Keep Out, Claudia!

by Ann M. Martin

  “The rehearsal went really well today,” said Kristy, flopping onto my bed. “You don’t have to worry.”

  “Well, I’m worrying anyway. A little bit. I’ve been thinking about Claire’s tantrum and Jackie’s speech.”

  “But Claire didn’t have a tantrum today. And Jackie’s speech was much better than yesterday’s. Shorter, too.”

  “You’re right.”

  “Come on. Leave the worrying to Mary Anne. She’s a professional worrier.”

  “I heard that!” exclaimed Mary Anne as she entered my room.

  “Now you’re sneaking around!” I accused her.

  “What?” said Mary Anne. “And Kristy, I do not worry professionally.”

  Jessi ran into the room then, grinning. “I wish you guys could hear yourselves,” she said. “My mother would say you are sniping and griping.”

  “Has anyone ever heard that saying about ‘good dress rehearsal, bad opening night’?” I asked my friends.

  “I have,” Jessi answered.

  “Do you believe it?”

  Jessi shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s a superstition.”

  “Anyway, we can’t do much about tomorrow now,” said Kristy. “We’ve held millions of rehearsals. I think the kids are as good as they’re going to get. We’ll just hope for the best.”

  The rest of the members of the BSC trickled in, and by five-thirty Kristy was ready to begin the meeting.

  “Any club business?” she asked after she’d called us to order.

  “Yeah,” I replied. “The Lowells.”

  Six heads turned slowly toward me. “The Lowells,” Jessi repeated.

  “I guess we could consider them unfinished business,” said Kristy. “We haven’t talked about them in a while. Claud’s right. We need to.”

  “Why?” asked Stacey, sounding whiny.

  “What are you complaining about, O Blonde-Haired, Blue-Eyed One?” I asked. “They didn’t say you were funny-looking.”

  “Exactly. How do you think I feel — being approved of by Mrs. Lowell? I don’t want her approval. It’s like, if she approves of me, then what’s wrong with me? Something must be. See what I mean?”

  “I understand,” said Dawn, “but how come you let Mrs. Lowell affect how you feel about yourself?”

  Stacey paused. “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Anyway, that isn’t the point,” said Kristy. “The point is — what if Mrs. Lowell calls the club again, wanting another sitter?”

  “Do you really think she’s going to?” asked Stacey.

  Kristy shrugged. “Who knows? She might.”

  “Or what if the kids show up at a band rehearsal one day? That could happen, too,” I said.

  “Well, I think we need to teach the Lowells a lesson,” Mal spoke up.

  “How?” asked Dawn.

  “I’m not sure. But I want to get back at them for the way they treated Claudia and Jessi. That was rude and mean and … and, well, dumb.”

  “How are we going to teach Mrs. Lowell a lesson?” asked Kristy. “We’re just a bunch of kids.”

  “The next time she calls we should tell her we’re not going to sit for her family anymore because we don’t like bigots,” I said hotly.

  “Claudia. You know darn well we cannot say that,” Kristy replied.

  “Okay, we’ll say we don’t sit for blonde-haired, blue-eyed people.”

  “Claudia! Geez!” cried Dawn. “Stace and I are blonde-haired, blue-eyed people. Besides, if we say anything like that then we’re no better than the Lowells. That’s bigoted, too.”

  “Isn’t there a term for that?” said Stacey. “Reverse something-or-other?”

  “Oh, who cares,” I said.

  “You know, we really ought to teach Caitlin and Mackie and Celeste a lesson,” said Mal. “But not a mean one; just that most people are nice. If we don’t do that and they grow up prejudiced, it’ll be our fault.”

  “No, it won’t,” interrupted Jessi. “It’ll be their parents’ fault. It’s already their parents’ fault.”

  Ring, ring.

  I dove for the phone. A split second before I picked it up, I remembered not to sound angry. I drew in a deep breath. “Hello, Baby-sitters Club.”

  “Hi … Claudee?”

  “Hi, Jamie!” I said brightly. (Not too many people call me Claudee.)

  “Hi-hi. Um, Mommy said I could telephone you. I was worrying about something. What if it rains tomorrow?”

