Aloha, Baby-Sitters! Read online

  Even from the freeway, it looked spectacular. I’d seen palm trees before, in L.A., when I visited Dawn. But there, they looked like giant Q-Tips reaching up to swab the gray, polluted air. Here, they seemed tall and proud.

  The air was clear. The grass was lush and green. Huge, ridged mountains rose on one side of us. On the other, a turquoise bay stretched out toward the ocean.

  “Aloha and welcome to Hawaii,” our bus driver announced over the speakers. “To your left is the Ko’olau Mountain Range, which is actually the rim of an extinct volcano. The Hawaiian Islands are formed entirely of volcanic lava. The smooth kind is called pahoehoe. The other kind is called a‘a, and you’ll discover why if you step on it….”

  The driver was pretty corny, but none of us minded. We were too busy gaping.

  About fifteen minutes later we pulled up in front of our hotel. It was a squat, rectangular, four-story, glass-and-steel building in the middle of town.

  “This is it?” Stacey asked.

  Mr. De Young smiled. “You were expecting the Plaza?”

  “No, but this is the Honolulu Surf,” Stacey explained. “Where’s the surf?”

  Claudia shrugged. “You can make one in the tub.”

  “Hang ten on the bathmat,” Abby said.

  “Catch a shredder through your Mr. Bubble,” Dawn added.

  “Gnarly, dudes,” Jessi remarked.

  Mr. De Young must have thought we were out of our minds.

  The minivan doors opened, and we all filed out. It was like walking into a perfume factory. Vibrant, thick-petaled flowers ringed the hotel.

  Jessi was doing pirouettes in the parking lot.

  “What’s that thing?” Abby asked.

  She was looking at a tree with gnarled bark and drooping branches. One of the branches had drooped all the way to the ground — and there it had taken root!

  “A banyan tree,” Dawn explained. “They don’t have them in the Northeast.”

  “Thank you, Ms. Natural,” Logan piped up out of nowhere. “Will you be eating the leaves raw or steamed for dinner tonight?”

  Dawn chased Logan around the van.

  For fifty jet-lagged, weary travelers, we sure made a lot of noise. Fortunately, the hotel had a few big, sturdy dollies to carry in our suitcases, plus a crew of big, sturdy staff members to push them.

  As part of our package deal, we were to stay three to a room, on twin beds and a fold-out couch. Claudia, Dawn, and I were given Room 323. Stacey, Jessi, and Abby were assigned to another floor, but good old Abby fixed that. She found out who was in the room next to us and swapped keys.

  After all the rooms had been assigned, Mr. Kingbridge announced, “Our main activities begin tomorrow. Today’s pretty casual. Settle in your rooms and meet back here in half an hour if you’re interested in a little stroll before dinner.”

  “YEEEAAAAAA!”

  A bellhop helped us up to our room. (He almost had a heart attack when he lifted Claudia’s suitcases.) Then he stood in the doorway with a pleasant smile.

  “Thanks a lot,” Claudia said. “Really.”

  He nodded and kept smiling, but he didn’t move.

  Claudia nodded, too. “Well … ’bye!” She stuck out her hand awkwardly, as if to shake his.

  “Oops,” Abby muttered. She fumbled around in her pocket, pulled out a few dollar bills, and handed them to the bellhop. He smiled even wider, thanked her, and left.

  “You have to pay them to leave?” Claudia asked.

  “It’s called a tip, Claudia,” Abby said.

  “Oh.”

  “Should we unpack?” I asked.

  Abby looked at Claudia’s luggage. “You want to be here until midnight? Let’s do it later. Maybe we can order an extra chest of drawers from room service.”

  We quickly washed up. Then we pulled fresh clothes from our suitcases, changed, and went back downstairs.

  Everyone gathered in the hotel banquet room, then set off in chaperone-led groups. (I almost went with Logan’s group, until I remembered TBI.)

  After a few minutes, I started pooping out. But I do remember some things about our walk. Honolulu is super clean, for one thing. A lot of Hawaiians wear flip-flops in the city — and they really do wear gaudy Hawaiian shirts. Flowers are everywhere. And the open-air markets sell everything from octopus to exotic fruits. I bought a “hand” of tiny bananas and a star-shaped fruit called carambola. Dawn bought a breadfruit, which looks like an old grapefruit with acne.

