Mary Anne + 2 Many Babies

  Mrs. Salem left for her meeting, and I sat at the kitchen table and began my homework. First I looked over my notes from Modern Living class. We were talking about parenting. I didn’t see that it was such a big deal; not for a baby-sitter anyway. If everyone would just take a child care course, they’d be prepared.

  I was opening my math book when I heard a noise from the second floor. I paused and listened. Definite cooing. I tiptoed upstairs and stopped at the doorway to the bedroom the babies share. Even from out in the hallway, I could smell that baby smell — powder and wipes and lotion and clean clothes and wet washclothes.

  I waited for the sound of tears, but instead I heard only the cooing. The babies were talking to each other; at least, that’s how it seemed.

  “Hi, Rose. Hi, Ricky,” I called softly from the hallway. I entered their room quietly. The twins have reached that touchy “fear-of-strangers” phase, and I didn’t want to make them cry.

  They didn’t. The cooing stopped, though. They sat in their cribs, watching me solemnly and silently.

  “Hey, Ricky. It’s me, Mary Anne. I’ve taken care of you a few times now.” I crossed the yellow carpet to Ricky’s white crib. I just adore the way the Salems decorated the twins’ nursery. It’s bright and airy. Yellow striped curtains hang at the windows. A small shelf is already jammed with picture books. A blue wooden chest, decorated with a painting of Winnie-the-Pooh, holds most of their toys. Under the window stands the changing table. Around the middle of the wall runs a colorful frieze of teddy bears and balloons.

  I didn’t approach Ricky too closely yet. Instead, I stepped over to Rose’s crib and whispered to her.

  “Want to be … tickled?” I finally said.

  Rose’s face cracked into a smile. A few teeth showed. I tickled her toes gently. When she began to giggle, I lifted her from her crib and laid her on the changing table.

  A lot of babies do not like to be changed, for some reason. I can’t understand that. Personally, if I were wearing a wet, stinky diaper, I wouldn’t even wait for someone else to change it. I’d learn to do it myself.

  Rose lay on her back and kicked her feet in the air. She let me remove her diaper, which I dropped in the diaper pail. I know, it sounds old-fashioned. But so what? Mrs. Salem does not put disposable diapers on the babies. She found out how bad they are for the environment, and she switched to cloth diapers, even though she and her husband have to wash loads of laundry almost every day. They never complain about this.

  I pinned Rose into a fresh diaper. Then I looked around the room. “I guess I better dress you in a fresh outfit,” I said. From the twins’ closet I took a pale blue dress, smocked across the front. I slipped it onto Rose, then completed her outfit — frilly socks and dainty blue cloth shoes. She looked like a princess.

  Ricky’s turn. He also let me change him without fussing. Then I dressed him in a red-and-white sailor suit. “You look very handsome,” I told him.

  I carried the twins (one at a time) to the kitchen. I found that I had to plan ahead with the babies. Managing them took some work. For instance, to move them to the kitchen, I had to place Rose back in her crib, carry Ricky downstairs, fasten him in his high chair, return to the bedroom for Rose, then carry her downstairs and fasten her into her high chair. But so what? The babies were as good as gold.

  They even gave themselves their bottles. Mr. and Mrs. Salem must have been pretty happy when the babies learned how to hold onto things.

  “Ready for a walk, you guys?” I asked.

  Ricky smiled at me, and a drop of milk trickled down his chin.

  Rose burped, then grinned.

  “Charming,” I told her, giggling.

  I set the twins in their double stroller and walked them down the Salems’ driveway. If I do say so myself, they looked awfully cute, sitting side by side, all dressed up, smiling and cooing. I almost wished they were wearing matching outfits so people would know for sure that they were twins, and not just two unrelated babies.

  We set off down the sidewalk. We passed an older woman who paused to smile at Ricky and Rose. Then we met up with a man who stopped to say, “Goodness. Ricky and Rose. You two are certainly getting big. Don’t you make a fine-looking pair.”

  In response, Rose kicked her feet, and Ricky waved his arms around. They gurgled and grinned.

