Free Hush Little Baby by Caroline B. Cooney

diner.
    Muffin climbed into the front seat. “He’s icky,” she said. “I’m not touching anybody icky.”
    “Some baby-sitter you are,” said Kit.
    The silence of the car and the silence outside the car was too much. Kit turned the ignition, got the radio again, and clicked the all-door lock. Then she got herself out of her seat belt, hauled herself to her knees, and leaned way over the seat back to examine the damage Sam the Baby had wrought. “Oh, for a pair of gloves,” she said. He had diarrhea all the way up his little back and halfway down his little legs. He smelled like a family of skunks.
    Holding her breath, vowing that she herself would have babies who were neat and careful about this kind of thing, she had to use about ten of the baby wipes Dusty had tucked into the carrier. Now, what was she supposed to do with his disgusting clothes, his very used diaper, and all these revolting baby wipes?
    She wrapped all of it up in one of his two blankets and looked out into the darkness. The entire property was one big garbage can. Kit, who recycled all things at all times, hurled her disgusting bundle into the chaos of old televisions, beer cans, and car parts. Then she rolled the window back up and turned on the heater to dry the baby’s clean bare body. Kit could not help bending forward and kissing his round tummy. She had not known that the nakedness of babies, the perfection of their little bodies, was so beautiful.
    “Stay asleep, Sam,” she whispered. His breathing continued uninterrupted. He didn’t know she was talking to him. He knew nothing but the inside of his sleepy little world. He felt safe enough to sleep. He trusted her with his little self.
    He trusts me, thought Kit.
    He had put his little life into her arms. All his world was her choice. Either she would take good care of him — or she would not.
    Oh, Sam the Baby! thought Kit. Do you realize what you’ve done? You’ve made me your mother, or sitter, or sister. If I could choose, which would I be? I don’t want to be anybody’s mother yet. I’ve never liked baby-sitting. That leaves sister. What if y ou are my brother? I’ll be giving up my own brother to a pack of strangers.
    I should have called Dad. I should have gone home and waited for Mom to get back from shopping, like Row said. Or maybe even called Malcolm. I can’t even tell if I’m taking good care of you, Sam. You look fine, but was that kind of diarrhea fine? And this is the last diaper in the package.
    She wrapped him, bare except for his diaper, inside the remaining blanket, tucking the end in until he was a papoose: no arms, no legs, just his shining face.
    She ordered Muffin to get in back with him.
    “What if he gets stinky again?” said Muffin.
    “Impossible. There’s nothing left inside him.” She scrubbed her hands with the last baby wipe and set off. Over and over, she muttered the directions. “Right on Swamp Maple.”
    This whole day was a swamp. Where were these people? Where on earth did Cinda and Burt live? And why? There was no other traffic. In this very heavily populated state, hers was the only car on the road.
    Swamp Maple wound among hills and through woods and next to silent still ponds.
    At one-point-six miles, Cinda had said, on the left, you’ll see a broken white picket fence. Turn left and go down the drive in the center of the fence.
    There was the fence, white, and very broken.
    The fence pickets were sharply pointed like toothpicks, whole sections smashed as if some angry person had driven right through. Her headlights caught trees strangled by wild grapevines, and in one place the vines had hoisted a piece of broken fence into the air.
    “This,” said Muffin, “is the spookiest place I’ve ever been in my life.”
    Kit stopped in the middle of the road, staring at the driveway to Burt and Cinda’s. There weren’t many places in the state of New Jersey where you could stop in the middle of the road and not worry about horns