Switcharound

by Lois Lowry

  It was huge. At least three sizes too big for skinny J.P. But it had his name in mammoth white letters across the back. J. P. TATE, it said. And below that: COACH.

  "Meet your fate with Herbie Tate," Caroline murmured, but no one heard her.

  "I told you," J.P. said at last, miserably, "I won't play baseball. I told you that on the phone. And you promised."

  "Right," said Herbie Tate agreeably. "And you don't have to. But you're going to coach the Tater Chips."

  "The WHAT?" J.P. asked.

  "That's Poochie's baseball team. I've got them all outfitted—from the store, of course—in blue and white, just like you. And their first practice is at nine o'clock tomorrow morning. Twelve six-year-olds, down at the park."

  Lillian, who had been collecting the lemonade glasses and the empty popcorn bowl, looked up suddenly as if she had a new idea. "Caroline," she said, "the park is only a couple of blocks away. After their morning nap, you can push the twins down there in their carriage. Then you can walk home with J.P. and Poochie in time to fix lunch."

  "In time to fix lunch," Caroline repeated, because she couldn't think of anything else to say.

  "I'll be at my morning classes," Lillian explained cheerfully. "I have to leave here real early in the morning. But I have all the baby-sitting instructions typed out for you."

  J.P. was still standing in the center of the living room, with his thin, pale arms dangling from the enormous sleeves of the too-big blue shirt. "Twelve six-year-olds," he said in an I-don't-believe-this voice.

  "Now," said Herbie Tate, "Taps."' Caroline and J.P. watched in disbelief as he held up an imaginary bugle and blew the first few bars of "Taps": da da dum; da da duuummmm.

  As they trudged down the carpeted hallway to their rooms, Lillian called after them in a very loud whisper, "Don't wake Poochie or the twins!"

  J.P. turned to Caroline as he opened the door of his room. "This is all a bad dream, right?" he muttered. "We're in a nightmare."

  "Wrong," Caroline said. "We're in Des Moines."

  5

  It was early morning. There were strange sounds in the room, and for a moment Caroline couldn't remember where she was. She lay very still, with her eyes closed, and tried to think.

  In New York, early on a summer morning, the sounds would be: Clank, Crash, Whack (the trash men). And Honk, Beep, Slam (taxis). The shower, as her mother got ready to go to work. Maybe the burble, burble, burble of the coffee pot in the kitchen. The muted footsteps of the people in the upstairs apartment.

  Here—wherever she was—the sounds were quieter and absolutely unidentifiable. A rhythmic thump, thump, thump; a slurpy, sucking sound; and a giggle. A giggle very close to her face.

  Caroline opened her eyes. It all came back to her; she groaned, closed her eyes, and pulled the pillow over her head.

  Des Moines. And babies.

  A wet hand grabbed her hair and pulled. She couldn't escape. Reluctantly Caroline tossed the pillow aside and removed her hair carefully from the baby's chubby fingers. The baby giggled again, put the fist back into her own mouth, and made more slurping noises.

  The other baby kicked the sides of her crib with little bare feet: thump, thump, thump.

  Caroline looked gloomily from one to the other. On her left, in a pink crib, wearing a pink nightgown: that was Holly. On her right, in a yellow crib, wearing a yellow nightgown: that was Ivy. The colors were the way they told the identical babies apart. Not that Caroline cared.

  She yawned and tried to remember the instructions that Lillian had given her.

  Diapers. The giant box of disposable diapers was in the corner of the room. All the diapers were white. So it didn't matter who got which diaper, as long as they both got dry diapers in the morning.

  Caroline looked from one baby to the other. "Are you guys wet?" she asked.

  Are you guys wet. Is the Pope Catholic? Caroline thought. What a dumb question. They were so wet she could hear them squish when they moved.

  Sleepily she went to the diaper box, took out two diapers, and started in on the pink baby, Holly. Lillian had shown her, last night, how the diapers worked. But Holly kicked and giggled and grabbed at Caroline's hair.

  "Cut it out," Caroline said grouchily. Finally she got the diaper firmly attached and pulled Holly's little pink nightgown back down. She dropped the wet diaper into the plastic container Lillian had shown her and then changed the yellow baby, Ivy. It went a little more smoothly the second time.

