Kristy’s face was bright red. Was it from the excitement of what she and I had just been through? Was it because she had just broken the world record for the up-the-stairs dash? Or maybe, just maybe, was it because she was majorly embarrassed because everyone else had beaten her to the meeting?
I think it was a combination of all three.
In any case, it wasn’t as if we were actually late. Just as Kristy began to walk toward her usual spot in the director’s chair by Claudia’s desk, the numbers on the clock flipped over to 5:30. “I hereby call this meeting to order,” Kristy said in a rush, as she plopped down and stuck a pencil over her ear. Then, without pausing, she blurted out, “You guys will never believe what just happened!”
Normally, Kristy is pretty strict about what we discuss at the beginning of meetings. If it’s not club business, she’ll cut you off and tell you to wait until all the club business has been discussed. But she’s been known to break her own rule, especially if she has exciting news.
“What?” asked Stacey.
“Tell us!” said Mary Anne.
Kristy glanced over at me. “Well, actually,” she said reluctantly, “it’s really Abby’s news. After all, the ba — I mean, it happened at her house.”
I could tell it was just about killing her to hold off telling everyone about the baby. And it was killing everyone else to have to wait to find out what had happened.
“I don’t care whose news it is. Just spill it!” begged Claudia, leaning forward and letting her handful of carefully selected Miniatures fall back into the pile.
“Well,” I began. “You’ll never guess what I found on the porch when I came home from school today.” I paused and looked around, but nobody seemed to want to waste time guessing.
“I’ll give you a hint,” said Kristy. “What’s little and smells sweet and makes you smile?” She was practically jumping out of her seat.
“Flowers?” asked Stacey.
“A Hershey’s Kiss?” guessed Claudia.
“A kitten?” asked Mary Anne.
“Mary Anne’s the closest,” I said. “Since a kitten is a baby cat. But what I found was a baby. A human one. A boy.”
“No way!” yelled Claudia.
“A baby on your doorstep?” asked Mal. “You must be kidding.” I saw her and Jessi exchange a wide-eyed glance.
“I’m not,” I said, crossing my heart and holding up my palm. “It’s absolutely true. Ask Kristy.”
Kristy nodded. Her eyes were shining with excitement, and while she wasn’t red anymore, her face was still pretty pink. “He is the cutest, sweetest, most adorable baby you’ve ever seen,” she said.
“Where did he come from?” asked Claudia.
“What’s his name?” asked Jessi.
“Why was he abandoned?” asked Stacey.
“How old is he?” asked Mary Anne.
“I don’t have the answer to any of those questions,” I replied. “It’s a mystery. He just arrived on our doorstep. That’s all I know.”
The phone rang then, and I think we all remembered at the same instant that we were supposed to be having a meeting. Immediately, the club swung into official BSC mode.
“Baby-sitters Club,” said Claudia, answering the phone. “Oh, hi, Mrs. Papadakis, how are you?” She listened for a moment. “Short notice is no problem,” she said. “I’m sure we can find someone for tomorrow. I’ll call you right back.”
Mary Anne had already opened the club record book on her lap. “Tomorrow?” she asked. “What time?” When Claudia told her that Mrs. Papadakis needed a sitter for the following afternoon, it took Mary Anne just a second to check the schedule. “Actually, I’m the only one free,” she said. “And I’ll be glad to take the job.”
Claudia called Mrs. Papadakis back, and the job was set.
As soon as Claudia finished the call, Stacey spoke up. “I hate to mention it, guys,” she began, “but baby or no baby, it is a Monday, and you know what that means.” She held up the manila envelope she uses for a treasury, and we all groaned and reached into pockets, backpacks, and purses. We like to give Stacey a hard time about paying dues, but in fact nobody really minds that much. After all, the money goes for good causes, such as paying Charlie to drive Kristy and me to meetings, covering Claudia’s phone bill, and buying stickers and things for our Kid-Kits. Plus, once in awhile, if we have enough extra funds, we blow the bucks on pizza.
