Ramona Quimby, Age 8 Page 6

  Beezus arrived first with an armload of books that she dropped on a chair. “Homework!” she said and groaned. Now that she was in junior high school, she was always talking about all the work she had to do, as if Ramona did nothing in school. “How do you feel?” she finally got around to asking.

  “Sick,” said Ramona in a faint voice, “but my whole class wrote to me.”

  Beezus glanced at the sheaf of letters. “They copied them off the blackboard,” she said.

  “Writing a whole letter in cursive is hard work for lots of people when they are in the third grade.” Ramona was hurt at having her letters belittled. She pushed Picky-picky off the couch so she could stretch her legs. The television droned on and on.

  “I wonder what’s keeping your father,” remarked Mrs. Quimby, looking out the front window.

  Ramona knew why her father was late, but she did not say so. He was buying her a little present because she was sick. She could hardly wait. “My class is giving book reports,” she informed Beezus, so her sister would know she had schoolwork to do too. “We have to pretend to sell a book to someone.”

  “We did that a couple of times,” said Beezus. “Teachers always tell you not to tell the whole story, and half the kids finish by saying, ‘If you want to know what happens next, read the book,’ and somebody always says, ‘Read this book, or I’ll punch you in the nose.’”

  Ramona knew who would say that in her class. Yard Ape, that was who.

  “Here he comes now,” said Mrs. Quimby, and she hurried to open the door for Ramona’s father, who kissed her as he entered.

  “Where’s the car?” she asked.

  “Bad news.” Mr. Quimby sounded tired. “It has to have a new transmission.”

  “Oh, no!” Mrs. Quimby was shocked. “How much is that going to cost?”

  Mr. Quimby looked grim. “Plenty. More than we can afford.”

  “We’ll have to afford it somehow,” said Mrs. Quimby. “We can’t manage without a car.”

  “The transmission people are letting us pay it off in installments,” he explained, “and I’ll manage to get in some more hours as Santa’s Little Helper at the warehouse.”

  “I wish there were some other way….” Mrs. Quimby looked sad as she went into the kitchen to attend to supper.

  Only then did Mr. Quimby turn his attention to Ramona. “How’s my little punkin?” he asked.

  “Sick.” Ramona forgot to look pitiful, she was so disappointed that her father had not brought her a present.

  “Cheer up,” Mr. Quimby half smiled. “At least you don’t need a new transmission, and you’ll feel better tomorrow.”

  “What’s a transmission?” asked Ramona.

  “That’s what makes the car go,” explained her father.

  “Oh,” said Ramona. Then to show her father that her life was not so easy, she added, “I have to give a book report at school.”

  “Well, make it interesting,” said Mr. Quimby, as he went off to wash for supper.

  Ramona knew her father was worried, but she could not help thinking he might have felt sorrier for his sick little girl. Anyone would think he loved the car more. She lay back genuinely weak, exhausted by television, and sorry her father would have to work more hours in the frozen-food warehouse where, no matter how many pairs of woolen socks he wore, his feet were always cold and he sometimes had to go outside until feeling came back into his cheeks.

  When her mother, after serving the rest of the family, said the time had come for Ramona to get into her own bed and have a little supper on a tray, she was ready to go. The thought that her mother did not think she was a nuisance comforted her.

  8

  Ramona’s Book Report

  The Quimby family was full of worries. The parents were worried about managing without a car while a new transmission was installed and even more worried about paying for it. Beezus was worried about a party she had been invited to, because boys had also been invited. She was afraid it would turn out to be a dancing party, and she felt silly trying to dance. Besides, eighth-grade boys acted like a bunch of little kids at parties. Ramona, still feeling weak, moped around the house for another day worrying about her book report. If she made it interesting, Mrs. Whaley would think she was showing off. If she did not make it interesting, her teacher would not like it.

  On top of everything, Beezus happened to look at her father’s head as he bent over his books at the dining-room table that evening. “Daddy, you’re getting thin on top!” she cried out, shocked.

  Ramona rushed to look. “Just a little thin,” she said, because she did not want her father’s feelings hurt. “You aren’t bald yet.”

