Ramona and Her Mother (10 page)

Once in the hall she grasped her sweater and pajama top and pulled them up an instant to feel the relief of cool air against her sweaty skin. Then she took hold of both her elastic waistbands and pulled them out and in several times to fan a little cool air inside her slacks.

In the office Mrs. Miller, the school secretary, had Ramona sit on a chair and poked a thermometer under her tongue. “Be sure to keep your lips closed,” she said. “We don't want any thermometers falling on the floor and breaking.”

Ramona sat still while Mrs. Miller answered the telephone and carried on a long conversation with a mother who was worried about her child's schoolwork and was anxious to talk to the principal. She sat still while a sixth-grade boy came in to use the telephone to call his mother to tell her he had forgotten his lunch money. She sat still while a mother came in to deliver a lunch to a fourth grader who had gone off without it.

Ramona sat and sat. She thought of the long day ahead, of recess and of lunchtime, and began to wish she really were sick. Maybe she was. Maybe she had a fever, a fever so high Mrs. Miller would telephone her mother at work, and her mother would come and take her home and put her to bed between cool white sheets. They would be alone in the house, just the two of them. Her mother would lay her hand on Ramona's hot forehead and give her little treats—ice cream between meals and cold orange juice, not fresh-frozen orange juice but fresh-fresh orange juice squeezed out of real oranges and not dumped out of a can and thinned with water. Her mother would read aloud stories from library books and would find in the bookcase the books Ramona had loved so much when she was little, especially the one about the little bear whose mother looked so soft and kind and loving in her long white apron and the book about the bunny snug in bed who said good-night to everything, mittens, a mouse, the moon, and the stars. Later, when Ramona was feeling better, her mother would tuck her upon the couch in the living room so she could watch television and even get to see the ends of old movies.

Pursing her lips tight around the thermometer, Ramona sighed through her nose. Mrs. Miller, her back turned, was busy with the ditto machine.

Finally, when Ramona could not sit still another second, she made a sort of angry humming noise. “M-m-m! M-m-m!”

“Oh, my goodness, Ramona,” said Mrs. Miller. “You were so quiet I forgot all about you. Thank you for buzzing like a little bee to remind me.” She pulled the thermometer from Ramona's mouth, turned it until she found the silver line that told the temperature, and then said, “Run along back to your room, and tell Mrs. Rudge you're just fine. OK?”

“OK.” Ramona was disappointed. Now there would be no rescuing telephone call to her mother, only a long, sweaty day. Oh, well, she knew she would not really have been rescued by her mother, who could not leave her work. Howie's grandmother, accompanied by Willa Jean and probably Woger, would have come for her.

Ramona paused at the drinking fountain for a long, cool drink of water and fanned more air under her clothes before she returned to Room 2.

“What did Mrs. Miller say?” asked Mrs. Rudge.

“She says I'm fine,” said Ramona.

Minutes dragged. The seconds between each click of the electric clock seemed to stretch longer and longer. Ramona felt so sleepy she wanted to put her head down on her arms and take a nap.

When the recess bell finally rang, Mrs. Rudge said, “Ramona, would you please come here a minute?”

Reluctantly Ramona walked to Mrs. Rudge's desk.

“Is there something you would like to tell me?” asked the teacher.

Ramona looked up into Mrs. Rudge's brown eyes, then down at the floor, shook her head, and looked up at Mrs. Rudge once more. Her teacher seemed so kind, so soft and plump, that Ramona longed to lean against her and tell her all her troubles, how hot she was and how no one ever said she was her mother's girl and how she wanted her mother to love her like a little rabbit and how somehow all these feelings had led to pretending to be a fireman.

“I can keep a secret,” said Mrs. Rudge. “I promise.”

This encouragement was all Ramona needed. “I—I'm too warm,” she confessed. “I've got my pajamas on.” Please, please, Mrs. Rudge, don't make me tell why, she prayed, because now that she had confessed she felt that wearing pajamas to school was a silly thing to do. A second grader pretending to be a fireman—it was the dumbest thing she had ever imagined.

“Why, that's no problem,” said Mrs. Rudge. “Just go to the girls' bathroom and take off your pajamas.” She reached into a drawer and pulled out a paper bag. “Roll up your pajamas and put them in this bag and hide them in your desk.”

Ramona shook her head. “I can't.” As soon as she had spoken, she realized she had chosen the wrong words. Now Mrs. Rudge would say, There's no such word as
can't
, and Ramona would argue with herself all over again. How could there not be such a word as
can't
? Mrs. Rudge had just said
can't
so
can't
had to be a word.

To Ramona's relief, Mrs. Rudge merely said, “Why not?”

“I don't have any underwear on,” confessed Ramona. Was there amusement in Mrs. Rudge's warm brown eyes? There better not be. No, it was all right. Mrs. Rudge was not laughing at her.

“I see,” said the teacher. “That
is
a problem, but I don't think you need to worry about it. Your slacks and sweater are warm enough on a day like this.”

“You mean go without any underwear?” Ramona was a little shocked at the suggestion. In summer she did not wear an undershirt, but she had always worn underpants, even in the hottest weather.

“Why not?” asked Mrs. Rudge with a wave of her hand, as if she were waving away underwear as unimportant. Underwear—pooh!

“Well . . .” said Ramona, halfway agreeing. “But . . . promise you won't tell my mother what I did?”

“I promise,” said Mrs. Rudge with a big smile. “Now run along before you melt into a puddle right here on the floor.”

