Amelia Bedelia Cleans Up

by Herman Parish

  “We should probably ask our parents first,” said Heather. And that’s what they did!

  The next day the three friends met at the lot and climbed up the steps of Mrs. West’s front porch.

  The house still looked a bit spooky to Amelia Bedelia. Not that she believed in ghosts. Or zombies. Or vampires. Or zombie vampire bats with sharp fangs that might swoop down on them from the attic. But still, if she were making a movie about a haunted house, the haunted house would look just like this one.

  The porch steps creaked. The doorbell wheezed and sighed instead of ringing.

  The door opened slowly.

  “Oh, my,” said the lady who looked at them through the doorway. She had short white hair, bright purple glasses, and a wide smile. “You’re the girls who have been cleaning up my empty lot, aren’t you? You did a wonderful job. I wanted to go out and thank you, but I sprained my ankle in the garden last week, and I haven’t been able to walk very well. You haven’t seen a cat, have you? Or two?”

  “We saw a gray cat in a bush when we were cleaning up,” said Heather.

  “And we saw a black cat in a tree yesterday,” said Holly.

  “Those are mine!” said Mrs. West. “The gray one is Timbuktu and the black one is Minsk. They haven’t come in for their food, and that’s not like them. I’m a bit worried. But I’ve forgotten my manners! Come in, girls, come in.”

  Leaning on a cane, Mrs. West ushered the girls into a wide front hallway. “Wow!” said Amelia Bedelia, looking around.

  “Zowie!” added Heather.

  “Yikes!” said Holly.

  There was a beautiful rug with tassels on the floor. A mirror, whose frame had been carved with hundreds of tiny flowers, hung on one wall. Amelia Bedelia could see pictures of the pyramids of Egypt and the Eiffel Tower and a huge red rock sticking up out of flat desert land. She saw photos of tall churches built of stone, and a city that seemed to have rivers instead of streets, and a marketplace where stalls were heaped with golden marigolds and women wore saris as bright as the flowers. She saw monkeys swinging through tall green trees, and giraffes ambling across grassy plains, and penguins sliding across slippery ice.

  “Now, what can I do for you girls?” asked Mrs. West. “Besides saying thank you for such a lot of work.”

  “Maybe we can do something for you first,” said Amelia Bedelia. “Can we help find your cats?”

  “That would be wonderful!” said Mrs. West. “I’m worried they might have gotten up into the attic. My ankle is still bothering me, and the attic stairs are quite steep. I don’t think I could climb them. Would you mind checking?”

  “We don’t mind,” said Amelia Bedelia.

  Mrs. West showed them the way up to the second floor. There was a huge wooden horn hanging on the wall above the staircase. Amelia Bedelia ran her fingers along it as they climbed.

  “Here’s the door to the attic,” Mrs. West said.

  The door was a little bit open. Amelia Bedelia pushed it open all the way and looked up a narrow, dusty flight of stairs.

  She could see two trails of little paw prints in the dust. It looked like the cats really had gone this way.

  But the stairs looked rickety . . . and kind of spooky.

  Amelia Bedelia wanted to help Mrs. West. Her mother had remembered that Mrs. West used to take classes at the yoga studio and that she was funny and interesting. Amelia Bedelia wanted to find Timbuktu and Minsk. She didn’t want to be a scaredy-cat. For a moment she imagined herself with whiskers and pointy ears, cowering under a bed.

  No, that wasn’t how an explorer acted. If two real cats could go up into that creepy attic, couldn’t an adventurer like Amelia Bedelia follow them?

  “You go first, Amelia Bedelia,” Holly said, peering up the attic stairs over Amelia Bedelia’s shoulder.

  “Why me?” asked Amelia Bedelia.

  “You’re president today,” said Holly.

  “I am?” asked Amelia Bedelia.

  “Sure,” Heather said nervously.

  Amelia Bedelia sighed. If she was president of an explorers’ club, she really had no choice.

  “Here, Timbuktu! Here, Minsk!” she called as she climbed up the creaky stairs.

