Summary: Gilbert loved his brother. More than anyone in the world… But when his father died, Gilbert had to take care of Arnie like his own son… and that revealed a whole new meaning of 'love'.

Chapter One: A Miracle

I can't quite recall how old I was when Mama had Arnie… I think I was probably five, or six. It was just me and Amy then. I still remember when Mama was pregnant.

I still remember when she told us she was pregnant…

"You're what?" Dad yelled… Mama didn't say anything in return. He just stared at him, while me and Amy watched from our bedroom. He huffed loudly and began to pace back and forth for a real long time… It made us nervous, but still, Mama said nothing. "Bonnie, you know how goddamn hard it is to raise one kid? Now we're having… not one, but three! Three bastards!"

"Don't you dare talk about yer own children like that, Albert!" Mama yelled. We could hear the trembling in her voice… Mama was scared. Like we all were. Dad wasn't really one to get angry or upset or anything… We tried playing with him before. He wasn't really the family type of guy.

"That's what they are, Bonnie! Bastards! You know goddamn well that we couldn't afford no weddin'."

That was always the speech of the night… and Dad always made it clear that he and Mama weren't married. It was a wonder how they stayed together for so long. Dad and Mama never really had much of a loving relationship of any sort… Just a tolerance for each other.

Then we heard Mama crying… I hated to hear Mama cry. But there wasn't much we could do. Amy led me back to my room and laid me to sleep then. There wasn't any other sound in the house other than Mama sobbing still…

When she was about, two or three weeks away from her due date… Mama fell down the steps. Or, so she said… I'll never know what really happened. But apparently, one night, Mama was going down the steps, probably to get some water, and she tripped… falling down the steps and landing on her stomach. At the time, it seemed like a genuine accident… I mean, Mama was crying, and we had to haul her off to the hospital. But looking back, I realized that it could've been anything. After all, Mama had been wanting an abortion for a while, since Dad made it clear that he didn't want anymore children. Who knows? Mama very well could've thrown herself off the steps, or she could've been pushed. Every time I think about it, it scares me… knowing what could have happened to her baby… To Arnie.

We rushed Mama to the hospital, and the whole way, Dad kept pestering her saying stuff like, "You clumsy ass woman. Can't even walk down the steps right… and even after having two babies already!" But Mama didn't say anything. I don't know… she was probably in too much pain to say anything.

It was the next morning, when the doctors came to us and said that Mama had given birth to a baby boy. He was almost premature by a month, weighed only two and a half pounds, and had a strange face.

"What's the matter with his face, Mama…?" I remember asking. Mama told me to ignore his face. She told me that it'd get better as he got older. I didn't know what to think of Arnold Grape. Hell, he was just a baby… small, funny looking, and he smelled weird too. Dad didn't say much when Arnie was born… He just sat by and watched, as though he were in another room, looking in at us through glass.

When it came time to take Arnie home, the doctors kept telling us that Arnie won't live to be ten years old. I asked Mama why…

"Why are they saying Arnie won't live to be ten?"

"Gilbert…" Mama would say, just before taking in a long, deep breath as she mentally prepared herself to come with the right words to say, "They're just sayin' that because they ain't seen no miracles yet."

"Miracles, Mama?"

"Yes, Gilbert. Arnie is a miracle."

She never stopped calling him that either. She always told him, 'sunshine, you're a miracle'. We all knew it, and I'm surprised Mama didn't just call him, 'miracle' instead of 'sunshine'. Arnie became Mama's favorite right away… the only child in the family with sandy blond hair. Though, he couldn't even babble by the time he turned two… Mama still loved him the most. We could all tell. Dad never said much about it... and Dad wanted for Arnie to not live much longer. Dad hated knowing that Arnie wasn't 'normal' like everyone else. Yet still, he never said anything about it, though he continued to yell at Mama for it.

I remember looking into Arnie's crib and hearing him cry softly and whine. I'd hold out my finger for him, and he'd grab onto it, clinging tightly for dear life.

"Don't be scared, Buddy…" I whispered to him. "I'm here. I am."

Author's Notes:

I kind of did this a while back, and I'm just recently revisiting it. There's not much information in WEGG to go off from.

I had to do crazy amounts of math to figure out an estimate of each child's age by the time their father died ... It wasn't hard, but I didn't want to do it.

Gah. Yeah. It's been a long day.

R & R. Thanks!