Claudia's Book Read online

  Kristy knelt down and drew the fingers of both her hands through the cement.

  Mary Anne stood there for a moment, looking worried. But she could not resist it. She leaned over and stuck her fingers into the cement and made four deep holes. “Euuuuw,” she said, giggling and pulling her fingers out.

  In no time at all we’d decorated a huge section of sidewalk with our “art.” About the only thing we didn’t do was walk in the wet cement. We were afraid our shoes would stick in it, and we didn’t think to take them off.

  We’d completely forgotten about our sandbox and about Mimi when a soft voice said, “Claudia! What are you doing?”

  We all jumped about a mile.

  I turned to face Mimi. It was hard to tell what she was thinking. I stared down at the sidewalk. There was barely a smooth square inch on it. Uh-oh.

  “We’re making pictures,” I said at last.

  “I wrote my name,” said Kristy, pointing at the giant letters at the end of the sidewalk.

  Mary Anne’s face got very red. She said, “I drew on the sidewalk, too.”

  Mimi looked at us. She looked at the sidewalk. We knew we were in trouble.

  “Did you really think this was the place to draw pictures?” Mimi asked me.

  I hung my head. “No,” I confessed. “I’m sorry.”

  “Me too,” said Kristy.

  “Me too,” said Mary Anne.

  Mimi thought for a moment. Then she nodded. She took us in the house and washed our hands. Then she made a phone call.

  A little while later (when we were in the backyard again, in the sandbox, at a safe distance from our “art”) one of the workmen returned and smoothed over the sidewalk. When he finished, he called, “All done.” He looked at us and grinned.

  “I thank you,” said Mimi in her soft, polite voice. She led us to the end of the walkway by the back door steps. “Now,” she said, “you may each lean over and put your hands in the cement, here.”

  We stood there for a moment in shock. We couldn’t believe we were going to be allowed to play in the cement again.

  Mimi smiled and nodded. She leaned over and spread her hands out and held them just above the surface of the wet cement. “Like this,” she said. “And press down carefully.”

  “Wow,” said Kristy. She leaned over and pressed her hands into the wet cement. Giggling, Mary Anne and I followed suit.

  “Now lift your hands straight up,” said Mimi.

  We lifted our hands up. When we did, we left a neat row of hand prints, six in all, along one side of the walk.

  “Now you can see how you grow,” said Mimi, smiling.

  And we did. For a long time after the walkway dried, we put our hands in the prints almost every day to see if we were growing. When Kristy’s little brother David Michael turned four, she brought him over and let him fit his hands into the prints.

  Mary Anne and Kristy have both moved to new neighborhoods. We’ve all grown up. But I still stop when I go down the back walk and check the prints. I can’t believe I was ever that little.

  It was a pretty cool day.

  I liked kindergarten. I liked it the first day I saw it. I wasn’t scared the way some kids were. (Cokie Mason put her hands on her hips and stomped her foot and told her father to “Stay right where you are!” when he started to leave her. I remember I was completely shocked that a little kid could talk to a grown-up like that.)

  But Mimi had brought me to school the first day (Mr. Spier had given us a ride), and Kristy and her mom were there when we arrived, so it wasn’t any big deal. Kristy, I remember, looked around the room, folded her arms, and said, “Not bad.” Mary Anne looked a little teary-eyed when her father started to leave, but before she could work up a cry, Kristy was saying, “The teacher said we get our own cubbies. We better go pick out the good ones.” Kristy had already scoped out the cubby situation (her older brothers had explained about them to her) and she took us straight to the cubbies near the windows and told us they were the best. By the time she’d showed us how to put our coats and lunches and stuff in our cubbies, our parents had left and Mrs. Kushel was calling us to the middle of the room for a hello song.

  We had a big open classroom that was lined with windows on one side, the wall of cubbies across the back of the room. We had a bulletin board above the cubbies and on the other side of the room across from the cubbies were low bookshelves and cabinets with more bulletin boards above that. At the front of the room was a big blackboard and the teacher’s desk.