After we’d handed over our money, Kristy asked if there was any other club business. She’s such a professional. I knew she was dying to talk about the baby, but she wasn’t about to skip over anything. Anyway, Mal waved her hand.
“Jessi and I had this idea,” she said. “You know how we’re in this writing workshop at the library? Well, it’s been a blast. It’s really fun to listen to other people read their work out loud.”
“We thought it might be fun for our charges to do some writing and then share it,” Jessi put in. “We could declare February BSC Writing Month —”
“And then at the end of the month we could have a poetry slam!” finished Mal excitedly.
“A what?” asked Kristy.
“A slam,” Mal repeated. “It’s the latest thing. It’s sort of like a talent show for writers. Everybody reads their stuff out loud, and there are prizes for the people who get the best audience response.”
“Like when there’s an applause meter?” asked Claudia.
“Exactly,” said Mal. “Only we — the judges — will be the meter.”
“Is it just for poetry?” asked Mary Anne.
“No, people can write prose, too,” said Jessi. “Short stories, plays, even jokes. Anything.”
“I don’t think I’d be a great coach — or judge — for this,” said Claudia. “I mean, I can’t even spell.”
“It’s not about spelling,” said Mal. “It’s about creativity, so you’ll be great. How about it, guys?”
Everybody agreed that the idea sounded like fun, and that it would be a great way to beat the February blahs.
“It’s definite, then,” said Kristy. “Any other business?” Nobody spoke up, so even though it wasn’t six o’clock yet Kristy declared the official part of the meeting over, and we went back to discussing the baby.
I had noticed Mal and Jessi exchanging a look when I first told everyone about the baby, and now I asked about it. It turned out that there was a woman in their writing group who had just written — and read out loud — a story about a mother abandoning her baby. Apparently, the same idea had struck them both: Could she be the one who had left the car seat on my porch?
“I mean, I know it’s a mistake to confuse fiction with fact,” said Mal.
“But I think we should keep an eye on her anyway,” added Jessi.
We all agreed that that would be a good idea and made plans to follow up any other leads that might help us solve this new mystery that had landed on my doorstep.
* * *
I started my own investigation that very night. When I arrived home, my mom announced that we’d be keeping the baby. “Just until his mother is found,” she said.
“Is that really okay?” I asked. “I thought he’d have to go to child welfare or something.”
“We’ve cleared it with the authorities,” my mom said. “They all agree that this is the best place for the baby, at least for now.” She looked away when she said that, and I had the feeling there was something she knew and wasn’t telling me. I was about to ask her some more questions, but the baby chose that moment to start crying, and soon we were rushing around trying to figure out what he needed.
Later, as I sat in my room trying to do my homework, I realized that there was no way I could concentrate. I was dying to know where the baby had come from, and I had a feeling I wouldn’t be able to focus on anything else until the mystery was solved.
I stepped out into the hall and listened. I heard my mother moving around in her study and knew she must be trying to catch up on some of the work she’d miss
ed that day. From Anna’s room came the sound of scales. As usual, she was using the last hour before bedtime to practice her violin. I didn’t hear the baby. He must have been asleep in my mom’s room, in the crib we’d borrowed from Watson, who’d stored Emily Michelle’s in his attic.
I tiptoed downstairs and grabbed a flashlight and my jacket from the hall closet. Then I slipped outside and began to search methodically, up and down the walk, all over the porch, and back and forth across the driveway. What was I looking for? Anything. Anything that might give me a clue about the baby’s identity. Maybe I’d missed a note, or perhaps I would find a dropped glove or some footprints.
Finally, just as I was about to give up, I found something near the end of the driveway. It was a receipt — from a drugstore in New York City. Who had dropped it? It could have been my mom, but it also could have been the person who left the baby. It wasn’t much of a clue, but it was better than nothing. I stuck it into my pocket and headed toward the house.
