Kid Power

by Susan Beth Pfeffer

  Dad raised his eyebrows, but didn’t say anything.

  “I get to advertise?” Carol asked.

  “Absolutely,” I said.

  “Deal,” she said.

  “You’ll bake the cookies tomorrow?” I asked.

  “I sure will,” she said.

  “Fine,” Dad said. “Now if you’ll leave me alone for a while, I’ll read my book and think about how many oatmeal cookies this family is going to eat on Sunday.”

  “None,” I said. “I’m going to get rid of each and every one of them if I have to ram them down those kids’ throats.”

  “You’ll make a great mother,” Dad said and started reading again.

  So Carol finished the sign for me, and then she made a sign that said, “Homebaked Oatmeal Cookies by Carol Golden.” She decided not to put her phone number down to avoid getting calls from cookie cranks. The next day she made four dozen oatmeal cookies. Mom was out all day going to different employment agencies, so she didn’t notice just how much of her ingredients Carol was using.

  “These cookies,” Carol said to me, as she nibbled on a slightly burnt one, “are pure net profit.”

  I paid her the three dollars, which lowered Kid Power’s net profits considerably. I knew I’d be getting a lot of money the next day, but it still hurt to see so much of the company’s profits go into somebody else’s hands.

  I cleaned the kitchen up for Carol so Mom wouldn’t see what a mess she’d made of it. We hadn’t discussed who’d do the cleaning, but I figured it was easier to just do it than to negotiate all over again. I packed the cookies into a paper bag, and stuck in a couple of paper plates to put them on. The lemonade she said she’d make after supper.

  Mom got in just before Dad did. “How did it go?” I asked while she took her shoes off.

  “Nothing,” she said, kicking her left shoe clear across the room. “Between all the other social workers that got laid off and all the June college graduates, there are a hundred applications for every job. One of the agencies suggested I get a Ph.D. and teach sociology to future unemployable social workers.”

  “You’ll get a job,” I said.

  “Sure,” she said. “When your father gets in, tell him I’m upstairs taking a nap.” She trudged out of the room, leaving her shoes where she’d flung them.

  So Dad treated us all to hamburgers and french fries that night, and we tiptoed around all evening, even though Mom had the airconditioner on and couldn’t have heard us anyway. Things were much easier when she had a job. Sure there were some nights when she’d come home tired and depressed from her work, but we never had to tiptoe.

  She didn’t seem in too bad a mood the next morning when she drove me and the cookies and the lemonade and the signs to Mrs. Dale’s house. “I’ll pick you up at four,” she said, and kissed me on the cheek. “Good luck, honey.”

  “Thanks, Mom,” I said and got out of the car. I could see Mrs. Dale setting out her merchandise on folding tables. There were already people there watching as she unpacked stuff from boxes.

  “Hi,” I said, walking over to her, holding the pitchers of lemonade carefully. “I’m Janie Golden from Kid Power.”

  Mrs. Dale smiled at me. “Look at those vultures,” she whispered. “Just waiting to swoop down.”

  “Is there any place I could put my stuff?” I asked. “I brought cookies and lemonade for the kids.”

  “That’s a great idea,” she said. “There should be some space at that end of the table. Why don’t you put your things there?”

  I went to where she pointed and set up. I scotch-taped the two signs to the edge of the table, and put out two platters of cookies. There were still plenty left, so I ate one while I waited for kids to show up.

  “Do you think we should put up another sign telling the kids the cookies are for them?” Mrs. Dale asked me as the first customers started going through her stuff.

  “I already did,” I said and took out another pair of signs. One read, “Kids’ Cookies. Free for all kids 12 and under.” The other read, “Adult Cookies. 5¢ each.”

  Mrs. Dale laughed, and handed me a nickel. “I’ll have one adult cookie please,” she said, and I gave her one from the adult pile. She bit into it and said, “These are very good. You’ll probably make more money today than I will.”

  “I’m just trying to build up my net profit,” I said, but before we had more of a chance to talk, some kids came over and started grabbing at the cookies. “Only two per kid,” I said.

