Aloha, Baby-Sitters!

by Ann M. Martin

  A plaque in front identified it as a Shinto temple. Shinto is a Japanese religion. I remembered seeing buildings like this one in Mimi’s old photos.

  Weird. What was it doing here? Was Queen Emma Japanese? Did she have Japanese neighbors?

  Either way, I’ll bet Emma rolled over in her grave when she heard about the attack on Pearl Harbor.

  Argggh. That place again. I just couldn’t get away from it, no matter where I went on this island.

  I walked back to the house. At the entrance, I stopped to let a group of tourists exit.

  We exchanged polite hellos.

  “Thank you, that was very interesting,” one of them said to me.

  “Oh, I don’t work —” I began.

  “Which is the correct pronunciation,” blurted out a youngish guy in the group, “Ha-wa-ee or Ha-va-ee?”

  “Um, well, I’m not Hawaiian. I’m —” My tongue froze in my mouth. My brain took me on a detour from the last word in that sentence.

  I swallowed and said, “Asian.”

  “I think it’s Ha-va-ee,” an older guy in the group said.

  “Thank you,” said the first man.

  “You’re velcome!” answered the second.

  Well, they thought that was the funniest thing ever said. They all walked away, laughing like hyenas.

  I felt like crawling under the floorboards.

  The rest of the trip? Fine, I guess. We took a gorgeous drive through the Ko‘olau Mountain Range. On the way, we stopped at a famous place called Nu‘uanu Pali Lookout, a sheer cliff with a breathtaking view of Windward Oahu.

  We learned that good old King Kamehameha once drove hundreds, maybe thousands of enemy soldiers to their deaths over the edge of that cliff.

  Senseless deaths.

  Again. Like at you-know-where.

  It was a recurring theme in Hawaii.

  Who knows? Maybe the king was part Japanese, too.

  “It looks different,” Jessi said, peering out at the island in Kaneohe Bay.

  “Well, the show is old,” Abby remarked, slathering her face with sunblock as thick as Elmer’s Glue. “Besides, the Skipper and Gilligan cut down a lot of the original trees to build houses and stuff.”

  “I saw him, you know,” Dawn said. “Gilligan. He was in a dinner theater show near L.A. He’s not young anymore.”

  Dawn, Abby, Jessi, Claudia, and I were poolside at the Sea View Family Resort. It was in a community called Kaneohe, on the windward side of Oahu, over the Ko‘olau Mountains from Honolulu. (Don’t let the name Windward Oahu give you the wrong impression. It’s not stormy and chilly. The wind is gentle, warm, and fragrant.)

  The resort wasn’t exactly super-modern, but it was huge — two swimming pools, a golf course, and a restaurant. And I adored the hotel managers, Mr. and Mrs. Reynolds. (Mrs. Reynolds was the one who told us about Gilligan’s Island, which is actually called Coconut Island.) They’re real Hawaiians. You can’t tell by their last name, but you can by their Polynesian looks. They both have dark, golden skin and black hair.

  When we asked if we could room together, Mrs. Reynolds assigned Claudia and me to the same room, and she put Abby, Dawn, and Jessi in the next room.

  Now, as the sun set behind us, we were hanging out at one of the pools and enjoying the view.

  “Claudia, Kristy, and I used to watch that show all the time,” I said.

  I looked over at Claudia, but she was gazing off into the distance.

  I was concerned about her. She hadn’t seemed herself the last few days. I’d asked her what was wrong a hundred times. But she always smiled and said everything was fine.

  Well, it wasn’t. I knew it. And I was determined to talk to her about it.

  I had my chance when we went to our room to prepare for dinner.

  “Claudia, won’t you tell me what’s bothering you?”

  Claudia started fumbling with the buttons on her blouse. “Nothing. Why?”

  “You’ve been so down. I thought you were going to cry at Punchbowl Cemetery.”

  “Cry?” Fumble, fumble. “Me? Why would I do that?”

  A button came off in her hand. Claudia sat there, staring at it, turning it over and over.

  I began changing out of my bathing suit. “Just asking.”

  Claudia took a deep breath. “Mary Anne, what ethnicity are you?”

