Mean Margaret

by Tor Seidler

  “You poor kids,” Mrs. Hubble said, jumping up from the table. “Let’s get you out of those wet clothes.”

  She herded them up to their room and helped them into dry things. All three claimed that being struck by lightning had ruined their appetite, but Mrs. Hubble said “Don’t be ridiculous” and herded them back down to the kitchen.

  The second that Six, Seven, and Eight slumped into their chairs, Nine came alive. She scowled, pointed accusingly from one of them to the other, and spoke for the first time since arriving home.

  “They dumped me in a ditch!”

  “What?” said Mr. Hubble.

  “What did she say?” said Mrs. Hubble.

  “They dumped me in a ditch!” the child cried. “In the middle of the night!”

  “Can you understand her?” said Mrs. Hubble.

  “Not a word,” said Mr. Hubble. “It’s gibberish.”

  The child turned crimson with anger and frustration. She could understand them, but she’d been speaking so much animal talk her tongue had forgotten how to form regular human words.

  Six, Seven, and Eight miraculously recovered their appetites.

  “This isn’t so bad, Mom,” said Six.

  “Yeah, for fish,” Eight said.

  “Whaaaa!” screamed the child, spitting out a mouthful of cottage cheese. “Bad!”

  “You know, I’m not sure she likes it,” said Mr. Hubble.

  “Try the salad, Sally,” said Mrs. Hubble.

  The child swatted the lettuce off her plate with the back of her hand.

  “Oh, my,” said Mrs. Hubble. “Try the cod.”

  The child tried it but hated the fishy taste and spat it out. She scanned the table for something good to snatch. Nothing appealed to her at all.

  “Honey!” she cried.

  “What did she say?” asked Mrs. Hubble.

  “I don’t think she likes low-cal food,” said Six.

  “Well, she’s going to have to learn to,” Mrs. Hubble said. “How on earth do you suppose she put on so much weight?”

  “What I want to know is where the heck she’s been,” Mr. Hubble said. “Can you tell us where you were, child?”

  “In a cave with woodchucks and bats and a squirrel and a smelly skunk and a nasty snake.”

  But of course no one understood a word.

  “First thing tomorrow we’re taking her to Dr. Millstone,” Mrs. Hubble said. “I’m sure she needs shots.”

  “Definitely,” Mr. Hubble said. “I’ve never seen anyone so filthy in my life.”

  “Or so fat,” said Seven, surreptitiously pinching the child’s bottom.

  “Whaaaaa!”

  “Noisy as ever, I see,” Seven remarked.

  The Hubbles still watched TV after dinner, but now only for an hour or so, and there was no more buttered popcorn. That evening, with dinner so late, there wasn’t even TV. Since Mrs. Hubble cooked, Mr. Hubble usually did the dishes, but tonight, as soon as they’d finished their fruit cocktails, Mr. Hubble and the older kids went out to the backyard with a flashlight to inspect the damage. The storm had passed, but the backyard was littered with leaves and twigs and the tree hut was shipwrecked on the ground.

  Mrs. Hubble sent Six, Seven, and Eight straight up to bed. To their amazement, she entrusted them with their little sister.

  “Brush your teeth, all of you,” Mrs. Hubble said. “I’ll look in when I’ve finished the dishes.”

  So Six, Seven, and Eight dragged Nine upstairs, gave her teeth a vigorous brushing, and put her to bed.

  “Some crib,” Seven said, putting the side up.

  “You start bawling, fatso, and well smother you with your pillow,” said Six.

  “Yeah,” said Eight, snapping off the light.

  The poor child. The first thing she did was check under her pillow. The peanut-butter cookies she’d hidden there were gone. Then she tried to scale the walls of the crib. Too high. She tried to shinny up one of the corner poles, but she was too fat. She tried to put the side down, but her chubby fingers couldn’t work the catch. In the end she just sat there on the mattress, staring out the window from the prison of her crib. The last clouds had blown away and she could see both the street lamp and the moon. The moon was the color of honey. Oh, how hungry she was! She’d run and crawled for what seemed like a hundred miles, trying to escape the horrid smell. She’d been stuck by prickers and poked by pigs. And after all that, she’d been given nothing but yucky, tasteless food. Yet, if she cried out, they would smother her. Whimpering silently, she thought of the cave: the sweet juicy berries, the even sweeter honey, the animals who waited on her hand and foot.