  I opened my eyes wide. Then I covered the mouthpiece of the phone and said to my friends, “Oh, my lord! What if it rains tomorrow? We never thought about that. The electric keyboard can’t be on the porch if it rains. The rain always blows in. This is a disaster!”

  “Claud,” said Kristy calmly, “it isn’t a disaster yet. It isn’t raining. And the weatherman is predicting sunshine for tomorrow.”

  “Well, what does he know?”

  “If it rains, we’ll figure something out. We’ll set up the band in the garage so the kids won’t get wet.”

  “But the audience can’t fit in the garage, too.”

  Then we’ll cancel,” hissed Kristy. She waved wildly at the phone. “Talk to Jamie before he hangs up.”

  “Jamie?” I said sweetly. “Don’t worry about it. See you tomorrow.”

  I hung up the phone.

  “The Lowells —” Jessi began to say.

  Ring, ring.

  “I’ll get it this time,” said Kristy, eyeing me. “Hello, Baby-sitters Club.” Pause. “Karen? What’s the matter? … Your kazoo? Well, did you look everywhere in your room? … Okay, how about the car? … Are you sure you had it when you left rehearsal this afternoon? … What? You blasted it in Andrew’s ear on the way home?” Kristy tried not to giggle. “Well, maybe Andrew has it. Maybe he doesn’t want to be blasted at anymore…. Okay, put Andrew on…. Hi, Andrew. Listen, you don’t know where Karen’s kazoo is, do you? You know, she needs it for the concert. And if she can’t find hers, then I’ll lend her Sam’s…. You just remembered where it is? Okay, why don’t you go find it, and give the phone back to Karen.” Kristy paused again and made a face. For a moment she held the phone away from her ear. Then she said, “Karen, what on earth is going on? … No, let Andrew get the kazoo himself. You don’t have to see his hiding place.”

  Kristy stayed on the phone for over five minutes, straightening out the problems between Andrew and Karen. By the time she hung up, Andrew had produced the missing kazoo and Karen had apologized for nearly deafening him earlier. Kristy was laughing, but she quickly became sober. “Okay. The Lowells,” she said to us. “We haven’t made a decision yet.”

  “I have an idea,” said Jessi. “I think if Mrs. Lowell calls the BSC again we should just tell her that no one can take the job. If that happens a few times, she’ll stop calling.”

  “I guess,” I replied with a sigh. “But then nobody has learned anything, except us. And we didn’t need the lessons we learned.”

  “Maybe teaching the Lowells a lesson isn’t our job,” said Dawn.

  “You know we can do one thing,” said Jessi.

  “What?” (The rest of us practically pounced on her.)

  “We can be good examples for the kids we sit for. For all of them, whether they have prejudiced ideas or not.”

  “Yeah!” exclaimed Stacey. Then she added more seriously. “But we don’t want to impose our ideas on them.”

  “No,” agreed Jessi. “We can just show them how to be good neighbors.”

  Everyone was silent for a few moments. Then I said, “You know what? This may be hard to believe, but I can’t hate the Lowells. I feel as though I ought to hate them, but I just can’t.”

  “My parents,” spoke up Mal, “say it’s okay to hate some of the things people do, but it’s not okay to hate the people who do them.”

  “Like Karen hating the fact that Andrew hid her kazoo, but not hating Andrew,” said Kristy.

  I frowned. “You guys? This is too much like school
. Let’s have a junk-food fest or something.”

  Mary Anne looked at her watch. “Too late. It’s almost six. We don’t have time. Anyway, let’s be good girls and not spoil our appetites for dinner.”

  “But we’re having liver,” I objected.

  “Then by all means scarf up a candy bar before you go downstairs,” said Mallory. “Liver. Ew. Why not just serve up monkey or something?”

  “Monkey!” exclaimed Kristy. “Hey —”

  “Oh, please don’t start,” wailed Mary Anne. “Mal, why did you mention disgusting food? That’s Kristy’s favorite subject.”

  Kristy ignored her. “Six o’clock,” she announced. “Meeting adjourned.”

  “Wait!” I cried. “Don’t leave yet. The concert starts at two. Meet here at one o’clock tomorrow. Wear jeans and red shirts like the kids. Who’s bringing those baskets for donations?”

  “I am,” said Mallory. “I found three.”

