“Oh, Claudia!” exclaimed my mother. She jumped up from her armchair, crossed the room, and sat down next to me on the couch, enfolding me in her arms.
“Mimi didn’t want to die,” spoke up Janine softly, and we all looked at her. We watched her pull the something from her pocket that she’d slipped in there earlier. It was a rumpled piece of paper.
“I think she just knew her time had come and that she was going to die,” Janine went on. “She was trying to accept it and deal with it. Look at this.” Janine held the paper out to my mother. “I found this at the bottom of her jewelry box.”
I peered over at it, and my father came to look at it, too. Written in Mimi’s funny handwriting (she’d had to switch to her left hand after her stroke), was an obituary. Mimi had been writing her own obituary — all the stuff about where she was born and who she was survived by. But the weirdest thing was the date of her death. She’d included that, too, and she’d listed it as this year.
“She knew,” I whispered.
My mother nodded. “I really don’t think she could have held out any longer, Claudia. She might have felt like a nuisance, that’s true. But that didn’t have anything to do with the timing of her death. She didn’t give up, or let herself die. It’s like Janine said. She must have known her time had come. And finally her heart just gave out. I think she was sicker than anyone, even the doctors, knew — except Mimi. She knew.”
“The doctors should have known!” I cried, exploding again. “They should have done more. They’re supposed to be trained. They’re supposed to be so smart, but they let Mimi die. They never even figured out what was wrong with her. What a bunch of jerks. They should have saved her, but I bet they didn’t even try. They probably thought to themselves, ‘Oh, she’s just an old lady. It doesn’t matter.’ Well, it matters to me!”
My family listened to my outburst, and I felt better when I was finished. It was a whole lot easier to be mad at the doctors, since I didn’t really know them, than it was to be mad at Mimi. And I felt like I had to be mad at someone.
“Claudia,” said my father, “can you remember some nice times you had with Mimi, instead of the bad days at the end?”
“Yes,” I answered, feeling my throat tighten. I thought of the night before the funeral, sitting around Mary Anne’s kitchen table with my friends. “Yes,” I repeated.
Mom and Dad and Janine and I talked about Mimi a little longer, and Mom said that, now that the door to Mimi’s room was open, we really should clean it out and fix it up. The rest of us agreed. In fact, we left the living room then and went into Mimi’s room. Janine plopped herself down on the bed again, Mom and Dad stepped inside and began to look around, and I hovered in the doorway.
“We can’t get rid of the things on her walls,” I said. “The haiku poem and stuff. I think those should stay here.”
My dad agreed. “They’ll look very nice in the guest bedroom,” he said. “All we need to give away are her personal items. Her clothes and jewelry and things.”
Mom hesitated, then opened the door to Mimi’s closet. “I’d kind of like to have her kimono,” she said.
Dad picked up a paperweight from the table. “I’d like to keep this,” he said, turning it over in his hands. Then, “Hey!” he exclaimed. “There’s a piece of tape on the bottom with my initials on it. I guess Mimi wanted me to have it, too.”
The four of us began looking through everything in Mimi’s room. Lots of things were labeled. Mimi had been thinking ahead. We took the items that were marked for us, and set aside those for Russ and Peaches.
“The jewelry isn’t marked, though,” Janine pointed out, and she held the pearl pin toward me.
This time I took it. I knew I would never wear it, but I would always keep it, because it had belonged to Mimi.
Another Saturday, another art class.
With the puppets finished, we were trying something more abstract. Collages — even though Marilyn and Carolyn had each made one already. They didn’t mind making seconds, though. Their first ones had been made with feathers and sequins, crepe paper and glitter, scraps of felt and lace. Their new ones were going to be made up solely of words and pictures cut from magazines and were to be in the form of birthday cards for their father.
Everyone was hard at work.
Jamie, remembering the twins’ joke about Trouble and Shut Up, had decided to invent a joke of his own. “Why,” he asked expansively, “did the little girl slide down the slide on her toenail?”
