Ramona the Brave

by Beverly Cleary

  “Ramona. Ramona Q.”

  “Good morning, Ramona,” said Mrs. Griggs. “Take the fourth desk in the second row,” she said.

  The desk, which had Ramona taped to the front where Mrs. Griggs could see it, turned out to be across the aisle from Susan. “Hi, Ramona Kimona,” said Susan.

  “Hi, Susan Snoozin’,” answered Ramona, as she opened her desk and took out a pencil. She untaped her label, printed her special Q, with ears and whiskers on it, and retaped it. Next she explored her reader to see if she could find the grown-up words she knew: gas, motel, burger. She could not.

  The bell rang and after Mrs. Griggs chose Joey to lead the flag salute, she made a little speech about how grown-up they were now that they were in the first grade and how the first grade was not a place to play like kindergarten. The class was here to work. They had much to learn, and she was here to help them. And now did anyone have anything to share with the class for Show and Tell?

  Hands waved. Stevie showed the horse chestnuts he had picked up on the way to school. The class was not impressed. Everyone who passed a horse-chestnut tree on the way to school picked up chestnuts, but no one ever found a use for them. Ramona waved her hand harder.

  “Yes, Ramona. What do you have to share with the class?” asked Mrs. Griggs. Then, seeing the initial on the label on Ramona’s desk, she smiled and asked, “Or should I call you Ramona Kitty Cat?”

  Much to Ramona’s annoyance, the class tittered at Mrs. Griggs’s joke. They knew she always added ears and whiskers to her Q’s. There was no need to laugh at this grown-up question that she was not expected to answer. Mrs. Griggs knew her name was not Ramona Kitty Cat.

  “Meow,” said one of the boys. Room One giggled. Some meowed, others purred, until the cat noises dwindled under the disapproving look of the teacher.

  Ramona faced the class, took a deep breath, and said, “Some men came and chopped a great big hole in the back of our house!” She paused dramatically to give the class time to be surprised, astonished, perhaps a little envious of such excitement. Then she would tell them how spooky the hole was.

  Instead, Room One, still in the mood for amusement, laughed. Everyone in the room except Howie laughed. Ramona was startled, then embarrassed. Once more she felt as if she were standing aside, seeing herself as someone else, a strange first grader at the front of the room, laughed at by her class. What was the matter with them? She could not see anything funny about herself. Her cheeks began to feel hot. “They did,” Ramona insisted. “They did too chop a hole in our house.” She turned to Mrs. Griggs for help.

  The teacher looked puzzled, as if she could not understand a hole chopped in a house. As if, perhaps, she did not believe a hole chopped in a house. Maybe that was why the class laughed. They thought she was making the whole thing up. “Tell us about it, Ramona,” said Mrs. Griggs.

  “They did,” Ramona insisted. “I’m not making it up.” At least Howie, sitting there looking so serious, was still her friend. “Howie knows,” Ramona said. “Howie came over to my house and jumped through the hole.”

  The class found this very funny. Howie jumping out a hole in Ramona’s house. Ramona’s ears began to burn. She turned to her friend for support. “Howie, didn’t they chop a hole in my house?”

  “No,” said Howie.

  Ramona was outraged. She could not believe her ears. “They did, too!” she shouted. “You were there. You saw them. You jumped through the hole like I said.”

  “Ramona,” said Mrs. Griggs, in a quiet voice that was neither cross nor angry, “you may take your seat. We do not shout in the classroom in the first grade.”

  Ramona obeyed. Tears of humiliation stung her eyes, but she was too proud to let them fall. Mrs. Griggs wasn’t even going to give her a chance to explain. And what was the matter with Howie? He knew she was telling the truth. I’ll get you for this, Howie Kemp, Ramona thought bitterly, and after they had had such a good time playing Brick Factory, too. Ramona wanted to run home when recess came, but her house was locked, and her mother had gone off to work in that office near all those darling babies.

  Ramona was unable to keep her mind on Jack and Becky, their dog Pal, and their cat Fluff in her stiff new reader. She could only sit and think, I was telling the truth. I was telling the truth.

  At recess one of the Erics yelled at Ramona, “Liar, liar, pants on fire, sitting on a telephone wire!”

  Ramona pointed to Howie. “He’s the fibber!” she yelled.

