Ramona the Brave

by Beverly Cleary

  “Ramona, do you have to keep slamming that book?” asked Beezus.

  Ramona slammed the book a few more times to show her sister she could slam the book all she wanted to.

  “Pest,” said Beezus, to show Ramona she could call her a pest if she wanted to.

  “I am not a pest!” yelled Ramona.

  “You are too a pest!” Beezus yelled back.

  Ha, thought Ramona, at least I got you away from your old book. “I’m not a pest, and you’re just bossy!” she shouted.

  “Silence, varlet,” commanded Beezus. “Yonder car approacheth. Our noble mother cometh.” People talked like that in the books Beezus was reading lately.

  Ramona thought Beezus was showing off. “Don’t you call me a bad name!” she shouted, half hoping her mother would hear.

  In a moment Mrs. Quimby appeared in the doorway. She looked angry. Beezus shot Ramona an it’s-all-your-fault look.

  “Girls, you can be heard all over the neighborhood,” said Mrs. Quimby.

  Ramona sat up and looked virtuous. “Beezus called me a bad name.”

  “How do you know?” asked Beezus. “You don’t even know what varlet means.”

  Mrs. Quimby took in the two girls on their rumpled beds, Ramona’s toys heaped in the corner, the overflowing dresser. Then, when she spoke, she said an astonishing thing. “I don’t blame you girls one little bit for bickering so much. This room is much too small for two growing girls, so of course you get on one another’s nerves.”

  The sisters looked at each other and relaxed. Their mother understood.

  “Well, we’re going to do something about it,” Mrs. Quimby continued. “We’re going to go ahead and build that extra bedroom onto the house.”

  Beezus sat up, and this time she was the one to slam her book shut. “Oh, Mother!” she cried. “Are we really?”

  Ramona understood the stress on that last word. The extra room had been talked about for so long that neither sister believed it would actually be built. Mr. Quimby had drawn plans for knocking out the back of the closet where the vacuum cleaner was kept and extending the house into the backyard just enough to add a small bedroom with the closet-turned-into-a-hall leading to it. Ramona had heard a lot of uninteresting grown-up talk about borrowing money from a bank to pay for it, but nothing had ever come of it. All she understood was that her father worked at something that sounded boring in an office downtown, and there was never quite enough money in the Quimby family. They were certainly not poor, but her parents worried a lot about taxes and college educations.

  “Where will we get the money to pay back the bank?” asked Beezus, who understood these things better than Ramona.

  Mrs. Quimby smiled, about to make an important announcement. “I have a job that begins as soon as school starts.”

  “A job!” cried the sisters.

  “Yes,” said their mother. “I am going to work from nine in the morning till two in the afternoon in Dr. Perry’s office. That way I can be here when Ramona gets home from school. And on my way home from talking to Dr. Perry, I stopped at the bank and arranged to borrow the money to pay for the room.”

  “Oh, Mother!” Beezus was all enthusiasm. Dr. Perry was the woman who had given the girls their checkups and their shots ever since they were born. “Just think! You’re going to be liberated!”

  Ramona was pleased by the look of amusement that flickered across her mother’s face. Ramona wasn’t the only one who said things grown-ups thought funny.

  “That remains to be seen,” said Mrs. Quimby, “and depends on how much help I get from you girls.”

  “And you’ll get to see all the darling babies!” Beezus loved babies and could hardly wait until she was old enough to baby-sit. “Oh, Mother, you’re so lucky!”

  Mrs. Quimby smiled. “I’m going to be Dr. Perry’s bookkeeper. I won’t be taking care of babies.”

  Ramona was less enthusiastic than Beezus. “Who will take care of me if I get sick?” she wanted to know.

  “Howie’s grandmother,” said Mrs. Quimby. “She’s always glad to earn a little extra money.”

  Ramona, who knew all about Howie’s grandmother, made up her mind to stay well. “Who will bake cookies?” she asked.

  “Oh, cookies.” Mrs. Quimby dismissed cookies as unimportant. “We can buy them at the store, or you can bake them from a mix. You’re old enough now.”

  “I might burn myself,” said Ramona darkly.

