Claudia And The First Thanksgiving Part 6

"Did you know that the Native Americans used to call cranberries 'ibimi,' which meant bitter berry?" I asked, imagining the sour taste of the cranberry eyes with the different flavors of the cookies. It didn't slow Claire down one bit. In fact, she tasted a cranberry and said, "It's not so bitter." Vanessa switched from cookies to place mats. Soon she and Sam were making up poems to go on the place mats. Jessi put Squirt and Emily Mich.e.l.le down for a nap. A moment later, the triplets dashed into the kitchen. "Our room is clean," announced Byron in an aggrieved voice. "And we still haven't found the turkey." "Is your room really clean?" asked Mal. "Did you make up your beds and dust off the shelves and sweep the floors?" The triplets disappeared again.

"You gave it away, Mal," said Jessi.

"Yup. But they'll make their beds and dust before they think about the broom." Over by the stove, Charlie snickered.

"Listen," commanded Vanessa. She held up a place mat with a turkey drawing. "I am not last, I am not least, I am the turkey of the feast." My sister burst out laughing. "That sounds like one of your puns, Claudia." I looked at her in surprise. Then I grinned.

"What are you laughing at?" Vanessa asked in surprise.

"Over to you, Janine," I said.

The triplets thundered back into the room. For a moment, as they all tried to wedge themselves in the door at once, I thought the door frame was going to come out. Then Adam popped free and shot across the kitchen and into the pantry.

"I won! I won!" he cried, emerging with the broom held aloft.

"Do we still have to sweep our room?" asked Byron, looking disgruntled.

"What do you think?" asked Mal.

"Can we play a game afterward?" "Sure," said Mal.

The door frame shuddered under the impact once more and then they were gone.

We played pin-the-tail-on-the-turkey when they came back. (I had drawn a big picture of a turkey, and we made tails out of construction paper.) Fortunately, one wall of the Pikes' family room is completely covered in cork, so it didn't matter where the thumbtacks went in the wall.

Abby and Anna had just taken the cookies out of the oven when a loud wail announced that Squirt was awake.

"I'll get him," I volunteered, heading for the bedroom where he'd been sleeping. I picked up Squirt, who was rubbing his eyes, and checked on Emily. She was still asleep, but then she'd had practice sleeping while a large family was in high gear around her.

"Can he have some juice now?" I asked Jessi, returning to the kitchen.

"Sure," she said.

We gave Squirt his juice. The chaos and noise continued around us.

And then Squirt, well, gave me the juice.

"Oops," I said. "His diaper needs changing." I stood up.

"You're it," said David Michael, whizzing by me and tagging Margo. "You're the turkey." "Don't run in the house," I said automatically.

"It's okay," said Margo. "We're playing Pilgrims chasing the turkey." If I were a turkey, I thought, I'd hate Thanksgiving.

"Okay, Squirt," I said. Over my shoulder I said, "I'm going to change Squirt." I heard a chair turn over in the Pikes' family room.

"Uh-oh," I said, heading toward the sound.

Just then Dawn walked through the door.

"Here," I said. "Can you take Squirt? He needs changing and I ... I ... I ..." My voice trailed off.

Then I shrieked so loudly that you could have heard me in the next state. "DAWN, DAWN, IT'S DAWN!" I flung myself at her, just managing to remember not to squash Squirt between us.

As we hugged, I heard Mary Anne's gasp. "It is you. Oh, Dawn." Well, from there we went into a BSC huddle, all hugging each other, and Dawn, and exclaiming, "I don't believe it!" and "How did you get here?" When Dawn broke free of the huddle, she turned to find herself face-to-face with Abby. "You're not Dawn Schafer, are you?" asked Abby with a perfectly straight face.

We started laughing and talking all over again, introducing Dawn and Abby, and trying to tell Dawn everything that had happened since we'd last seen her. As we talked, we surged back into the kitchen, and Dawn grabbed a chair at the kitchen table.

That's when I realized that I was still holding Squirt, who was taking things very calmly, and that a chair was still tipped over in the other room. Turning Squirt wet side out, I found the chair, righted it, and returned to the kitchen to find Dawn examining a cookie with cranberry eyes. "Very nice, Claire," she said. "Thank you. I'm going to save it." "Can I have the eyes, then?" asked Claire.