  Soon she fell asleep and dreamed she was in her leafy bed in the cave. There was a honeycomb within easy reach, but just as she was about to grab it, she heard a squeak. One of the bats? She opened her eyes and saw her mother putting down the side of her crib.

  “I just wanted to say good night,” her mother whispered. “We’re so glad to have you back, Sally.”

  “Margaret,” the child said.

  “What?”

  “Margaret!” the child said, making a great effort to use human speech.

  “Keep it down, will you?” said Six.

  “But what’s she saying?” Mrs. Hubble asked. “Can any of you make it out?”

  “Sounded like ‘Garbage,’ ” Eight said sleepily.

  “Margaret!” the child repeated.

  “Margaret?” said Mrs. Hubble. “Is that what you’re saying?”

  The child nodded eagerly.

  “But your name’s Sally.”

  “No, Margaret!” she said stubbornly.

  “Well, I suppose, if that’s what you really want . . . Good night, Margaret.”

  And Mrs. Hubble leaned in and gave Margaret a goodnight kiss

  Searching

  While Margaret was getting a good-night kiss from her mother, Phoebe was getting one from Fred in the hole in the tree. Even more wondrous, Fred actually dozed off with his arms encircling her. It was so marvelously calming, and the patter of raindrops on the maple leaves was so lulling, that Phoebe actually managed to fall asleep herself.

  But not for long. She woke to a terrible black silence, and the terrible truth rushed into it. They’d lost their child!

  “The rain’s stopped, Fred.”

  Fred drowsily lifted his head.

  “We’ve got to go home,” Phoebe said. “In case Margaret finds her way back in the dark.”

  Calling the grubby, overcrowded cave “home” rubbed Fred’s fur the wrong way. But even though he’d been in a blissfully deep sleep after the endless day of searching, the hole in the tree was far from paradise, and he could tell from Phoebe’s tone that her mind was made up.

  “Well, at least that dim-witted dog ought to be asleep,” he mumbled, dragging himself up.

  Once they got out of the hole, and out from under the tree, they found the night wasn’t so black after all. In fact, the clouds had blown away and the moon was up. If not for the soaking-wet grass in the meadow, the return trip might have been almost pleasant.

  It didn’t break Fred’s heart to find no Margaret among the sleeping creatures in the cave. He wouldn’t have to roll out at the crack of dawn to fetch honey. Pulling Phoebe into their nook, he put his arms around her and soon passed out again.

  Not Phoebe. She lay there missing Margaret’s snoring. She was still awake when the bats flew off on one of their mysterious middle-of-the-night errands. She was still awake a couple of hours later when they returned.

  “Any sign of her?” she whispered.

  “Sorry,” said Ms. Bat.

  At the first pale hint of dawn, Phoebe slipped out of Fred’s embrace and tiptoed outside. A faint skunk odor still clung to the walls of the cave, but outdoors, after last night’s storm, every thing smelled amazingly fresh. Crouching there, she prayed to her mother’s spirit: prayed to see Margaret come crawling back, to hear the child cry “Food!” again. But all she saw was the sun pok
e up and glisten on the wet bushes and trees, and all she heard was birds singing.

  After a while she felt a paw on her shoulder.

  “You didn’t sleep, sweetheart?” Fred said softly.

  “I’m too worried.”

  “I’m sure she’s safe, wherever she is. Those humans at the pig farm probably took her in.”

  “But what if they didn’t? What if she’s wandering around lost? Or hurt?”

  “Well . . . we could go and find out if they have her.”

  She took his paw, as surprised as she was grateful.

  Fred had hoped he’d seen the last of the pig farm the night before, but they ended up spending the day there, on a stakeout for Margaret. They saw a lot of the raucous dog, and pigs by the dozen, and several cats—one minus his tail. But the only humans they saw were two hulking ones in muddy boots.