  “Not if you are careful.” Mrs. Quimby’s good spirits could not be budged.

  Suddenly Ramona and her sister exchanged an anxious glance, and each tried to speak faster than the other. “Who gets the new room?” they both wanted to know.

  Ramona began to feel unhappy and left out before her mother had a chance to answer. Beezus always got everything, because she was older. Beezus got to stay up later. She got to spend the night at Mary Jane’s house and go away to camp. She got most of the new clothes, and when she had outgrown them, they were put away for Ramona. There was no hope.

  “Now, girls,” said Mrs. Quimby, “don’t get all worked up. Your father and I talked it over a long time ago and decided you will take turns. Every six months you will trade.”

  Ramona had a quick word with God. “Who gets it first?” she asked, anxious again.

  Mrs. Quimby smiled. “You do.”

  “Moth-ther!” wailed Beezus. “Couldn’t we at least draw straws?”

  Mrs. Quimby shook her head. “Ramona has a point when she says she never gets anything first because she is younger. We thought this time Ramona could be first for a change. Don’t you agree that’s fair?”

  “Yes!” shouted Ramona.

  “I guess so,” said Beezus.

  “Good,” said Mrs. Quimby, the matter settled.

  “Is a man going to come and really chop a hole in the house?” asked Ramona.

  “Next week,” said her mother.

  Ramona could hardly wait. The summer was no longer boring. Something was going to happen after all. And when school started, she would have something exciting to share with her class for Show and Tell. A hole chopped in the house!

  3

  The Hole in the House

  Although Ramona was standing with her nose pressed against the front window, she was wild with impatience. She was impatient for school to start. She was impatient because no matter how many times her mother telephoned, the workmen had not come to start the new room, and if they did not start the new room, how was Ramona going to astound the first grade by telling them about the hole chopped in the house? She was impatient because she had nothing to do.

  “Ramona, how many times do I have to tell you not to rub your nose against the window? You smudge the glass.” Mrs. Quimby sounded as if she too looked forward to the beginning of school.

  Ramona’s answer was, “Mother! Here comes Howie. With bricks!”

  “Oh, dear,” said Mrs. Quimby.

  Ramona ran out to meet Howie, who was trudging down Klickitat Street pulling his little red wagon full of old bricks, the very best kind for playing Brick Factory, because they were old and broken with the corners crumbled away. “Where did you get them?” asked Ramona, who knew how scarce old bricks were in their neighborhood.

  “At my other grandmother’s,” said Howie. “A bulldozer was smashing some old houses so somebody could build a shopping center, and the man told me I could pick up broken bricks.”

  “Let’s get started,” said Ramona, running to the garage and returning with two big rocks she and Howie used in playing Brick Factory, a simple but satisfying game. Each grasped a rock in both hands and with it pounded a brick into pieces and the pieces into smithereens. The pounding was hard, tiring work. Pow! Pow! Pow! Then they reduced the smithereens to dust. Crunch, crunch, crunch. They were no longer six-year-olds. They were the strongest people in the world. They were giants.

  When the driveway was thick with red dust, Ramona dragged out the hose and pretended that a terrible flood was washin
g away the Brick Factory in a stream of red mud. “Run, Howie! Run before it gets you!” screamed Ramona. She was mighty Ramona, brave and strong. Howie’s sneakers left red footprints, but he did not really run away. He only ran to the next driveway and back. Then the two began the game all over again. Howie’s short blond hair turned rusty red. Ramona’s brown hair only looked dingy.

  Ramona, who was usually impatient with Howie because he always took his time and refused to get excited, found him an excellent Brick Factory player. He was strong, and his pounding was hard and steady. They met each day on the Quimbys’ driveway to play their game. Their arms and shoulders ached. They had Band-Aids on their blisters, but they pounded on.

  Mrs. Quimby decided that when Ramona was playing Brick Factory she was staying out of trouble. However, she did ask several times why the game could not be played on Howie’s driveway once in a while. Howie always explained that his mother had a headache or that his little sister Willa Jean was taking a nap.