  Caroline looked at her watch. Seven A.M. "I don't suppose you guys would like to go back to sleep for about an hour," she suggested. "This is my summer vacation."

  But the babies just giggled again, thumping their cribs. One of them, the yellow one, got up on her hands and knees and bounced. Then she fell forward, bumped her chin, and began to cry. The pink baby cried sympathetically.

  Caroline pulled on her bathrobe in disgust. "I just want you to know that I plan to remain childless, myself," she told the twins. They weren't paying any attention. They were wailing.

  One at a time she carried them to the kitchen and deposited them unceremoniously into the big playpen. "Orange juice," she said aloud. That was the second thing on the babies' morning schedule, right after the dry diapers. In the refrigerator were two small bottles of orange juice that Lillian had prepared the night before. One had a pink plastic cap and one had a yellow plastic cap.

  "It doesn't really matter," Lillian had explained to Caroline, "because the juice is just the same. But it's a good idea just to stay in the yellow/pink habit."

  "Here," Caroline said. She poked the yellow bottle into the yellow baby's mouth and waited while Ivy reached up and got a grip on it. Then she did the same with the pink bottle and the pink baby. The crying silenced. The bottles were like plugs.

  Now that the babies were quiet, absorbed with their orange juice, Caroline flipped the switch on the TV and sank onto the couch near the playpen. Half asleep, she stared at some ancient cartoons and wondered if she would remember how to make the babies' oatmeal. The little pink bowl and the little yellow bowl were set out on the counter, waiting.

  Poochie appeared, glanced at the twins in the playpen and then at Caroline, hitched up his drooping pajama pants, and went to the cupboard. Carefully he took out a bowl and a box of cereal. Then he went to the drawer for a spoon, to the cupboard for the sugar bowl, and to the refrigerator for a bottle of milk. He arranged everything precisely on the floor in front of the TV, plopped down, and put it all together for his breakfast.

  Well, thought Caroline, at least I don't have to feed him, too.

  She was beginning to feel more awake. In a minute she would start to make the babies' oatmeal. Their bottles were empty. Holly was whacking Ivy across the back with her empty bottle. Ivy wasn't paying any attention. She was trying to poke the nipple of hers into her ear.

  "How are you doing, Pooch? You all ready for baseball practice?" Caroline asked.

  Poochie grunted. He stirred his cereal and took another bite. "I hate baseball," he said with his mouth full. He stared at the cartoon on the television. "Roadrunner goes over the cliff," he said, "and lands on a train that's going past. I've seen this one a million times."

  "Me too. But it's all news on the other channels." Caroline began to warm some milk in a shallow pan on the stove. She added the oatmeal and stirred until it was the right consistency. Then she lifted the pink baby into the pink highchair and the yellow baby into the yellow highchair.

  "Yuck!" Caroline said. "They're wet again. I just changed them!"

  "Yeah," Poochie said matter-of-factly. "They're always wet."

  The babies began to bang the trays of their highchairs with their fists. Caroline used the pink spoon to put oatmeal from the pink bowl into the mouth of the pink twin. Then she switched over and used the yellow spoon to put oatmeal from the yellow bowl into the mouth of the yellow twin. When she looked back at the first highchair, she saw that there was oatmeal in the baby's sparse dark hair.

/>   "Hey!" she said. "How did that happen? I put it into her mouth and now it's in her hair!"

  Poochie glanced over. "You have to hold their hands while you feed them," he told her. "Or else they grab it out of their mouths and smear it around." He looked back at the cartoon on TV.

  He was right. The second baby, the yellow one, was happily smearing oatmeal into her hair, too.

  Caroline filled the pink spoon with oatmeal, moved in toward the pink highchair, and grabbed both of Holly's arms with her left hand. When she had the baby restrained, she poked the oatmeal into the mouth. Holly grinned, gummed the oatmeal, and swallowed. Then Caroline did the same thing with Ivy.

  "I think I'm getting the hang of it," she said to Poochie.

  "Yeah," Poochie replied, without looking away from the TV.

  "But I'm going to have to wash their hair," Caroline said. "Your mother didn't show me how."

  "Just sit them in the sink," Poochie said, "and spray them with the squirt thing. They really hate it. They scream."

  "Great." Caroline sighed and lunged at Holly with another spoonful of oatmeal.

