Why are the BSC members making it so hard for Mallory to join the club?

The Baby-sitters Club #14: Hello, Mallory

Oh, if only they'd made it a little harder. So, Mal wants to join the BSC. The BSC needs to replace Stacey. (sniff. Stacey! Don't leave us!) Sounds like a match made in heaven, right? And yet if only we knew what fresh hell awaited us with every Mal-book.

But this is the first one, and we are so young, and so innocent. Much like Mal herself.

Mal is thrilled to be invited to a BSC meeting to see if she might be appropriate for the club. She dresses up for the meeting. And by dresses up for the meeting, I mean “Dresses like a 6 year old” for the meeting. I’m pretty sure that CLAIRE would know better than to wear a red jumper that says “Mallory” across the front, and white tights with red hearts on them. If I'm not mistaken, my mother made me wear a similar outfit, for my PRE-SCHOOL CLASS PHOTO. And even then I knew better. If you can’t remember your name without looking in the mirror, you have no business baby-sitting.

Things are going all right, but then Mal makes the mistake of mentioning that Nicky broke his finger last weekend. The girls jump all over her for this. Now, we all know I'm loathe to defend Mal, but though she had been left in charge of the kids, at the time the accident actually occurred, Mr. Pike was home, so the BSC should probably just chill the f- out. The girls then ask Mal to come back the next day for a “test.” Honestly, they really are bitchy. I never thought I’d ever, ever side with Mal, but the BSC is really unsympathetic here. I know they need to make sure she’s responsible, and believe me, as a big sister/one of the oldest girls in the church youth group/neighborhood ringleader, I know the temptation to put the “little girls” through the paces and prove to them that they will never be as good as you are (Shout out to my little sister, Becky, who I am surprised is still talking to me these days) but this is going a little far. They ask Mal all these weird medical and emergency related questions, like “At what age does a baby cut his first tooth” and when Mal says, “Eight months” (which is when Claire got her first tooth), Kristy is all “Wrong. Seven months. Mary Anne, jot that down.” What a bee-yatch. Another was “When should you apply a tourniquet?” I remember when I first read this book, I was like 7, and I had to ask my mom what a tourniquet was, and she was like “I don’t know, like a weird band-aid. Why are you asking me this?” And my mom is one of the smartest people alive. Like, Janine-smart, so that tells you something.

And that’s just the oral exam. The “drawing part” consists of Mallory having to draw a diagram of the human digestive system. Um, I am 25 years old, a graduate of one of our country's top universities, and about to start graduate classes at a flagship state school, and Mallory’s drawing looks ten times better than anything I could have come up with. This is probably the only time that I will say Mallory did a better job at something than I could have done. Savor it. She manages to label the esophagus, stomach, and intestines, for which Dawn wants to give her partial credit, but Kristy quickly nips that in the bud since she forgot “the liver, the gall bladder, the pancreas, and about a hundred other things.” Beee-yatch!

So the girls also arrange a trial sitting job for Mal where she goes with Claudia to watch the Perkins girls. This is after the ridiculous test, so Mal is understandably nervous, but boy, she really does royally mess this trial job up. It's not just tiny nit-picky things, like when Logan went on a trial job. She's nervous because Claudia is watching her like a hawk (and kind of being a total jerk), but really, it's like Mal has been replaced by Jackie Rodowsky. She spills milk all over the floor, breaks a glass, and lets the dog into the house, which Mr. Perkins expressly told them not to do. The job's not a total loss, as she does manage to entertain the girls by suggesting they have a pajama party in the daytime -put on their pj's, do each other's hair, etc. That actually sounds like something I would have loved as a kid. Ok, fine, it sounds like last weekend when I spent all Sunday painting my nails and watching "Troop Beverly Hills" and didn't get dressed until about 3 pm when it was time to go to church.

Obviously, Mal failed all the tests, then proves just how grown up she is by screaming about how it wasn't fair and stomping out of Claudia's room. Which is probably what I would have done too, but it doesn't really help her cause any. She decides to start her own baby-sitting club with the new girl in her class and her new best friend, Jessi. People in Stoneybrook really are total jackasses to the Ramseys, and it's really sad. The kids in school all talk about how Jessi doesn't belong there because she's black. They make jokes about how her real name is probably "Mobobwe" or something. The adults are no better. One little girl tries to play with Becca, and her mother screams at her that she can't go play with "them." This is right out in the front yard with Jessi and Becca standing right there. I'm not sure I find this level of blatant racial hostility believable. In an affluent Connecticut suburb in this day and age, while I'm sure racism exists, I would think it would be more subtle. That's not to say I think it would be any less damaging, hostile, or horrifying, just that it seems to me that the people would be more likely to ignore the Ramseys, or be polite to their faces but talk about them behind their backs, or be condescending and patronizing, rather than just this level of blatant rudeness and hostility. Nonetheless, I really do feel sorry for them. It's awful.

So Mal and Jessi form "Kids, Inc." which, wasn't that a TV show or something? They hold their meetings at the same time as the BSC, and pretty much blatantly rip off their business model, but they are only allowed to sit in the afternoons, and they decide that they will take the jobs together "2 baby-sitters for the price of 1." No one hires them but their own mothers. Sad. However, Kristy is understandably peeved, but the BSC is realizing more and more that they are just too busy. The girls also realize they were way too hard on Mallory-- they had to look up the answers to most of the questions they asked her. So in the end they come crawling back to Mal and present the "junior officer" idea, and she says that she does still want to join the BSC, but says they have to take her and Jessi. The book ends with Mal's second trial sitting job, this time for Jamie Newton. Claud is way nicer this time, and she passes. I guess we just assume that Jessi passes hers, because by the time the pageant comes around, she's in the club and no one ever mentions it again.

I really didn't hate Mal this time around. Maybe because the rest of the girls were so nasty? Honestly, I don't think they ever again act like such jerks to anyone. It's really too bad, because there are several later books when I would really love to see someone put Mal in her place, and the one time they do, I can't enjoy it. Maybe I'm just not as heartless as I've always thought.