  Huh? I hadn’t expected a question like that.

  I finished pulling on my clothes and sat next to Claud on the bed. “Well, a little German, a little Norwegian, some —”

  “Have you ever felt, like, guilty for what the Germans did in World War Two?” she interrupted me.

  “I hadn’t thought about it.” So that’s what this was about. “Oh, Claudia, you’re not still thinking about what we saw at Pearl Harbor!”

  Claudia’s head sank. “How could they have done that, Mary Anne? My ancestors! And everyone in Hawaii puts on such a friendly face. It’s as if they’ve all forgotten about it.”

  “It was a long time ago, Claud.”

  “Yeah, but think of all the survivors. Not only buddies, like Mr. Blanchard’s. But brothers and sisters of sailors who died. Sons and daughters. Little kids who never met their fathers. Wives who had to explain to their children that their daddies weren’t coming home.”

  Oh boy. My eyes were starting to water. “Claudia, you can’t take this so personally.”

  “You know, my parents always taught me to respect my elders. No one ever thought I took that seriously, but I always have. Mimi was my guardian angel. And now I can’t even think of her the same way, Mary Anne. I mean, she was in Japan at the time. She was on the other side.”

  “Maybe she was against the attack. Maybe that was one of the reasons she came here,” I suggested.

  “Maybe,” Claudia mumbled.

  I put my arm around her and smiled. “Look, let’s go have our dinner. I’m sure you’ll feel better with a full stomach.”

  Claudia grumbled something and finished dressing.

  We didn’t say a word as we walked to the restaurant.

  * * *

  Well, Claudia slowly cheered up during dinner. By bedtime, she was talking excitedly about our scheduled tour of Windward Oahu the next day.

  As we waited in the lobby on Saturday morning for our group to gather, a family with two girls was checking out at the front desk.

  The littler girl, who looked about three, skipped over to us. “I have two Barbies,” she announced.

  Her older sister ran up beside her. “She thinks Barneys are Barbies. She always makes that mistake.”

  “They’re both very nice,” I said. “What are your names?”

  “I’m Nikki Harbison. I’m seven. Show them how old you are, Evie.”

  “This many.” The littler girl struggled to hold up three fingers.

  “Joseph is five,” Nikki went on.

  “Where’s he?” I asked.

  Nikki shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Nikki, Evie, Joseph!” called the kids’ mom. “Let’s go!”

  “Well, it was nice to meet you,” Claudia said, standing up. “’Bye.”

  “’Bye!” the girls cried, skipping away.

  “Where’s Joseph?” I heard Mr. Harbison say.

  “Wasn’t he with you?” his wife answered.

  “J-o-o-seph!” called Mr. Harbison, running off.

  Mrs. Harbison left their luggage at the front desk and walked away in the other direction, holding her daughters’ hands. “Joe?”

  By now the lobby was full of SMS students. Mr. Kingbridge was scribbling something on an itinerary sheet.

  But my attention was on Mrs. Reynolds. “Tell the kitchen staff to be on the lookout for a blond five-year-old boy,” she said into the hotel phone. Then she hung up and called to a bellhop, “George, check the pools and have someone go to the game room.”

  When Mrs. Reynolds saw me watching, she signaled me over. “You were talking to the girls. Did they say anything about their brot
her?”

  “No,” I replied.

  Mr. and Mrs. Harbison both returned to the desk. Without Joseph.

  They seemed frantic. “We can’t find him anywhere!” Mrs. Harbison said.

  “Mommy, is Joseph lost?” Evie asked.

  “Of course he is!” Nikki said.

  “Ma’am, I’d be happy to look after the girls if you want to go search some more,” Mrs. Reynolds said.

  The two parents talked briefly. “Well, all right,” Mrs. Harbison said. “Girls, you stay close to the nice lady.”

  I could see how busy Mrs. Reynolds was. She certainly didn’t need two little girls running around the lobby. What if she had an emergency of her own?

  I ran up to Mr. Kingbridge, explained the situation, and asked if I could stay.

  “Well, I suppose so,” he replied. “Mrs. Hall is staying behind. Just keep in touch with her.”

  “Thanks!” I replied.

