Nanny X (3 page)

“Here.” Nanny X reached into a steel-gray diaper bag that matched her hair, and pulled out an apple for each of us. She tossed them one at a time.

“You can pitch!” Jake crowed. He looked ready to forgive the anchovies.

“I was the MVP of the South Brooklyn girls softball team,” Nanny X said. She didn't mention what year. “Now come. We have a meeting to go to.”

“The save-the-park meeting?” It was almost as if she'd overheard our conversation with Stinky. Or maybe she'd just heard Jake and me that morning, in the living room.

“I believe both sides will be represented, but yes.”

“How did you know about it?” I said. If I could get her to admit to eavesdropping, maybe my mother would decide that leaving us with a nanny was a big mistake. My mother hates eavesdropping.

“It's my business to know,” Nanny X said. “Yours, too, I should think.” She concentrated hard on her walking.

When we got to the park, it seemed like a lot of people had made it their business to know. Or maybe everyone who lives near Washington, D.C., just likes to protest. The place was packed, and everyone had signs. Be Green Not Mean. Use Space with Grace. On the other side of the park, more people carried signs. Only these signs said things like Let Us Grow and More Dollars Makes Sense! I didn't see Stinky anywhere.

Nanny X walked through the signs like they were just trees and not a bunch of angry parents and businesspeople and kids. She spread out a blue sheet that almost matched the sky, and plunked my sister in the middle of it. “Homework,” she said to me and Jake. “Chop-chop.” She pulled two pencils out of the diaper bag and blew on the tips. “By my count you have exactly ten minutes until something happens. That's enough time to finish your math.”

“How did you know we have math homework?” I asked Nanny X.

“Children always have math homework,” she said. “And I know a lot of things.”

“What's the volume of this prism?” I asked.

“Regular or irregular?” She glanced at my paper.

“Regular.”

“To answer that would be irresponsible. That's your homework, not mine.”

Nanny X was like a Magic 8 Ball; half of her answers weren't even answers. But I had one more question.

“Who's going to save the park?” I asked.

Nanny X took off her sunglasses and looked at me with eyes that were the color of a thunderstorm. This time she answered directly.

“We are,” she said.

The only thing I've ever saved before is a baby rabbit when Yeti caught one in the backyard, and I am pretty sure that saving a park is not the same thing as saving a rabbit. You can't feed a park milk from an eyedropper. You can't deliver it to the animal rescue lady. Maybe Nanny X would teach me how to do mind control, like she used on Yeti, so I could use it on the mayor and convince him to leave our park alone.

I pulled out a piece of notebook paper and made my own sign: Baseball Is a Diamond. I drew bases with some lines coming out from them, so it looked like they were all glowy.

Nanny X looked at her watch. “Five. Four. Three. Two. Now.”

At “now,” a lady got up onto the stage. She had glasses, plus hair that went all the way down to her butt, and she held up a Be Green Not Mean sign. I wondered if I could count reading those signs for my reading log, too.

“Friends,” Mrs. Green-Not-Mean said into a megaphone. “We are here because it has come to our attention that the mayor is attempting to rush through this park's destruction, and we thought if you could just see the park, just see our children at play, you would realize that we do not need a factory here.”

“
What if I don't have any children?
” a man yelled. He didn't raise his hand or anything.

Mrs. Green-Not-Mean's voice got kind of quavery. “Lovett's children belong to all of us,” she said. “And I am here to tell you that they do not need another fast-food restaurant, they do not need another warehouse. I beg you, look at the children and you will see that this is what they—what
we
—really need.” She spread her arms and looked at the trees like she wanted to hug them. I moved a little behind Nanny X in case she decided that she wanted to hug me, too, since I was one of Lovett's children.

Half of the people in the audience clapped. The lady wiped her eyes and sat back down.

“Friends.” A man took out a megaphone that was like the lady's, only bigger. He had a shiny spot on his head where hair used to be. “My name is Rufus Strathmore, chairman of the Lovett Chamber of Commerce.” He waited for people to clap. “How do you think we support the many fine things our city has? Business. What do we need? Business. Because business means jobs, and that is what will help our children most.”

Then people started yelling, “What kind of jobs?” And everyone held up their signs, including me. I saw Stinky Malloy standing near the front. His sign was on actual poster board, not notebook paper, and it said Slides Are Cool. That's what he started chanting. Then a bunch more people joined in. “Slides are cool! Slides are cool!” Ali and I
chanted, too, even though I would have said the slide was cooler than just the regular kind of cool. It was dry-ice cool! It was frozen-tundra cool! Plus, I would have worked in something about the ball field. And intestines.

The Green-Not-Mean lady got back onstage. “
Slides are cool!
” she yelled.

“Excuse me, madam, but you know nothing about—”

“
Slides are cool!
”

“This land will bring industry to the heart of our city,” said Rufus Strathmore.

“
This land is already in use!
” shouted Mrs. Green-Not-Mean. Her voice got really high on the last word, like those opera singers who can shatter glass. Mr. Strathmore and Mrs. Green-Not-Mean started screaming at each other without even using their megaphones. The mayor jumped onstage and stood between them, like he was trying to break it up, even though we all knew whose side he was really on.