  A few minutes later, a couple of little girls flew through the front door of a house and dashed across their lawn. “Hi, Rosie! Hi, Ricky!” they cried. Then they looked at me. “Lady, can we play with the twins, please?” asked the younger girl.

  Lady? Sheesh, was I getting that old? I thought. But what I said was, “Sure, for a few minutes. I’m Mary Anne. I’m baby-sitting for the twins. What are your names?”

  “Sara,” said one.

  “Bea,” said the other.

  The girls bent over the babies. They tickled them. They played peek-a-boo and pat-a-cake with them. They exclaimed over their outfits.

  “I can’t wait until I can baby-sit,” said Bea.

  “It’s the best job in the world,” I replied.

  “Is it ever hard?” Sara asked.

  “Hard? Nah,” I said, completely forgetting about the times Jamie Newton refused to go to sleep, and the day Jenny Prezzioso ran a fever of 104° and I had to call an ambulance, and the many things that had been broken by Jackie Rodowsky, the Walking Disaster. “It’s always fun,” I added. “I can’t wait until I have children of my own.” Or better yet, a baby sister, I thought.

  * * *

  “The twins were angels,” I told Dawn later that afternoon.

  It was almost dinnertime. Dad and Sharon had not yet returned from work. Dawn and I had finished tossing a salad and had just stuck a casserole in the oven. It was some vegetarian thing Sharon had concocted. I didn’t ask what was in it. I have found that it’s better not to know.

  “Rose and Ricky are pretty sweet,” agreed Dawn.

  “They didn’t even cry today. Not even when I changed them.”

  “Babies are wonderful.”

  “I know. I don’t understand why Dad and Sharon won’t have one. I thought that was supposed to be part of a marriage. Look how badly Watson and Kristy’s mom wanted a baby after they got married.”

  “Would you want a little brother or a little sister?” asked Dawn.

  I hesitated. “I know I’m supposed to say I don’t care as long as the baby is healthy, but, well, I would sort of like another sister,” I said. “She would be so much fun to dress up. We could buy her jewelry and barrettes and some of those headbands — you know, the stretchy ones.”

  Dawn sat in a kitchen chair and said dreamily, “What would you want to name our sister … or brother?”

  “I don’t know about a brother, but I think a beautiful name for a girl is Tara. Or Charity. Or Bea. Isn’t Bea cute? I met a little girl today named Bea. Maybe Will would be nice for a boy.”

  “I think Dawn and Mary Anne are lovely names.”

  I jumped a mile, then whirled around to see who had spoken. It was Sharon. Dawn and I had been lost in some other world, and we hadn’t heard our parents come home.

  “Are you two talking about babies again?” asked Dad.

  “Yes,” I replied.

  I couldn’t bring myself to say anything more, but luckily Dawn jumped into the conversation. “We’ve noticed a pattern,” she said. “People get married, then they have babies. Or they adopt babies or children.”

  “Not everyone,” said Sharon. “Besides, between Richard and me we already have three children. And a cat.”

  “But don’t the two of you want to have a baby together?” I asked.

  “No,” Sharon answered gently. “Not at this point in our lives.”

  “We’re happy just the way we are,” added Dad.

  His voice carried that final note, the one that means, “End of discussion.” The one that means, “I don’t want to hear another word about it.”

  Dawn got the message, too. “Dinner’s almo
st ready,” she said.

  So we ate dinner. No one said anything further about babies. But I couldn’t stop thinking about them. Especially what to name a baby. I doodled in the margin of my math homework that evening: Tara, Lizzie, Margaret, Tara, Adele, Tara, Frannie, Tara, Charity, Bea …

  When Logan and I had worked out our finances for Modern Living class, we’d drawn a bunch of pretty negative conclusions: apartment rents were much higher than we’d expected; food was expensive; everything was expensive. And we could not yet be financially independent.

  “What are we supposed to say in class tomorrow?” Logan asked. “Somehow, I have the feeling that ‘we can’t afford anything’ isn’t what Mrs. Boyden wants to hear. We could have told her that without doing any homework.”

