Keep Out, Claudia!

  “Yeah, Mrs. Lowell thinks that,” said Stacey pointedly.

  “Sorry,” I muttered.

  “If it’s any consolation,” said Dawn, “I bet the Lowells don’t like Jews or Indians or Buddhists or Puerto Ricans or anyone who isn’t white and just like their perfect family.”

  “Well, I’m not sure it’s comforting to know I’m not the only one the Lowells hate —” I started to say.

  “Claud, they don’t hate you,” spoke up Jessi. “They just don’t understand you. That’s the way my dad explained it to me once.”

  “What do they have to understand?” I cried, still outraged. “I have two eyes, two ears, a nose, and a mouth, just like the Lowells. I live in a house like the Lowells’ house. I have a family like the Lowells. My parents go to work and my sister and I go to school and when we get hungry we eat and when we get tired we sleep and we laugh and cry and fall in love. Just like the Lowells.”

  “Same here,” said Jessi, “but my skin is black. And your eyes slant, Claud.”

  “So what?”

  “That’s why prejudice isn’t rational.”

  “It must be hard to grow old,” said Kristy.

  I looked at her in confusion. “What?”

  “Something Nannie said last night. She said she expected racism to decrease with each generation — or something like that — and that she’s disappointed because things aren’t getting better.”

  “Well, it does seem like things used to be worse,” said Mallory hesitantly. “For hundreds of years African-Americans were kept as slaves. And during the Second World War the Nazis killed Jews and Catholics. But things are better now … aren’t they?”

  “Ever heard of the skinheads?” asked Stacey. “They beat up on people who are black or middle eastern or — or lots of things. And they live right here in the United States. Today. Same with the KKK.”

  “The what?” I frowned.

  “The Ku Klux Klan,” Jessi supplied. “They still exist. And not just in the south. In the north. In cities. In lots of places.”

  Mary Anne’s eyes had filled with tears. “This is scary,” she whispered. “I wonder if those skinheads could get me for anything. I think maybe some of my ancestors were Russian. I wonder if that’s a problem.”

  “Ooh, now I understand what Nannie meant,” said Mallory. “I guess as long as there’s prejudice and misunderstanding, there’s trouble. And innocent people worry and get hurt.”

  “Or killed,” added Dawn.

  Shame, anger, now fear. My feelings were jumbled up.

  The phone rang then, and I jumped. I’d completely forgotten we were in a BSC meeting.

  Jessi picked up the receiver. “Hello, Baby-sitters Club.” She listened for a moment and her face became a mask. “Just a minute,” she said coldly. “You can talk to Kristy.” Jessi handed the phone across the room. “It’s Mrs. Lowell,” she said in a tone of voice I’d never heard her use. “I thought you might want to talk to her.”

  Kristy nodded. “Hello?” she said. And then, “I’ll call you back.”

  “Why are you going to call her back?” I exploded as Kristy hung up the phone. “I was waiting for you to blow her off.”

  “So was I,” replied Kristy, “but she took me by surprise. I couldn’t think of what to say. Listen to this. Mrs. Lowell actually had the nerve just now to ask for the blonde-haired, blue-eyed baby-sitter she’s heard about. Can you believe it? Who does she think we are? Who does she think I am? She knows I’m not blonde-haired and blue-eyed. Does she mean I’m not good enough to sit for her again?”

  “See, Claudia?” spoke up Mary Anne. “I guess I wasn’t such a hot baby-sitter after all. Mrs. Lowell isn’t asking for me again either. Now you don’t have to feel so bad.”

  Kristy was wearing a small smile. “You guys?” she said. “What are we going to do? When you think about it, this is sort of funny.”

  “Hysterical,” I said.

  Stacey, looking huffy, added, “I’m blonde-haired and blue-eyed and you wouldn’t catch me dead sitting for the Lowells.”

  “Ditto,” said Dawn.

  By then, Kristy was grinning. “Perfect. Okay, watch this,” she said. I couldn’t help smiling a little myself. Kristy was up to something, and I knew it would be good.

