Names and Naming in Young Adult Literature - Scarecrow Press

Names for Fun 19
der blade, which would show if she wore a swimming suit. Ratchet
grows up thinking that she is the one keeping her mother from belonging
to the Pensacola Hunt Club. But on the next to the last page of the
book, readers learn that Ratchet, who is now a middle-aged woman,
has telephoned the Pensacola Hunt Club and learned that anyone can
be a member. It was never up to Ratchet to get her mother accepted.
Henriette was using the name of the Pensacola Hunt Club not to refer
to the actual establishment but as a metaphor for all the things in life
she wants but suspects she will never have.
Along with obsessing about Ratchet’s birthmark, Henriette bemoans
Ratchet’s unfashionable name—“That was your father’s fault” (5).
Ratchet has never met her father because he “took a powder” shortly
after Ratchet was born. Henriette tells Ratchet the story on the same
day that she informs her that she is going away for the summer. After
giving birth to her first (and only) baby, she is in a foul mood because
of the pain and stress of the delivery and the fact that at the hospital
she has been wheeled into a room with seven other new mothers. Naturally,
she makes a fuss: “I mean, if I wanted to hang out with a bunch
of other women I would have lived in a commune, right? I would have
had my labor in some touchy-feely ashram” (6).
Workmen are fixing pipes in the only available private room, but to
keep Henriette from distressing all the other new mothers, the nurses
put her in with the workmen. She soon gets rid of them by throwing
around “bits of placenta” (really chunks of cherry Jell-O from her dinner
tray). They leave in such a hurry that they forget to take all their
tools. At first, Henriette does not notice because she is arguing with
Ratchet’s father over what to name the baby.
I liked the name Eugenie, and your father kept saying, “STINKO. Let’s
name her STINKO,” just to be funny. Can you imagine annoying me after
the kind of day I’d had? Then he says, “Or how about FART? FART
Clark!”
I’d say Yvonne, and he’d say Belch. He just wasn’t listening, he was
too busy being hilarious. That’s when I saw the tool on the windowsill.
“Who left that ratchet on the windowsill?” I asked, but of course he can’t
just answer the question. He has to argue. “No, it’s not a ratchet, it’s a
lug wrench.” Well, I knew a ratchet when I saw one. (7)