Jessi's Secret Language (2 page)

“Hi! Sorry I'm late!”

I start most meetings of the Baby-sitters Club that way because I'm usually rushing to the meetings from either a ballet class or a sitting job. This time I was rushing in from tryouts. They had gone reasonably well, but I wouldn't
really
know how I'd done until my next class.

“That's okay,” Kristy Thomas replied. She spoke briskly, but then she smiled at me, so I knew it really was okay.

I sat down next to Mallory Pike, feeling relieved. Mallory and I are the two newest members of the club, so we don't want to upset anybody. Especially Kristy.

Kristy is the president of the club.

Kristy started the club in order to help out parents in the neighborhood who need sitters, and to earn money, of course. But for me, the club has done something else. It has helped to pave
my way here in Stoneybrook. I'm meeting lots of people, especially people in my neighborhood, and those people are finding out that I (a black girl) am not scary or awful or anything except just another eleven-year-old kid, who happens to have dark skin. (And who also happens to be a good dancer, a good joke-teller, a good reader, good at languages, and most important, good with children. But a
terrible
letter-writer.)

I think I'm getting ahead of myself again, though. Let me back up and tell you about Kristy, her club, and the rest of its members. For starters, Kristy and all the other girls except Mallory are eighth-graders. Mal and I are not only newcomers to the club, we're lowly sixth-graders. Anyway, as I said, Kristy was the one who began the club. She started it about a year ago when she saw how hard it was for her mom to find a sitter for Kristy's little brother David Michael. Mrs. Thomas was making phone call after phone call and not getting anywhere.

Kristy thought, wouldn't it be great if her mother could make one call and reach a whole lot of sitters at once? So she teamed up with three other girls — Mary Anne Spier, Claudia Kishi, and Stacey McGill — and they formed the Baby-sitters Club. (Stacey's no longer living in
Stoneybrook, and Mal and I and another girl, Dawn Schafer, have joined the club, but I'll tell you about all that later.)

Anyway, the club meets on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons from five-thirty until six. People who need a sitter call us at those times (the club advertises a lot, so our clients know how to reach us), and when they call, they reach
six
sitters! Kristy, Claudia, Mary Anne, Dawn, Mal, and me. They're bound to get a sitter for their kids with just that one phone call.

As president, Kristy keeps the club running very professionally. Long ago, she got a record book in which we write down all sorts of things — our job appointments, of course, plus information about our clients, as well as all the money we earn.

Kristy also makes us keep a club notebook. We're supposed to write about every job we go on. The notebook is a sort of diary telling about which kids we sat for, what went on, how the kids behaved, and any problems we ran into. Once a week, each of us is supposed to read the last week's entries so we can stay on top of things. We all agree that this was a good idea of Kristy's, and that reading the notebook is helpful. But writing about the jobs can be a pain. Oh, well.

I know why Kristy is the president of the Baby-sitters Club. It's because she's a take-charge kind of person who is brimming with ideas. Kristy's one of those people who's always beginning sentences with, “
I
know, let's …” or “Hey, how about …” She has a big mouth and loves to be bossy. Some kids don't like her, but I do. I like lively people who surprise you now and then.

Kristy has a mom, two older brothers named Sam and Charlie (they're in high school), and her younger brother David Michael, who's seven. Also, since her mom (who was divorced) got remarried, Kristy now has a step-father, Watson Brewer, and a little stepsister and stepbrother. Karen is six and Andrew is four. (Kristy's father left the Thomases a long time ago, and Kristy hardly ever hears from him.)

Kristy used to live right across the street from Claudia Kishi (we hold our club meetings in Claudia's bedroom) and next door to Mary Anne Spier, but when her mother and Watson got married, the Thomases moved across town to Mr. Brewer's mansion. (He's a millionaire or something.) Kristy's having sort of a hard time adjusting to her new rich neighborhood (boy, can I relate to that), but she still sees her old friends, the club members. We use part of our club dues
to pay Kristy's brother Charlie to drive her to and from Claudia's house so that she never has to miss a meeting. Plus, she still goes to Stoneybrook Middle School, and she and Mary Anne are still best friends. (They had lived next door to each other since they were babies.)