  It was a distraught Phoebe who accompanied Fred back to the cave at sunset, and she nearly despaired when they found Margaret hadn’t returned while they were away. That night, Fred held her tight, not even minding when her tears got his fur wet.

  The next day they widened their search. They climbed to the very top of the hill to get a view of the whole countryside. No sign of Margaret. Phoebe cross-examined crows and sparrows. No sightings. Late in the afternoon, she dragged Fred all the way to the greenhouse. But while she looked longingly down the road to town, he dissuaded her from taking it. The town was notorious for its cars and dogs.

  When they straggled back to the cave, they found that the other animals had prepared a feast for them: clover and turnip greens and an ear of corn. Fred dug right in.

  “This corn’s fresh!” he exclaimed.

  “The bats commandeered it from a roadside stand,” said the squirrel.

  “It was a remarkable spectacle to behold,” said the skunk. “They had to fly in formation.”

  “You’ve got to try some, Phoebe,” Fred said. “It’s the sweetest I’ve ever tasted.”

  Out of politeness, Phoebe sampled a kernel, and she said it was excellent, but she wouldn’t take another.

  “You have to eat, Pheebs,” Babette said.

  “I’m sorry,” Phoebe said. “I just can’t.”

  But that night she at least managed to doze off.

  Early the next morning, while she and Fred were still sound asleep, the squirrel tiptoed around, waking the others, whispering that he wanted to see them outside. The snake, who was still digesting a certain brown toad he’d been after since early spring, cracked an eye and hissed to leave him alone, but when he noticed that Babette was joining the others, he decided to go along after all. For the last couple of days she’d hardly paid any attention to him, thanks to the army of animals that had come traipsing over to call on her, and while this should have been a relief, he’d found himself feeling oddly resentful.

  “Sorry to get you all up so early,” the squirrel said as the snake joined the others. “But I’m really worried about Phoebe.”

  “Me, too,” said the skunk. “She’s so dispirited.”

  “I’ve never seen her like this her whole life,” said Babette.

  “I think we should help her,” the squirrel said.

  “Help her how?” asked Ms. Bat, who was hanging beside her husband on a sumac.

  “Help her look for Margaret.”

  The name affected the different animals in different ways. While Matt automatically curled into a defensive ball, the snake made a gagging sound, as if the brown toad was trying to hop back out of his gullet. One little twin said, “Stinky.” The other, “Smelly.”

  The skunk sighed. “I suppose you should count me in, since I’m responsible for the whole mess,” she said.

  “I guess we could help, too,” said Ms. Bat. “Though, frankly, I don’t think we’ll have much luck.”

  “It’s just to show Phoebe our support,” said the squirrel. “Shall we make it unanimous?”

  “No way I’m wasting my time scouring the countryside for that tail-stomping lout,” said the snake. “And that’s final.”

  “We can still round up a good search party,” said Babette. “I can get some of my friends to help.”

  So, later that morning, when Fred and Phoebe headed off to hunt for Margaret, the other animals went, too—even the snake, who somehow disliked the idea of Babette enlisting the help of the otter, and the muskrat, and the raccoon, and that pushy porcupine. The search party fanned out and looked behind every rock and tree, in every ditch, all up and down the stream. But there was no sign of Margaret anywhere.

  After a week of this, even Phoebe began to lose hope. No one had found so much as another scrap of Margaret’s nightdress.

  So the search was finally called off, and the animals started going about their usual business. Babette went out of her way to make Phoebe feel as if she was co-mother of her children.

  “They like you much better than me,” she said.

  But whether or not this was true, Phoebe knew she was only their aunt. She’d had a child of her own for a while, someone to devote herself to heart and soul, but that was over—down the drain. She had only one consolation: Fred. He’d changed somehow. It was as if he and not the snake had shed his old skin. Every day he assured her that Margaret was safe and sound, wherever she was. Every night he held Phoebe tight, careless of his fur.

