The new year brought with it several exciting new things for Rosemary. Only a couple days after Christmas, one of the stray dogs that slept in the barn had puppies, and Mother used her smile and dark brown eyes to get Da to allow her to bring the mother dog and her five puppies to stay in the house. These new little creatures were instant playmates for Rosemary. The mother dog was called Ruth because, like the Ruth of the Bible, she seemed to latch on to Mother and followed her all over the house and even outdoors once her own babies grew old enough to keep up. She became an instant guardian of Rosemary, and as the baby would romp around on the floor with Ida (named after Ida Tarbell, whom Mother quite idolized), Roscoe (named by Da), Bluebell, Roosevelt (Mother was a big admirer of Teddy), and Wolfgang (named after Mother’s great-grandfather, since Mother said the puppy favored him quite closely), Ruth would stretch out on the floor in front of the fireplace, her black eyes always open and focused on her six wards. If a puppy started playing too roughly with Rosemary and it looked as though Rosemary would cry, Ruth was at her side in an instant, nuzzling her neck until she forgot the affliction, or else running to place herself in front of a doorway to keep Rosemary from crawling away from Mother’s surveillance. Da always declared that Mother made Ruth out to be far more intelligent than she actually was, but in some ways, I think Mother found a kindred spirit in that stray dog. And at night, after Rosemary had gone to bed and before Mother joined Da, she would pull Ruth up on the couch with her and talk as if she were conversing with any of the other lady neighbors who came to visit.
The second exciting addition to the Larkin household came about two weeks after Christmas, after all the company had left and it was once again just the three Larkins. Mother had Rosemary on the floor in the living room, making up a story for her using the doll Rosemary had gotten for Christmas and little Roosevelt, who had opted not to take a nap with the rest of his litter mates in the box in the corner by the kitchen stove. Da was out working in the fields again, determined to get a crop planted in the spring, even if just a small one, since what little money they had was almost completely gone and the bank was getting shifty about the loan. Someone knocked at the front door and when Mother swung it open, a man literally collapsed on the front step, shattering his bottle of alcohol on the doorframe so that a piece flew and cut Rosemary’s shin, a tiny, almost unnoticeable scar that she forever bore. Mother left the man there to go see to Rosemary’s leg, and when she got back, the man was dead, having bled to death from a bullet hole in his stomach. Mother ran straight out to the fields to get Da, who buried the body down by the creek while Mother faced the grisly task of scrubbing the blood off the steps. However, their reward for their work was great, since the mystery man had on him nearly two hundred dollars, and had left by the road in front of the house a dairy cow and a beautiful black mare.
Mother and Da figured that the animals and money rightly belonged to them since the man that was never identified had died on their doorstep, so Da spent the rest of the day working on the barn and by the next day had the dairy cow and the mare both nestled away. When two men from the town questioned where Mr. Larkin, who everyone knew had no money, suddenly came across a cow, a mare, and money, Da told them the story, showed them the cut on Rosemary’s leg, and walked them to the freshly dug grave where he offered to dig up the decomposing body if they really needed any more proof than an honest man’s word. They didn’t and went away, and I suppose no one noticed the ad for the stolen animals and money in the paper of a town some fifty miles to the east. Or, if they did, said nothing, and if anyone questioned the animals, Da would show them Rosemary’s cut and the grave as he had those other men until the questions finally stopped and Da was left to keep the animals and badly needed money in peace. Mother insisted to the lady neighbors that it was simply God looking out for the family, and no one felt the desire to question God’s work, so the story died completely except for what Mother and Da told us.
The third and perhaps most exciting thing, at least to Rosemary, came in early January, or was at least discovered in early January. After months of feeling not quite herself, which she blamed on stress and the weather, Mother finally agreed to visit the doctor only to receive the news, “Congratulations, Mrs. Larkin. You’ve another little one on the way.” It’s needless to say that Mother and Da were floored and a little less than enthused. They hadn’t expected to have another child for several years, as if they were afraid bringing in another child would mess up the wonderful home they had built for themselves.
When Mother went to sleep early one afternoon just before Rosemary’s first birthday, Da took his daughter in his arms and carried her down to the creek, all bundled up against the cold that he feared would creep into her lungs. Once to the water that had long been frozen to a mere trickle, Da sat down on a rock and situated Rosemary in his lap to where she could look up at him curiously.
“Rosa, my angel, I don’t know if yeh understan’ all this, but yeh’re going to have a lil brother or sister soon. Now it’s a big responsibility an’ I’m sorry for yeh to have it, with yeh being so young, but yeh’re going to be a good big sister, I know, an’ watch out for her or him. An’ I want yeh to know that this doesn’t mean I love yeh less at all, because I won’t, an’ even if it’s another lil girl, yeh’ll still be my angel. An’. . . an’ if he or she gives yeh any trouble, come tell me an’ I’ll remind them who came first. An’... well, we’ll see about this new lil one, won’t we, Rosa?”
