Rabble Starkey by Lois Lowry Read Free Book Online

good thing for her to go to the hospital. Maybe they can make her well. We have to hope that, anyhow."
    Veronica nodded her head. "She scared me," she said in a whisper to Sweet-Ho.
    "Come on in, all of you," Sweet-Ho said. That's when she wrinkled her nose, smelling us when we filed past her through the door. "Change out of those ruined clothes so that you smell human, and then come down to the kitchen and I'll give you lemonade."
    "She did, Sweet-Ho," Veronica said, all desperate-like. "She scared me something terrible."
    "I know." Sweet-Ho put her hands on Veronica's shoulders. She had a way of doing that sometimes, which made you feel how strong she was, even though her hands wasn't especially big, any more than the rest of her was. Shoot, I don't think Sweet-Ho ever grew none after she married Ginger Starkey. But she had this strength in her that you could feel when you needed to feel it.
    I took Gunther on upstairs to clean him up and change his clothes, and Veronica stood there for a while with Sweet-Ho, feeling that strength.
    At suppertime Mr. Bigelow came home, just him in the car, and he said that Veronica's mother would stay at the hospital for a while until she was better. We was eating in the Bigelows' kitchen, me and Sweet-Ho and Veronica and Gunther, when he came in, and he sat down at the table with us. Sweet-Ho handed him a plate with some food on it. Mr. Bigelow thanked her
and once or twice he picked up a fork and poked at the food, but I noticed he didn't eat none. Sadness makes you lose your appetite, I expect.

    Veronica asked her daddy if I could stay after supper so we could finish working on the family trees. I was surprised because I thought they was already done. We each had them tucked in our notebooks to take to school on Monday. But I didn't say nothing, and Mr. Bigelow said sure, as long as Sweet-Ho didn't mind.
    Then he stopped to think. "You know," he said, "in view of what's happened, I think it might be a good idea if you and Rabble stayed in the guest room tonight, Sweet-Ho. Would you mind?"
    "Nossir," Sweet-Ho said. "I could be right there in case Gunther is wakeful."
    Mr. Bigelow nodded his head. "I'd appreciate it," he said.
    Veronica went with me down to the garage so's I could get my night things and Sweet-Ho's. Walking across the yard I asked her, "Why did you say we had to finish the family trees? I thought they was all done."
    "Yours is finished," Veronica said in an angry voice. "But I'm going to make a new one. I'm not going to have my mother on my new one at all."

    Later, after I had my nightgown on, I went into Veronica's room, down the hall from the guest room
where me and Sweet-Ho was to stay. I have to confess that I like Veronica's room, even all frilled up like it is. The bed has one of them roofs on it, all ruffles, and the wallpaper is a whole mess of flowers, pink and white. It's like a movie star's room, if you don't look at the wall where Veronica has taped up dog pictures right on top of the wallpaper.
    Veronica was sitting there cross-legged on her bed, in her blue pajamas. She had her crayons all laying about on the bedspread, and a pack of construction paper spread out. There was a blue sheet of construction paper on a book across her knees, and she was drawing in a whole new set of apples.
    I picked the old one up off the floor where she had thrown it, and looked at the apple that said "Alice Mayhew Bigelow." Veronica didn't look at me. I felt kind of timid, even though Veronica was my closest bosom friend. She was drawing in them new apples with hard, firm lines, but she hadn't put new names in them yet.
    I watched her put in her own name, and then Gunther's, same as before. She looked up, finally.
    "I
almost
needed to put in 'dec' after Gunther's name," she said. "She
almost
killed Gunther."
    "She was only baptizing him," I said. "That's the way they do it down at the Baptist church, Veronica, dipping their heads right in under the water. It's not meant to