Rabble Starkey by Lois Lowry

Author:Lois Lowry [Lowry, Lois]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

"Here comes your daddy," Sweet-Ho said that evening to Gunther while he played on the kitchen floor. She was looking through the window. Gunther jumped up and ran to her to be lifted so's he could see, the way he did every night when Mr. Bigelow came home from work.

"Daddy! Daddy!" Gunther said, all happy, when Mr. Bigelow came through the door.

Sweet-Ho handed him to his daddy. "Hi, Phil," she said, and smiled when Mr. Bigelow hoisted Gunther up to his shoulders for a ride.

"Rabble and Veronica? Is the table set?" she asked. "It's almost time for supper. Put your cards away now."

Me and Veronica had been playing Go Fish at the kitchen table. We hadn't talked any more about Norman Cox. It was a thing we had to think about before we did more talking.

"You got any kings?" I asked. But Veronica had already commenced to gather up the cards, so I gave her my hand. She was winning, anyway. We started collecting the plates and silverware to take them to the dining room.

"Can I do the napkins?" Gunther asked, and his daddy lifted him back down so's he could help us. He was real good at folding the napkins into triangles and putting one beside each plate.

"I got a call at the office today," Mr. Bigelow said to Sweet-Ho. "From Meadowhill."

Gunther went on about his business, folding napkins real careful. Sweet-Ho kept right on stirring something on the stove, but she looked over at him with a question in her eyes. I counted forks and didn't say nothing. Veronica picked up a stack of five dinner plates and headed for the dining room, but I noticed she kept the door open so's she could listen from where she was.

Meadowhill was the name of the hospital where Mrs. Bigelow was. Where she had been now for two months. The doctors there had told Mr. Bigelow no visitors, not even family, at least for a while. He talked to them once every week; I knew because Sweet-Ho told me. They always said no change.

Veronica never said nothing about her mother, never asked nothing.

"Veronica?" Mr. Bigelow called. "Honey? Come in here for a minute."

Veronica set the plates on the table and came back to the kitchen real slow, with her eyes on the floor, like she might see something scary if she looked up.

Her daddy put his arm around her.

"I talked to one of the doctors at Meadowhill," he said. "And he said they'd like you and me to come for a visit on Saturday."

"Rabble and I have to help Millie Bellows on Saturday," Veronica said, real quiet. "We're going to scrub her kitchen floor."

"And wax it, too," I added. "We can take a can of floor wax from here, can't we, Sweet-Ho?"

"Self-polishing is what we need," Veronica said, still with her head down. "She has loads of rags there, old clothes all ripped up, so we don't need rags, but she doesn't have any self-polishing wax, so—"

Gunther trotted off happily to the dining room with his hands full of folded napkins.

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