  I loved being around real Hawaiians. I couldn’t wait to meet some and find out more about their culture.

  When we returned to the hotel, we had an early dinner. I was so drowsy, I could barely focus on the menu.

  Jessi was frowning at hers. “What’s mahi-mahi?” she asked a waiter.

  “Dolphin,” he replied.

  I thought Dawn would spit out the guava juice she was drinking. “But you can’t —”

  “A dolphinfish,” the waiter said with a sly wink. “It’s different from the mammal.”

  “What’s poi bread?” Claudia asked.

  “The opposite of girl bread,” Abby replied.

  “You don’t know poi?” the waiter asked. “To Hawaiians, it’s like rice. It’s made from a root vegetable, taro. Never heard of it? I’ll bring you some.”

  Well, I tried the mahimahi and the poi bread, and they were great. I washed it all down with papaya-mango juice, and I felt like a real Hawaiian.

  We all trudged to our rooms at six-thirty. I plopped right into bed. The last thing I saw before my eyes closed was Claudia Kishi.

  Unpacking.

  “Whoa, leave some room for the rest of us!”

  Stacey’s voice gave me a start. I hadn’t even realized she was awake.

  “I haven’t written that much,” I said. “Yet.”

  “Zzzzzzzzzzzz,” remarked Abby.

  “Ahhh,” Stacey said. “The call of the ancient Hawaiian sinus bird.”

  “That’s funny,” I said, scribbling away. “Mal will like that.”

  Stacey shuffled off to the bathroom.

  A few minutes later I could see Abby’s arm reaching out. Her eyes were still shut, but she knew just where to find the tissue box.

  She held a tissue to her nose and honked.

  “I dote doe what it is,” she murmured. “Baybe I’b allergic to palb trees.”

  “Morning,” Stacey said, emerging from the bathroom.

  “Bordig, Stacey and Jessi,” Abby replied as she gathered up a handful of rattling bottles. “Bordig, decodgestadt. Bordig, adtihistabine. Bordig, idhalers.”

  She walked to the bathroom, calling over her shoulder, “Pardod be while I try to becub a hubad.”

  I quickly wrote in Mal’s journal:

  When Abby returned, I washed up and dressed in record time. Breakfast was due to begin at six-thirty, and I was starving.

  Before we left, I shut the spiral notebook and stuck it in my backpack. Then I tossed in my camera. I wanted both of them with me at all times.

  Guess who was sitting on the carpet just outside the banquet room? Claudia, Dawn, Mary Anne, and about a dozen other SMS kids. (Everyone else in the hotel must have still been sleeping.)

  “Hi!” we all called out.

  Click. I took a photo of the gathering.

  “Puh-leeze,” Claudia protested. “Not before breakfast. I don’t photograph well when I’m hungry.”

  “You just ate a whole bag of Doritos upstairs,” Dawn said.

  “Not true!” Claudia shot back. “I gave you three of them.”

  Soon the doors opened. Claudia was the first in line. The rest of us BSC members were close behind.

  Click. I thought Mal would want to see a typical hotel breakfast. The buffet included a few funky-looking dishes, but fortunately everything was labeled. (Mary Anne and Dawn tried some of the taro pudding, but I stuck with scrambled eggs and sausage.)

  After breakfast we split into groups. The majority wanted to go to the beach — includi
ng Abby, Stacey, Dawn, Robert, and Logan. Claudia, Mary Anne, and I all decided to sign up for a guided walking tour of Honolulu.

  Mrs. Hall led us a few blocks away from the hotel to a fancy building with a lot of columns. In front of it was a statue of a stern-looking guy wearing a thick gold robe and an ugly hat, with a spear in one hand and his other hand raised palm up as if he’d just pitched a softball.

  Waiting by the statue was our tour guide, a roly-poly, silver-haired man wearing flip-flops and a loud patterned shirt.

  Click. The statue.

  Click. The guide.

  Click. The building (with Claudia in front, sticking out her tongue).

  “Aloha and welcome,” the guide said. “I am Mr. Yap and in case you’re wondering about this statue, well, he’s an Italian model.”

  I opened my spiral notebook and started writing:

  Mr. Yap grinned. “Actually, he’s supposed to represent Kamehameha the Great, a warrior king who took Hawaii into the nineteenth century in a blaze of glory, only to see it start to fall apart….”