Kristy has brown hair, brown eyes, and is on the small side. She
always
dresses in jeans, turtlenecks, sweaters, and sneakers, and she has no interest at all in boys. She thinks they are gigantic pains. (So do I.)

The vice president of the club is Claudia Kishi. This is mostly because Claudia has a private phone and private phone number, so it's very convenient to hold our meetings in her room. When job calls come in, they don't tie up anyone else's line. (Once Mal and I tried to start a babysitting club of our own at her house, but her brothers and sisters always wanted to use the phone, so that never worked out. Also, our club needed some older members, not just us two sixth-graders.) But when Claudia's phone rings during a meeting, we can be pretty sure it's a job call.

Claudia is absolutely the most exotic, sophisticated thirteen-year-old I have ever seen. She's Japanese-American, and has long, silky, black
hair which I don't think I've ever seen her wear the same way twice. She braids it, puts it in ponytails, winds it around her head, and decorates it with clips or ribbons or barrettes or scarves or whatever she feels like. Her eyes are almost as dark as mine and she has a complexion I once heard Kristy say she would kill for (not that there's anything wrong with Kristy's skin). And her clothes! You should see Claudia's clothes. Mallory and I have talked about her outfits. Claudia wears things our mothers won't let us wear until we're forty-five, if then. Don't get me wrong. Her clothes aren't, like, revealing or anything. It's just that they're so
wild
. Mallory and I are absolutely in awe of her. I think Mary Anne is, too, a little. Claudia wears the newest, most up-to-date fashions (whatever they happen to be), and adds her own personal, slightly crazy touches. She loves art and sometimes makes herself jewelry, especially big earrings. (Claudia, of course, has pierced ears, which Mal and I want desperately but are not allowed to have yet. All we're going to get is braces on our teeth.)

Anyway, Claudia doesn't just love art, she's a really good artist. Unfortunately, she's a terrible student. Being a poor student is bad enough, but when you have an older sister who is a genius,
like Claudia's sister, Janine, it's really tough. Claudia manages, though. She does as well as she can in school, and otherwise concentrates on her art and babysitting. She lives with her parents, her sister, and her grandmother, Mimi.

Mary Anne Spier is the club secretary. She's in charge of keeping the record book in order, except for the money stuff. (That's Dawn Schafer's job, since she's the treasurer.) It's hard to believe that Mary Anne and Kristy are best friends. This is because in a lot of ways they're opposites. Oh, they look alike, all right. They're the two shortest kids in their grade and they both have brown hair and brown eyes, but that's where the similarities end. Kristy is loud and outgoing, Mary Anne is shy and introspective. (
Introspective
is one of my favorite words. It means thoughtful, looking inside yourself.) And Mary Anne is sensitive and caring. I notice that the other girls usually go to her if they have a problem. She's a good listener and takes people seriously.

Mary Anne, believe it or not, is the only club member with a steady boyfriend. She used to dress very babyishly, but now her clothes look pretty cool. She's changing. Claudia says she's becoming more mature. And I think that's hard on Kristy. Mary Anne lives with her dad and her
kitten, Tigger. Her mother died when she was a baby. I think Mr. Spier used to be really strict with her, but he's lightened up lately.

Okay. Remember that I said there used to be a club member named Stacey McGill? She was the original treasurer of the Baby-sitters Club, but her family moved back to New York City, where they used to live. Guess what.
Our
family moved into her old house! Anyway, when Stacey moved away, Dawn Schafer took her place as the treasurer. Dawn had moved to Stoneybrook from California several months after Kristy started the club. She got to be good friends with Mary Anne, and soon she had joined the club. I like Dawn a lot. She lives near Mallory, so I see her more often than the other older girls in the club.

