Sammy Keyes and the Search for Snake Eyes (3 page)

She shrugged. “Haven't you ever seen someone hold a baby?”

I felt pretty much like an idiot. I mean, sure, I'd seen women with babies. They're everywhere. And I can't really explain why this one felt like a bomb instead of a baby, but it did. That's
exactly
what it felt like.

“I think he's hungry,” Marissa was saying. “He's rooting around like crazy! Is there a bottle in that bag? He also needs a new diaper—pee-yew!”

I dug through the bag. “Bottle, check!” I held it out to her. “Diaper, check!”

“Let's feed him first.”

She sat down cross-legged on the graveled tar paper and held the baby in the crook of her arm. The baby grabbed the bottle with both hands and sucked like it hadn't been fed in days.

“Wow, look at that,” I said.

Marissa grinned. “He was just hungry.”

I sat down next to her. “Why do you think it's a him?”

“Looks like a him, don't you think?”

“It looks like an it. And there's a
Barbie
in the bag.”

“Yeah, but the blanket's blue. And his outfit's mostly blue. Mothers are very blue and pink oriented at this stage.”

“Is that so.” I shook my head at her. “For someone who doesn't know anything about babies, you're sure sounding like a pediatric pro.”

“Well,
here
. Have some experience.”

Before I could stop her, she'd transferred the baby into my lap. “See?” she says. “It's just a baby.”

Nuh-uh, I thought. This thing's a
bomb
. But I sat there and watched it chugalug the bottle, and when there were all of two drops left, the baby pushed the bottle aside and started fussing again. “What?” I asked it. “What do you want
now
?”

“I think you're supposed to burp him now.”

“How do I do that?”

“I don't know. Hold him on your shoulder and tap his back?”

I tried, but it started fussing even more.

“Maybe bounce a little?”

So there I am, cross-legged on the roof of the mall, bouncing and patting and sort of trying to shake the bubbles out of him, when all of a sudden he goes,
“Aaaarp!”

“Yeah! You did it!”

I was about to say, “Hey, I did!” but before I got the
chance, he
bombed
me. Half that bottle came up. And it was
hot
, too. It spread all over my shoulder and down my back, and all I could say was “Oh! Oh,
yuck
!” I held the baby away from me and cried, “Why'd you do
that
?” And you know what that little monster did? He smiled. Smiled and
cooed.

“Oh, great. Just great!” I practically threw the Bomber to Marissa and dug through the bag. One small package of Kleenex, a can of baby formula, a tube of baby wipes, a plastic mat, five diapers, and a thin flannel towel.

I sacrificed the towel, but it was hopeless. I had baby barf all over my shirt and it wasn't coming off. And I'm barely coming to grips with the barf when Marissa says, “We'd better change him and go, Sammy. What if they lock that door or something?”

I was more worried about Grams worrying about why I was so late than I was about the door getting locked. So I decided, All right. Let's change this puppy and get a move on. Pit stop at home for dinner and then back out to the mall at seven. It'd be over before my shirt was done tumbling dry.

I opened up the plastic mat and said, “Let's do it.”

She laid him down and said, “Smell that? This boy's pretty poopy.”

“Oh, great.” I unsnapped the jumper, ripped the side tabs of the diaper open, and it turns out Marissa was right. It was stinky. It was poopy.

And it was, indeed, a boy.

“I told you so,” Marissa said with a grin.

He starts kicking and cooing, and the more I tried to
clean him up, the more he giggled and pumped those legs. Finally I grabbed both his feet with one hand and cleaned him up with the other. And as I'm shoving a new diaper under his bouncing bottom, he suddenly stops struggling, looks right at me, and opens his eyes real big.

“What?” I ask him. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

He holds my gaze, then lets loose.

Not with a wail.

Not with a burp or barf.

No, this time he shoots a fountain of
pee
, straight up in the air.

And since what goes up must come down—down it came. All over him, all over the new diaper, all over the changing mat, and all over me.

So I'm kneeling there with pee on my hands, pee in my hair, pee
every
where, when he starts kicking again. And cooing. Like, Whipee! Wasn't that fun!

Marissa's trying hard not to, but she can't help it. She just cracks up.

I grab the flannel towel and clean everything the best I can; then I wrap him in his diaper, snap up his jumper, flip open the stroller, and strap him in. I stuff everything else into the Sears bag, whip on my backpack, and say, “Let's go.”

Marissa holds open the door and helps me carry him in the stroller down to the back-corridor maze. Then we jet out of the mall and over to where Marissa's parked her bike. She looks at all the stuff I've got and asks, “How are you going to get into the apartment?”

Now, this is a very good question, seeing how I'm living in a seniors-only apartment complex where kids are not allowed to live. But for once, I don't have to give her a plan that involves the fire escape and bubble gum in the doorjamb. For once I get to say, “I'm going to walk right in.”

“Oh, of course,” she says. “That way you can walk right back out.”

“Exactly. And after I give this baby back,
then
I'll sneak in for the night.”

I should have known it wouldn't be that easy.

I backed the stroller through the lobby door of the Senior Highrise and called “Hi, Mr. Garnucci!” over to the manager's desk. “How are you?”

“Samantha. How nice to see you,” he yelled. “Haven't seen you in ages!” Mr. Garnucci always yells, even when he's standing right next to you. Comes from dealing with old people all day, I suppose. What's funny is, I find myself yelling at him, too. I guess it's kind of contagious.