  "I couldn't sleep with all the noise in here." J.P. stood in the kitchen doorway, half-asleep, wearing his enormous COACH T-shirt and his pajama bottoms. He yawned and looked around.

  One baby, Holly, freshly washed, with her hair still damp, wearing a dry diaper and a clean pink jumpsuit, was lying on her back in the playpen, happily drinking a bottle of milk.

  Caroline was on the floor, trying to fasten fresh yellow clothes onto a wiggling, squirming, damp, fussing Ivy, who was anxiously reaching for her bottle.

  Both highchairs were smeared with oatmeal.

  Caroline had oatmeal in her hair.

  There was water all over the kitchen floor, from the babies' baths.

  Poochie was still staring at the TV. He had turned up the volume to drown the babies' screaming and was sitting on the floor about ten inches from the set, munching on his third bowl of cereal.

  "What's for breakfast?" J.P. asked. "If I'm going to coach a stupid baseball team, I need a really big, nourishing breakfast."

  Poochie, without moving his eyes away from the TV, shoved the nearly empty box of dry cereal across the rug toward J.P.

  Caroline buttoned Ivy's final button, handed her the bottle of milk, and plopped her into the playpen beside her sister. She collapsed onto the couch. "I'm dead," she said. "It's only eight o'clock in the morning, and I'm dead. I am not cut out for motherhood. I don't even like those babies."

  J.P. peered into the playpen. "They're kind of cute," he said. Then he leaned over farther and wrinkled his nose. "But they smell sort of gross. Do they need their diapers changed?"

  6

  Caroline looked at her watch. Eleven A.M. This isn't fair, she thought; they only slept for an hour, and soon it will be time for their lunch, and then I'll have to bathe them again because they'll have squash and peas in their hair, and I don't even like babies, and I wanted to go to the primate seminar, and when the court said we'd have to go to Des Moines, the court probably didn't know about "The Holly and the Ivy"—

  Whoops. She'd almost tied a yellow sunbonnet around the head of the pink baby. She switched the little cotton hats, got them on the correct babies, and then lugged them one by one—they were heavy— outside to the wide carriage.

  The babies sat side by side, smiling and drooling. Carefully Caroline buckled the straps that held them in. She didn't like them, but she wasn't going to run the risk of dumping them on the sidewalk.

  She pushed the carriage along the wide tree-shaded sidewalk, toward the park where J.P. was coaching the Tater Chips. Again she noticed how different it was from New York. Every house was nicely painted, every yard was neatly mowed, every car looked clean. There were no taxi drivers yelling obscenities at each other the way there were at home. No drunks lying in doorways. No trash littering the sidewalks.

  This looked like—well, it looked like Leave It to Beaver's neighborhood. She almost expected Eddie Haskell to come through one of the front doors and say "Good morning" in his wonderfully fake Eddie Haskell voice.

  "Gee whiz! Gosh! Golly, hi, Eddie!" Caroline said aloud, in her Beaver Cleaver voice, and the twins chortled.

  As she approached the ball field, she could hear shouts. Even the babies heard the noise. They turned their heads, wide-eyed, listening.

  It was hard, at first, to see the ball team itself because of the dust rising around them. Caroline could see heads wearing blue baseball caps, but below the heads was nothing but swirling, tan dust. Out of the dust cloud came the shouts.

  She didn't try to get any closer. If she walked the babies into all that dust, she'd have to give them extra baths for sure.

  "J.P.!" she called. "It's Caroline! It's almost time to come home for lunch!"

  The tallest head emerged from the swirling dust, and attached to the head was J.P.'s lanky body in its oversized COACH shirt.

  "I said cut it out!" he yelled into the whirlwind of dust. Then he walked over to where Caroline waited with the carriage. He was filthy: sweaty, dusty, with his sneakers untied. Caroline had never seen her brother so disheveled before. In New York, J.P. always wore a tie and jacket to Computer Club.

  "What's going on?" Caroline asked, peering beyond J.P. to the mass of yelling little baseball players.

  J.P. scowled. "They're fighting," he said. "What time did practice start? Nine o'clock? They've been fighting since 9:08."

  "Why?"