  I told Claudia what I was doing. She wished me good luck as she filed out the front door with the group.

  I ran to Mrs. Reynolds and told her I could help out.

  “I’ll stay with the girls right now,” she said. “You check the hallways. Start from the top and work down.”

  The Sea View had three connected buildings. I took the elevator to the top of the one we were in and worked my way down. When I reached the bottom, Mrs. Reynolds was frantically signaling me. “Would you stay with the girls for a moment? One of the busboys says he thinks he saw a boy walking alone across the park.”

  She jogged out of the building. The girls were sitting in the lobby among their luggage. Nikki was reading a book and Evie was playing with numbered blocks.

  “When are they going to find him?” Evie whined.

  “Soon,” I reassured her.

  But I wasn’t so sure. Mr. and Mrs. Harbison kept running in and out, looking more and more panicked. I introduced myself and they seemed to trust me instantly. (Maybe that was because they saw the word Baby-sitters on the BSC T-shirt I was wearing.)

  Mrs. Reynolds came back half an hour later with no news. We switched places, and I continued the search.

  By now, practically the entire hotel staff was involved. The police had been called, too. A squad car was parked out front, and I could see an officer talking intently to Mr. Harbison.

  I double-checked the Harbisons’ old room, which was open. I found a seashell and a green plastic pail, but no little boy.

  I was worried. It was eleven o’clock, and Joseph had been gone an hour and a half.

  When I returned to the lobby, Evie was in tears. “A robber took him!” she was screaming. “And he drowneded him!”

  “Shhh, shhh,” Mrs. Reynolds was saying. “Let’s make some numbers with your blocks.”

  My mind was racing. What if I were Joseph in this hotel? What would make me leave my family?

  Seeing something cool. Needing to use the bathroom. Going back to my room to find something I’d forgotten …

  I ruled all of those out. The lobby looked normal, the bathrooms had been checked, the room was empty.

  Mrs. Reynolds was holding Evie in her lap and shuffling blocks. “Now, what was your room number?”

  “Three … and four,” Evie muttered.

  “No, Evie,” Nikki said. “It’s two four three!”

  Bing! It hit me. Maybe Joseph had wanted to go back to his room. But he was only five. What if he’d forgotten the number?

  “I’ll be right back!” I called out.

  Two four three.

  I took the elevator to the fourth floor. I tried Room 432 and 423. One was locked, the other open but empty.

  Same with rooms 342 and 324 on the third floor — one locked, one empty.

  I went downstairs and tried the door for room 234. It was locked, so I knocked once, twice.

  No answer.

  I felt as if all the air were rushing out of me. My body slumped as I walked to the elevator.

  “Who is it?”

  I almost didn’t hear the little voice. I spun around and ran back to room 234.

  “Joseph?” I called out.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Can you open up?”

  “Are you a stranger?”

  “My name is Mary Anne. I’m a friend of Evie and Nikki’s. Can you open the door, please?”

  “Uh-uh. It’s stuck.”

  “Give it a good, hard turn, Joseph. The knob is kind of old-fashioned.”

  I could hear him grunting. With a loud click, the door opened.

  A blond, brown-eyed, dimply boy smiled bashfully at me. “I really am strong.”

  I had to wipe my eyes dry. I took Joseph by the hand and led him down the hall. “Joseph, your mom and dad are so worried about you. What happened? Did you forget something?”

  “My big shell. But you know what? That wasn’t our room. I thought it was, but the toilet was on the wrong side. The door was open, but I closed it by mistake. And I couldn’t get it open. And you know what?”

  “What?”

  “I didn’t cry. Well, a little bit. Then I fell asleep on the big bed. Then you knocked on the door.”

  We rode the elevator down to the lobby. The moment the door opened, Mrs. Harbison let out a sort of half-scream, half-sob. She and her husband rushed to Joseph and scooped him up, kissing him, thanking me, hugging him, and scolding him all at the same time.

  “Let me kiss him!” Evie cried out. She and Nikki were beaming.

  “Good work,” Mrs. Reynolds said, hanging up the hotel phone. “I just called the police to tell them what happened. How did you find him?”