Ramona did as she was told, and, oh, the relief she felt in the girls' bathroom when she shut herself in a cubicle and peeled off those damp pajamas, which, to her surprise, had not shrunk at all. She quickly pulled on her clothes and rolled up the pajamas as tight as she could and hid them in the paper bag. Even though skipping in the halls was forbidden, Ramona skipped. The halls were empty, recess was over, and she was late, but still she skipped because she felt as light and as cool as a spring breeze. And who would know she was not wearing underwear? Nobody, that's who. Maybe wearing underwear wasn't so important after all. Maybe after today Ramona would skip underwear—at least in summer when she was wearing slacks.

Back in Room 2, Ramona lifted the lid of her desk and hid her package way at the back behind her books. She pretended not to notice the curious stares of the boys and girls, who were wondering why Mrs. Rudge said nothing about Ramona's being late. Instead she looked at Mrs. Rudge, who gave her a tiny smile that said quite plainly, We have a secret, just the two of us.

Ramona's heart was warm with love for her teacher. She smiled back and twitched her nose like a bunny.

B
y the time school was over Ramona had forgotten about the pajamas in her desk, and that evening she was so busy practicing her name in cursive writing that they remained forgotten. No more babyish printing for Ramona. Mrs. Rudge had taught her to write in what Ramona used to call “that rumply stuff.” And write she did.

She wrote in pencil, ballpoint pen, and crayon on any paper she could find—paper bags, old envelopes, the backs of arithmetic papers, around the edge of the newspaper. She wrote her name with her finger in steam on the bathroom mirror when her father had taken a shower after work. Before supper she wrote her name in dust on the top of the television set. After supper she went outside where, beneath the porch light, she wrote Ramona Quimby in chalk on each of the front steps. When she came back into the house, she found her mother and Beezus on the couch studying pictures in a paperback book.

“Let me see, too,” said Ramona, wiping her chalky fingers on the seat of her slacks and twitching her nose.

“It's just a book on how to cut hair that I ran across,” said Mrs. Quimby. “I thought I would try to learn to cut Beezus's hair so it would look like the ice skater on television.”

“See, Mother,” said Beezus. “First you twist the top hair up out of the way and cut the bottom hair first.”

“I see,” said Mrs. Quimby. “That doesn't look so difficult.”

Ramona felt left out. Somehow that trip to the beauty school had brought her mother and Beezus closer together. They were friends again, close friends.

“Bedtime, Ramona,” said Mrs. Quimby, still studying the book.

A terrible thought crossed Ramona's mind. Her new pajamas! She had left them rolled up in her desk at school. Then Ramona had an even worse thought. This was Friday. She could not bring her pajamas home until Monday. How could she explain if her family found out?

Ramona made up her mind right then and there that neither her parents nor Beezus would find out because she was going to keep those pajamas a secret. Without waiting for a second reminder Ramona was in and out of the bathtub in no time. She could not locate the old pajamas she had taken off the night before, but she did come across another too-small pair in a drawer. She put them on, turned off the light, hopped into bed, and pulled the covers up tight around her ears. But what if she fell asleep before her parents came in to kiss her good-night?

Ramona took no chances. “Come and kiss me good-night,” she sang out while hanging on tight to the sheet and blankets.

Mr. Quimby was first. “What's got into you, Ramona?” he asked after he had kissed her. “You forgot to beg to stay up just a little longer to watch TV or finish drawing a picture or read another chapter. You forgot to remind us you don't have to go to school tomorrow. Don't you feel good?”

Ramona giggled. “Daddy, you're so silly. I feel fine.” She was pleased that her father had noticed she now read books with chapters.

Mrs. Quimby was next. Ramona pulled the covers tight around her ears when she heard her mother coming down the hall. Mrs. Quimby kissed Ramona and then looked at her in the dim light from the hall. “Are you cold?” she asked.

“No,” answered Ramona.

“If you are, I can get another blanket from the linen closet,” said Mrs. Quimby. Then she added, “Nighty-night. Sweet dreams.”

That was close, thought Ramona with a twitch of her nose. When she said her prayers, she added a request at the end. Please, God, do not let anyone find out I wore my pajamas to school. She felt that although God was probably too busy to think about her pajamas, asking would not hurt and might even help.

Saturday morning she dressed in the closet and hid the too-small pajamas in her bottom drawer. She was happy to discover that her father was home for the morning, even though he would have to work at the ShopRite Market Saturday afternoon and evening. Today was going to be a good day. The sun was shining, the sidewalk dry, and her father could watch her skate.

That is, she was happy until Mr. Quimby looked around the living room and said, “This is a home, not a base camp.” He had recently watched a television program on mountain climbing. “Let's all pitch in and clean this place up. Ramona, pick up all the newspapers and magazines and dust the living room. Beezus, you can run the vacuum cleaner. Then both of you tackle your rooms. Change the sheets and straighten up. Every kettle must rest on its own bottom around here.” He did not mention that this was one of his grandmother's sayings.

Except for washing the egg beater in sudsy water so she could beat up a lot of suds, Ramona did not care much for housework, and this morning she longed to be outside racing up and down the sidewalk on her roller skates. However, she carried the old newspapers out to the garage without complaining and hastily flicked a dustcloth around the living room while Beezus plugged in the vacuum cleaner and made it growl back and forth across the carpet. Mr. Quimby went off to clean the bathroom while Mrs. Quimby was busy in the kitchen.