  My cubby was next to Kristy’s, and Mary Anne’s was on the other side. We’d been the first to choose our cubbies, and all the girls had picked out cubbies on one side, while the boys had taken the cubbies on the other side. We had an aquarium and a terrarium and a giant jigsaw puzzle on a low table in one corner of the room that we could work on in free time. (I was very good at the jigsaw puzzle. I like to match the colors and make the pictures.)

  So I was pretty cool about my first day of school, thanks to Kristy and Mary Anne. And I liked the other kids, or most of them anyway. Alan Gray and Pete Black were in my class, too, along with Cokie Mason, and we’re still together in eighth grade at SMS.

  You know, it’s funny, but I don’t remember how any of us looked. I mean, in my mind, we all looked just the same then as we do now. And some of us are pretty much the same, come to think of it. Alan learned that trick of rolling his eyes all the way back in his head so just the whites showed, back when we were in kindergarten. He still does it now and it still grosses me out.

  But the class picture of my kindergarten shows something very, very different! We were all either cute or goofy-looking. (In that picture, my hair was in pigtails and I was wearing double ribbons on each pigtail — four colors in all — to match the flowered blouse I was wearing with my purple Oshkosh overalls. I think I had purple sneakers, too.)

  Kindergarten was cool, though. Mrs. Kushel, our teacher, seemed really old to me. She had blonde hair, dangling down in tight ringlets and tended to shout at our class. I didn’t like that, but since I didn’t usually get into trouble the way Alan or Kristy did (except that I had a hard time keeping still and paying attention to anything for very long), it wasn’t too bad. And we had art class. The art teacher, Miss Packett, wasn’t very good (I know now) not only because she played favorites, but because her favorite art projects were dull: coloring in the lines, making sure the colors matched. She lined up a row of apples once — including a green apple — and we were supposed to color them as close to the colors we saw as possible. But I got carried away and made a row of apples in all the primary colors. Miss Packett didn’t like that one bit. But all she said was, “Very interesting, Claudia.”

  Janine, of course, had aced kindergarten and was even doing some fourth-grade stuff although she was only in third grade. I walked to school every morning with Kristy and Mary Anne. (My job was to go get them first). We would return to my house where Janine would be waiting to walk us to school. If it was a nice day, she’d wait outside on the front steps, reading. If it was a rainy or cold or snowy day, she’d wait just inside the door — reading. Then she’d walk behind us all the way to school. Guess what she was doing while she was walking? Reading.

  That was okay with us. We had plenty to talk about: whether trading lunches (Mary Anne’s father always called after her as she was leaving not to trade her lunch at school) meant the whole lunch or if Mary Anne could swap an apple for a banana with me or for an orange with Kristy; whether Alan Gray really had seen a giant boa constrictor in the bushes at the edge of the playground … you get the idea.

  And that June, during the very last week of kindergarten, I had something really, really important to talk about: my sixth birthday party. It was less than a month away and my parents had told me I could have a big party and invite the whole kindergarten class. I was very excited. Plus, I had talked them into letting me help plan it, and they had agreed and had let me choose the theme for it.

  I had chose
n the circus. I adored circuses back then. I wanted to be a lion tamer. I loved how brave they looked and I loved the cool clothes they wore.

  So we were going to serve hot dogs and popcorn and peanuts and ice cream just like at the circus, and Mimi had helped me make these neat invitations that looked like tickets to the circus and said, “Admit One Guest to Claudia’s Birthday Circus Celebration.” Underneath it explained that I was having a circus-themed birthday party and when and where and my phone number to RSVP, which I thought was really grown-up when I found out the letters stood for French words that meant to please call and say whether you were coming or not.

  “And guess what,” I said dramatically, as we were walking to kindergarten on the very last day of school. I’d been saying that about a million times a day for the past few days, but my friends didn’t let me down.

  “What?” asked Kristy and Mary Anne together.

  “My father’s going to get real clown face paint and paint our faces like clowns!”