  Howie remained calm. “No, I’m not.”

  As usual, Howie’s refusal to get excited infuriated Ramona. She wanted him to get excited. She wanted him to yell back. “You did too see the hole,” she shouted. “You did too jump through it!”

  “Sure I jumped through it, but nobody chopped a hole in your house,” Howie told Ramona.

  “But they did!” cried Ramona, burning with fury. “They did, and you know it! You’re a fibber, Howie Kemp!”

  “You’re just making that up,” said Howie. “Two men pried some siding off your house with crowbars. Nobody chopped a hole at all.”

  Ramona was suddenly subdued. “What’s the difference?” she asked, even though she knew in her heart that Howie was right.

  “Lots,” said Howie. “You chop with an ax, not a crowbar.”

  “Howie Kemp! You make me so mad!” shouted Ramona. “You knew what I meant!” She wanted to hit. She wanted to kick, but she did not, because now she was in the first grade. Still, she had to punish Howie, so she said, “I am never going to play Brick Factory with you again! So there!”

  “Okay,” said Howie. “I guess I’ll have to come and take back my bricks.”

  Ramona was sorry she had spoken so hastily. She would miss Howie’s bricks. She turned and kicked the side of the school. She had not fibbed. Not really. She had only meant to make the story exciting, and since tools did not interest her, she felt that a hole really had been chopped in her house. That was the trouble with Howie. If she offered him a glass of bug juice, he said, “That’s Kool-Aid.” If she said, “It’s been a million years since I had a Popsicle,” he said, “You had a Popsicle last week. I saw you.”

  Ramona began to feel heavy with guilt. Now the whole class and Mrs. Griggs thought Ramona was a fibber. Here it was, the first half of the first morning of the first day of school, and already the first grade was spoiled for her. When the class returned to Room One, Ramona did not raise her hand the rest of the day, even though she ached to give answers. She wanted to go to Mrs. Griggs and explain the whole thing, but Mrs. Griggs seemed so busy she did not know how to approach her.

  The class forgot the incident. By lunchtime no one called her a liar with pants on fire, but Ramona remembered and, as it turned out, so did Howie.

  That afternoon Ramona had to go shopping with her mother. Ramona could see that having to make her own bed and maybe even bake her own cookies were not the only disadvantages of her mother’s new job. Ramona was going to be dragged around on boring errands after school, because her mother could no longer do them in the morning. When they returned and Mrs. Quimby was unloading groceries on the driveway, the first thing that Ramona noticed was that Howie had come and taken away all of his bricks. She looked to see if he had left her one little piece of a brick, but he had taken them all, even the smithereens. And just when she most felt like some good hard pounding, too.

  5

  Owl Trouble

  One afternoon late in September, when the air was hazy with smoke from distant forest fires and the sun hung in the sky like an orange volleyball, Ramona was sharpening her pencil as an excuse to look out the window at Miss Binney’s afternoon kindergarten class, busy drawing butterflies with colored chalk on the asphalt of the playground. This had been a disappointing day for Ramona, who had come to school eager to tell about her new room, which was almost completed. Mrs. Griggs said they did not have time for Show and Tell that morning. Ramona had sat up as tall as she could, but Mrs. Griggs chose Patty to lead the fla
g salute.

  How happy the kindergartners looked out in the smoky autumn sunshine! Ramona turned the handle of the pencil sharpener more and more slowly while she admired the butterflies with pink wings and yellow spots and butterflies with green wings and orange spots. She longed to be outside drawing with those bright chalks.

  At the same time Ramona wondered what Beezus was doing upstairs in Mr. Cardoza’s room. Beezus was enjoying school. The boys, as Mrs. Quimby had predicted, had forgotten the Beezus-Jesus episode. Every time Beezus opened her mouth at home it was Mr. Cardoza this or Mr. Cardoza that. Mr. Cardoza let his class push their desks around any way they wanted. Mr. Cardoza—guess what!—drove a red sports car. Mr. Cardoza let his class bring mice to school. Mr. Cardoza said funny things that made his class laugh. When his class grew too noisy, he said, “All right, let’s quiet down to a dull roar.” Mr. Cardoza expected his class to have good manners….

  Mrs. Griggs’s calm voice interrupted Ramona’s thoughts. “Ramona, remember your seat.”

