Ramona and Her Mother (12 page)

“There.” Mrs. Quimby closed the suitcase, snapped the latches, and set it on the floor. “Now you are all packed.” She sat down on the bed.

Ramona pulled her car coat out of the closet and slowly put it on, one arm and then the other. She looked at her mother with sad eyes as she grasped the handle of her suitcase and lifted. The suitcase would not budge. Ramona grasped it with both hands. Still she could not lift it.

Hope flowed into Ramona's heart. Had her mother made the suitcase too heavy on purpose? She looked closely at her mother, who was watching her. She saw—didn't she?—a tiny smile in her mother's eyes.

“You tricked me!” cried Ramona. “You made the suitcase too heavy on purpose. You don't want me to run away!”

“I couldn't get along without my Ramona,” said Ramona's mother. She held out her arms. Ramona ran into them. Her mother had said the words she had longed to hear. Her mother could not get along without her. She felt warm and safe and comforted and oh, how good her mother smelled, so clean and sweet like flowers. Better than any mother in the whole world. Ramona's tears dampened her mother's blouse. After a moment Mrs. Quimby handed Ramona a Kleenex. When Ramona had wiped her eyes and nose, she was surprised to discover that her mother had tears in her eyes, too.

“Mama,” said Ramona, using a word she had given up as babyish, “why did you do that?”

“Because I could see I couldn't get anyplace arguing with you,” answered her mother. “You wouldn't listen.”

The truth made Ramona uncomfortable. “Why did Mrs. Rudge phone?” she asked, to change the subject.

Mrs. Quimby looked concerned. “She called to say that she had noticed you twitching your nose a lot—Daddy and I have noticed it, too—and she wondered if something was making you nervous. She wondered if you perhaps needed a shorter day in school.”

And a longer day with Howie's grandmother? What a terrible idea. “School is easy,” said Ramona, not mentioning spelling, which, after all, might be easy if she paid more attention to it.

“Have you any idea what makes you twitch your nose?” asked Mrs. Quimby gently. “I noticed you twitch it three times during breakfast.”

Ramona was surprised. Maybe she had twitched so much she could twitch without knowing it. “Of course I know why,” she said. “I was pretending I was a rabbit, a baby rabbit, because you call me a little rabbit sometimes.”

This time Ramona did not mind when her mother laughed. She laughed a bit, too, to show that she now thought pretending to be a baby rabbit seemed silly, as if it were something she had done a long time ago when she was little.

“Rabbits are nice,” said Mrs. Quimby, “but I prefer a little girl. My little girl.”

“Really?” said Ramona, even though she knew her mother spoke the truth.

“I am glad to know you were a little rabbit,” said Ramona's mother. “I was afraid my working full time might be too much for you, and just when we have decided Daddy will quit his job at the market and go back to school.”

Ramona was astonished. “School! You mean do homework and stuff like that? Daddy?”

“I expect so,” answered Mrs. Quimby.

“Why does he want to go and do a thing like that?” Ramona could not understand.

“To finish college,” her mother explained. “So he can get a better job, he hopes. One that he likes.”

So this was what her parents had been talking about at night in their room. “Will he have to go away?” asked Ramona.

“No. He can go to Portland State right here in town,” explained Mrs. Quimby. “But I will have to go on working full time, which I want to do anyway because I like my job. Do you think you can manage to get along with Mrs. Kemp?”

Ramona thought how much happier her family would be if her father never came home tired from working in the express line again. “Of course I can,” she agreed with courage. “I've gotten along—sort of—so far.” After this she would stay away from pinking shears and bluing. As for Willa Jean—maybe she would go to nursery school and learn to shape up. Yes, Ramona could manage. “And I guess we'll have to scrimp and pinch some more,” she said.

“That's right. Scrimp and pinch and save as much money as we can while Daddy is studying, even though he hopes to find part-time work after school starts,” said Mrs. Quimby. “And by the way, you don't have to tell me if you don't want to, but I am curious. Why are your pajamas at school?”

“Oh.” Ramona made a face; it all seemed so ridiculous now. She gave her mother the shortest possible explanation.

Mrs. Quimby did not seem upset. She merely said, “What next?” and laughed.

“Did Mrs. Rudge say anything about my spelling?” Ramona hesitated to ask the question, but she did want to know the answer.

“Why, no,” said Mrs. Quimby. “She didn't even mention spelling, but she did say you were one of her little sparklers who made teaching interesting.” And with that Ramona's mother left the room.