  “And who’s bringing chairs?” (We had decided to provide a few folding chairs for older people in the audience. Everyone else would have to sit on the ground, like at any outdoor concert.)

  “Me!” said Mary Anne, Dawn, Jessi, and Stacey.

  Kristy looked at me. “Is that it, Claud?”

  “I think so.”

  “Okay. See you guys tomorrow.”

  “And keep your fingers crossed for sunshine!” I added.

  I had nightmares about rain and thunderstorms. In one, All the Children were performing in Jamie’s yard on a sunny, perfect day. Then, without warning, a storm blew in. It blew in so quickly that the children and the audience couldn’t even run for cover before a bolt of lightning sliced down through the porch roof and struck the keyboard. The keyboard lit up like a neon sign, then crumbled into a little pile of ashes. Shea and Marilyn stood over it, their hands still poised to play, their mouths forming round O’s of surprise.

  In the dream, I screamed. (I hope I didn’t really scream. That would be too, too embarrassing.) And then the storm blew away, and the concert began again, and Shea and Marilyn played air guitar instead of the keyboard. The audience thought the lightning had been a special effect, and they applauded loudly at the end of the concert and donated enough money for all the red T-shirts we needed.

  Maybe that wasn’t a nightmare after all.

  At any rate, I was relieved to wake up on Saturday and see that the sun was shining. (Frankly, I was relieved just to wake up.) The sky was a deep, clear blue, without so much as a hint of a cloud. Still, I jumped out of bed, ran to my phone, and dialed W-E-A-T-H-E-R. “Good morning,” said a tinny female voice. “Thank you for calling Weather. Here are today’s readings and forecasts. Highs in the low seventies, lows tonight in the high fifties. The current temperature is a pleasant sixty-two degrees.”

  “Is it going to RAIN?” I shouted.

  “Stay tuned for the remainder of the forecast following —”

  I held the phone in front of me and said, “What is this? The Telephone Company Variety Show?”

  I listened for another minute and the weatherwoman assured me that the day would be “brilliantly sunny.”

  “Thank you,” I said to her, and hung up.

  That was at eight-fifteen. At one o’clock, when my friends began to arrive, the sun really was brilliant.

  “Hey! What a great day!” called Kristy as she ran across the lawn.

  I was sitting on the front stoop. “I know. We are so lucky.”

  Mallory showed up then with three wicker baskets, and soon the others arrived (in cars) with wooden and metal folding chairs, which their parents drove over to the Newtons’.

  By one-thirty Jamie’s yard looked like … well, it looked like a yard with a bunch of chairs in it.

  Jamie dashed outside and tested every chair. “This one’s good, this one’s good,” he kept saying.

  Meanwhile, the members of the Baby-sitters Club ran an extension cord out of the Newtons’ house and connected it to the keyboard. Someone set up three small tables and Mallory placed a basket on each one.

  I propped up a sign by the garage. I had lettered it myself (but Stacey had given me a hand with the spelling). The sign said:

  ALL THE CHILDREN

  PREMIERE PERFORMANCE …

  HERE … TODAY!

  EVERYONE WELCOME

  ADMISSION FREE

  (DONATIONS ACCEPTED)

  “We’re here! We’re here!” cried a small voice.

  I looked away from the sign.

  Running up Jamie’s driveway, dressed in jeans and their red T-shirts, were Gabbie and Myriah Perkins.

  “Are you ready?” I asked them, smiling.

  “Very ready,” said Gabbie seriously.

  The members of All the Children began to arrive quickly after that. The ones who lived nearby walked to Jamie’s on their own. Others showed up accompanied by their parents, and we had to separate the moms and dads from their kids so we could organize the band.

  “Where’s Jackie?” I asked at ten minutes to two. “We need our emcee. What are we going to do if he doesn’t show up?”

  “Claud!” exclaimed Kristy, exasperated. “You sound like Mary Anne again.”

  “And I heard that again,” said Mary Anne. “Listen, you guys should be glad to have me around. I will personally do all your worrying for you. Claudia, you’re not taking full advantage of me.”

  “Hello, everybody!” called a familiar voice.

  “Jackie!” I replied, before I had even turned around. Then I ran to him and hugged him. “Oh, I’m so glad you’re here!”