  “Says who?” one of the kids asked.

  “Says me,” I said.

  “The sign doesn’t say anything about two cookies a kid,” the kid pointed out.

  So I took the sign down and changed it to “Kids’ Cookies. 2 Free Cookies for all kids 12 and under.” The “2” fit in pretty well, but the second “Cookies” was pretty scrunched in.

  “As long as the sign says it, I guess it’s okay,” the kid said and handed me a nickel. “I want one of the adult cookies, too.”

  “Okay,” I said. There was nothing on the sign that said kids couldn’t buy the adult cookies if they wanted, so I knew it must be okay.

  It was a long, hot, tiring yard sale. The kids stayed away from their parents, and stuck to the cookies and me. The lemonade didn’t last the morning, but Mrs. Dale thought that it was such a good idea, she sent me inside to make some more, which I did. When I came back with a fresh pitcher, I saw a whole family, two grungy-looking parents and three of the dirtiest little kids I’ve ever seen, steal all but two of the cookies from the adult plate.

  I shouted “Hey!” at them, but they just ran away with the cookies. Mrs. Dale came right over though.

  “Those awful people,” she said. “I knew they were going to steal something before they left. I could tell from the way they were looking around and whispering. I guess we should consider ourselves lucky all they took were the cookies.”

  “I guess so,” I said, and put the lemonade pitcher down.

  “Let me pay you for them,” she said.

  “For the cookies?” I said. “You don’t have to do that.”

  “Of course I should,” she said. “A dollar should cover it, don’t you think?”

  Instead of answering her, I took some of the kid cookies and put them on the adult plate. “They’re all the same cookie,” I said. “I’m just charging for some of them.”

  Mrs. Dale laughed. “Janie, you’ll be a millionaire before you’re twenty-one,” she said.

  “I thought about charging a quarter for four cookies,” I said, “but I decided that was cheating. So I guess I won’t get rich that fast.”

  Mrs. Dale was still laughing when a lady walked over to where I was sitting and asked for an adult cookie. I gave her one and she gave me a nickel.

  She ate it very carefully. “This is an excellent oatmeal cookie,” she said when she finished. “I’ll take a dozen.”

  “A dozen?” I asked. “I don’t sell them by the dozen.”

  “Why not?” the woman asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It just never occurred to me.” I looked through the bag and found a dozen unbroken cookies. There were so few cookies left that I took them out and put them on the plates, and put the lady’s dozen cookies back in the bag and handed it to her. She gave me three quarters, and I gave her back her change.

  “These cookies remind me of my childhood,” she said. “I don’t suppose I could get more.”

  “At sixty cents a dozen?” I asked, doing some quick arithmetic. If I took a ten-cent commission for every dozen cookies, Carol would still be getting fifty cents, which was basically the rate she’d wanted to charge me before I bargained her down. “Sure you can,” I said, and gave her my phone number. “That’s also the number of Kid Power,” I said. “No job too big or small.”

  “I’ll remember that,” she said, and started to walk away.

  “Don’t forget to tell your friends,” I called out after her.

  “I won’t,�
�� she called back, and left with her cookies.

  Mrs. Dale looked at me and grinned. “You’ll make it before you’re twenty-one,” she said.

  I counted the pile of nickels I’d earned already. There was well over two dollars there, and I still had a few cookies left. Even if I didn’t sell anymore, and had to give the rest away to the few remaining stragglers, I’d still have cut my business expenses down to less than a dollar and raised my net profit by two.

  I smiled back at Mrs. Dale. “I just might at that,” I said.

  Chapter Four

  My best friend, Lisa, couldn’t have cared less about gross and net. “Money’s money,” she said as we sat in my back yard. I’d insisted on staying there just in case the phone rang. Mom was following up on an ad, and Carol was swimming.

  “I thought so, too,” I said. “But now I know better.”

  “That’s all you care about these days,” she said. “Are you going to spend the whole summer working?”

  “No, of course not,” I said. “I’m not working now, am I?”

  “I wouldn’t exactly call this playing,” she said.