A little sparkler! Ramona liked that. She thought of the last Fourth of July when she had twirled through the dusk, a sparkler fizzing and spitting in each hand and leaving circles of light and figure eights as she had spun across the front yard until she had fallen to the grass with dizziness. And now she was one of Mrs. Rudge's little sparklers!

Ramona held out her arms and twirled across the room, pretending she was holding sparklers. Then she seized a pencil and paper that were lying on her bureau and wrote her name in good, bold cursive:

There. A girl who was a sparkler needed a name that looked like a sparkler. And that was the way Ramona Quimby was going to write her name.

Ching-chong, ching-chong
went the roller skates out on the sidewalk. Ramona opened the suitcase and pulled out her skates.

Visit

RAMONA QUIMBY

and all of her friends in

The World of Beverly Cleary

at www.beverlycleary.com

And turn the page

for a SNEAK PEEK at

RAMONA QUIMBY,
AGE
8

R
amona Quimby hoped her parents would forget to give her a little talking-to. She did not want anything to spoil this exciting day.

“Ha-ha, I get to ride the bus to school all by myself,” Ramona bragged to her big sister, Beatrice, at breakfast. Her stomach felt quivery with excitement at the day ahead, a day that would begin with a bus ride just the right length to make her feel a long way from home but not long enough—she hoped—to make her feel carsick. Ramona was going to ride the bus, because changes had been made in the schools in the Quimbys' part of the city during the summer. Glenwood, the girls' old school, had become an intermediate school, which meant Ramona had to go to Cedarhurst Primary School.

“Ha-ha yourself.” Beezus was too excited to be annoyed with her little sister. “Today I start high school.”

“
Junior
high school,” corrected Ramona, who was not going to let her sister get away with acting older than she really was. “Rosemont Junior High School is not the same as high school, and besides you have to walk.”

Ramona had reached the age of demanding accuracy from everyone, even herself. All summer, whenever a grown-up asked what grade she was in, she felt as if she were fibbing when she answered, “third,” because she had not actually started the third grade. Still, she could not say she was in the second grade since she had finished that grade last June. Grown-ups did not understand that summers were free from grades.

“Ha-ha to both of you,” said Mr. Quimby, as he carried his breakfast dishes into the kitchen. “You're not the only ones going to school today.” Yesterday had been his last day working at the checkout counter of the ShopRite Market. Today he was returning to college to become what he called “a real, live school teacher.” He was also going to work one day a week in the frozen-food warehouse of the chain of ShopRite Markets to help the family “squeak by,” as the grown-ups put it, until he finished his schooling.

“Ha-ha to all of you if you don't hurry up,” said Mrs. Quimby, as she swished suds in the dishpan. She stood back from the sink so she would not spatter the white uniform she wore in the doctor's office where she worked as a receptionist.

“Daddy, will you have to do homework?” Ramona wiped off her milk moustache and gathered up her dishes.

“That's right.” Mr. Quimby flicked a dish towel at Ramona as she passed him. She giggled and dodged, happy because he was happy. Never again would he stand all day at a cash register, ringing up groceries for a long line of people who were always in a hurry.

Ramona slid her plate into the dishwater. “And will Mother have to sign your progress reports?”

Mrs. Quimby laughed. “I hope so.”

Beezus was last to bring her dishes into the kitchen. “Daddy, what do you have to study to learn to be a teacher?” she asked.

Ramona had been wondering the same thing. Her father knew how to read and do arithmetic. He also knew about Oregon pioneers and about two pints making one quart.

Mr. Quimby wiped a plate and stacked it in the cupboard. “I'm taking an art course, because I want to teach art. And I'll study child development—”

Ramona interrupted. “What's child development?”

“How kids grow,” answered her father.

Why does anyone have to go to school to study a thing like that? wondered Ramona. All her life she had been told that the way to grow was to eat good food, usually food she did not like, and get plenty of sleep, usually when she had more interesting things to do than go to bed.

Mrs. Quimby hung up the dishcloth, scooped up Picky-picky, the Quimbys' old yellow cat, and dropped him at the top of the basement steps. “Scat, all of you,” she said, “or you'll be late for school.”

After the family's rush to brush teeth, Mr. Quimby said to his daughters, “Hold out your hands,” and into each waiting pair he dropped a new pink eraser. “Just for luck,” he said, “not because I expect you to make mistakes.”