Laughing, Dawn gave Claire the two cranberry eyes.

I couldn't believe my own eyes. It really was Dawn - tanned, with her long, pale blonde hair and friendly blue eyes, looking as relaxed and at home and, well, as Dawn-like as ever. I had wondered what would happen when Dawn and Abby finally met, since they were so very, very different. But they were totally cool, as if they had been BSC members together.

We were all extremely excited. Mary Anne, naturally, was a little misty-eyed, too, as Dawn told us how much she'd missed us. "So I decided to come to Stoneybrook for Thanksgiving. Then I decided I wanted it to be a surprise. Everyone helped me keep it a secret, and here I am." "I don't believe it, I just don't believe it," said Mary Anne. "I am so, so glad you are here." "Me, too, and that's true," said Vanessa. "Want to see my place mats, Dawn?" "Come play with us," urged Adam.

"I better go change Squirt," I said.

"Hey, I can handle that," said Dawn with a grin, standing up. She took Squirt. "You are so cute." She wrinkled her nose. "And so wet." Holding Squirt, who had grabbed a fistful of Dawn's hair, she left the kitchen.

Mary Anne dabbed at her eyes.

Then Kristy clapped her hand to her forehead in mock dismay. "Dinner for thirty-seven! What are we going to do?" she cried.

Chapter 15.

It was a cold and gloomy day, a pre-snow brooding gray.

But who cared? It was Thanksgiving. No school for four whole days. And a Thanksgiving feast of turkey and crane berries (the Pilgrims really did call them that because of the shape of the branches of the cranberry bushes) and a whole lot more of my favorite foods, both traditional and nontraditional. No oysters, though.

I mentioned this to Janine as we rode to Kristy's house at noon.

"How can people eat oysters raw?" I asked. "It's enough to make you a vegetarian or something." "Some vegetarians say that their rule is never to eat anything that has a face," said Janine. She paused. "Do oysters have faces?" "Good one, Janine," I said. "You should ask Dawn. It sounds like her kind of question to me." Janine allowed herself a small smile. "Maybe I will," she said.

When we reached Kristy's, we unloaded a card table, extra chairs, napkins, and a pumpkin pie that my mom and dad had made the night before, after Mom had come home from work. (My dad had left work early and gone over to the Brewer-Thomases to help with the cooking and cleaning the day before.) Stacey and her mother were wrestling chairs through the front door, dodging Nannie, who was fastening a Thanksgiving display of multicolored corn to the front door.

I carried the pumpkin pie into the kitchen.

The kitchen was awesome. The smell of roasting turkey filled the air. I bent over and peered through the oven window at the ma.s.sive bird. But I couldn't help worrying that it wouldn't be big enough.

"Don't worry," Kristy a.s.sured me, when I asked her about this. "The Pikes are bringing another ten-ton turkey, too." "You sounded like Vanessa, on her way to a rhyme," Mal's voice said at that minute. We turned to see her step aside. Mr. Pike came into the kitchen, holding an enormous roasting pan with a huge tinfoil hump in the middle.

Watson cried, "Over here, over here," pointing to the only clear spot on the butcher-block counter.

Every available surface was covered: I could see pecan, pumpkin, and apple-cranberry pies, cranberry sauce, and a sweet potato ca.s.serole with little marshmallows on top. Plain potatoes were boiling on the stove to be made into mashed potatoes at the last minute. I saw string beans and carrots. Rolls stood on trays ready to be put into the oven. Kristy's mother was making gravy.

Dawn and Mary Anne arrived carrying a huge pot. "Pumpkin soup," Dawn announced. "It's very good for you. It's sweet, too, but that's its natural flavor. No added sugar." I hid a smile. Dawn might have moved back to California, but she hadn't changed.

I left them to help with the card tables in the library and den.

Abby, Anna, and Janine had begun setting the tables, with a little help from Claire.

"You turn the knife blade toward the plate, Claire," I heard Janine explain.

"Why?" asked Claire.

Abby and Anna looked up. I waited.

"Because," said Janine at last. "That's why." I couldn't help it. I started laughing.

