Ramona the Brave (4 page)

O
ne 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 flag 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 happened 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.

Susan gasped. Ramona twisted the owl as hard as she could until it looked like nothing but an old paper bag scribbled with crayon. Without meaning to, Ramona had done a terrible thing.

“Mrs. Griggs!” cried Susan. “Ramona scrunched my owl!”

“Tattletale.” Ramona threw the twisted bag on the floor, and as Mrs. Griggs approached to see what had happened, she dodged past her teacher, out the door and down the hall, running as fast as she could, even though running in the halls was forbidden. She wove through the upper classes, who had come down the stairs. She plowed through the other first grade coming out of Room Two. She jumped down the steps and was out of the building on her way home, running as hard as she could, her sandals pounding on the sidewalk and crackling through fallen leaves. She ran as if she were pursued by Susan, Mrs. Griggs, the principal, all of Room One, the whole school. She ran from her conscience and from God, who, as they said in Sunday School, was everywhere. She ran as if Something was coming to get her. She ran until her lungs felt as if they were bursting with the smoky air. She ran until her sandals slipped on dry leaves and she fell sprawling on the sidewalk. Ignoring the pain, she scrambled to her feet and fled home with blood trickling from her knees.