Ann Martin - Mary Anne And Too Many Babies

We set off down the sidewalk. We passed an older woman who paused to smile at Ricky and Rose. Then we met up with a man who stopped to say, "Goodness. Ricky and Rose. You two are certainly getting big. Don't you make a fine-looking pair."

In response, Rose kicked her feet, and Ricky waved his arms around. They gurgled and grinned.

NA few minutes later, a couple of little girls

flew through the front door of a house and dashed across their lawn. "Hi, Rosie! Hi, Ricky!" they cried. Then they looked at me. "Lady, can we play with the twins, please?" asked the younger girl.

Lady? Sheesh, was I getting that old? I thought. But what I said was, "Sure, for a few minutes. I'm Mary Anne. I'm baby-sitting for the twins. What are your names?"

"Sara," said one.

"Bea," said the other.

The girls bent over the babies. They tickled them. They played peek-a-boo and pat-a-cake with them. They exclaimed over their outfits.

"I can't wait until I can baby-sit," said Bea.

"It's the best job in the world," I replied.

"Is it ever hard?" Sara asked.

"Hard? Nah," I said, completely forgetting about the times Jamie Newton refused to go to sleep, and the day Jenny Prezzioso ran a fever of 104° and I had to call an ambulance, and the many things that had been broken by Jackie Rodowsky, the Walking Disaster. "It's always fun," I added. "I can't wait until I have children of my own." Or better yet, a baby sister, I thought.

The twins were angels," I told Dawn later that afternoon. It was almost dinnertime. Dad and Sharon

had not yet returned from work. Dawn and I had finished tossing a salad and had just stuck a casserole in the oven. It was some vegetarian thing Sharon had concocted. I didn't ask what was in it. I have found that it's better not to know.

"Rose and Ricky are pretty sweet," agreed Dawn.

"They didn't even cry today. Not even when I changed them."

"Babies are wonderful."

"I know. I don't understand why Dad and Sharon won't have one. I thought that was supposed to be part of a marriage. Look how badly Watson and Kristy's mom wanted a baby after they got married."

"Would you want a little brother or a little sister?" asked Dawn.

I hesitated. "I know I'm supposed to say I don't care as long as the baby is healthy, but, well, I would sort of like another sister," I said. "She would be so much fun to dress up. We could buy her jewelry and barrettes and some of those headbands — you know, the stretchy ones."

Dawn sat in a kitchen chair and said dreamily, "What would you want to name our sister ... or brother?"

"I don't know about a brother, but I think a beautiful name for a girl is Tara. Or Charity.

Or Bea. Isn't Bea cute? I met a little girl today named Bea. Maybe Will would be nice for a boy."

"I think Dawn and Mary Anne are lovely names."

I jumped a mile, then whirled around to see who had spoken. It was Sharon. Dawn and I had been lost in some other world, and we hadn't heard our parents come home.

"Are you two talking about babies again?" asked Dad.

"Yes," I replied.

I couldn't bring myself to say anything more, but luckily Dawn jumped into the conversation. "We've noticed a pattern," she said. "People get married, then they have babies. Or they adopt babies or children."

"Not everyone," said Sharon. "Besides, between Richard and me we already have three children. And a cat."

"But don't the two of you want to have a baby together?" I asked.

"No," Sharon answered gently. "Not at this point in our lives."

"We're happy just the way we are," added Dad.

His voice carried that final note, the one that means, "End of discussion." The one that means, "I don't want to hear another word about it."

Dawn got the message, too. "Dinner's almost ready/' she said.

So we ate dinner. No one said anything further about babies. But I couldn't stop thinking about them. Especially what to name a baby. I doodled in the margin of my math homework that evening: Tara, Lizzie, Margaret, Tara, Adele, Tara, Frannie, Tara, Charity, Bea . . .

Chapter 5.

Then Logan and I had worked out our finances for Modern Living class, we'd drawn a bunch of pretty negative conclusions: apartment rents were much higher than we'd expected; food was expensive; everything was expensive. And we could not yet be financially independent.

"What are we supposed to say in class tomorrow?" Logan asked. "Somehow, I have the feeling that 'we can't afford anything' isn't what Mrs. Boy den wants to hear. We could have told her that without doing any homework."

So Logan and I had written a two-page paper outlining how much money we earn, comparing the rents of different-sized apartments, and trying to figure out what percent of someone's salary should be spent on rent alone, and therefore how much we would need to earn to afford even the tiniest little apartment.

We made four professional-looking graphs, too. (We used Magic Markers, colored dots, rulers, even a protractor.)

Guess what. The day those homework assignments were due, we never even discussed them. We walked into our Modern Living classroom to find Mrs. Boy den sitting at her desk, her hands clasped in front of her. On the desk was a carton of eggs, the lid open. Mrs. Boyden said nothing as we filed into the room.

Something was going to happen.

"Logan," I dared to whisper, "do you think Mrs. Boyden is angry at our class? Did we do something wrong?"

Logan shrugged. "Beats me."

To be on the safe side, I handed in our homework assignment. I laid it silently on the edge of our teacher's desk. The other kids watched, then did the same thing.

When we were all seated quietly, Mrs. Boyden got to her feet. She smiled. "Congratulations," she said. "You have all become parents."

"Huh?" said Shawna.

"You've been married for awhile," Mrs. Boyden continued, "and now you have had babies. Congratulations."

I noticed a lot of confused faces in the room.

Mrs. Boyden indicated the carton of eggs.

"Your children/' she said. "When I call your names, please come to the front of the room and receive your egg. Logan Bruno and Mary Anne Spier."

Feeling both confused and self-conscious, Logan and I made our way to Mrs. Boy den's desk. She held out an egg, which Logan accepted (because my hand was sort of shaking). When she didn't say anything else, we returned to our seats.

Pair by pair, the other kids were given eggs also. While Logan waited for everyone to sit down, he played with our egg. He placed it in the center of his desk, tapped it, sent it rolling, then caught it just before it sailed over the edge.

"Each of you now has a child," Mrs. Boyden announced, closing the lid on the carton. "The eggs are your children. For the next few weeks you are to treat the eggs as you would infants."

At that moment, Logan had just rolled our egg to the edge of his desk again. He caught it in a hurry. He handed it to me.

"Your babies," Mrs. Boyden was saying, "must be fed regularly, clothed, taken to the -doctor, and especially, watched over. Just as you would never leave a human infant alone, you must never leave your egg alone. Someone must be available to care for it at all times.

You will be in charge of your egg-children for a month. At the end of four weeks, a paper will be due. I will expect you to write about your experiences, any problems you encountered, the solutions to those problems, and so forth. We'll talk more about the papers later this week. By the way, as parents you are responsible for your children, starting right now. Of course, I won't be able to see that your babies are cared for when you're out of school, so everyone is on his or her honor this month. Every eighth-grader will become a parent to an egg, and I trust you to keep an eye on each other. Only you can make the honor system work."