Ramona the Brave (3 page)

A
lthough 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 washing 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.

W
hen 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 mother'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.

“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.