“Why?” asked Gabbie.
“Because she wanted to!” hooted Jamie.
He didn’t quite have the hang of jokes yet, but most of the kids let out giggles anyway, I guess at the ridiculous thought of someone actually sliding down anything on one toenail.
When the giggling died down, Carolyn leaned over and whispered something to Corrie, who nodded.
A few moments later, Corrie whispered something to Jamie, who also nodded.
What was going on? A secret?
I could understand that. I had a secret of my own. I was working on a special project in my room. I worked on it in between school assignments and assignments for my art classes and my stop-action painting and baby-sitting and club meetings. It was slow-going, as you can imagine, because of everything else I had to do, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that I was working on it. But I didn’t tell anyone about it. It was a secret from my family and my friends. I didn’t even mention it to Stacey when we talked on the phone. And Stacey knew about everything else — about how the kids at school had acted, about Janine and the jewelry box, and being mad at Mimi and the doctors. But she didn’t know my secret.
Soon everyone would, though.
“Claud?” said Mary Anne, interrupting my thoughts.
“Yeah?”
“I hate to say this, but I think we’re running out of glue.”
That morning, with the help of Corrie, our early bird, Mary Anne and I had filled little paper pill cups with glue, one for each kid. Collages take a lot of glue. Even so, it was hard to believe we were already running out. But I looked around the table, and the children were literally scraping the bottoms of the cups.
“Okay,” I said, “I’ll go get the big glue bottle.”
The big glue bottle, unfortunately, was in my room, so I had to run up two long flights of stairs — from the basement to the first floor, then from the first floor to the second floor — in order to get it.
When I returned with the glue, I got the distinct impression that Mary Anne and the kids had been talking about something, but had stopped as soon as I appeared. More secrets?
Before I could ask, Corrie spoke up shyly. “Claudia?” she began. “Could a collage be a mural, too?”
“What’s a mural?” asked Gabbie.
“It’s a very big picture,” I told her, trying to sign to Matt Braddock at the same time so that he wouldn’t be left out of the conversation. “You could make a drawing on a long, long piece of paper. For instance, you could draw a picture of going for a drive. You could show your street, then your town, then the countryside and a farm. Something like that.”
“Oh,” said Gabbie, and the others, who had been listening intently, nodded.
“But could you make a collage mural?” asked Corrie again.
“Well, I guess so,” I answered.
“Goody!” exclaimed several of the children.
“Is that what you’d like to try next?” I asked.
“Yes,” replied Myriah firmly.
I was pleased. The kids were learning new art forms and trying to combine them on their own. That was important.
“Can we start next week?” asked Marilyn.
“Sure,” I replied.
“We’ll need all these materials,” added Carolyn. “The scraps and glitter and stuff plus the magazine pictures and the words.”
“You know how you guys could help out?” I said, since I was running out of magazines. “You could each bring in a couple of
old magazines and even a newspaper, okay?”
I signed to Matt to make sure he understood what we were doing.
Matt nodded, looking excited.
At that moment, the doorbell rang.
“I’ll have to get it,” I said to Mary Anne. “Dad’s gardening in the backyard, and Mom and Janine are out.”
“Okay,” agreed Mary Anne. The kids were working busily. Everything was under control.
I dashed up the steps two at a time, ran to our front door, and peered out the side window. Was I ever surprised to see Mrs. Addison standing there! The art class wouldn’t be over for another fifteen minutes.
I opened the door. “Hi,” I said. (I know I sounded as surprised as I felt.)
“Hi,” replied Mrs. Addison. “I’m sorry I’m so early. My husband’s waiting in the car.” (She turned and gave a little wave toward a blue Camaro parked crookedly in our driveway, as if the Addisons were in a big hurry.) “I forgot to tell Corrie this morning that we have tickets to the ice show in Stamford. I mean, tickets for Sean and Corrie. They’ll meet a baby-sitter there, and then Mr. Addison and I can enjoy an afternoon to ourselves.”