  Ramona, who discovered she had ground her pencil in half, remembered her seat. She sat quietly as Mrs. Griggs pushed a lock of hair behind her ear and said, as she had said every day since first grade had started, “We are not in kindergarten any longer. We are in the first grade, and people in the first grade must learn to be good workers.”

  What Mrs. Griggs did not seem to understand was that Ramona was a good worker. She had learned bunny and apple and airplane and all the other words in her new reader. When Mrs. Griggs read out, “Toys,” Ramona could circle toys in her workbook. She was not like poor little Davy, who was still stuck on saw and was. If the book said saw, Davy read was. If the book said dog, Davy read god. Ramona felt so sorry for Davy that whenever she could she tried to help him circle the right pictures in his workbook. Mrs. Griggs did not understand that Ramona wanted to help Davy. She always told Ramona to keep her eyes on her own work. “Keep your eyes on your own work,” was a favorite saying of Mrs. Griggs. Another was, “Nobody likes a tattletale.” If Joey complained that Eric J. hit him, Mrs. Griggs answered, “Joey, nobody likes a tattletale.”

  Now Mrs. Griggs was saying, “If Susan and Howie and Davy were eating apples and gave apples to Eric J. and Patty, how many people would have apples?” Ramona sat quietly while half the class waved their hands.

  “Ramona,” said Mrs. Griggs, in a voice that hinted she had caught Ramona napping.

  “Five,” answered Ramona. She was bored, not napping. She had learned to think about schoolwork, and at the same time think about other things in a private corner of her mind. “Mrs. Griggs, when do we get to make paper-bag owls?”

  Susan spoke without raising her hand. “Yes, Mrs. Griggs. You said we would get to make wise old owls for Parents’ Night.” Parents’ Night was not the same as Open House. On Parents’ Night the children stayed home while parents came to school to listen to teachers explain what the children were going to learn during the school year.

  “Yes,” said Howie. “We remembered to bring our paper bags from home.”

  Mrs. Griggs looked tired. She glanced at the clock.

  “Whoo-whoo!” hooted Davy, which was brave of him and, as Ramona could not help thinking, rather kindergartnish. Others must not have agreed with this thought, for Mrs. Griggs’s room was filled with a hubbub of hoots.

  Mrs. Griggs tucked the wisp of hair behind her ear and gave up. “All right, class. Since the afternoon is so warm, we will postpone our seat work and work on our owls.”

  Instantly Room One was wide-awake. Paper bags and crayons came out of desks. The scissors monitor passed out scissors. The paper monitor passed out squares of orange, black, and yellow paper. Mrs. Griggs got out the pastepots and paper bags for those who had forgotten to bring theirs from home. The class would make owls, print their names on them, and set them up on their desks for their parents to admire.

  The minutes on the electric clock clicked by with an astonishing speed. Mrs. Griggs showed the class how to make orange triangles for beaks and big yellow circles with smaller black circles on top for eyes. She told Patty not to worry if her bag had Frosty Ice Cream Bag printed on one side. Just turn it over and use the other side. Most people tried to make their owls look straight ahead, but Eric R. made his owl cross-eyed. Ramona tried her eyes in several positions and finally decided to have them looking off to the right. Then she noticed Susan’s owl was looking off to the right, too.

  Ramona frowned and picked up her black crayon. Since the owl was supposed to look wise, she drew spectacles around his eyes, and out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Susan doing the same thing. Susan was copying Ramona’s owl! “Copycat!” whispered Ramona, but Susan ignored her by going over her crayon lines to make them blacker.

  “Ramona, pay attention to your own work,” said Mrs. Griggs. “Howie, it is not necessary to pound your eyes down with your fist. The paste will make them stick.”

  Ramona pulled her owl closer to her chest and tried to hide it in the circle of her arm, so that old copycat Susan could not see. With her brown crayon she drew wings and began to cover her owl with V ’s, which represented feathers.

  By now Mrs. Griggs was walking up and down between the desks admiring and commenting on the owls. Karen’s owl was such a nice, neat owl. My, what big eyes Patty’s owl had! George wasted paste. So had several others. “Class, when we waste paste,” said Mrs. Griggs, “and then pound our eyes down with our fists, our eyes skid.” Ramona congratulated herself on her owl’s nonskid eyes.