  Mr. Yap went on to talk about the late-1700s arrival in Hawaii of an English sea captain, James Cook. The Hawaiians thought he was a god. It took them awhile to realize he wasn’t, and boy, were they angry. By that time, the Europeans had brought diseases and strange customs to the islands. The Hawaiians ended up killing Cook.

  “Later, in the nineteenth century, the cultures really collided,” Mr. Yap continued. “Missionaries were shocked by the Hawaiians’ scanty clothing, and they invented the muumuu for the native women to wear. Looking into the houses of the missionaries, the Hawaiians were further shocked to see women cooking, and men sharing food at the same table as women. The Hawaiian system of behavior, kapu, allowed none of those things. Eventually, the Europeans forced kapu to die off and instituted their own customs.”

  What a familiar story this was.

  My head was buried in the notebook as Mr. Yap took us across the street and into a park. He showed us the only royal palace in the United States, ’Iolani Palace. (What did it look like? I don’t remember. I was so busy writing, I only looked up to take a quick snapshot, and then I had to run to catch up with everybody.)

  As we walked through the Hawaii capitol district, we saw the State Capitol, which has columns made to look like palms and rooms in the shape of volcanoes. (I took lots of cool pictures there.) We went to the Mission Houses Museum, a small complex of restored houses actually built by the missionaries, including a teeny bedroom where an entire family of seven slept.

  I had to change rolls of film on our way to the Hawaii Maritime Center. There I scribbled like crazy:

  My fingers were starting to hurt. I was near the end of my second thirty-six-exposure roll of film.

  I took a writing break as we walked along the row of shops that line the waterfront.

  That was gorgeous. I clicked away.

  We detoured up Merchant Street, passing some old-fashioned buildings that seemed out of place. We ended up in Chinatown for lunch, where I had something called Szechuan chicken.

  It was great, even though I didn’t recognize everything on my plate. “What’s this?” I asked, popping a little, shiny, vegetable-ish thing into my mouth.

  “Jessi, that’s a dried hot pepper!” Claudia cried out. “Don’t even think of —”

  Gulp.

  Take this warning from me. Never swallow a dried hot pepper. You will be taking your life in your hands. I cannot tell you how awful it felt. I thought my throat would explode. I drank about a gallon of ice water. I reserved one line in Mal’s book for the unique experience:

  Claudia was so cruel. She grabbed my camera and took a photo of me guzzling water. I’m sure steam was puffing out of my ears.

  I did not feel much better until our group headed back to the waterfront arcade. There we ate mango ice cream in an outdoor cafe near the Aloha Tower.

  Well, we didn’t all eat mango ice cream.

  Of course, I snapped before-and-after shots of Claudia and the Disappearing Dessert.

  Afterward, Mrs. Hall took us to an outdoor hula festival. I scampered around the area, finding dramatic angles for photos.

  As we walked back to the hotel, Mary Anne spun around. “I feel sooooo relaxed!”

  Everyone around her agreed.

  Except me. I was exhausted.

  Oh, well. I’d done my job. At least Mallory would know how our vacation really felt. I could always ask her.

  “SHE’S NOT! SHE’S NOT! SHE’S NOT! SHE’S NOT!” Jenny Prezzioso was lying on the kitchen floor, stamping her feet and shrieking.

  Mrs. Prezzioso was standing at the table, looking at her.

  I knew what the next step would be. Mrs. P. would pick Jenny up, give her a big kiss, and take some ice cream out of the freezer. Or take candy out of the cupboard. Or promise to buy Jenny a new doll, or a video, or whatever other thing she wanted at that moment.

  Jenny, as you can guess, is spoiled. She has more possessions than any other four-year-old child I know. Personally, I think Toys “R” Us should install a tunnel directly to Jenny’s house. That way the Prezziosos wouldn’t have to spend money on gas.

  “SHE’S NOT! SHE’S NOT! SHE’S NOT! SHE’S NOT!”

  In case you were wondering, the “SHE” Jenny was yelling about was me. The “NOT” was as in “NOT GOING TO BABY-SIT.”

  What did she have against me? I had no idea. We’d always gotten along well before. But with Jenny, you never know.

  Anyway, I was wrong about Mrs. P. She didn’t do any of the things I expected her to do.

  “Mallory,” she said softly. “Please come into the living room with me.”

  I followed her away from Tropical Storm Jenny. We huddled together in a quiet corner.