  Jackie pulled away from me, pink-faced. “Do not hug me,” he hissed. “You are a girl!” He searched the faces in the yard. “I hope Nicky didn’t see that,” he added nervously.

  I grinned. “Oh, Jackie. Come on, let’s get organized. The show will start in ten minutes. And look how big our audience is.”

  * * *

  Jackie Rodowsky stood in front of the company of All the Children, who were arranged behind him in neat blue-jeaned, red-shirted groups. In front of him were grandparents and parents and children and neighbors and friends. Most of them were seated comfortably on blankets or beach towels. The others occupied the folding chairs.

  The audience looked expectantly at Jackie as he said, “Welcome, Lysol and germs. You know, a funny thing happened to me on my way over to this backyard.” Jackie glanced questioningly at me, and I waved my arms back and forth. I was sending him a gigantic NO signal.

  (Next to me, Kristy had buried her head in her hands and was muttering, “I don’t believe it. Who does he think he is? Johnny Carson?”)

  Luckily, Jackie got my message. He started over again. “Welcome, parents and friends, brothers and sisters, and grandparents and families,” he said. (I heaved a sigh. Kristy unburied her face.) “Today I am proud to present All the Children. This is our new band and this is our first concert and actually this was all my idea.”

  “Jackie! Jackie!” called Claire Pike from the oatmeal drum section. “You aren’t supposed to say that! You didn’t say it before!”

  Jackie ignored Claire. “We will be playing music from … from …”

  “From Fiddler on the Roof!” supplied Karen, and several people laughed.

  “From that ever-popular musical Fiddler on the Roof,” said Jackie. “And now for our first song, ‘Anatevka.’ Hit it, Shea and Marilyn.”

  Jackie ran to the kazoo players (without tripping). He did drop his kazoo twice before getting a solid grip on it, but I don’t think anyone noticed.

  When “Anatevka” came to an end, the audience clapped. Kristy’s big brothers even whistled. Then Shea and Marilyn played the opening notes of “If I Were a Rich Man.” This was a difficult piece. We had arranged the number so that the keyboard and violin and guitar often played while the other instruments were at rest.

  But Claire kept forgetting.

  The third time she beat her drum out of turn, Archie nudged her.

  The fourth time, Clai
re opened her mouth and —

  “She’s going to yell!” I whispered urgently to Mallory.

  Mal looked calm. “I don’t think so. I told her that if she had to yell, she should do it inside her head.”

  Sure enough, Claire closed her mouth a few moments later.

  The rest of the song, and the entire first portion of the concert, went quite well. Buddy Barrett sang once when everyone else was quiet, Charlotte forgot part of the music for “Tradition,” and Jackie dropped his kazoo several more times, but nobody cared much.

  Before the intermission, Jackie announced politely that there were three baskets for donations for the band T-shirts — but that was all he said. And when the concert ended he said, “Thank you for coming. I hope you enjoyed our show.”

  I wish someone had videotaped the concert. I really do. Especially the end. After Jackie thanked the audience, they clapped and clapped (and whistled) and clapped some more. Then a whole bunch of the parents stood up, ran to their kids, and hugged them and congratulated them.

  “I’d say this was a success,” I shouted to Stacey over the noise.

  Stacey grinned. “Definitely!”

  The yard seemed like a train station at rush hour; people running here and there, calling to one another. I looked from side to side, surveying the scene, and I saw two small figures sidling toward the gate in the Newtons’ fence. Caitlin and Mackie Lowell.

  Jessi was standing next to me and I elbowed her. “Look!” I exclaimed, pointing to the Lowell kids.

  Jessi looked just in time to see them run through the gate and down the sidewalk toward their street. “I don’t believe it,” she murmured. “I bet their parents don’t know they’re here.”

  “Probably not. You know what? When I first noticed them they looked kind of sad.” Wistful was the word I meant to use.

  “I bet they wish they were playing today. I think they wanted to be in the concert,” said Jessi.

  “Even with us around? The funny-looking ones.”

  “I guess so.”

  “Jessi,” I began thoughtfully, “do you think the Lowell kids really thought we were funny-looking or … or mean or stupid or whatever? Or were they just repeating things they heard their parents say?”