  Mrs. Quimby also examined the top of her husband’s head. “It is a little thin,” she agreed, and kissed the spot. “Never mind. I found a gray hair last week.”

  “What is this? A conference about my hair?” asked Mr. Quimby, and he grabbed his wife around the waist. “Don’t worry,” he told her. “I’ll still love you when you’re old and gray.”

  “Thanks a lot,” said Mrs. Quimby, not wanting to think of herself as old and gray. They both laughed. Mr. Quimby released his wife and gave her a playful slap on the bottom, an act that amused and shocked his daughters.

  Ramona had two feelings about this conversation. She did not want her father’s hair to grow thin or her mother’s hair to grow gray. She wanted her parents to stay exactly as they were for ever and ever. But oh, how good it was to see them be so affectionate with one another. She knew her mother and father loved one another, but sometimes, when they were tired and hurried, or when they had long, serious conversations after the girls had gone to bed, she wondered and worried, because she knew children whose parents had stopped loving one another. Now she knew everything was all right.

  Suddenly Ramona felt so happy that a book report did not seem so difficult after all—if she could think of a way to make it interesting.

  The book, The Left-Behind Cat, which Mrs. Whaley had sent home for Ramona to read for her report, was divided into chapters but used babyish words. The story was about a cat that was left behind when a family moved away and about its adventures with a dog, another cat, and some children before it finally found a home with a nice old couple who gave it a saucer of cream and named it Lefty because its left paw was white and because it had been left behind. Medium-boring, thought Ramona, good enough to pass the time on the bus, but not good enough to read during Sustained Silent Reading. Besides, cream cost too much to give to a cat. The most the old people would give a cat was half-and-half, she thought. Ramona required accuracy from books as well as from people.

  “Daddy, how do you sell something?” Ramona interrupted her father, who was studying, even though she knew she should not. However, her need for an answer was urgent.

  Mr. Quimby did not look up from his book. “You ought to know. You see enough commercials on television.”

  Ramona considered his answer. She had always looked upon commercials as entertainment, but now she thought about some of her favorites—the cats that danced back and forth, the dog that pushed away brand-X dog food with his paw, the man who ate a pizza, got indigestion, and groaned that he couldn’t believe he ate the whole thing, the six horses that pulled the Wells Fargo bank’s stagecoach across deserts and over mountains.

  “Do you mean I should do a book report like a TV commercial?” Ramona asked.

  “Why not?” Mr. Quimby answered in an absentminded way.

  “I don’t want my teacher to say I’m a nuisance,” said Ramona, needing assurance from a grown-up.

  This time Mr. Quimby lifted his eyes from his book. “Look,” he said, “she told you to pretend you’re selling the book, so sell it. What better way than a TV commercial? You aren’t being a nuisance if you do what your teacher asks.” He looked at Ramona a moment and said, “Why do you worry she’d think you’re a nuisance?”

  Ramona stared at the carpet, wiggled her toes inside her shoes, and finally said, “I
squeaked my shoes the first day of school.”

  “That’s not being much of a nuisance,” said Mr. Quimby.

  “And when I got egg in my hair, Mrs. Whaley said I was a nuisance,” confessed Ramona, “and then I threw up in school.”

  “But you didn’t do those things on purpose,” her father pointed out. “Now run along. I have studying to do.”

  Ramona thought this answer over and decided that since her parents agreed, they must be right. Well, Mrs. Whaley could just go jump in a lake, even though her teacher had written, without wasting words, that she missed her. Ramona was going to give her book report any way she wanted. So there, Mrs. Whaley.

  Ramona went to her room and looked at her table, which the family called “Ramona’s studio,” because it was a clutter of crayons, different kinds of paper, Scotch tape, bits of yarn, and odds and ends that Ramona used for amusing herself. Then Ramona thought a moment, and suddenly, filled with inspiration, she went to work. She knew exactly what she wanted to do and set about doing it. She worked with paper, crayons, Scotch tape, and rubber bands. She worked so hard and with such pleasure that her cheeks grew pink. Nothing in the whole world felt as good as being able to make something from a sudden idea.