Nanny X pulled a pair of binoculars from the diaper bag. She wasn't watching the stage anymore, though. She was watching the crowd.

I watched the stage, which is why I saw the big, brown rock flying right toward it.
Pow
. It hit the mayor in the head.

“Help him!” someone yelled. “Help the mayor! He's been hit.”

Mr. Strathmore and Mrs. Green-Not-Mean were quiet for about four seconds while they looked at the mayor, who was all slumpy in the middle of the platform. Then they started yelling again.

“Is there a doctor in the park?”

“What kind of stunt is this?”

“Call 911.”

“Your people know all about stunts.”

I wondered if Nanny X was going to take us home. That's what happens whenever my mom sees grown-ups misbehaving. But Nanny X did not take us home. Instead, she took a diaper out of the diaper bag. I thought she was going to change Eliza, and Eliza must have thought the same thing, because she rolled onto her back and stuck her legs up in the air and wiggled them. But Nanny X took the diaper and walked over to one side of a big tree. She unfolded the diaper and held it up to her face. Her lips moved, like she was asking the diaper if it was having a nice day. If Nanny X expected that diaper to talk back to her, then Ali and I had a bigger problem than the mayor turning our park into a factory.

Something told me that even in New York, nobody talked to diapers. Maybe Nanny X was just
smelling
the diaper to make sure it was clean. And her lips were moving because . . . that helped her smell better? But I heard her voice.

“Yes,” she told the diaper. “I quite agree. It's started. Right. I'm on it.” She crumpled up the diaper and started back toward us.

“Should we call Mom?” Jake asked. He didn't bother to whisper, and I knew what he was thinking. He was thinking that when the grown-up who's supposed to be taking care of you starts talking to diapers, it's time to go find another grown-up.

But even with her strange clothes, and even with her definitely knowing about Yeti's fleas and her probably knowing about Ms. Bertram and the gum—even with her general spookiness—Nanny X seemed like she was only partly nuts. Not totally.

“May I join your conversation?” she said.

“I thought you were already having your own conversation.” I knew that wasn't exactly the way to talk to a grown-up. But I thought it might be the way to talk to a grown-up who talked to diapers. Besides, somebody had to be in charge; I was the oldest.

Nanny X moved her glasses down her nose and looked at me over the rims. I looked back, not quite as pleasantly.

“Fine,” Nanny X said. “Though I must say I was rather counting on your cooperation. This is a disappointment.”

If there's one thing I hate, it's when grown-ups tell you they're “disappointed.” I decided to put everything out in the open. “Did we just see you talking to a diaper?” I didn't add “weirdo” at the end of my question. See? I
can
be polite.

“No,” said Nanny X. “You did not.”

“Uh, excuse me,” I said, polite again. “But yes we did.”

“Ah,” Nanny X said. “You thought you did. But you see, children, I was not talking
to
the diaper. I was talking
through
it. I'll ex—”

“
We've found the culprit
,” Police Chief Grummel announced from the stage. Everyone stopped talking.

“
Let me repeat
,” said the chief, even though we all heard him the first time. “
We have found the culprit
.”

Two more police officers rushed to the platform. They had their “culprit” by the collar. He was skinny, with longish dark hair, and he was holding a Slides Are Cool sign. It only took us two seconds to realize that who they had was Stinky Malloy. That seemed even crazier than Nanny X talking to diapers.

The mayor, who was lying on a stretcher about to be carried away, looked up at Stinky. “Book him,” he said.

Stinky Malloy! He turned in quarters when he found them on the playground. It's true, he was concerned about the environment, and there were probably a lot of things
he'd do to keep a factory from being plunked in the middle of Lovett. But he wouldn't hurt anybody. I was sure about that.

“
I didn't do it!
” yelled Stinky.

“
My head!
” yelled the mayor.

“I didn't do it!” Stinky told the police officers, who completely ignored him. Then Stinky saw us.

“Ali! Jake!” he said. “Tell them it wasn't me.”

“It wasn't him,” I said, moving forward. “You've got to listen. Please. It wasn't him.”

“If it wasn't you,” said Chief Grummel, who was listening now that Stinky was talking to somebody else, “then what's this?” He held up a round rock, about the size of a potato—the boiled kind, not the baking kind.

“I didn't throw that,” Stinky said. “I was just holding it. You found it in my
hand
.”

“Where there's smoke, there's fire,” the chief said. “Get me a stick; I want to roast a hot dog.”

“But it's true,” Stinky said. “I picked it up because I thought it might be a geode.”

“Throwing rocks at the mayor is a criminal offense,” said the chief. “You have the right to remain silent, and we have the right to take you to the police station.”

“My mother's going to kill me,” said Stinky Malloy.

“You see,” said the chief. “Even his mother thinks he's guilty.”

“You've made a mistake,” I said. “You can't arrest a kid.”

“Watch me,” said Chief Grummel. He started to lead Stinky away.

“Stinky didn't do it,” I told Nanny X. “I know he didn't.”

“Tell me about him,” she said.

I looked at Nanny X again, the nanny who had known us for only a few hours but who knew about Ms. Bertram and gum and a billion other things she shouldn't know.
The nanny who was ready to save the park. The nanny who dressed funny and talked to diapers. She wasn't my first choice, but there was no one else to tell. So I told her.