Just then, I heard the faint sound of crying. I looked up in time to see the light go on in my mom’s bedroom. I watched from outside as she walked into the room, picked up the baby, and strolled around with him cradled in her arms, trying to comfort him. His cries grew louder at first, but finally he began to settle down.
The poor kid. Did he feel rejected? How could anybody abandon such an adorable boy? I resolved then and there that I wouldn’t stop investigating until I knew the whole truth about the baby — who he belonged to, why they had given him up. It was the least I could do for the vulnerable little stranger who had turned up at my house.
That’s Mary Anne, writing up her job at the Papadakises’ in the club notebook. Only she and her charges didn’t spend much of that afternoon at the Papadakis house. They, along with just about everybody else in the neighborhood, came to our house. They didn’t come to see me or Anna, either. They came to see Eli.
Who’s Eli? Take a guess. That’s the name we gave our mystery baby. After all, if he was going to be staying with us for a while, he had to have a name. We couldn’t just refer to him as “the baby” forever, could we?
On Eli’s second day with us, my mom stayed home from work again. The heating system was still down at her office, and besides, someone had to stay with Eli while Anna and I were at school.
Speaking of school, I almost didn’t make it there that day. Being around Eli was so much more fun than sitting in social studies class. Who would want to trade a happy, gurgling baby for a dull, droning teacher?
That morning I woke up early. Well, actually, I was woken up. By Eli. But I couldn’t blame him. If you can’t talk, how else are you going to let people know that you’re hungry and your diaper is wet and you want to come out of your crib? Crying makes a lot of sense under those circumstances, don’t you think?
Eli’s cries brought results, too. Within minutes, he had three handmaidens waiting on him. I changed his diaper while Anna dug around in the blue diaper bag for a clean sleeper. Meanwhile, my mom headed downstairs to warm some formula. Soon, I had a happy, dry, clean baby sitting on my lap, sucking contentedly on a bottle. Again, I leaned down to sniff the top of his head. Mmmm! There’s no smell that can compare.
I stalled as long as I could — feeding Eli, burping him, putting him down for a morning nap. Eventually, though, my mom kicked Anna and me out of the house, insisting that we go to school.
I don’t know what the point was. It’s not as if I could concentrate at all. Instead of multiplying X and Y, I spent math class thinking about whether Eli was too young for his first baseball glove. During social studies, I gazed out the window and wondered what Eli was doing right then (not that there was much to wonder about — it was a good bet that he was either sleeping or eating, since those are the two main things that babies do). All through English class I speculated on who might have left Eli on our doorstep, and why. Mal had mentioned during our meeting that whoever had abandoned him had probably just picked our house at random because it’s in a wealthy neighborhood. That sort of made sense. But why wouldn’t he or she have picked an even fancier house, like Kristy’s? For most of science class I thought about how cute Eli was when he smiled.
Baby love. I had it bad.
At lunchtime, my friends and I talked about Eli, and both Kristy and Mary Anne told me they wanted to stop over that afternoon to see him. It turned out that they weren’t the only ones. Everybody wanted to visit Eli, and that’s why Tuesday ended up being Open House Day at the Stevensons’.
When Mary Anne arrived at the Papadakises’ that afternoon, the kids ran to her.
“Did you hear about the baby?” asked Hannie, as soon as Mary Anne walked in the door. Hannie’s seven. She has dark hair and deep brown eyes and this great smile. She’s best friends with Kristy’s little stepsister, Karen.
“He appeared, like, out of nowhere!” Hannie’s brother, Linny, added. Linny, who’s nine, looks a lot like his sister. He hangs out with Kristy’s little brother, David Michael, even though David Michael is two years younger.
“I heard he’s really cute,” said Hannie. “Can we go see him?”
Mary Anne told me later that she was a little surprised to find the Papadakis kids so excited about a baby, since they have a little sister of their own: Sari, who’s two and looks like a miniature version of Hannie. “But a baby’s a baby,” she said. “A two-year-old just isn’t the same, I guess.”