  Kristy phoned Mrs. Lowell back. “I’m sorry,” she told her. “We’re all out of blonde-haired, blue-eyed baby-sitters. And everyone else is busy. Oh, except for one of our associate members. His name is Logan.” Kristy paused, apparently because she’d been cut off by Mrs. Lowell. Then I heard her repeat, “Boys don’t baby-sit? Well, Logan does, but anyway, let me see. You know what, Mrs. Lowell? I might be able to sit after all. That is, if I’m not sitting for Emily Michelle. Did I tell you I have an adopted sister? She’s Vietnamese…. What? You don’t? … Yeah, well, I had a feeling. Later, Mrs. Lowell.” Kristy hung up the phone. “We just lost a sitting job,” she said.

  “Good,” I replied.

  “She heard about Logan and Emily and suddenly — like magic — she didn’t need a sitter anymore.”

  “What’s wrong with Logan?” asked Mary Anne.

  “He’s a boy,” said Kristy. “In Mrs. Lowell’s world boys don’t baby-sit. And I committed the crime of being a member of a family who adopted a Vietnamese child.” Kristy’s grin hadn’t faded yet. “Hey, Dawn, Stacey, you blonde-haired, blue-eyed people — I bet you guys wouldn’t have been good enough for Mrs. Lowell, either.”

  We were all starting to smile by then. “Why not?” asked Stacey.

  “Because your parents are …” — Kristy dropped her voice to a whisper — “… divorced.”

  “Ooh!” I cried. “I’m telling! I’m telling Mrs. Lowell.”

  “You know what?” said Mary Anne. “When you think about it, none of us would be good enough for the Lowells. Claud, you’re Japanese. Jessi, you’re African-American. Stacey, Dawn, and Kristy, your parents are divorced. I have a stepsister. Oh, and by the way, I made the mistake of mentioning that to the Lowell kids. And Mallory —”

  “Yeah?”

  “Your family is just too darn big. Caitlin thinks you’re Catholic. You know what else?” Mary Anne went on. “I feel sort of sorry for Mrs. Lowell.”

  “How sorry?” I asked.

  Mary Anne held her thumb an eighth of an inch from her finger. “This sorry,” she said, giggling.

  * * *

  Later that evening I was sitting in the kitchen with my father. He was making salad dressing. I was chopping vegetables. “Dad?” I said. “Did anybody ever hate you because you’re Japanese?”

  Dad’s back had been facing me. Now he turned away from the counter. “Why do you ask that, honey?”

  “I was just wondering.”

  “Did something happen?”

  “There’s this woman named Mrs. Lowell. She’s a baby-sitting client. She doesn’t want me to sit for her kids because I’m Asian. That’s never happened to me before. I mean, I don’t understand. What’s wrong with being Japanese?”

  “Nothing,” Dad answered. “And I’m sorry anyone made you feel you had to ask that question.”

  “Did you know,” said Janine, who apparently had been listening to our conversation from somewhere nearby, “that during World War Two thousands of Japanese were interned in concentration camps in the United States?”

  “In the United States?” I repeated, aghast. “There were concentration camps here in America?” My voice had grown shrill. “I thought the only concentration camps were the ones in Europe with those funny names. Treblinka and Dachau and — well, I don’t remember any others, but we learned about them in school this year. Our teacher didn’t tell us about death camps here, though, for Japanese people.”

  “They weren’t death camps,” said Janine. “But they were places where American Japanese were made to stay during the war.”

  “Because Japan and the U.S. were fighting on opposite sides?” I asked.

  Janine nodded. “So Japanese-Americans were
n’t trusted, and they were pulled out of their homes, away from their jobs and lives, and made to stay locked up in camps.”

  “But they hadn’t done anything wrong,” I protested. And then I remembered what Mary Anne had said: Prejudice isn’t rational. “How come people like Mrs. Lowell can’t look underneath other people’s skin? How come what’s on the outside matters so much?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Dad replied. “But I guess what’s really important is that you can look underneath.” My father smiled sadly at me.

  One Saturday, not long after Jackie had suggested putting on a show, we held a band rehearsal and nearly everyone came. All of us BSC members were there, and the kids just kept trickling into the Newtons’ yard, clutching their instruments.

  The Papadakis kids arrived with Karen, Andrew, and David Michael. Most of the kids from the neighborhood had shown up, as well as the younger brothers and sisters of the BSC members. I was standing in a noisy, happy crowd.

