blame her none because I felt the same way myself. Gunther Bigelow, asleep; that's the kind of thing that "Hallelujah!" should be cried out loud for. For seven months he'd been screeching off and on through the night so that Sweet-Ho and me, we took turns jiggling his crib. Some mornings at school I'd be half-asleep during spelling practice, and it was because Gunther had been so wakeful all night.
But after that spooky quiet night when I thought at first he must be dead, Gunther always slept. Sweet-Ho and me, we could even eat Fritos and talk to each other after we went to bed, and giggle and sometimes sing, and Gunther never woke.
He grew. He increased in homeliness and had every ailment known to man or boy or beast: diaper rash and impetigo and pinkeye and allergies to everything, so that when he drank milk he sneezed and when he ate vegetables he puked and when he ate Gerber Junior dinners his eyes got all swole up and itchy.
He could eat bananas okay, and hard-boiled eggs, and Chef Boyardee spaghetti. So he ate those three things, and grew. He hiccuped all the time, but we got used to that and even appreciated it after he started to walk, because it meant we could hear him coming.
When he was two years old, he moved back to his own house. His mama hadn't changed none, couldn't manage any better, but Gunther was old enough to fend for hisself at night, and during the day Sweet-Ho was there to hand him his bananas and such. Mrs. Bigelow didn't even seem to take no notice that he was living there. It wasn't like when I was little and went to Gnomie's to live. Even though I don't remember it, Sweet-Ho said that everybody just fitted me in and made me part of the family. But it wasn't like they didn't notice. It was that their loving came so natural.