“I'm fine!” I called to him. “I thought my grandmother might like seeing this baby I'm taking care of! You don't mind, do you?” I turned the stroller his way. “Check him out. What do you think?”

Mr. Garnucci coochie-cooed the baby for a minute, then said, “It's fine with me, and it's sure to brighten her day.” Then he smiles at me and says, “Your grand-mother's new neighbor moved in today. Her name's Mrs. Wedgewood and she seems much more ”—he clears his throat—“
agreeable
than your grandmother's old neighbor.”

“Well, that's good,” I said, then pushed the stroller toward the elevator. “I'll see you in a little while.”

“Have a nice visit!”

I rode up to the fifth floor and zipped down the hall, but as I got close to our apartment, I started slowing down.

Our door was open.

Wide
open.

Now, Grams is very quick about coming in and going out, and her lock is always snapped in place,
presto
. Before you're even done coming in, you're locked in. That's the way she runs her door, and there's no arguing with her about it. And with the way our old neighbor, Mrs. Gray-bill, was always trying to prove that I live there, it's been a good thing. A
necessary
thing.

But even after Mrs. Graybill was gone, Grams was still very quick about the door. Until now. Now the door was hanging there, wide open.

The minute I poked my nose in the apartment, I knew why. “Samantha!” my grandmother says as she hurries toward me. “What a nice surprise. Come in! Come in!”

A very large woman is planted on the couch. She's got the blackest hair I've ever seen on anyone, and arms that are
way
bigger than my legs—maybe even bigger than my
body
—and they're covered with bruises. Big blue and black and green bruises. They look like a gorilla's been using them for punching bags.

She smiles at me real big, and my grams scoots me in, saying, “Rose, this is Samantha, the granddaughter I was telling you so much about. Samantha, this is my new neighbor, Mrs. Wedgewood.”

“Pleased to meet you,” I tell her as we shake hands over her metal walker. And I do try to look her in the eye, but
it's hard with her arm moving back and forth in big fatty waves, distracting me.

She lets go of my hand and says, “Your grandmother has been telling me what a big help you are to her.” She smiles. “And who is this little doll?”

“I'm baby-sitting him and I thought, you know, that Grams might like a visit.”

Now, through all this I'm smiling and trying to act normal, but Grams' radar is in full scan, and I can practically hear her thinking, Baby-sitting?
You?

“Well, how nice of you,” Mrs. Wedgewood says. She leans over a little to get a better look, and that's when I notice long, scraggly strands of gray hair poking out at her neck and around her ears. And it's just dawning on me that all that big bouncy black hair on her head is a wig when she says, “And what's the little fellow's name?”

I quit staring at her wig. A name! Wild names start flying through my brain: Screamin' Joe. Flailing Frank. Peein' Pete. Poopy… “Pepe,” I tell her. “His name's Pepe.”

They both look at me like,
Pepe?
but I just smile and pretend it's a name that every little boy should have.

Mrs. Wedgewood takes a deep breath and says, “Well, it's been nice chatting with you, Rita, but I really should be getting home now so you can have a little time with your visitors.” She scoots to the edge of the couch, grabs the walker, then rocks forward and pulls herself to a standing position. Well, almost standing. She's leaning on the walker so hard that she looks a lot like a humpback
whale trying to push around a gurney, her arms flapping from side to side like flabby, bruised fins.

She winks at the baby and says, “Your ride looks like more fun than mine, Pepe!” Then she shuffles out the door with a “Nice to meet you both. We'll be seeing lots of each other, I'm sure.”

Grams locks the door behind her and says, “Well. She seems very pleasant.” Then she turns to me, plants her hands on her hips and zeros in on me. “Why are you so late, and what is the real story with this baby?”

“I'm so late because, well… it's sort of a long story.”

She gives me a closed little smile, then says, “It always is.”

I couldn't believe my ears. “Have you and Marissa been talking?”

“No…. Why do you say that?”

“Because she said something just like that when I told her it wasn't my fault I got stuck with this …this…
monster
.”

“Monster? He doesn't look like a monster to me.”

“Yeah, well, just wait until he barfs on
your
shirt and pees in
your
hair!”

She grins. “Ah, the joys of motherhood.” Then she heads for the kitchen, saying, “So what
is
the long story? I haven't even started on dinner yet, so we have plenty of time.”

So I told her. Everything. And by the time I'm done, she's not only stopped making dinner, she's also practically stopped breathing. “You mean to tell me,” she
whispers from the kitchen chair she'd sort of crumbled into, “you have no idea whose baby this is?”

Poopy Pepe's squirming in the stroller, twisting around and starting to squawk. “Well, sure, I know whose it is, and I'm going to give it back to her at seven.”

“What if she doesn't show up?”

“It's her
baby
. Of course she's going to show up.”

She looks at Pepe and says, “Samantha, you've got to take that baby out of his stroller. And when did you say you fed him?”

“He
just
ate. Like an hour ago.”

“But you said he spit half of it up.”

“Well, yeah, but there's no way he can be hungry yet … is there?”

“Babies that age eat every couple of hours. Is there formula in that bag?”

“Yeah. There's a small can of it in there.”

“Well, let me see it.” The whimpering was getting louder. “And get him out of that stroller!”

I handed her the can and pinched the clip open on the stroller straps. “What do I do with him?”