  At the top, she stepped out into a wide, dusty space. And she screamed.

  Actually, it came out as a squeak. A huge face with dark, scary eyes and a long, skinny nose was laughing at her from the far wall.

  Holly yelped—before all three girls realized that what they were looking at was a wooden mask.

  “Oh, gosh,” said Holly. “My heart’s in my mouth!”

  Amelia Bedelia’s heart was where it usually was . . . but it was thumping.

  There were lots of old trunks in the attic, and piles of boxes. Cobwebs swung from the rafters overhead.

  Amelia Bedelia followed the paw prints, trying not to think of ghosts or goblins or vampire bats. Or vampire cats!

  Something brushed the top of Amelia Bedelia’s hair, like a ghostly hand. She squeaked again, and Heather grabbed her shoulder.

  Amelia Bedelia looked up. A kite with a long, dangling tail hung from the ceiling. A fierce face with a scowling mouth was painted on it.

  “Yikes!” whispered Holly.

  But Amelia Bedelia was starting to feel braver. A kite and a mask and cobwebs and shadows were not enough to stop true explorers! She tiptoed past a bucket. She saw more pails and buckets in other spots around the attic. She looked up. There were holes in the roof.

  The paw print trail led across the attic to a half-open window. There were more paw prints on the sill.

  “I bet the cats went out the window!” Holly said.

  “I’m sure they did,” said Amelia Bedelia.

  “How can you be so sure?” asked Heather.

  Amelia Bedelia pointed. “Because I see them over there,” she said.

  The three girls crowded around the window and looked out.

  Next to Mrs. West’s house was a smaller building. As they watched, the girls saw a fluffy gray shape leap across the gap between the house and the smaller building and land on the roof. A sleek black shape was already there, waiting.

  The two cats walked across the roof of the other building and disappeared.

  “The cat’s out of the bag!” said Holly, and giggled.

  “I think both cats are out of the attic,” said Amelia Bedelia.

  “I meant, now we know the secret of where the cats are,” said Holly. “Let’s tell Mrs. West!”

  “The carriage house!” exclaimed Mrs. West when the girls told her what they had seen. “Oh, thank you, girls! I never would have thought to check there. Follow me!”

  The girls followed Mrs. West outside and into the other building. Amelia Bedelia looked around, but to her surprise, she didn’t see any carriages. Just two very old-looking cars.

  Soft meows came from a loft overhead. “That’s where those cats are!” said Mrs. West, shaking her head. “How will we ever get them to come down?”

  There was a ladder leading up to the loft. “We could climb up,” said Holly.

  “But could we climb down while we’re holding cats?” asked Heather.

  “I have a better idea!” Amelia Bedelia said. “Do you have any lemons?” she asked Mrs. West.

  Mrs. West did have lemons. Better than that, she had lemon marmalade and sugar cookies. Amelia Bedelia spread a little marmalade on a cookie and left it at the foot of the ladder. Then the three girls and Mrs. West waited.

  “Wow,” said Heather. “Look at these cars. They look old!”

  “Just like me,” Mrs. West agreed.

  One of the cars was a convertible, silver and sleek and curvy. It looked almost as if it would float or fly as well as it could drive. The other car was square and boxy, with big spoked wheels and a steering wheel on a stick.

  “My husband loved old cars,” said Mrs. West. “These were the last two in his collection. Nobody else in my family has room to keep them. I’ve been trying to sell them, but it
takes such a long time to find the right buyer for cars like these. They’re white elephants, really.”

  Amelia Bedelia looked hard at the cars, but she could not see any long dangling trunks or big floppy ears.

  Just then there was a quiet meow from the top of the ladder, and a black, whiskered face poked out of the loft.

  “That’s Minsk!” whispered Mrs. West.

  Slowly, rung by rung, Minsk eased himself down the ladder until he could start licking the marmalade off the cookie.

  The gray, fluffy cat appeared and meowed. “Timbuktu!” Mrs. West said.

  Timbuktu scampered down the ladder and pushed Minsk aside so that she could also have a bite of lemon marmalade.