  “That is the dumbest game in the world,” said Beezus, who spent her time playing jacks with Mary Jane when she was not reading. “Why do you call your game Brick Factory? You aren’t making bricks. You’re wrecking them.”

  “We just do,” said Ramona, who left rusty footprints on the kitchen floor, rusty fingerprints on the doors, and rusty streaks in the bathtub. Picky-picky spent a lot of time washing brick dust off his paws. Mrs. Quimby had to wash separate loads of Ramona’s clothes in the washing machine to prevent them from staining the rest of the laundry.

  “Let the kids have their fun,” said Mr. Quimby, when he came home tired from work. “At least, they’re out in the sunshine.”

  He was not so tired he could not run when Ramona chased him with her rusty hands. “I’m going to get you, Daddy!” she shouted.

  “I’m going to get you!” He could run fast for a man who was thirty-three years old, but Ramona always caught him and threw her arms around him. He was not a father to worry about a little brick dust on his clothes. The neighbors all said Ramona was her father’s girl. There was no doubt about that.

  “Oh, well, school will soon be starting,” said Mrs. Quimby with a sigh.

  And then one morning, before Ramona and Howie could remove their bricks from the garage, their game was ended by the arrival of two workmen in an old truck. The new room was actually going to be built! Summer was suddenly worthwhile. Brick Factory was forgotten as the two elderly workmen unloaded tools and marked foundation with string. Chunk! Chunk! Picks tore into the lawn while Mrs. Quimby rushed out to pick the zinnias before the plants were yanked out of the ground.

  “That’s where my new room is going to be,” Ramona boasted to Howie.

  “For six months, don’t forget.” Beezus still felt they should have drawn straws to see who would get it first.

  Howie, who liked tools, spent all his time at the Quimbys’ watching. A trench was dug for the foundation, forms were built, concrete mixed and poured. Howie knew the name of every tool and how it was used. Howie was a great one for thinking things over and figuring things out. The workmen even let him try their tools. Ramona was not interested in tools or in thinking things over and figuring things out. She was interested in results. Fast.

  When the workmen had gone home for the day and no one was looking, Ramona, who had been told not to touch the wet concrete, marked it with her special initial, a Q with ears and whiskers:She had invented her own Q in kindergarten after Miss Binney, the teacher, had told the class the letter Q had a tail. Why stop there? Ramona had thought. Now her in the concrete would make the room hers, even when Beezus’s turn to use it came.

  Mrs. Quimby watched advertisements in the newspaper and found a secondhand dresser and bookcase for Ramona and a desk for Beezus, which she stored in the garage where she worked with sandpaper and paint to make them look like new. Neighbors dropped by to see what was going on. Howie’s mother came with his messy little sister Willa Jean, who was the sort of child known as a toddler. Mrs. Kemp and Mrs. Quimby sat in the kitchen drinking coffee and discussing their children while Beezus and Ramona defended their possessions from Willa Jean. This was what grown-ups called playing with Willa Jean.

  When the concrete was dry, the workmen returned for the exciting part. They took crowbars from their truck, and with a screeching of nails being pulled from wood, they pried siding off the house and knocked out the lath and plaster at the back of the vacuum-cleaner closet. There it was, a hole in the house! Ramona and Howie ran in through the back door, down the hall, and jumped out the hole, round and round, until the workmen said, “Get lost, kids, before you get hurt.”

  Ramona felt light with joy. A real hole in the house that was going to lead to her very-own-for-six-months room! She could hardly wait to go to school, because now, for the first time in her life, she had something really important to share with her class for Show and Tell! “My room, boom! My room, boom!” she sang.

  “Be quiet, Ramona,” said Beezus. “Can’t you see I’m trying to read?”

  Before the workmen left for the day, they nailed a sheet of plastic over the hole in the house. That night, after the sisters had gone to bed, Beezus whispered, “It’s sort of scary, having a hole in the house.” The edges of the plastic rustled and flapped in the night breeze.

  “Really scary.” Ramona had been thinking the same thing. “Spooky.” She planned to tell the first grade that she not only had a hole in her house, she had a spooky hole in her house.

  “A ghost could ooze in between the nails,” whispered Beezus.