  “Okay,” I said, getting up. “You want to go someplace, we’ll go someplace.”

  “It’s about time,” she said and rose. Just as she did, the phone rang.

  “Oops,” I said, and started running toward the back door. “Well, it might be a job for Mom,” I called back to her, but I knew she didn’t believe it any more that I did.

  I got to the phone by the third ring, and answered it breathlessly. “Hello?”

  “Is this Kid Power?” a man asked.

  “Yes it is,” I said, sounding businesslike. “What can I do for you?”

  “Mrs. Edwards suggested I call,” the man said. “She said you were available for odd jobs.”

  “I sure am,” I said. “What kind of job do you have in mind?”

  “My name is Harry Townsend,” he said. “I live two doors away from Mrs. Edwards. The yellow house with the white trim.”

  “I know,” I said. “The one with the beautiful gardens.”

  “That’s the one,” he said. “The gardens are my wife’s, but she’s in the hospital right now for surgery.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it,” I said. I thought it gave my end of the conversation a nice adult sound.

  “It’s nothing major, but she’ll be in the hospital for a little while, and she’s concerned that her garden will be overrun with weeds by the time she can start tending it again. Do you know anything about gardening?”

  I was no gardening pro, but the summer before, we’d planted a vegetable garden and I could recognize a radish and a tomato with no difficulty at all by September. “I’ve done some gardening,” I said.

  “The work wouldn’t be very difficult,” Mr. Townsend said. “Just simple weeding and fertilizing. Maybe a half hour a day, sometimes a little more. Would you be interested?”

  “I charge a minimum of a dollar an hour for each day’s work,” I said. “Would you be willing to pay that?”

  “Certainly,” Mr. Townsend said. “Why don’t you come over right now, and I’ll tell you what my wife told me while it’s still fresh in my mind.”

  “Sure,” I said, and then remembered Lisa. “Uh, a friend of mine is here. Could she come, too?”

  “I’d be delighted to have her,” he said. “I’ll see both of you in a few minutes then.”

  “Right. And thank you, Mr. Townsend,” I said and hung up. I ran back outside and shouted to Lisa, “I got another job!”

  “All work and no play,” she said, but then she smiled. “What kind of job?”

  “Gardening. Come on. We’re supposed to go over right now and look at Mrs. Townsend’s gardens.”

  “Mrs. Townsend’s?” Lisa asked. “But she has the nicest gardens on the block. Maybe even in town.”

  “All I’m supposed to do is weed them,” I said. “I know the difference between a weed and a flower. Flowers are pretty.”

  “Janie, you’re getting in too deep,” Lisa said. “I’d better come with you before you make a complete fool of yourself.”

  “Just because you’re always gardening is no reason to assume other people don’t know how to, too,” I said, and started for the street.

  “Other people may know,” Lisa said, running to catch up with me. “Just not you.”

  But looking at Mrs. Townsend’s gardens reassured me. Sure they were beautiful, but they were so neatly laid out, I was sure I’d have no trouble figuring what to keep and what to pull out. Even the bugs sitting on the rose bushes were pretty. They looked like big green ladybugs.

  Mr. Townsend was very polite, and showed me where all the gardening tools were. He also gave me a neatly typed list of what Mrs. Townsend wanted done daily, and what she wanted done weekly. I admired her organization. I hoped if I ever had to go into the hospital for surgery, that I’d be that organized with Kid Power.

  Lisa, of course, decided to throw her two cents in, by making little comments to Mr. Townsend. He smiled and nodded, but then he said, “Frankly, my wife’s the gardener in the family. I hardly know the difference between a weed and a flower.”

  A man after my own heart. I smiled at him and said “Don’t worry, Mr. Townsend. With Kid Power taking care of your garden, you won’t have to know the difference.”

  Lisa walked home with me and offered to help out with the garden, but I didn’t pay too much attention to what she was saying. I was more interested in figuring out how much money I was going to earn a week. Five dollars a week from Mr. Townsend, and $2.50 from Mrs. Edwards, and maybe a dollar a week from Mrs. Marks. That was $8.50 guaranteed, except for Mrs. Marks, and I had a feeling I could pretty much count on it. Little Harriet didn’t seem to get any clothes except the stuff her grandmother made for her. Plus those jobs, there would be whatever unexpected jobs came up. And all that was pure net, which was the best kind of money there was. “Lisa, I’m going to be rich,” I said.