I could feel my temper rising. An afternoon to themselves? Wasn’t that all they ever had? Time without their children? Dumping them at lessons, with friends, with sitters? I counted to five before I said slowly and deliberately something that both Mary Anne and I had been wanting to say to the Addisons for a long time. Mary Anne really should have been the one to say it, since she’s better with words than I am. But, oh well. There was Mrs. Addison, and there I was. It might be our only chance.
“Mrs. Addison,” I began, trying to think of ways to be tactful, “this is the first time you’ve picked Corrie up early.”
“Yes, I —” she began.
But I kept on talking. “Did you know that Corrie is always the last one to leave my house after class is over? And that she’s always the first to arrive?”
Mrs. Addison checked her watch impatiently and glanced over her shoulder at the car waiting in our driveway.
“I love having Corrie around,” I went on. “She’s a terrific kid. But, well, she feels pretty bad about being left here … left here longer than any of the other children, I mean.”
Mrs. Addison’s expression changed. She looked at me curiously.
“Did you notice,” I started to ask, “that Corrie hasn’t brought home any of her art projects?”
“Well,” (Mrs. Addison cleared her throat), “I noticed that just, um, just this morning. And I did wonder why.”
“It’s because she’s been giving them away,” I said.
“Giving them away?”
I nodded. “Yes. To me, to Mary Anne Spier, to the other kids. I think,” I began (and oh, my lord, I hoped I wasn’t butting in where I didn’t belong), “that Corrie is a little bit mad at you and Mr. Addison.” (What an understatement.) “She wants to please you, but she gets angry and scared when she feels like,” (I tried to think of a nice way to say that Corrie felt her parents didn’t care about her), “like … sometimes other things are more important to you and Mr. Addison than she is.”
There. I’d said it. I waited for the fireworks.
But Mrs. Addison merely looked at me with tears in her eyes. She rummaged around in her purse for some Kleenex.
“All Corrie wants,” I dared to say, “is to spend more time with you.”
Mrs. Addison began to sniffle. “Excuse me,” she said hurriedly, and ran out the door and back to her car.
Uh-oh, I thought. Now I’ve done it. I stood at the door on rubbery legs. A few minutes later, Mrs. Addison returned. I was still at the door.
“I think,” Mrs. Addison began, “that the baby-sitter probably wouldn’t mind if I attended the ice show with Sean and Corrie today. I can pass up my free afternoon.”
“You can?!” I grinned. And you should have seen the look on Corrie’s face when her mother and father not only gave Corrie the news about the ice show, but took a tour of our makeshift art room. Corrie even presented her parents with her newly finished collage.
“This is for you,” she said proudly, hastily scrawling
across the back.
A few moments later, the Addisons and Corrie climbed the basement steps.
I watched them go. I knew that Corrie’s life wouldn’t magically change, that it wouldn’t be perfect from then on. But I thought maybe it would be better. And I realized that Mimi was the one who had shown me how it could be better. Because Mimi had always been there when I needed her. I never had to fight for her love the way Corrie had to fight for her parents’ love. Now Mimi might be gone, but I knew that before she died (died, not left me), she had made me a strong person, strong enough to stand up to Mrs. Addison for Corrie.
I will now reveal my secret.
My secret was a tribute to Mimi. It was a piece of art. Mimi had always appreciated my art. She liked anything I did, but she especially liked my paintings and collages. And so, since the kids and I seemed to have collage fever, I made a collage for Mimi.
It was not very big — only about twelve inches by twelve inches, and I filled it with small but important things. Maybe I did that because Mimi had always seemed small but important to me. She was tiny — birdlike — but she could help me to solve any problem or make me feel better even when I was at my lowest of lows.
So the collage contained small pictures cut from magazines — of a tea cup and saucer to represent our “special tea”; of a family eating a meal, since Mimi had always cooked for us and insisted that we eat together; and of a woman knitting, since Mimi liked to do needlework before she had her stroke. Then I drew a picture of a Japanese woman cradling a Japanese baby. I added that, too, plus yarn and ribbon, thread and lace. I even glued down tiny charms — scissors and a thimble — and tea leaves and flour.