  “A cold clammy ghost,” agreed Ramona with a delicious shiver.

  “A cold clammy ghost that sobbed in the night,” elaborated Beezus, “and had icy fingers that—”

  Ramona burrowed deeper into her bed and pulled her pillow over her ears. In a moment she emerged. “I know what would be better,” she said. “A gorilla. A gorilla without bones that could ooze around the plastic—”

  “Girls!” called Mrs. Quimby from the living room. “It’s time to go to sleep.”

  Ramona’s whisper could barely be heard. “—and reached out with his cold, cold hands—”

  “And grabbed us!” finished Beezus in her softest whisper. The sisters shivered with pleasure and were silent while Ramona’s imagination continued. The boneless gorilla ghost could ooze under the closet door…let’s see…and he could swing on the clothes bar…and in the morning when they opened the closet door to get their school clothes he would…Ramona fell asleep before she could decide what the ghost would do.

  4

  The First Day of School

  When the first day of school finally arrived, Ramona made her own bed so her mother would be liberated. She hid the lumps under stuffed animals.

  “That’s cheating,” said Beezus, who was pulling up her own blankets smooth and tight.

  “Pooh, who cares?” This morning Ramona did not care what her sister said. She was now in the first grade and eager to leave for school all by herself before old slowpoke Howie could catch up with her. She clattered down the hall in her stiff new sandals, grabbed her new blue lunch box from the kitchen counter, kissed her mother good-by, and was on her way before her mother could tell her she must try to be a good girl now that she was in the first grade. She crunched through the fallen leaves on the sidewalk and held her head high. She wanted people to think, How grown up Ramona Quimby is. Last year she was a little kinder-gartner in the temporary building and look at her now, a big girl on her way to school in the big brick building.

  A neighbor who had come out to move her lawn sprinkler actually did say, “Hello, Ramona. My, aren’t you a big girl!”

  “Yes,” said Ramona, but she spoke modestly. She did not want people to think that being in the first grade had gone to her head. She was tempted to try going to school a new way, by another street, but decided she wasn’t quite that brave yet.

  How little the new members of the morning kindergarten looked! Some of them were clinging to their mot
her’s hands. One was actually crying. Babies! Ramona called out to her old kindergarten teacher crossing the playground, “Miss Binney! Miss Binney! It’s me, Ramona!”

  Miss Binney waved and smiled. “Ramona Q.! How nice to see you!” Miss Binney understood that Ramona used her last initial because she wanted to be different, and when Miss Binney printed Ramona’s name, she always added ears and whiskers to the Q. That was the kind of teacher Miss Binney was.

  Ramona saw Beezus and Mary Jane. “Hi, Beatrice,” she called, to let her sister know she would remember not to call her Beezus at school. “How are you, Beatrice?”

  Little Davy jumped at Ramona. “Ho-hah!” he shouted.

  Ramona knew first graders could not really use karate. “You mean, ‘Hah-yah!’” she said. Davy never got anything right.

  Ramona felt much smaller and less sure of herself as she made her way up the steps of the big brick building with the older boys and girls. She felt smaller still as they jostled her in the hall on her way to the room she had looked forward to for so long. Room One, at the foot of the stairs that led to the classrooms of the upper grades, was the classroom for Ramona and the other morning kindergartners of last year. Last year’s afternoon kindergarten was entering the first grade in Room Two.

  Many of Ramona’s old kindergarten class, taller now and with more teeth missing, were already in their seats behind desks neatly labeled with their names. Like place cards at a party, thought Ramona. Eric J. and Eric R., little Davy with the legs of his new jeans turned up farther than the legs of any other boy’s jeans, Susan with her fat curls like springs touching her shoulders. Boing, thought Ramona as always, at the sight of those curls. This year she promised herself she would not pull those curls no matter how much they tempted her.

  Mrs. Griggs was seated at her desk. “And what is your name?” she asked Ramona. Mrs. Griggs, older than Miss Binney, looked pleasant enough, but of course she was not Miss Binney. Her hair, which was no special color, was parted in the middle and held at the back of her neck with a plastic clasp.