  His shoulders slumped. "I don't know. I told one to practice batting, and he struck out, so he got mad at the pitcher. Another one was supposed to practice throwing, but he threw it the wrong way and hit the third baseman—or maybe I should say third baseperson, since it's a girl—so the third baseman, excuse me, I mean baseperson, punched him in the nose. Then the shortstop started to cry because he missed an infield fly, and two other kids laughed at him for crying, so they all started to fight. It's been that way all morning."

  "Well, you're supposed to keep things in order, J.P. That's what a coach is for," Caroline pointed out.

  J.P. gave her a long, disdainful look. Then he leaned over the carriage. "Hi, babies," he said and tickled Ivy under the chin. "You guys don't fight, do you?" The twins giggled and waved their arms.

  "Keep an eye on the babies for a minute, J.P.," Caroline said. She left him there with the carriage and walked over to the screaming mob of little ballplayers.

  "POOCHIE!" she yelled.

  Out of the mass emerged Poochie. His Tater Chips shirt was torn, and he was crying.

  "You're a mess, Pooch," Caroline said. "Straighten up. Dry your eyes." Poochie obeyed, wiping his eyes and his running nose on his arm.

  "Now tell me some of their names," she said.

  "Jason," Poochie sniffled.

  "JASON!" roared Caroline. "Stand over here!"

  A drippy-nosed redhead emerged from the fight and stood where she indicated.

  "Another name, Pooch."

  "Adam."

  "ADAM!" bellowed Caroline. "Front and center!"

  Another scowling Tater Chip emerged from the dusty throng.

  "Now Kristin," muttered Poochie.

  "KRISTIN!" In a very few minutes, the dust had settled, and Caroline was facing a sulking line of twelve six-year-olds. They were all sniffling. They sounded like a Dristan commercial. One little boy had a bloody nose, but it seemed to be subsiding. Two had torn their Tater Chips shirts, but not beyond repair.

  "Now," said Caroline—actually, she didn't say it; she barked it as if she were a drill sergeant—"what's going on here, people?"

  "Kristin hit me with a line drive I" someone called accusingly.

  "Eric cheated!" someone else yelled. "Eric is a big poophead!"

  "HOLD IT!" Caroline announced. "Shut up, everybody, and listen to me. You guys have to learn to follow orders. Do you know what ORDERS are?"

  They all stared at her sullenly. Noses dripped.

  "Orders," Caroline went on
, "are rules. RULES. Got that?"

  Twelve heads nodded.

  "And rules have to be obeyed. If you want to play ball, you have to obey the rules. Do you want to have a good ball team?"

  "Yeah," someone muttered.

  "I can't hear you," Caroline bellowed. "Do you want the Tater Chips to be a championship ball team?"

  "YEAH!" the team members all yelled.

  Caroline grinned. "You should try out for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir," she said. "Okay, men. And women. Tie your shoes. Wipe your noses. Be here tomorrow at nine o'clock sharp. DISMISSED!"

  Poochie walked beside her as she went back to the baby carriage. J.P. was leaning over, playing with the twins. "They need to be changed," he said, looking up, "and I think they're getting hungry. Do you know what you're supposed to give them for lunch?"

  "Of course I do," Caroline told him. She sighed and took the handle of the carriage. They started toward their father's house.

  "I can't stand that ball team," J.P. whispered, so that Poochie wouldn't hear.

  "And I can't stand these babies," Caroline whispered back.

  "You and I, Caroline, we really got stuck. You know what we ought to do?"

  "What?" Caroline asked.

  Her brother kicked a stone and glanced back at Poochie, who had lagged behind and was walking lopsided, with one foot on the sidewalk and one foot in the street. J.P. looked around to make sure no one was listening. Then he said, "We ought to think up a revenge."

  7

  "Hi there! Boy, am I exhausted! How was your day?" Lillian Tate asked as she came in from the driveway and put down her briefcase.

  She sounds exactly like Mom, Caroline thought. "It was okay," she told Lillian.

  J.P. didn't say anything.

  Poochie grunted without taking his eyes away from the television. He was sprawled on the floor in front of the set.

  In their playpen, the babies gurgled and kicked. They had just woken from their afternoon nap and had had their diapers changed. Now they were each happily chomping with their two teeth on special baby cookies. Caroline could see that already they had gluey cookie crumbs stuck to the creases in their fat little necks. They were going to need baths again before they went to bed.