  Finally, with a big sigh of relief, Ramona leaned back in her chair to admire her work: three cat masks with holes for eyes and mouths, masks that could be worn by hooking rubber bands over ears. But Ramona did not stop there. With pencil and paper, she began to write out what she would say. She was so full of ideas that she printed rather than waste time in cursive writing. Next she phoned Sara and Janet, keeping her voice low and trying not to giggle so she wouldn’t disturb her father any more than necessary, and explained her plan to them. Both her friends giggled and agreed to take part in the book report. Ramona spent the rest of the evening memorizing what she was going to say.

  The next morning on the bus and at school, no one even mentioned Ramona’s throwing up. She had braced herself for some remark from Yard Ape, but all he said was, “Hi, Superfoot.” When school started, Ramona slipped cat masks to Sara and Janet, handed her written excuse for her absence to Mrs. Whaley, and waited, fanning away escaped fruit flies, for book reports to begin.

  After arithmetic, Mrs. Whaley called on several people to come to the front of the room to pretend they were selling books to the class. Most of the reports began, “This is a book about…” and many, as Beezus had predicted, ended with “…if you want to find out what happens next, read the book.”

  Then Mrs. Whaley said, “We have time for one more report before lunch. Who wants to be next?”

  Ramona waved her hand, and Mrs. Whaley nodded.

  Ramona beckoned to Sara and Janet, who giggled in an embarrassed way but joined Ramona, standing behind her and off to one side. All three girls slipped on their cat masks and giggled again. Ramona took a deep breath as Sara and Janet began to chant, “Meow, meow, meow, meow. Meow, meow, meow, meow,” and danced back and forth like the cats they had seen in the cat-food commercial on television.

  “Left-Behind Cat gives kids something to smile about,” said Ramona in a loud clear voice, while her chorus meowed softly behind her. She wasn’t sure that what she said was exactly true, but neither were the commercials that showed cats eating dry cat food without making any noise. “Kids who have tried Left-Behind Cat are all smiles, smiles, smiles. Left-Behind Cat is the book kids ask for by name. Kids can read it every day and thrive on it. The happiest kids read Left-Behind Cat. Left-Behind Cat contains cats, dogs, people—” Here Ramona caught sight of Yard Ape leaning back in his seat, grinning in the way that always flustered her. She could not help interrupting herself with a giggle, and after suppressing it she tried not to look at Yard Ape and to take up where she had left off. “…cats, dogs, people—” The giggle came back, and Ramona was lost. She could not remember what came next. “…cats, dogs, people,” she repeated, trying to start and failing.

  Mrs. Whaley and the class waited. Yard Ape grinned. Ramona’s loyal chorus meowed and danced. This performance could not go on all morning. Ramona had to say something, anything to end the waiting, the meowing, her book report. She tried desperately to recall a cat-food commercial, any cat-food commercial, and could not. All she could remember was the man on television who ate the pizza, and so she blurted out the only sentence she could think of, “I can’t believe I read the whole thing!”

  Mrs. Whaley’s laugh rang out above the laughter of the class. Ramona felt her face turn red behind her mask, and her ears, visible to the class, turned red as well.

  “Thank you, Ramona,” said Mrs. Whaley. “That was most entertaining. Class, you are excused for lunch.”

  Ramona felt brave behind her cat mask. “Mrs. Whaley,” she said, as the class pushed back chairs and gathered up lunch boxes, “that wasn’t the way my report was supposed to end.”

  “Did you like the book?” asked Mrs. Whaley.

  “Not really,” confessed Ramona.

  “Then I think it was a good way to end your report,” said the teacher. “Asking the class to sell books they really don’t like isn’t fair, now that I stop to think about it. I was only trying to make book reports a little livelier.”

  Encouraged by this confession and still safe behind her mask, Ramona had the boldness to speak up. “Mrs. Whaley,” she said with her heart pounding, “you told Mrs. Larson that I’m a nuisance, and I don’t think I am.”

  Mrs. Whaley looked astonished. “When did I say that?”

  “The day I got egg in my hair,” said Ramona. “You called me a show-off and said I was a nuisance.”

