The Knowles family lived in a quiet hysteria. On a quiet street that was named for a tree. Actually they lived in a pink clapboard house. But inside the house was a quiet hysteria.
Peggy and Henry and Little Peggy made three, but three musketeers, the Knowles family was not; a battle raged on in their pink clapboard house. A nice quiet war that no one could see.
Little Peggy Knowles ate old cigar stumps. She ate cigarette butts and licked postage stamps. Her parents fought about every little thing. In a quiet way, but Henry and Peggy fought all the time. Peggy would say the sky is blue, or peas are green. Bees are yellow and black, they buzz and they sting, and Henry would say, well yes, I suppose, in a way...
Then Peggy would say, “I suppose”? What does “I suppose” mean? What do you mean when you say “in a way”? And it went on and on. They went ʻround and ʻround, and Little Peggy watched and made animal sounds.
She was eight years old and still didnʼt speak. Not one single word. But she chirped like a titmouse: woot-woot! weet-weet! Or squealed like a dolphin or gronked like a hippo, and sometimes she cried like a lamb or a sheep.
They called her Little Peggy and her mother Big Peggy. No one knows why; at four foot nine, Big Peggy weighed ninety-six pounds, soaking wet. She talked big, though, especially to Henry, whose first name and real name was actually “Petunia.”
Itʼll make him tough. Itʼll make him a man. That was the thinking. That was the plan, but it didnʼt work with Henry/Petunia. He was downright compliant. Just went right along with anything and everything Big Peggy said.
The Knowles family lived in a muted dissonance. A quiet hysteria, on a street named for trees. In a pink clapboard house with a nice quiet lawn. With a girl who spoke only in gronks, woots and bleats and they went ‘round and ‘round but it went on and on.
Then one day Little Peggy was munching on cigarette butts, and eyeing a roll of postage stamps, when Big Peggy walked by with Petunia—I mean Henry—in tow.
Little Peggy looked up, eyes bright as diamonds, smile brown from tobacco.
Woot-woot? she asked.
Big Peggy turned to her husband and said, you need to do something about this, you know.
Henry replied, in a way, I suppose...
And it went on and on. It went ʻround and ʻround. A nice quiet war in a nice quiet house and alone in her room, Little Peggy, quietly, licked all the stamps and said, why canʼt they love me the way that I am.