  Day by day, Phoebe found herself looking forward more and more to nighttime.

  A Return Journey

  Margaret was safe and sound. But she wasn’t happy. The food her parents served was abominable, and every night after dinner her mother dunked her in the bathtub, and then she got stuck in the jail-like crib. And she couldn’t even cry herself to sleep. If she made a peep, Six, Seven, and Eight threatened to smother her.

  She began to miss the animals in the cave—especially the woodchucks. Whenever she looked at her teddy bear, she thought of the huge one she’d seen outside the burrow. For some reason, it was only now that she realized the woodchucks had saved her from being eaten up. And it was only now—now that her brothers and sisters were being so mean to her—that she realized how mean she’d been to the animals. For a while she made little effort to speak human, preferring to talk to herself in animal language. She even began to wish there was some way she could repay the woodchucks for all they’d done for her. But what could she possibly do?

  One evening a few weeks later, she decided to hide under her crib to escape her hot bath, so after dinner she headed straight upstairs. When she was halfway up the staircase, her mother cried:

  “Mr. Hubble, come look! She’s walking upstairs!”

  It was true. She was holding on to the spokes of the banister, but she actually was walking up the stairs. It wasn’t all that hard, really. Because she hadn’t been wolfing down so much food, she was shedding her flab.

  The next evening, when she climbed into her high chair by herself, her father said: “You know, Margaret, you’re getting kind of cute.”

  “Really, Dada?”

  “Good girl!” Mr. Hubble said, beaming. “That wasn’t gibberish at all. Pretty soon you’ll be able to tell us how you got lost.”

  This was true, too. In spite of her nostalgia for the animals, she was getting the hang of human speech again.

  Needless to say, this development worried Six, Seven, and Eight. With their tree hut in ruins, they went behind the garage to discuss a plan of action.

  “We could throw her down the cellar stairs and say she fell,” said Six.

  “She probably wouldn’t even get hurt,” said Seven. “Her bones are still pretty soft.”

  They discussed various options and finally agreed on one. Since Margaret’s speech was getting dangerously intelligible, they decided to carry out their plan that very night.

  The three of them went to bed with their clothes on. After giving the rest of the household plenty of time to fall asleep, they slipped out from under the covers and surrounded the crib.

  Six stuck a pencil through the bars and po
ked Margaret awake. “Listen, you,” he said. “If you rat on us, we’re going to dump you twice as far away as last time.”

  Margaret blinked, her eyes adjusting to the moonlight, and shook her head.

  “You won’t rat?” said Seven.

  Margaret shook her head.

  “How come?” Six said suspiciously.

  “Back to the ditch.”

  “You want to go back where we dumped you?” Eight said.

  Margaret nodded.

  “Why?” said Six.

  “Want to,” said Margaret.

  After holding a private conference in the corner of the bedroom, Six, Seven, and Eight returned to the crib.

  “When do you want to go back there?” asked Six.

  Margaret looked out the window at the full moon. “Now?”

  Six, Seven, and Eight found the idea of a midnight adventure rather appealing. Eight let down the side of the crib so Margaret could get out, Seven dressed her, and Six carried her downstairs. After getting the flashlight from the top of the basement stairs they’d considered tossing her down, they crept out of the house, Six carrying Margaret piggyback.

  Halfway down the block, Seven took over for Six.

  “Boy, it’s a good thing you’ve lost weight,” Eight said when his turn came.

  Trading off, they carried her down a country road, past a greenhouse, across a meadow, and through some trees. When they came to the edge of the ditch, Seven set her down.

  “What now?” said Six.

  The three followed Margaret as she toddled along past a ghostlike birch tree and up to the entrance mound of a burrow. Margaret had heard Fred bemoan the fact that a badger had taken it over, so she stuck her head inside and called out:

  “Wake up, badger!”

  “What’d you say?” said Six.

  “Animal talk,” Margaret said, backing up from the mound.

  “Bull,” said Eight.

  “What does it mean?” Seven asked.

  “Wake up, badger.”

  “Yeah, right,” said Six.