  “My husband and I have been involved in a parenting group,” she said in a low voice. “We’ve learned so much from the professionals and other parents. You see, we’ve been giving Jenny too much power….”

  (I did not say, “I could have told you that.” I held myself back.)

  “So we’ve started setting limits,” Mrs. P. went on. “As you can tell, Jenny is in rebellion. She’s been throwing tantrums like this all week. We’ve discovered that the best thing to do is ignore her. Compassionately, though. We say, ‘Jenny, when you’re finished, you may come and tell us,’ and then we walk away. She fusses and fumes for a few minutes, then stops. She works it out all by herself. I’d like you to follow this method, okay, Mallory?”

  I nodded politely, but inside I was dancing with joy. Jenny needed discipline like this. “Sure.”

  Jenny’s protest was already quieting down.

  Mrs. P. smiled. “Don’t take it personally — what she was saying. She still likes you, Mal. Anyway, Andrea’s sleeping. Jenny just had a big lunch, so she can have a snack around three o’clock, but no sweets.”

  “Okay,” I said, taking mental notes.

  “’Bye. Good luck.”

  Mrs. P. went into the kitchen and said good-bye to Jenny. Then she swept out the front door.

  When I entered the kitchen, Jenny was sitting on a kitchen chair, doodling on a notepad with crayons. “Hi, Jenny!” I said.

  “It’s Jennifer, that’s my name,” she replied.

  “Oh! Sorry. What’re you doing?”

  “Making a beautiful picture. But it’s not for you.”

  “Eeeeeeeee!” Andrea’s voice wafted into the room.

  I scooted into the nursery. Andrea was squirming in her bassinet, waking up.

  “Hello there!” I said. “Do you need a little diaper change?”

  “She can’t answer you,” Jenny yelled from the kitchen. “She’s a baby!”

  “Thank you,” I called out.

  I changed Andrea’s diaper and brought her into the kitchen. Unlike her sister, Andrea was in a great mood. She burbled and chattered in baby syllables.

  “She’s saying she wants to drink her bottle,” Jenny reported. “She already had yucky baby food for lu
nch.”

  I set Andrea in a high chair and quickly prepared her bottle.

  “I want ice cream,” Jenny announced.

  “Maybe after dinner tonight,” I replied. “Your mom said —”

  “NO! I WANT ICE CREAM NOOOOWWW!”

  “Jenny — I mean, Jennifer —”

  She fell to the floor again. “I HATE YOU, YOU STUPID! YOU GIVE ANDREA WHATEVER SHE WANTS! I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU!”

  “WAAAAAAHHH!” Andrea shrieked.

  I ran to Andrea and picked her up. The bottle seemed to quiet her down, but Jenny was a lost cause. She was wailing away.

  I gritted my teeth and remembered Mrs. P.’s advice.

  “Jennifer,” I shouted, “I’m going outside with your sister now! When you’re finished, you can join us if you want!”

  “IIII HAAAATE YOUUUUUU!”

  I went into the backyard and sat in a lounge chair under a big tree. Calmly I fed Andrea. Inside, Jenny carried on even more loudly. Much more loudly. I half expected the neighbors to dial 911.

  Mad as I was, I had a strong urge to go back inside and comfort her. Sure, she was being obnoxious, but she also seemed to be so unhappy.

  Well, no police arrived. And Jenny’s screaming soon turned into whimpers, then stopped.

  A few minutes later she bounced outside with her art project. “Look what I made!”

  She held out a sheet of white paper with circles and squiggles in many different colors.

  “Wow,” I said. “That’s beautiful.”

  “It’s for you. It’s a garden with big flowers and a huge gigantic bear eating them.”

  “Ohhhhh, I see.”

  “Can we go to the park and play in the sprinkler?”

  “Sure,” I replied.

  “Yeeeaaaaa!”

  Andrea was just about finished with her bottle. I sat with her a little longer, then brought her inside. Quickly I helped Jenny pick out a bathing suit, then darted to the kitchen to pack some provisions in the diaper bag — apple-cinnamon mini rice cakes, a box of crackers, a full bottle.

  I was back outside, fastening Andrea in her stroller and tying a bonnet on her head, when Jenny emerged. She was wearing a tiara and cape, and she held a magic wand in her right hand. “I’m going to make the park into an enchanted world of deep discounts!”