  “Ooooh,” said Mary Anne. Then she frowned worriedly. “What if my father won’t let me because it’s messy?”

  That stopped me for a moment. Then I said, “Tell him you need to wear old clothes so that if you do get clown makeup on them, it’ll be okay.”

  “Also, you can put aprons over everybody before they get their faces painted, Claudia,” said Kristy (a world-class organizer even then). “Ask your mom or dad for one of their old kitchen aprons.”

  “That’s a great idea,” I said admiringly. I reached inside my bookbag and patted the stack of invitations lovingly. I could hardly wait to give them out. My parents had been planning to mail them, but I’d talked them into letting me hand them out at school, so I’d be sure everyone got one.

  But it was hard to find just the right time to do it on the last day of school. Mrs. Kushel started the class by letting people talk about what they were going to do over summer vacation. Then our class gave Mrs. Kushel a big thank-you card that we’d made in art class with Miss Packett’s help. (She’d drawn a picture of the school with the words “SES Kindergarten Class” and the date on the outside.) We all got to color a little of it — in the lines and in the right colors, of course. Inside we’d printed our names.

  Mrs. Kushel thanked us calmly, which was pretty amazing because everyone was mega-excited and racing around. Kristy and Cokie Mason had a fight on the playground, I remember, because Cokie thought Kristy had deliberately tripped her while they were jumping rope and Kristy said Cokie was just clumsy. And Alan had put Vaseline on his hand and kept shaking hands with everybody and making them shriek until Mrs. Kushel caught him (actually, Alan asked her to shake hands and she did). It was pretty wild.

  Then after lunch (when Mrs. Kushel handed out cupcakes to each of us for dessert) we held an awards ceremony. Kids got awards for all kinds of things: neatest cubby and best attendance and never being late, and the kids who didn’t get those kinds of awards got good citizenship awards (I got one of those). Finally, at the very end of the day we had to clean out our cubbies.

  And then suddenly the last bell rang. I was crouched in front of my cubby, holding my invitations, and I jumped straight up in the air.

  “Wait a minute!” I shouted. I gave a handful of invitations to Kristy and a handful of them to Mary Anne. “Quick,” I told them. “Give everyone an invitation.”

  Kristy raced to the door of the classroom with hers and started giving them to the kids who were already headed for the door. I ran around the room, handing mine out.

  Alan took his and said, “What’s this, a report card?”

  “No, silly,” I told him. “It’s an invitation to my birthday party in July. It’s a circus party.”

  “Neat,” said Alan, cramming the card into his backpack without even opening it.

  Cokie looked at hers and said, “We’re going to the beach. All summer. Do you want your invitation back?”

  “You can keep it.” I wasn’t too disappointed that Cokie couldn’t come.

  I ended up with two invitations left over, but then I remembered that we’d made extra ones and that I was going to give one to my teacher, too.

  I grabbed my bookbag out of my cubby and joined Mary Anne and Kristy by the door.

  “Here,” I said to Mrs. Kushel.

  “Another card?” she said. “How nice, Claudia … ”

  At that moment, a chair crashed over and Mrs. Kushel had to stop Alan and Pete from playing tag.

  “Are you coming or not?” said a bored voice, and I looked up to see Janine waiting for us in the hall.

  “Did you guys hand out all your invitations?” I asked Mary Anne and Kristy worriedly. “Do you think Mrs. Kushel will read hers?”

  “Of course she will,” said Kristy. “I handed out all of mine.”

  “All but one,” said Mary Anne. “And I might have given someone an invitation twice.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “There were extras.”

  “Claudia!” said Janine.

  “Okay, okay.” We started walking down the hall. I leaned over to my friends and whispered, “My sister acts just like Mrs. Kushel.”

  We looked back at my sister. She’d stuck a pencil behind her ear and was twirling her hair into ringlets like Mrs. Kushel.

  We burst out laughing. Kindergarten was over and we were practically grown-up first-graders and summer was going to be great — especially my birthday party.