  Mrs. Griggs paused between Ramona’s and Susan’s desks. Ramona bent over her owl, because she wanted to surprise Mrs. Griggs when it was finished. “What a wise old owl Susan has made!” Mrs. Griggs held up Susan’s owl for the class to see while Susan tried to look modest and pleased at the same time. Ramona was furious. Susan’s owl had wings and feathers exactly like her owl. Susan had peeked! Susan had copied! She scowled at Susan and thought, Copycat, copycat! She longed to tell Mrs. Griggs that Susan had copied, but she knew what the answer would be. “Ramona, nobody likes a tattletale.”

  Mrs. Griggs continued to admire Susan’s owl. “Susan, your owl is looking at something. What do you think he’s looking at?”

  “Um-m.” Susan was taken by surprise. “Um-m. Another owl?”

  How dumb, thought Ramona. He’s looking at a bat, a mouse, a witch riding on a broomstick, Superman, anything but another owl.

  Mrs. Griggs suspended Susan’s owl with two paper clips to the wire across the top of the blackboard for all to admire. “Class, it is time to clean up our desk. Scissors monitor, collect the scissors,” said Mrs. Griggs. “Leave your owls on your desks for me to hang up after the paste dries.”

  Ramona stuffed her crayons into the box so hard that she broke several, but she did not care. She refused to look at Susan. She looked at her own owl, which no longer seemed like her own. Suddenly she hated it. Now everyone would think Ramona had copied Susan’s owl, when it was the other way around. They would call her Ramona Copycat instead of Ramona Kitty Cat. With both hands she crushed her owl, her beautiful wise owl, into a wad and squashed it down as hard as she could. Then, with her head held high, she marched to the front of the room and flung it into the wastebasket. As the bell rang, she marched out of the room without looking back.

  All that week Ramona stared at the owls above the blackboard. Cross-eyed owls, paste-waster’s owls with eyes that had skidded off in all directions, one-eyed owls made by those so anxious not to waste paste that they had not used enough, and right in the center Susan’s wise and handsome owl copied from Ramona’s owl.

  If Mrs. Griggs noticed that Ramona’s owl was missing, she said nothing. The afternoon of Parents’ Night she unclipped the owls from the wire and passed them out to their owners along with sheets of old newspaper for wadding up and stuffing inside the owls to make them stand up. Miserable because she had no owl to stand upon her desk, Ramona pretended to be busy making her desk tidy.

  “Ramona, what happene
d to your owl?” asked Susan, who knew very well what had happened to Ramona’s owl.

  “You shut up,” said Ramona.

  “Mrs. Griggs, Ramona doesn’t have an owl,” said Howie, who was the kind of boy who always looked around the classroom to make sure everything was in order.

  Ramona scowled.

  “Why, Ramona,” said Mrs. Griggs. “What happened to your owl?”

  Ramona spoke with all the dignity she could muster. “I do not care for owls.” She did care. She cared so much it hurt, but Mrs. Griggs was not going to call her a tattletale.

  Mrs. Griggs looked at Ramona as if she were trying to understand something. All she said was, “All right, Ramona, if that’s the way you feel.”

  That was not the way Ramona felt, but she was relieved to have Mrs. Griggs’s permission to remain owlless on Parents’ Night. She felt unhappy and confused. Which was worse, a copycat or a tattletale? Ramona thought a copycat was worse. She half-heartedly joined the class in cleaning up the room for their parents, and every time she passed Susan’s desk, she grew more angry. Susan was a copycat and a cheater. Ramona longed to seize one of those curls, stretch it out as far as she could, and then let it go. Boing, she thought, but she kept her hands to herself, which was not easy even though she was in the first grade.

  Susan sat her owl up on her desk and gave it a little pat. Fury made Ramona’s chest feel tight. Susan was pretending not to notice Ramona.

  At last the room was in order for Parents’ Night. Twenty-five owls stood up straight looking in all directions. The bell rang. Mrs. Griggs took her place by the door as the class began to leave the room.

  Ramona slid out of her seat. Her chest felt tighter. Her head told her to keep her hands to herself, but her hands did not obey. They seized Susan’s owl. They crushed the owl with a sound of crackling paper.