Nannie and David Michael had made centerpieces for the fables, and I had written name cards in careful calligraphy for each place. We hadn't wanted a roomful of kids eating Thanksgiving dinner completely unsupervised. After all, the kids in our play had managed to start a sword fight with cardboard turkey legs. There was some argument about who was going to sit where, but everything turned out okay.

Mr. Ramsey had brought his video camera. When the tables were set, he went from room to room filming them. We'd put gaily patterned tablecloths on the tables, and the place mats Vanessa and Sam had made were bright splashes of color at each chair.

In the dining room, I could hear our parents talking and laughing as they added leaves to the big formal table and spread a snowy white tablecloth across it. Watson took silver from a sideboard and gave it to Dawn's mother, who began setting the places.

"Uh, the, um, knives face in toward the plate," I heard Watson say.

Although thirty-seven people including twenty-three kids were there, everyone was on their best behavior. For the kids, it meant trying hard to keep their excitement under control. We burned off some of their energy putting up the decorations we'd made during our marathon baby-sitting job the day before.

At two o'clock, we sat down to Thanksgiving dinner.

What can I say? Most of my favorite people, and most of my favorite foods, were gathered together under one roof. We set up the food buffet style, and let everyone serve themselves - although some of the younger kids needed a little help. I was practically staggering under the weight of my plate as I went to my seat, at a card table in the library. Stacey waved to me from another card table.

I looked around at my dining companions: Margo, David Michael, and Sam. "Hi," I said, "Happy Thanksgiving, guys." It was a feast of n.o.ble proportions. (That was a line from both versions of the Thanksgiving play.) We ate and ate, and talked and talked. Then we took a break from eating so we would have room for dessert.

We sang Thanksgiving songs and Christmas songs and silly songs.

I ate three kinds of pie and ice cream. I would have eaten more, if my stomach had had the n.o.ble proportions to match the feast. But I still managed to do quite a bit of picking and snacking during our cleanup.

By late afternoon, we were all moving in super-slow motion, even Dawn, who was still on West Coast time, which meant it felt three hours earlier to her. Everyone began to get ready to go home.

The day had gone so fast! I didn't want it to end.

Suddenly I heard Vanessa shout, "Oh, oh, oh, it's snoooow!" We hurried to the door. Fat white flakes of snow were twirling gently down through the darkening air. No matter how many times I see snow, it always amazes me. I put my arms out and let the flakes tickle them.

Then I s.h.i.+vered. "It's cold," I said.

We loaded up the car. I turned to look at the others - Kristy's family gathered in the doorway, waving; the Pikes, bursting out of the Pikemobile; Dawn and Mary Anne sitting happily next to one another in their backseat; Abby and Anna and their mother heading for the sidewalk that led toward their house; Stacey and her mom getting into their car; Jessi rocking Squirt gently in her arms as she talked to Mal, who was about to join her family.

I was suddenly so happy that I couldn't stand it, so happy I thought I would burst. I rolled down the window. Leaning as far out as I could, I shouted, for all my friends and all the world to hear: "Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Happy Thanksgiving!" What else could I say about the best Thanksgiving ever?

About the Author ANN MATTHEWS MARTIN was born on August 12, 1955. She grew up in Princeton, NJ, with her parents and her younger sister, Jane.

Although Ann used to be a teacher and then an editor of children's books, she's now a full-time writer. She gets the ideas for her books from many different places. Some are based on personal experiences. Others are based on childhood memories and feelings. Many are written about contemporary problems or events.

All of Ann's characters, even the members of the Baby-sitters Club, are made up. (So is Stoneybrook.) But many of her characters are based on real people. Sometimes Ann names her characters after people she knows, other times she chooses names she likes.

In addition to the Baby-sitters Club books, Ann Martin has written many other books for children. Her favorite is Ten Kids, No Pets because she loves big families and she loves animals. Her favorite Baby-sitters Club book is Kristy's Big Day. (By the way, Kristy is her favorite baby-sitter!) Ann M. Martin now lives in New York. She has two cats, Mouse and Rosie (who's a boy, but that's a long story). Her hobbies are reading, sewing, and needlework - especially making clothes for children.