  My mom was worried, though. I realize that, now that I’m older. She asked me several times, as the day of my birthday party drew closer, if I was sure I had given out all the invitations.

  “Of course I’m sure,” I said. I didn’t even think about it. The summer had been endless so far. Wasn’t my birthday ever going to come?

  “No one’s called to say whether they’re coming,” Mom said.

  “Kristy and Mary Anne have,” I replied. “And I told you that Cokie can’t come.” I stopped and frowned, remembering what had happened when I’d given my invitation to my teacher. “And I don’t think Mrs. Kushel is coming, either.”

  My mother looked thoughtful. “Well, it is summer,” said my mother. “I know people have all kinds of plans. And Mimi could have forgotten to write RSVP on the invitations, or at least on some of them … ”

  I wasn’t listening. If I had been, I might have told my mom that I clearly recalled that “RSVP” — looking very cool and sophisticated and grown-up — was written across the bottom of every invitation. But I had already spun away.

  “You won’t forget to order the cake?” I demanded breathlessly. It was a special ice-cream birthday cake from King Kone’s, a store in Stoneybrook that specialized in ice-cream cakes made to order. Mine was going to be a circus cake, with circus decorations on top.

  “I won’t forget,” my mother promised.

  And she didn’t. She let me go with her the morning of the party to pick up the cake. It was beautiful. Like the Calder circus mobile at the Whitney Museum in New York. And right in the middle of the cake was a lion tamer with long black hair — me!

  I was so excited. My mother smiled, and the guy behind the counter said, “Happy birthday, circus girl — or do I mean happy circus, birthday girl?” Then he reminded my mom to let the cake thaw out in the refrigerator and not to wait too long to serve it or it would begin to melt.

  When we got back home I raced upstairs to change into my party outfit. Even though it was summer, I was wearing black tights and my tall black rainboots and my red jacket with the brass buttons. I had a T-shirt with a lion’s head painted on the front and I wore that under the jacket. I thought it made me look like a lion tamer.

  I was standing in front of the mirror admiring my outfit when Janine stopped in the doorway of my room. She was wearing a Laura Ashely flowered dress and white tights and flats. She frowned. “That’s not a birthday outfit,” she said.

  “It is for my birthday,” I replied firmly.

  Janine looked as if she were about to say more, but then Mimi
appeared behind her. “You look very nice, my granddaughters,” she said. She smiled. “Now we must help your parents finish making the house ready for the party.”

  We went downstairs and I stopped in the door of the dining room. My mouth dropped open. It had been transformed.

  Crepe paper streamers of every color had been tied to the hanging light above the dining room table, then stretched out to the corners of the room, turning it into a sort of tent. Circus paper plates were laid out on a circus paper tablecloth. My father was arranging forks and spoons and circus napkins on the table.

  My mother bustled in carrying a rolled-up piece of paper and a shoebox. I recognized it immediately. We were going to play a circus version of pin the tail on the donkey called “pin the nose on the clown.” I’d helped my mom cut out the round red clown noses to go on the picture of the laughing clown’s face my mom had found in a poster shop.

  “Good. There you are,” she said. She looked at her watch. “The guests will be here any minute. Janine, why don’t you put this poster up outside on the back wall of the garage.”

  “Claudia and I will get the cups for the punch,” said Mimi.

  “The three-ring punch,” I said (Mom had cut rings of orange, lemon, and lime to float in the bright red punch).

  “The first game I’m going to play is circus Simon says,” I told Mimi excitedly as we set out the punch bowl and cups. “The things I will say will be circus things. You know, ‘circus Simon says, roar like a lion.’ ”

  Mimi nodded. The doorbell rang.

  “I’ll get it!” I shrieked and raced to the front door.

  It was Kristy and Mary Anne. They were in their party clothes. That meant that Mary Anne was wearing a pink flowered dress with pink tights and flat black patent leather shoes. Her hair was fixed in pigtails and tied with pink bows. She was holding a neatly wrapped package.