True enough.
At any rate, Mary Anne was just as eager to meet Eli as the Papadakis kids were, so after a quick call to make sure it was okay with me, she brought them over.
My mother had gone out to do errands soon after Anna and I had come home from school. (Anna had — for the first time in my memory — skipped orchestra. She said she couldn’t stand being away from Eli for one more minute.) So when Mary Anne and her charges arrived, they found Anna and me hovering over the baby, arguing happily about whose turn it would be to change his diaper next time it needed changing.
We were in the living room, and I was holding Eli (having just won a coin toss with Anna). Mary Anne and her three charges surrounded us on the couch and began cooing over the baby. (Well, Sari wasn’t exactly cooing. She was more interested in banging on our piano.)
“Isn’t he the sweetest thing?” cried Mary Anne, holding out her arms for him. I didn’t want to hand him over, but just to be polite, I did. Mary Anne nestled her nose into the crease of his neck and breathed deeply. I guess she likes that baby smell as much as I do.
“Can I hold him?” begged Hannie.
“Let’s tickle his toes and see if he laughs,” suggested Linny seriously, as if the baby were a scientific experiment.
Just then the doorbell rang. “I’ll answer it,” I said, but nobody even looked up. Mary Anne was too busy making a face at Eli, trying to entice a smile out of him. Anna looked on as if she were a mother bear, worried about whether this strange person might hurt her cub. And Hannie and Linny were poking and prodding in a gentle, exploratory way.
I opened the door to find a small crowd on the porch. Kristy was there with David Michael, and they’d arrived at the same time as Shannon, who had given in to her younger sister Maria’s begging and brought her over to see the baby. And just as I was letting that set of visitors in, another two arrived: Melody and Bill Korman, who also live in the neighborhood.
As I let them in, I looked up at our front door, half expecting to see a lighted marquee like the ones at movie theaters. “See the Mystery Baby! He Smiles, He Gurgles, He Coos! Step Right Up!”
Eli was a star.
Inside, the kids were gathered around the couch. They were talking in whispers so as not to scare Eli. “When’s my turn to hold him?” asked Maria, who’s eight. She hopped from foot to foot with impatience.
“You’re behind me,” Linny said, pushing himself closer to Mary Anne and Eli.
“Look at his little foot!” cried Melody. She’s seven, and like Maria, she goes to Stoneybrook Day School instead of
Stoneybrook Elementary.
Bill, Melody’s nine-year-old brother, shouldered his way past her and stared at the baby. “What a little doink!” he said. He was trying to act tough, but he was just as smitten with Eli as the rest of us, even though he tried not to show it.
Eli, who had been resting peacefully, suddenly opened his eyes and looked around. He must have been shocked to see all those pairs of eyes staring back at him, because within about one half of a millisecond he screwed up his face and began to wail.
“Okay,” said Mary Anne, rocking him gently. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”
Apparently, Eli did not agree with her. He wailed more loudly.
“Maybe he needs a new diaper.”
“I bet he’s hungry. Where’s his bottle?”
“He probably just wants a pacifier.”
“I think his foot hurts him. See how he’s holding it?”
All the kids were talking at once, offering ideas. They jostled each other and moved closer, prompting Eli to scream at an even higher volume.
Pandemonium.
Finally, Mary Anne couldn’t take it anymore. She handed Eli to Anna, stood up, and made a T with her hands. “Hey, time out!” she called.
Somehow, her soft voice was forceful enough so that the kids heard it, even over Eli’s screams and their own shouts. “The baby isn’t hungry or wet or anything else. He’s just confused. There’s too much going on in here, and it’s time for some of us to leave.”
“No way!” said Hannie, folding her arms. “I didn’t even hold him yet.”
The other kids began to protest, too.
Mary Anne thought for a second. Then she turned to me. “Do you have a bunch of paper and pencils we could use?” she asked.