HANK AND BEULAH’S CHILDREN

Their first child, Sonny, two years younger than Margaret and two years older than Jenny, was born with multiple deformities, which included a hair lip, a cleft palate, being tongue tied, pigeon toed, and having a receding chin, a protruding butt, and an unhandsome wizened face with an unhealthy yellowed complexion. He was a large ugly duckling, but this, in no way, diminished his parents or grandmother’s love for him. Society treated him even more cruelly than it had Hank. Sonny retaliated by becoming angry and quarrelsome, a rock hurling fight picking boy. He liked to lift girl’s dresses and have a look underneath. Mother said that Margaret and Jenny should not mistreat Sonny, that he really wasn’t foolish (retarded) as many said, but just unfortunate and certainly smart enough to know when he was being picked on.

Hank and Beulah were so happy when their baby girl, Betty Ann, was born about a year later, but it soon became apparent that she had many of the same deformities as Sonny, and in addition, had a severe heart problem. When she tried to walk, her cheeks would turn purplish-blue and she would pant from exertion. She appeared to understand what was spoken to her, but when she tried desperately to communicate, her speech was discernible only to her family. She was unable to go to school, but was kept at home where she was loved and protected. She grew very slowly and looked like a toddler when she was six.

In two more years there was a third child, a pretty little girl, but with a congenial heart defect and a generally weak constitution. This was Twila. Hank began to feel that he was cursed by God, but a few years later, there were two normal little girls with sparkling brown eyes. They were so encouraged by this success that they tried for another normal child, but the sixth, another daughter, was like Betty Ann. People said that these deformities came from Beulah’s side of the family.

When Sonny was six, he had diphtheria. Hank drove into their yard late one night in February. He pounded on the door frantically shouting, “Sonny’s burning up with fever and out of his head.” There was no phone at the Barnes house and no time to call a doctor from the nearest phone, a mile away. Daddy said he’d be right over and he hurried into his overalls. He sat up with the Painter family until dawn, keeping cold wet towels on Sonny’s head until his fever broke and calming and reassuring the distraught parents. Beulah had always liked Warren, and now she thought he walked on water. The very next day Mother and Daddy took Jenny and Margaret to the doctor’s for diphtheria immunizations.