  Mrs. Whaley frowned, thinking. “Why, Ramona, I can recall saying something about my little show-off, but I meant it affectionately, and I’m sure I never called you a nuisance.”

  “Yes, you did,” insisted Ramona. “You said I was a show-off, and then you said, ‘What a nuisance.’” Ramona could never forget those exact words.

  Mrs. Whaley, who had looked worried, smiled in relief. “Oh, Ramona, you misunderstood,” she said. “I meant that trying to wash egg out of your hair was a nuisance for Mrs. Larson. I didn’t mean that you personally were a nuisance.”

  Ramona felt a little better, enough to come out from under her mask to say, “I wasn’t showing off. I was just trying to crack an egg on my head like everyone else.”

  Mrs. Whaley’s smile was mischievous. “Tell me, Ramona,” she said, “don’t you ever try to show off?”

  Ramona was embarrassed. “Well…maybe…sometimes, a little,” she admitted. Then she added positively, “But I wasn’t showing off that day. How could I be showing off when I was doing what everyone else was doing?”

  “You’ve convinced me,” said Mrs. Whaley with a big smile. “Now run along and eat your lunch.”

  Ramona snatched up her lunch box and went jumping down the stairs to the cafeteria. She laughed to herself because she knew exactly what all the boys and girls from her class would say when they finished their lunches. She knew because she planned to say it herself. “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing!”

  9

  Rainy Sunday

  Rainy Sunday afternoons in November were always dismal, but Ramona felt this Sunday was the most dismal of all. She pressed her nose against the living-room window, watching the ceaseless rain pelting down as bare black branches clawed at the electric wires in front of the house. Even lunch, leftovers Mrs. Quimby had wanted to clear out of the refrigerator, had been dreary, with her parents, who seemed tired or discouraged or both, having little to say and Beezus mysteriously moody. Ramona longed for sunshine, sidewalks dry enough for roller-skating, a smiling, happy family.

  “Ramona, you haven’t cleaned up your room this weekend,” said Mrs. Quimby, who was sitting on the couch, sorting through a stack of bills. “And don’t press your nose against the window. It leaves a smudge.”

  Ramona felt as if everything she did was wrong. The whole family seemed cross today, even Picky-picky who meowed at the fro
nt door. With a sigh, Mrs. Quimby got up to let him out. Beezus, carrying a towel and shampoo, stalked through the living room into the kitchen, where she began to wash her hair at the sink. Mr. Quimby, studying at the dining-room table as usual, made his pencil scratch angrily across a pad of paper. The television set sat blank and mute, and in the fireplace a log sullenly refused to burn.

  Mrs. Quimby sat down and then got up again as Picky-picky, indignant at the wet world outdoors, yowled to come in. “Ramona, clean up your room,” she ordered, as she let the cat and a gust of cold air into the house.

  “Beezus hasn’t cleaned up her room.” Ramona could not resist pointing this omission out to her mother.

  “I’m not talking about Beezus,” said Mrs. Quimby. “I’m talking about you.”

  Still Ramona did not move from the window. Cleaning up her room seemed such a boring thing to do, no fun at all on a rainy afternoon. She thought vaguely of all the exciting things she would like to do—learn to twirl a lariat, play a musical saw, flip around and over bars in a gymnastic competition while crowds cheered.

  “Ramona, clean up your room!” Mrs. Quimby raised her voice.

  “Well, you don’t have to yell at me.” Ramona’s feelings were hurt by the tone of her mother’s voice. The log in the fireplace settled, sending a puff of smoke into the living room.

  “Then do it,” snapped Mrs. Quimby. “Your room is a disaster area.”

  Mr. Quimby threw down his pencil. “Young lady, you do what your mother says, and you do it now. She shouldn’t have to tell you three times.”

  “Well, all right, but you don’t have to be so cross,” said Ramona. To herself she thought, Nag, nag, nag.

  Sulkily Ramona took her hurt feelings off to her room, where she pulled a week’s collection of dirty socks from under her bed. On her way to the bathroom hamper, she looked down the hall and saw her sister standing in the living room, rubbing her hair with a towel.