  “Thank goodness!” said Mrs. West. She scooped up Minsk. Amelia Bedelia picked up Timbuktu. “Bring her inside, would you?” asked Mrs. West. “Then I can pour you some lemonade to thank you for your help!”

  They carried the cats back into the house. Amelia Bedelia paused in the front hallway to look again at the pictures on the wall. One in particular caught her eye. In it, a woman was standing on the edge of an enormous canyon, waving. She had glasses and short hair and she looked a lot like . . .

  “That’s you!” said Amelia Bedelia.

  “Yes, it is!” Mrs. West smiled even more widely. “Good eye. My husband took those pictures. He was a wonderful photographer.”

  “Have you really been to all these places?” Amelia Bedelia asked.

  “Certainly,” said Mrs. West. “When I was a bit younger, of course. My husband and I loved to travel together.”

  “Wow,” said Amelia Bedelia again. “You must have been around the world!”

  Mrs. West laughed. “More than once!” she said. “But come into the kitchen, girls. I’ll feed these silly cats and pour you some lemonade, and you can tell me what you wanted to see me about.”

  Mrs. West poured tall glasses of icy lemonade and set out sugar cookies. “First, tell me how you knew my cats would like lemon marmalade,” she said.

  “Because we knew that Minsk, at least, likes lemon tarts!” said Amelia Bedelia. She explained how she had coaxed Minsk down out of a tree with one of her tarts.

  Then the girls told Mrs. West about their club, and how a tree house would be a perfect meeting place, and how the oak tree in her lot would be the perfect place for that tree house.

  “So we were wondering . . . maybe . . .” Amelia Bedelia said. “Could you not sell the lot after all?”

  “Oh, dear.” Mrs. West sighed. “I’m sorry, girls, but the truth is, I need the money. I want to stay in this house as long as I can. It’s full of wonderful memories and all the things my husband and I collected in our travels. But the roof has started to leak, and I need to repair it quickly. There are some other things around the house that need work also. That’s why I decided to sell the lot.”

  Amelia Bedelia felt terrible.

  “It’s a shame.” Mrs. West finished up her glass of lemonade. “I wish I could help out three fellow explorers. Would you like to see some things we collected on our travels? I imagine you saw my mask from Nigeria up in the attic, and the kite from Japan too. There are some other interesting mementoes I could show you.”

  “I’d love to see them,” said Heather.

  “Yes, please!” said Holly.

  Amelia Bedelia was not sure. “Did you really bring home toes?” she asked. “And just men’s toes, or are there any from women?”

  Mrs. West laughed. “‘Mementoes’ is another word for souvenirs. Things that I’ve collected from all over.”

  “In that case,” said Amelia Bedelia, “I’d love to see them too.”

  Mrs. West told them that the wooden horn hanging above the staircase was a didgeridoo from Australia. There were swords from Spain hanging in the library, and a fan made of peacock feathers on a desk. Next to the fan was a jar full of coins from countries all over the world, and also a giant shell, shiny pink inside, that Mrs. West had found in Bermuda. When Amelia Bedelia held it up to her ear, she could hear the sea.

  “I’m sorry that I couldn’t help with your tree house,” Mrs. West told them when it was time for them to leave. “Do come back another day. I love having company.”

  The three friends headed home. Amelia Bedelia took a last look at Mrs. West’s house as they walked down the block. It did not look spooky to her anymore. It looked like a house full of treasures, like a wonderful place to explore.

  “That was exciting!” said Holly. “I loved that long horn thing the best. What did Mrs. West call it?”

  “A didgeridoo,” said Heather.

  “Is there a didgeridon’t?” asked Amelia Bedelia.

  “I liked the kite in the attic,” said Holly.

  “I liked all of it,” said Amelia Bedelia. “I understand why Mrs. West wants to stay in her house, with all those cool souvenirs and mementoes. But I wish there was some way we could have the tree house and Mrs. West could have the money she needs to fix up her home at the same time!”

  That night Amelia Bedelia perched on a stool in the kitchen, tearing up lettuce for a salad and telling her parents all about her visit to Mrs. West’s house. She described the photographs, the kite, the swords, the didgeridoo, and finally the cars in the garage.