  I explained everything. The police came, and I repeated it all to them. Mr. and Mrs. Harbison couldn’t stop thanking me.

  While the Harbisons were collecting themselves in the lobby, Mrs. Reynolds looked curiously at my T-shirt. “What’s the Baby-sitters Club?”

  “This group I belong to back home,” I said. “We do a lot of sitting.”

  “How’d you like to pick up a job here?”

  “Really?”

  “Well, you seem pretty terrific with kids. My husband and I have three. Our regular daytime sitter is sick. My father-in-law lives with us, but he can’t fill in tomorrow, because he’ll be away. Would you be interested?”

  Would I? Spending a day with a typical Hawaiian family? Learning about another culture firsthand?

  “Sure I would,” I replied. “But I’ll have to check with one of our chaperones.”

  “What’s the name?” Mrs. Reynolds asked. “I’ll call from the switchboard, and you can ask.”

  You know what Mrs. Hall’s response was? “You want to baby-sit on vacation?”

  I thought about it, but my mind was made up. I said yes, and she gave me permission.

  “It’s okay,” I told Mrs. Reynolds.

  “What a relief,” she said. “My husband will pick you up here tomorrow at nine o’clock.”

  “Come on, Dawn, it’s not so bad!” Abby called out.

  She, Logan, Claudia, and a couple of other kids raced each other into the water.

  “Later,” I shouted.

  Honestly, I didn’t have the urge.

  I don’t know what I was expecting. Maybe a pristine stretch of sand with a few palm trees and a ‘ukulele band. Maybe another bustling resort beach with high-rises and surfers.

  I sure wasn’t expecting dark, brownish water with mudflats and a little strip of sand.

  Okay, okay, I was spoiled, I admit it. But you try spending five days in paradise and see how you feel.

  Jessi was sitting on the beach towel next to mine, talking into her tape recorder. “Hi, Mal. We’re killing a few hours before lunch. Later, we’re going to the North Shore of Oahu —”

  I took the machine from her. “Hi, Mal!” I called into the built-in mike. “I’m going to ask Jessi if she wants to go in search of a better beach.”

  Jessi giggled and took it back. “Details later.”

  She snapped it off. We found Ms.
Bernhardt and asked permission to wander away. She said fine, as long as we didn’t go too far.

  We set off, heading away from the Sea View.

  What did we find? First a concrete dock with some boat launches. Then a grassy picnic area with a fried-fish shack.

  “Let’s go back,” Jessi suggested.

  A squealing group of children ran by, dressed in bathing suits. They scampered over a ridge at the other end of the field.

  “Where are they heading?” I asked.

  The kids had dropped out of sight, but we could hear them, laughing and splashing. We ran to the ridge and climbed over.

  Then we stopped in our tracks.

  It was a beach, all right. It had sand and palm trees and water. But it looked as though no one had cleaned it in years.

  A broken cooler lay open a few feet away, with empty cans scattered around it. Old, torn clothing was draped over a shredded truck tire. A newspaper flew across the sand, wrapping itself around the trunk of a tree. Seagulls picked among the remains of an abandoned lunch.

  The kids were swimming around, ignoring the bottles and wooden planks that bobbed in the water nearby.

  I looked around for a trash can, but not one was in sight.

  In the middle of the beach was an old wooden sign. We had to move close to read the faded print:

  LOT FOR SALE

  JL5-7289

  SWIM AT YOUR OWN RISK!

  “Yuck,” Jessi remarked.

  “How could people do this?” I said. “I mean, this could be a nice beach.”

  Jessi picked up a rent-a-car brochure. “Maybe it was. It looks as though lots of people came.”

  “And didn’t clean up.”

  “Maybe the maintenance staff and life-guards are on vacation.”

  “What maintenance staff? The sign says swim at your own risk. This isn’t a public beach.”

  “It’s private?”

  “Well, I don’t see a house nearby. But that sign says someone’s trying to sell the land.” I shrugged. “I don’t know what you’d call it.”

  I spotted some broken glass by the ridge. I scooped up the pieces, dumped them in the cooler, and picked it up from the bottom. “I saw a Dumpster by the food shack,” I said. “I don’t want the kids to step on this glass.”