Dawn would be the first one to describe herself as a true California girl. She has long (and I mean
long
) hair that's so blonde it's almost white. She loves health food (won't touch the junk food that Claudia's addicted to) and always longs for warm weather.

She's going through a rough time right now. The reason she moved east was because her parents got divorced. She came here with her mom and her younger brother, Jeff. But Jeff was so unhappy that he finally moved
back
to California
to try living with Mr. Schafer. As Dawn pointed out, her family is now ripped in half. I think Dawn is a survivor, though.

The other club members are Mal and me. You already know about me. And you know that Mal has seven brothers and sisters. She loves to read, write stories, and illustrate her stories. She thinks her parents treat her like an infant, and she can't wait for the day when her braces will be off, her ears will be pierced, and her glasses will be gone. She's dying for contacts and wishes she could straighten out her head of curly hair. As Mal once said, being eleven is a real trial. Mal and I are junior club members since we are pretty much allowed to sit only after school and on weekends; hardly ever at night (unless we're at our own houses taking care of our brothers and sisters).

So those are our six club members. We do have two associate members, who don't come to meetings. They're people we can call on if we really get in a fix — if someone needs a sitter and none of us can take the job. One of those members is Logan Bruno, who just happens to be Mary Anne's boyfriend! The other is a girl named Shannon Kilbourne, who lives across the street from Kristy in her ritzy new neighborhood.

And that's about it. At our club meetings, we mostly take phone calls and line up jobs. In between, we talk. We talk about us and what's going on in school or in our lives or with the kids we sit for. Sometimes we get silly. For instance, during the meeting that was held after my ballet tryouts, Dawn announced that she'd heard that if you were able to touch your nose with your tongue, it meant that eventually (like when you were eighteen) you would need a very big bra. Well, this was pretty intriguing for all of us, especially Mal and me, who don't need bras at all yet, and even though I didn't see the vaguest connection between tongue-touching and bra size.

“I can do it! I can do it!” Kristy shrieked, but she had to calm down in the middle of her shrieking because the phone rang. Kristy, who always sits in Claudia's director's chair, wearing a visor and looking official, dove for the phone. So did Mary Anne, Dawn, and Claudia. Mal and I didn't dive for it. We're too new for that. We're still in the middle of the fitting-in process.

Kristy picked up the phone and said, “Hello, Baby-sitters Club.” She paused. “Yes? … Oh, I see…. Well, we've never sat for a deaf child before, but that doesn't make a difference to any of us. I mean, if it doesn't make a difference to
you. We like all children.” (Long pause.) “Training? Well, that makes sense. Listen, let me talk to the other babysitters and I'll call you back in a few minutes. Just give me your number…. Okay. Thanks. Bye.”

Kristy hung up the phone and turned to us. “That was a new client. Her name is Mrs. Braddock. She's got two kids. Haley is nine and Matthew is seven. The Braddocks have just moved to the neighborhood. There are two hitches here. One, she needs a regular baby-sitter, two afternoons each week. And two, Matthew is deaf. He uses Ameslan, whatever that is. So she needs a sitter who can come every Monday and Wednesday afternoon, and she needs someone who'll be willing to learn this Ameslan thing. Mrs. Braddock says she'll train the sitter. She sounds really nice.”

The six of us got into a big discussion. Dawn and Mary Anne didn't want regular afternoon jobs. They wanted their schedules to be more free. Claudia couldn't take the job because she has an art class on Wednesday. Kristy lives too far away to be convenient to the job. That left Mal and me. Mal was interested, but she often has to watch her brothers and sisters on Mondays when her mom volunteers at Meals on Wheels.

So Kristy called Mrs. Braddock back and I got the job! I was so excited. Working with a handicapped child sounded really interesting.

The meeting was over then and we were all rushing out the door to our homes and our dinners when Mal cried, “Hey, Jessi, how did the tryouts go?”

“Oh, fine!” I replied lightly. “But I won't know anything until my next class.”

“Well, good luck!” said the others.

“Thanks,” I replied. But I was a whole lot more nervous than I let on.