  So Logan and I had written a two-page paper outlining how much money we earn, comparing the rents of different-sized apartments, and trying to figure out what percent of someone’s salary should be spent on rent alone, and therefore how much we would need to earn to afford even the tiniest little apartment. We made four professional-looking graphs, too. (We used Magic Markers, colored dots, rulers, even a protractor.)

  Guess what. The day those homework assignments were due, we never even discussed them. We walked into our Modern Living classroom to find Mrs. Boyden sitting at her desk, her hands clasped in front of her. On the desk was a carton of eggs, the lid open. Mrs. Boyden said nothing as we filed into the room.

  Something was going to happen.

  “Logan,” I dared to whisper, “do you think Mrs. Boyden is angry at our class? Did we do something wrong?”

  Logan shrugged. “Beats me.”

  To be on the safe side, I handed in our homework assignment. I laid it silently on the edge of our teacher’s desk. The other kids watched, then did the same thing.

  When we were all seated quietly, Mrs. Boyden got to her feet. She smiled. “Congratulations,” she said. “You have all become parents.”

  “Huh?” said Shawna.

  “You’ve been married for awhile,” Mrs. Boyden continued, “and now you have had babies. Congratulations.”

  I noticed a lot of confused faces in the room.

  Mrs. Boyden indicated the carton of eggs. “Your children,” she said. “When I call your names, please come to the front of the room and receive your egg. Logan Bruno and Mary Anne Spier.”

  Feeling both confused and self-conscious, Logan and I made our way to Mrs. Boyden’s desk. She held out an egg, which Logan accepted (because my hand was sort of shaking). When she didn’t say anything else, we returned to our seats.

  Pair by pair, the other kids were given eggs also. While Logan waited for everyone to sit down, he played with our egg. He placed it in the center of his desk, tapped it, sent it rolling, then caught it just before it sailed over the edge.

  “Each of you now has a child,” Mrs. Boyden announced, closing the lid on the carton. “The eggs are your children. For the next few weeks you are to treat the eggs as you would infants.”

  At that moment, Logan had just rolled our egg to the edge of his desk again. He caught it in a hurry. He handed it to me.

  “Your babies,” Mrs. Boyden was saying, “must be fed regularly, clothed, taken to the doctor, and especially, watched over. Just as you would never leave a human infant alone, you must never leave your egg alone. Someone must be available to care for it at all times. You will be in charge of your egg-children for a month. At the end of four weeks, a paper will be due. I will expect you to write about your experiences, any problems you encountered, the solutions to those problems, and so forth. We’ll talk more about the papers later this week. By the way, as parents you are responsible for your children, starting right now. Of course, I won’t be able to see that your babies are cared for when you’re out of school, so everyone is on his or her honor this month. Every eighth-grader will become a parent to an egg, and I trust you to keep an eye on each other. Only you can make the honor system work.”

  (Behind me, someone whispered, “Funny, I thought only we could prevent forest fires.” Someone else giggled. Mrs. Boyden didn’t notice.)

  “Any questions?” our teacher asked.

  As you can imagine, nearly everybody raised a hand.

  “Shawna?” said Mrs. Boyden.

  “Do we really have to take our eggs to the doctor?” she asked. “I might feel sort of silly. Like, what will the pediatrician think?”

  Mrs. Boyden closed her eyes momentarily. “No, you don’t actually have to take your egg to a doctor. But you are going to be a mother for a month, so I expect you to know when and why your child might need to see a doctor. Remember to plan for checkups.”

  Logan nudged me. “How are we supposed to feed these eggs?” he asked.

  I shrugged.

  Shawna raised her hand again and spoke without waiting to be called on. “About food —” she began to say.

  “No, you do not need to prepare food and pretend to feed your egg,” Mrs. Boyden broke in. “Let me explain the project in more detail. When you leave this room at the end of the period, either you or your partner — your spouse — must watch over your child every moment. You wouldn’t leave an infant unattended, so do not stash your egg in your locker during school hours. The egg will accompany you to classes. You must also tend to your egg after school and at night.”

  “Hey, what about after-school sports?” exclaimed a boy in the front row. “I can’t watch an egg while I’m at baseball practice.”

  “Ask your wife to watch your child, then,” said Mrs. Boyden.