I hoped the collage was impressive and meaningful, but I wasn’t sure. Even so, I backed it, matted it, and had it framed. That cost a lot of baby-sitting money, but I didn’t care. It was for Mimi.
And now it was time to unveil it. As far as I knew, nobody had any idea about my secret. I decided to show it to my friends first, then my family. If my friends didn’t like it, or thought it was stupid, they would tell me so. I could count on them for that. Then I could change it, or start over, before I showed it to my family. I wanted my family to see the polished, perfect tribute, not something silly or full of mistakes.
So at the next meeting of the Baby-sitters Club, when we were gathered in my room and Kristy said, “Any club business?” I raised my hand tentatively.
Kristy looked at me curiously. Mallory and Jessi are usually the only ones who bother to raise their hands. In fact, Kristy has never asked us to do that. It’s just that Mal and Jessi are younger, and the sixth-grade teachers still drill that stuff about hand-raising into your head at their age. By eighth grade, the teachers have pretty much given up.
“Claud?” said Kristy.
“I — I know this isn’t club, um, club business,” I stammered, “so if you don’t want to hear about it right — right now, that’s okay … I guess. I mean, this is Mimi business, and you all knew her, and you know how im — important she was to me.” (To my horror, I could feel tears welling up in my eyes.) “I want to — to show you something.”
I could feel every single person in my room, even Kristy, melting.
And Kristy was the one to say, “Of course we want to see … whatever it is. Don’t we, you guys?”
The others agreed without hesitating.
I drew in a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “Okay,” I began, “what it is, is a tribute to Mimi. I wanted to do something in her memory. Having memories is one thing, but I wanted to do something for her. Even though she’s not — not here, I think she’ll know I did it. I know that sounds weird, but I really feel it’s true.”
I eased myself off the bed, where I’d been sandwiched between Dawn and Mary Anne, crossed the room to my closet, and emerged with th
e collage. I set it on the bed, and my friends crowded around for a look.
At first nobody said a word, and a cold feeling washed over me. “It’s terrible, isn’t it?” I said. “It’s really dumb.”
“Oh, no,” breathed Dawn. “It’s perfect. It — it says Mimi all over. I mean, it is Mimi. It’s Mimi the way we want to remember her.”
“Yeah,” said Kristy, Jessi, and Mal.
And Mary Anne burst into tears. I think that was what finally convinced me that the collage was all right, not all wrong, that I’d done my job. The collage really was a tribute. In Dawn’s words, it said Mimi all over.
I decided I could show it to my parents and Janine. And I decided to do so that night after dinner.
I waited until the kitchen had been cleaned up and everyone was about to begin their evening activities. Janine was heading upstairs to her computer, Mom was sitting down at the desk in the living room to pay bills, and Dad was just opening the paper.
“You guys?” I said.
My parents and sister turned toward me.
“I have something to show you.” Even though my friends had honestly loved the collage, I began to feel nervous again.
“What is it, sweetie?” asked Mom.
“It’s something for Mimi,” I replied. “And something for us to remember her by. I’ll go get it.” I ran to my room, retrieved the collage from my closet, and brought it back downstairs. Then I stood before my family with the front of the collage pressed against my chest.
“Well,” I said, “um, this is it.” I turned it around.
“Why, Claudia, it’s perfect!” exclaimed my mother, stepping forward for a closer look.
Dad and Janine peered at it, too, and it was Janine who glanced at the fireplace and said, “I think we should hang it over the mantelpiece.”
“That’s a wonderful idea,” agreed Dad.
But I said, “Thanks. Thank you, guys, for wanting to put it in the living room, but I had a different idea. I mean, if you don’t mind, I was wondering if we could put the collage in Mimi’s room. I know it’s going to become our guest room, but it’s been Mimi’s room for as long as I can remember, and I like leaving the — the flavor of Mimi there.”