  “Should we start the rehearseal now?” I asked Kristy.

  “Let’s wait a few more minutes,” she answered. “If we do, maybe everybody will show up.”

  So we waited. Karen and her friends Nancy Dawes and Hannie Papadakis made up a dance to the “Little Girls” song. Then they surrounded Nicky Pike, hands on hips, singing, “Little girls! Little girls!” Nicky broke out of their circle and ran to David Michael. “Save me!” he cried.

  The drum players — and there were quite a few of them — grouped together near the swing set, beating away happily.

  Marilyn and Shea sat at the keyboard and played a duet.

  “Claudia?” said Jackie, tapping my arm. “Can I make an announcement?”

  “We’re waiting for a few more kids to arrive,” I told him.

  “But I can’t wait.”

  “He might as well go ahead,” Dawn whispered to me. “I think the only kids who aren’t here now are the Lowells.”

  I nodded. “Okay, Jackie. What’s your announcement?”

  “Shea, help me,” said Jackie. “Help me get their attention.”

  Shea crashed out a chord on the keyboard. The kids gathered around him.

  Jackie stood on an overturned plastic crate. “Everybody!” he said loudly. “I have an idea.”

  “Another one?” asked Vanessa Pike.

  “Yup. It’s about our show. I think we should play the songs from Fiddler on the Roof, not Annie.”

  “What’s Fiddler on the Roof?” asked Becca Ramsey.

  “I know!” cried Linny Papadakis. “We saw that show in Stamford.”

  It turned out that a lot of kids had. And many of them owned the music and were familiar with the songs. Still, not every kid knew what Jackie was talking about, so I said to him, “Tell them the story of Fiddler on the Roof.”

  “Okay,” answered Jackie, pleased to have been trusted with that task. “See, there’s this family with all these girls —”

  “More girls?” protested Nicky.

  “— living in Russia a long time ago,” Jackie continued. “And their father wants them to get married, only he wants this lady called a matchmaker to choose husbands for them. But the daughters fall in love with other men. Also, a war is coming, and the family is in trouble because they’re Jewish …” Jackie trailed off and glanced over his shoulder at me. “I’m not sure why that got them in trouble. I mean, why the soldiers didn’t like them. Well, anyway.” Jackie turned back to the kids. “And the soldiers want to make the family — and all the Jewish people in town — leave the place where they’ve been living. It’s called Anatevka. And they have to pack up their stuff and find another home and it’s very sad. But the songs are good and Shea knows how to play some of them and I think our program should be called Fiddler on the Roof instead of Annie,” Jackie finished up.

  The kids who had seen Fiddler on the Roof, which was more than half of them, agreed. Our entire program had changed.

  “Shea? What song do you and Jackie want to teach the kids first?” I asked.

  Shea considered this. “How about ‘Tradition’? I like that one. It has a good beat. And we know most of the words.”

  “Okay. Let’s start.”

  Soon after we began, the Lowell kids showed up. Mrs. Lowell was with them.

  “Tradishu-u-u-u-un! Tradition!” the singers were belting out.

  I glanced at Mrs. Lowell, then down at the ground. “Hi,” I said. I wondered what she saw when she looked at me. Slope-eyes? That was why I couldn’t look at her.

  “Hello,” replied Mrs. Lowell. She was gazing around the yard at the kids, who’d stopped playing and singing. Then she approached Dawn.

  Caitlin, Mackie, and Celeste ran to the children.

  “Are you one of the baby-sitters?” Mrs. Lowell asked Dawn. (She ignored the rest of us. You’d never have known that Mary Anne and Kristy and I had taken care of her kids.)

  “Yes,” Dawn answered warily.

  “Are you in charge here?”

  “Actually,” said Dawn, straightening her shoulders, “Claudia is in charge. The band was her idea.”