If it seems like Da was at all reluctant to let a new child into their family, it’s because he was. For the year that it was only Rosemary, Da worshiped his first child and played with her and was happy, and I suppose he had every right to fear that a second child would disrupt the home he had been working so hard for. At the very least, things would be noisier and more stressful as they would need to find more money and food for their extended family.
Mother, for one, was ecstatic and told Rosemary about all the fun things she would get to do with her new little brother or sister. Unfortunately, Rosemary’s first birthday was almost forgotten as Mother suddenly grew ill –it was just a cold, but Da feared the worst and refused to let her out of her bed. Rosemary was too young to feel any void in her heart at the lack of a big celebration of her first completed year of life anyways, but Aunt Kate and Uncle Henry were still there to save the day. Aunt Kate made a small sweet cake for Rosemary that, although inedible, was at least pretty to look at. Uncle Henry brought his trombone, and while the loud noise would have scared most babies, Rosemary clapped and giggled as he played for her. Grandmama and Papa sent Rosemary a pretty gold chain with a single pearl on it, much to Oma’s chagrin who insisted it was far too precious a gift for such a small child and that they were merely trying to make her feel like the inferior grandmother.
Oma arrived about this time to stay with Mother and Da until the baby was born, which annoyed Da to no end since Mother’s mother missed no opportunity to point out his shortcomings, and though Mother tried to persuade Oma to stop bullying, that only set Oma off even more. The result was that Lucy felt the need to come visit again to act as moderator, which meant Klaus came as well, and Ed came for as long as work would allow, and Aunt Beth came because Aunt Kate was there and she didn’t want her youngest sister to get the first word to the new baby since it would probably be something terrible. Uncle Henry was there, of course, as he spent almost as much time at his brother’s house as his parents’, using anything as an excuse to come visit. So by the end of April, the Larkin house was quite over-crowded, as it had been when Rosemary had arrived.
Then, May 6th came around and only a few short hours after Mother rolled out of bed that morning, her first son rolled out of her. The contractions had been insignificant enough that Mother had slept right through them and awoke only in minor discomfort. She sent Da off to work per usual; Aunt Beth set some water to boil; Lucy tried to lecture Aunt Kate on something that only annoyed and frustrated her; then suddenly there was the baby, looking up at the world from Oma’s arms with dark round eyes.
Mother waited to name him until Da came in from work for lunch, eagerly running across the fields to see if the child had been born yet. When he saw it was a boy, he sighed with relief, “Thank goodness. Rosa doesn’t need any competition.”
“That’s all you can say? You aren’t glad to have a son?” Lucy prodded, picking up her own son, who had been tugging on one of Rosemary’s curls to make her cry.
Da looked down at the infant son in his wife’s arms, then pulled him up to get a closer look. The dark eyes and dark hair would soon lighten, leaving the boy with feathery blond hair and bright blue eyes, as light in appearance as Rosemary was dark. It was always a family joke at his expense that, had he been born a girl or retained his dark hair, Da might have sent him off. I always had my suspicions that Da never loved any of us as much as he loved Rosemary, but he of course insisted this wasn’t true, and the rest of us rather favored her over each other too, I think.
When Mother shared that she thought maybe Da should name his first son, Da thought long and hard, turning over every inch of the baby’s skin as though searching for just the right nomenclature to be printed on the baby’s pinkness. The baby began to squawl, and he quickly thrust the infant back into his wife’s arms for her to comfort and nurse. Da realized, I’m sure, that there was some great importance on the birth of his first son, and he considered the importance of giving the child a good name to grown on. It was the only time Mother ever let him choose the name, perhaps because he worked himself into a fret trying to decide on just one.
Finally picking up Rosemary and sitting in Aunt Beth’s vacated space on the couch beside Mother, Da asked her, “Well, Rosie, what are we go’na call this, yeh’r brotha?” She, of course, had no answer. “I’d like Fitzpatrick after me and me da, o’ course, but that’s an awful hard name. Maybe . . . well Peter Fitzpatrick Larkin. How’s that?”
“Peter,” Mother repeated, gently stroking her son’s cheek. “Our beautiful boy, Peter Larkin.”
“Peter, Rosemary? Can you say ‘Peter’?” Aunt Kate encouraged, kneeling down in front of Da. Rosemary’s eyes were trained on the baby as though she recognized the value of the things in Mother’s lap, but couldn’t quite figure out what it was. “Peter?”
“Pete-Pete!” Rosemary beamed, clapping her hands alongside the adults when they all laughed and cooed over her success. ‘Pete-Pete’ would stick as a nickname for the rest of his life, with that story told constantly to his embarrassment, but then none of us were ever allowed to call him that except Rosemary unless we wanted our ears boxed.
So Peter Fitzpatrick Larkin was born that warm May morning, and then there were four.
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