  “Money doesn’t buy happiness,” she said.

  “I know that,” I said. “But it doesn’t buy unhappiness either.”

  “Want to go to the movies on Saturday?” she asked. “They’re having a special matinee of The Invasion of the Giant Anteaters.”

  “Giant anteaters?” I said. “That sounds pretty good.”

  “Then you’ll come?” she asked. “If you don’t go, my mom won’t let me go because there’s nobody else to go with except my brother, and I absolutely refuse to go with him. He cries at all the scary parts.”

  Lisa’s brother was seven, and they should have made a horror movie about him. “Sure I’ll go,” I said. “I’ll meet you at your house.”

  “Okay,” she said. “But please remember. I have to spend the week at my aunt’s, so I won’t be around to remind you.”

  “I’ll remember,” I said.

  “Okay,” she said. “Well, I’d better go home now. Let me know if you need any help with Mrs. Townsend’s gardens.”

  “I won’t,” I said for about the tenth time. “Need help, that is. But thanks anyway.”

  “See you,” she said, and walked up her front walk. I kept walking until I reached my house and then went in. Mom was in the living room, rubbing her feet. She’d been rubbing her feet a lot ever since she started job hunting.

  “Guess what?” I said. “I got another job. I’m going to take care of Mrs. Townsend’s gardens while she’s in the hospital.”

  “I didn’t know she was sick,” Mom said.

  “Surgery,” I said. “Isn’t that great?”

  “That she’s in the hospital?” Mom asked. “Oh, you mean about your job. Yeah, I suppose so. But do you really know enough about gardening? Mrs. Townsend’s gardens are beautiful.”

  “You’re as bad as Lisa,” I said. “I worked on our garden last summer, didn’t I?”

  “If I remember correctly, you were the one who refused to pull out any dandelions because they were so pretty,” she said. “You said they couldn’t
possibly be weeds if they were so nice.”

  “Dandelions just have a bad reputation,” I said. “How did the job-hunting go?”

  “Nothing,” she said, and rubbed her feet even harder. “They’re not even polite anymore.”

  “What do you think you’re going to do?” I asked and sat down on the arm of her chair. Mom looked awfully tired.

  “Well, I’m going to quit this searching for a while,” she said. “Before I’m completely crippled. Besides, I could use a bit of a vacation. Maybe I could convince your father that we should all go away for a while. We could see the Rockies or someplace like that.”

  “I can’t leave Kid Power,” I said. “And I don’t think Carol’ll want to give up her newspaper route. And you know how Dad feels about traveling.”

  “Fine,” she said. “I’ll go alone. Just as soon as the swelling goes down.”

  “You wouldn’t really, would you?” I asked. Somehow I couldn’t picture Mom enjoying herself looking at the Rockies all by herself, but I’d never seen her unemployed before. Let alone unemployed with swollen feet.

  Mom sighed. “I don’t really feel like going anyplace right now except maybe the shower,” she said. “I’m sorry to be so crotchety, but there’s only so much rejection I can take in a single day.”

  “I understand,” I said, and kissed her on the cheek. “Want me to make supper?”

  “Would you, honey?” she asked. “I thought we might have tuna salad tonight.”

  “Sure,” I said. Tuna salad was my specialty. “You go up and take a shower, and by the time you come down, supper’ll be ready.”

  “That sounds wonderful,” she said. “You are a magnificent daughter.”

  I smiled at her and got up. Just as I did, the phone rang.

  “It couldn’t possibly be for me,” Mom said. “Answer it, hon.”

  So I did. “Hello?”

  “Is this Kid Power?” a woman asked. She sounded kind of frenzied.

  “Yes, it is,” I said. “What can I do for you?”

  “This might sound sort of strange,” the woman said. “But your sign said ‘No job too big or small.’”