  “Oh.” Mrs. Lowell looked at me, then back at Dawn. She cleared her throat. “There certainly is an assortment of children here.”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Dawn. “All ages. The youngest one is —” Dawn stopped speaking. She realized that wasn’t what Mrs. Lowell had meant. She also realized Mrs. Lowell was right. The children were “assorted.” Becca is African-American. Linny and Hannie are Greek. Nancy Dawes is Jewish, but Dawn didn’t see how Mrs. Lowell could tell that just by looking at her. The Hsu boys are Asian. And did Mrs. Lowell know that the Rodowskys are Polish? Frankly, Dawn didn’t care. “I guess,” she said.

  “What songs are the children learning?” asked Mrs. Lowell.

  “They’re learning music from Fiddler on the Roof. They just —”

  “Fiddler on the Roof?” Mrs. Lowell’s jaw tightened. Her lips were pressed together so firmly they were turning white. “Caitlin? Celeste? Mackie? Come here, please. We’re going home.”

  “But Mom —” said Mackie.

  “I mean it. Right this instant.”

  “We want to play!” wailed Celeste, banging her sticks together.

  “You can play at home.”

  Mrs. Lowell meant business. Reluctantly her children made their way to her. Celeste’s lower lip was trembling. As they pushed past me, Mrs. Lowell made a face. It was the sort of face you’d make if you opened up a package of meat and discovered it was moldy.

  Stacey put her arm around me.

  I wanted to cry, but I looked at the grinning members of All the Children. They didn’t know what had happened and they were ready to play again. Shea started at the beginning of “Tradition” and worked slowly through the song while the children tried to memorize the melody.

  “What was that all about?” Mary Anne whispered to me.

  My friends and I stepped away and clustered together at the edge of the yard. Kristy was fuming. Her face was beet red.

  “I guess they didn’t like our choice of musicals,” said Jessi.

  “Because it’s about Russian Jews?” asked Mal.

  “That’s a bad combination for Mrs. Lowell,” I said. “Foreigners and people of a different religion.” I attempted a smile. Kristy just shook her head.

  “Hey, come on. You were the one who was able to laugh before,” I said to her.

  “I didn’t have to face Mrs. Lowell then,” Kristy answered. “I couldn’t see how much she dislikes me because my sister is from Vietnam. It’s a little different when you’re actually looking at her.”

  “What do you think we should do now?” asked Stacey.

  “What do you mean?” replied Dawn.

  “About our program.”

  “Go ahead with it.”

  “What if other parents don’t approve of the idea?”

  “What other parents? None of them is like Mrs. Lowell. And half of them have already taken their kids to see Fiddler on the Roof. We can
’t change the program because Mrs. Lowell doesn’t like it.”

  “I guess,” said Stacey. “But you know what? When you get right down to it, we’re just kids. We might be good baby-sitters —”

  “We are good baby-sitters,” interrupted Dawn.

  “— but we’re still just kids. And these kids, the ones in the band, are other people’s children. Not ours. Their parents think they know what’s best for them. So we have to go along with that.”

  Stacey was right. Who were we to think we could change the world?

  “Wait a sec, you guys!” said Dawn. “You are worrying about a problem we don’t even have. As I just said, the rest of the parents are nothing like Mrs. Lowell. As far as we know, they love the band and they love the songs their children are playing. So Caitlin and Celeste and Mackie can’t be part of the band anymore. That’s too bad. It really is. But there are a couple of dozen other kids” — Dawn spread her arms, indicating the crowd of children in the yard — “who still want to make music. Right?”

  “Right,” agreed Stacey. “Okay, Shea. Take it away!”

  My friends and I tried very hard to be cheerful after that, especially when we were around the kids. Still, I don’t know about the other BSC members, but when I was alone, I brooded. Not so much about the music our band was playing. It didn’t take me long to realize that not too many people would find fault with performing music from a show as long-running and as popular as Fiddler on the Roof. No, I brooded about my awful revelation. (By the way, Janine was the one who told me about revelations. She says a revelation is like a discovery, only more dramatic.)

  The thing is, I’d never thought of myself as different until I met Mrs. Lowell. I mean, everyone is unique. There is no other Claudia Lynn Kishi, no one who looks just like me, and loves art and junk food and is poor at school but good with kids, and so forth. I learned that when I was little enough to watch Sesame Street. What I hadn’t learned is that there are people — in my very own neighborhood — who don’t value me or find me worthwhile, just because my ancestors happen to have come from a particular country.