Ann Martin - Dawn On The Coast

Brenda pressed hard on her crayon to color in the giraffe she was drawing. Snap! It broke in half.

"My brown!" she said. "My brown broke!"

She grabbed the brown crayon out of her sister's box.

"Gimme!" Rosie shouted back.

"It's mine!" shouted Brenda.

Rosie began banging on the table. She had probably been waiting for just such an opportunity to make a lot of noise.

Now, Claudia is really the only sitter who has a lot of experience with the Feldman kids. A lot of experience, in this case, really means only two times. The first time she encountered this kind of problem, she ignored it and, when they didn't get any attention, the Feldman kids calmed down. The second time she sat for them, Kristy was along. Kristy had let out a sharp, shrill whistle and called the whole scene to a halt. Claudia didn't know how to whistle like Kristy, so she quietly took the brown crayon out of Brenda's hand and gave it back to Rosie.

"You know that's Rosie's crayon," she said gently.

Just then Mary Anne stepped in and took Brenda's hand. That's baby-sitting teamwork. "I need some help with the babies," she said.

"Brenda, you're a good helper. You come over and work with me."

Surprisingly, Brenda got up from the table and went to join Mary Anne. Claudia quieted Rosie and got her interested again in her picture. Rob looked over from the sidelines.

"I'm the oldest/' he muttered. "And I know most about babies."

Mary Anne looked at him curiously.

"Would you like to join us, too?" she asked.

Rob eyed the babies.

"I'm watching television," he said. He turned his attention back to the screen.

Mary Anne and Brenda started a little rolling game for the babies with a cloth ball, but when Brenda rolled it, the ball rolled over toward Rob and bumped his knee.

"Here you go, babies," he said. He rolled the ball gently back.

Mary Anne shot Claudia a look as if to say, "Did you just see what I saw? Is that really Rob Feldman, girl-hater, sitting over there?"

Claudia shrugged her shoulders in reply. Maybe Rob didn't consider babies to be girls yet. Or maybe he had just grown out of his nasty phase. (After all, it had been almost a full year since Claudia had sat for him.)

"Blast off!" he said suddenly, his eyes fixed on the screen. "Babies into space!" Since he

was watching a cowboy movie, no one knew quite what he meant.

The kids colored for awhile. At one point, Rosie started up her noise, banging her fists on the table, her feet on the floor, and loudly chanting a song she knew, but she was silenced by, of all people, Gabbie. When Rosie started her tirade, Gabbie put her hands over her ears and stared Rosie straight in the eye.

"You be quiet, Rosie Feldman," she said, very precisely. "You are really hurting my ears."

Rosie was so surprised at getting a reprimand from Gabbie that she screwed up her face and went back to her picture.

When it was time for dinner, Mary Anne volunteered to take Brenda and Myriah (the two oldest girls) to the kitchen to serve up the plates.

"What about the babies?" Claudia asked.

"Hmmm," said Mary Anne. "Maybe I could take them up and get them set up in their high chairs and the girls could serve the chili."

Rob swung around from the television.

"Little babies can't coordinate their hands with their eyes," he said. Then he looked at his cousin. "But you can, can't you, Lucy?"

Mary Anne shot Claudia another look. Well, it was worth a try, she thought.

"Rob," she asked, "why don't you come help me with the babies in the kitchen. Can you carry Lucy?"

Rob picked Lucy up and followed Mary Anne and the kitchen crew out of the playroom. He set Lucy into her high chair and strapped her in.

"How do you know so much about babies?" Mary Anne asked as she set the other baby down.

"Babies in Space," Rob said tersely.

"Is that a TV show?" Mary Anne asked.

"No," he said, as if everyone knew. "A book."

"Oh," said Mary Anne.

As it turned out, the book was a science fiction story about some scientists who send babies in a rocket to another planet. First, of course, they have to know everything about babies that they can, so the book is filled with little bits and snatches of scientific information about babies and how they develop.

Mary Anne opened a jar of strained pears, stuck a spoon in it, and set it down on Lucy's high-chair tray. Rob picked up the jar and started to feed her.

"When babies are nursing, they get immunities from their mothers," he said. He spooned some of the strained pear and aimed it high at

Lucy's little mouth. "Ready! Aim! Fire!" He made rocket noises as he dipped the spoon into Lucy's waiting mouth.

Mary Anne told me later that she thought, Well, you just never know. Rob Feldman, girl-hater/baby-lover. Now he seemed more like future baby-sitter material. Who could figure it? Baby-sitting is always a surprise.

Dinner went fairly smoothly. Claudia maneuvered the seating so Brenda wasn't sitting next to Rosie. (Those two were just a bad combination.) And after dinner, Rob helped Claudia get the babies off to bed.

When the parents got home, all the kids were in their pajamas and most were asleep. (Brenda kept waking up confused. "Where am I?") The Perkinses and the Feldmans picked up their pajama-ed and sleepy-eyed kids, covered them with raincoats, and ran them out to their cars.

"Oh," said Mrs. Newton, as she shook out her umbrella. "What a refreshing evening. And how did it go for you girls?"

Mary Anne grinned at Claudia.

"Surprisingly well," said Mary Anne.

Chapter 7.

Well, Thursday was what I would call a perfect day. (Perfect except for the strange feelings that were brewing inside me.) Dad volunteered to take me and Jeff, plus the members of the We Love Kids Club, plus a friend of Jeff's ... to the beach! (Brave Dad.) Everyone gathered at our house after breakfast in the morning, and it did take us awhile to get going.

I had to run back into the house to slip a cover-up over my bikini so I'd feel okay for the car ride. (What if we stopped at a store for drinks or something?) Sunny, Jill, and Maggie arrived in their bikinis and the sight was just too much for Jeff and his friend Luke. "Underwear!" they screamed. "The girls are going to the beach in their underwear!" (Ten-year-old boys will be ten-year-old boys, all right).

There we were, all dragging beach totes with suntan lotion and beach towels, and all wearing flip-flops. No question about where we were headed. I took a look at us as we gathered in the driveway and noticed that we were all blond. Jeff and I are white-blond, but everyone there was some kind of blond or other. Well, this really was a stereotypical California group.

We waited for Jeff to run back into the house (two times) for more comic books, I checked

to see that I had stuck my Walkman in my bag and, finally, we were off.

In the car, Jeff and Luke insisted on singing "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall."

"Dad," I said. "Make them stop."

"I think it would take a power greater than I," he said.

Luckily, the boys got bored after about 82 bottles.

When we got to the beach it really was not very crowded. People in California wait until it's really summer to go to the beach, and also, it was the middle of the week. Actually, it was beautiful beach weather. Not a cloud in that whole wide blue sky, and the sun was beating down, warming the sand, the ocean, and us!

I ran ahead and found us a big stretch of sand. (We needed a big space.) "Blonds over here!" I shouted and everyone ran to the spot and spread out their towels.

"You're right about blonds," said Dad. "We look like the Swedish delegation to the blond convention."

And the whole rest of the day, that's what he called us, "The Blond Convention." Of course, it didn't help when Jill and Maggie pulled out their Sun-Light and combed it through their hair.