  “They’re really neat,” she said, dumping the lettuce into a bowl. “But Mrs. West says nobody in her family wants them.”

  “Can you toss the salad, Amelia Bedelia?” asked her father.

  Amelia Bedelia picked up the bowl of salad and eyed the ceiling. “How high?” she asked.

  “I mean, put some dressing on it and use the tongs to gently shake things around so the dressing gets on every vegetable,” said her father. “And about the cars, just remember—one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”

  “The cars are not treasure,” said Amelia Bedelia. “And they are not carriages or elephants either. They’re just cars, but pretty cool old ones. Plus, they belong to Mrs. West, and she is a woman, not a man.”

  “Some cars can be treasure,” her father explained. “Valuable. Worth a lot of money.”

  “How much money?” asked Amelia Bedelia.

  “No idea,” said her father. “I don’t know that much about old cars.”

  “But I bet your friend Wild Bill does,” said her mother. “Why don’t you ask him?”

  The next morning Amelia Bedelia woke up to the sound of leaves brushing against her window. The wind had picked up, and the trees were dancing.

  Something inside Amelia Bedelia was dancing too—excitement! She dialed Wild Bill’s number, thinking about those cool old cars in Mrs. West’s carriage house. Her dad had said cars could be treasures, hadn’t he? And Mrs. West needed money, didn’t she? What if those old cars really were valuable? Maybe Mrs. West would not have to sell the lot! Maybe there was a tree house in Amelia Bedelia’s future, after all!

  “Howdy!” said a voice on the phone. “Thank you for calling Wild Bill’s Auto-Rama, the home of the sweet deal! Are you in the market for a new car today?”

  “Actually, no,” said Amelia Bedelia. “I’m at home.”

  “I know who this is,” said Wild Bill. “Amelia Bedelia, right?”

  “That’s right,” said Amelia Bedelia. “And I have a question for you. I know someone who has two cars. Old ones. I was wondering if they might be worth a lot of money.”

  “Lots of people have old cars in their garages, little lady,” said Wild Bill. “And usually they’re not worth one red cent.”

  “I don’t think these would be worth one cent, no matter what color it is,” Amelia Bedelia agreed. “I think they might be worth lots of dollars. One of them looks really old. It has a steering wheel on a stick. And the other one is silver and curvy and shiny. On the front it says something that starts with an F. Furry . . . no, Ferrari.”

  “What? What? What?” shouted Wild Bill into the phone.

  “Ferrari!” Amelia Bedelia shouted back.

  “Little lady, meet me right aw
ay at your friend’s house! Tell me where it is!” Wild Bill exclaimed. “And hold on to your hat! This could be very exciting!”

  Amelia Bedelia told her parents where she was going and hurried over to Mrs. West’s. The wind whistled past her ears and tugged at her baseball cap.

  When she got there, Wild Bill was waiting by the carriage house with Mrs. West. Amelia Bedelia waved to them and clamped her hands together on the top of her head.

  “What are you doing?” Wild Bill asked.

  “I’m hanging on to my hat, like you said,” Amelia Bedelia explained. “Or else the wind might blow it away.” She looked up at him. “Or I guess you might eat it.”

  “Ma’am, can we see those cars?” Wild Bill asked Mrs. West. “I was happy to wait for this little lady, but I tell you, I’m so excited I’ve got ants in my pants!”

  Amelia Bedelia took a step back. “How did they get in there?” she asked.

  Smiling, Mrs. West unlocked the carriage house door.

  “Jumping Jehoshaphat!” Wild Bill exclaimed. “I don’t believe it!”

  He ran into the carriage house. He circled around the cars. He peered underneath them. He peeked under the hoods. He was beaming.

  “Ma’am,” he said to Mrs. West, “I’d be very honored to sell these cars for you.”

  “Well!” Mrs. West was smiling too. “I can hardly believe it! Perhaps they’ll bring in enough to let me make the repairs my house needs. What a windfall!”