  “But I take piano lessons,” spoke up the wife. She hesitated, then added, “I guess I could bring the egg with me.”

  Mrs. Boyden nodded. “That would be an acceptable solution, as long as you keep your eye on the baby throughout the lesson.”

  Mrs. Boyden mentioned some facts about babies. Not everyone was aware, for example, that infants cannot hold their own bottles. “What does that tell you about feeding your baby?” asked Mrs. Boyden.

  “I guess we have to be with our egg at mealtimes,” spoke up Trevor Sandbourne. “The baby can’t eat by itself.”

  “Right. In fact, you need to hold the egg,” pointed out Mrs. Boyden. “Infants can’t sit up, either. Understand?” We nodded. “One last thing,” our teacher went on, glancing at the clock. “From here on in, I would like you to refer to your children as children, rather than as eggs.” Mrs. Boyden didn’t explain this — the bell rang just as she finished her sentence — so I didn’t have a chance to ask her why we weren’t supposed to call our eggs eggs.

  Around me, my classmates were getting to their feet. But not Logan. He turned to me with this incredible horrified expression on his face. Then he looked at our egg. I mean, our child. It was resting on my desk inside a little barricade I had created with my notebook, pocketbook, and two textbooks. For the time being it was safe, but —

  “We can’t carry that, um … we can’t carry that around all day,” said Logan, pointing at our child.

  “Just what I was thinking,” I answered. “But we have to.”

  “Yeah. Okay. Where will it be safe? In my backpack?”

  “Not the way you sling that thing around. I’ll put our child in my purse. She’ll be safe there.”

  “Are you sure she won’t suffocate? And how do you know it’s a girl?”

  “I don’t. I just want a girl. And she won’t suffocate. My bag doesn’t close, see?” (My purse was a big woven bag. It was great for school because I could toss lots of stuff into it, and I didn’t have to worry about zipping or unzipping it all day.)

  “Okay,” said Logan uncertainly.

  “Hey, come on, this is going to be fun,” I told him. I was standing up, settling our daughter in my purse.

  “But what about gym? You and I have gym at the same time now. What are we going to do with her then? I’ll be playing baseball. I can’t bring her out on the field with me. It’s too hot. Plus, I’d probably sit on her.”

  “D
on’t panic,” I said, although I felt a teensy bit panicky myself. “I’ll be doing aerobics in my gym class. I’ll bring my bag with me and leave it where I can see it. She’ll be fine.”

  “All right. I guess I’m just a nervous father.”

  “Well, relax. You’re around kids all the time. You’re great with them. Pretend you’re baby-sitting or something.”

  Logan relaxed. He looked fondly at our child, now nestled on a wad of Kleenex in my purse. “Maybe we should name her,” he suggested.

  “Yes, but not now, dear. We’re going to be late for our next class.” I picked up my books and slipped my purse over my shoulder.

  Logan peered worriedly inside the bag. “Take care of our child,” he said. “Be particularly careful during gym. Why don’t you give her to me at lunch and I’ll watch her for the rest of the day?”

  “Oh, no,” I said. “You are not putting our daughter in your backpack. This afternoon we’ll get together and figure out a way to carry her around. I don’t mind watching her today.”

  * * *

  I had thought I might feel silly worrying about our child all day. I mean, how was I supposed to explain to my gym teacher that I needed to keep my purse nearby during aerobics so that I could baby-sit for an egg? But of course I wasn’t the only student with that problem. A bunch of other girls who had also attended their Modern Living classes earlier that day were in the same situation. And I saw a couple of them just set their eggs on the floor and leave them. How would they be able to tell them apart at the end of class?

  “Logan!” I exclaimed, when I met him in the cafeteria at lunchtime. “We have to mark our baby or something. What if she got lost? We wouldn’t be able to tell her from any other egg. I mean, baby.”

  “This afternoon we’ll paint her with food coloring,” said Logan. “It’s painless and nontoxic. You have to think of those things.”

  I nodded. “Listen, I’m sure she’s hungry by now. Why don’t you eat while I feed her? Then I’ll eat while you finish feeding her. We should probably feed her again at …”