Beezus and Ramona (3 page)

“I do
not
spoil your fun,” stormed
Ramona. “You have all the fun. I can't read and it isn't fair.” Ramona's words ended in a howl as she buried her face in her mother's skirt.

“I couldn't read when I was your age and I didn't have someone to read to me all the
time, so it is too fair,” argued Beezus. “You always get your own way, because you're the youngest.”

“I do not!” shouted Ramona. “And you don't read all the time. You're mean!”

“I am
not
mean,” Beezus shouted back.

“Children!” cried Mother. “Stop it, both of you! Ramona, you were a very naughty girl!” A loud sniff came from Ramona.

“And, Beezus,” her mother continued, “the library won't take your card away from you. If you'll get my purse I'll give you some money to pay for the damage to the book. Take Ramona along with you, explain what happened, and the librarian will tell you how much to pay.”

This made Beezus feel better. Ramona sulked all the way to the library, but when they got there Beezus was pleased to see that Miss Evans, the children's librarian, was sitting behind the desk. Miss Evans was the
kind of librarian who would understand about little sisters.

“Hello, Beatrice,” said Miss Evans. “Is this your little sister I've heard so much about?”

Beezus wondered what Miss Evans had heard about Ramona. “Yes, this is Ramona,” she said and went on hesitantly, “and, Miss Evans, she—”

“I'm a bad girl,” interrupted Ramona, smiling winningly at the librarian.

“Oh, you are?” said Miss Evans. “What did you do?”

“I wrote in a book,” said Ramona, not the least ashamed. “I wrote in purple crayon and it will never, ever erase. Never, never, never.”

Embarrassed, Beezus handed Miss Evans
Big Steve the Steam Shovel
. “Mother gave me the money to pay for the damage,” she explained.

The librarian turned the pages of the
book. “Well, you didn't miss a page, did you?” she finally said to Ramona.

“No,” said Ramona, pleased with herself.

“And it will never, never—”

“I'm awfully sorry,” interrupted Beezus.

“After this I'll try to keep our library books where she can't reach them.”

Miss Evans consulted a file of little cards in a drawer. “Since every page in the book was damaged and the library can no longer use it, I'll have to ask you to pay for the whole book. I'm sorry, but this is the rule. It will cost two dollars and fifty cents.”

Two dollars and fifty cents! What a lot of things that would have bought, Beezus reflected, as she pulled three folded dollar bills out of her pocket and handed them to the librarian. Miss Evans put the money in a drawer and gave Beezus fifty cents in change.

Then Miss Evans took a rubber stamp
and stamped something inside the book. By twisting her head around, Beezus could see that the word was
Discarded
. “There!” Miss Evans said, pushing the book across the desk. “You have paid for it, so now it's yours.”

Beezus stared at the librarian. “You mean…to keep?”

“That's right,” answered Miss Evans.

Ramona grabbed the book. “It's mine. I told you it was mine!” Then she turned to Beezus and said triumphantly, “You said people didn't buy books at the library and now you just bought one!”

“Buying a book and paying for damage are not the same thing,” Miss Evans pointed out to Ramona.

Beezus could see that Ramona didn't care. The book was hers, wasn't it? It was paid for and she could keep it. And that's not fair, thought Beezus. Ramona shouldn't get
her own way when she had been naughty.

“But, Miss Evans,” protested Beezus, “if she spoils a book she shouldn't get to keep it. Now every time she finds a book she likes she will…” Beezus did not go on. She knew very well what Ramona would do, but she wasn't going to say it out loud in front of her.

“I see what you mean.” Miss Evans looked thoughtful. “Give me the book, Ramona,” she said.

Doubtfully Ramona handed her the book.

“Ramona, do you have a library card?” Miss Evans asked.

Ramona shook her head.

“Then Beezus must have taken the book out on her card,” said Miss Evans. “So the book belongs to Beezus.”

Why, of course! Why hadn't she thought of that before? It was her book, not Ramona's.
“Oh, thank you,” said Beezus gratefully, as Miss Evans handed the book to her. She could do anything she wanted with it.

For once Ramona didn't know what to say. She scowled and looked as if she were building up to a tantrum. “You've got to read it to me,” she said at last.

“Not unless I feel like it,” said Beezus.

“After all, it's my book,” she couldn't resist adding.

“That's no fair!” Ramona looked as if she were about to howl.

“It is too fair,” said Beezus calmly. “And if you have a tantrum I won't read to you at all.”

Suddenly, as if she had decided Beezus meant what she said, Ramona stopped scowling. “O.K.,” she said cheerfully.

Beezus watched her carefully for a minute. Yes, she really was being agreeable, thought Beezus with a great feeling of relief.
And now that she did not have to read
Big Steve
unless she wanted to, Beezus felt she would not mind reading it once in a while. “Come on, Ramona,” she said. “Maybe I'll have time to read to you before Father comes home.”

“O.K.,” said Ramona happily, as she took Beezus's hand.

Miss Evans smiled at the girls as they started to leave. “Good luck, Beatrice,” she said.

B
eezus and Ramona both looked forward to Friday afternoons after school—Beezus because she attended the art class in the recreation center in Glenwood Park, Ramona because she was allowed to go to the park with Beezus and play in the sand pile until the class was over. This Friday while Beezus held Ramona by the hand and waited for the traffic light to change from
red to green, she thought how wonderful it would be to have an imagination like Ramona's.

“Oh, you know Ramona. Her imagination runs away with her,” Mother said, when Ramona made up a story about seeing a fire engine crash into a garbage truck.

“That child has an imagination a mile long,” the Quimbys' grown-up friends remarked when Ramona sat in the middle of the living-room floor in a plastic wading pool she had dragged up from the basement and pretended she was in a boat in the middle of the lake.

“Did you ever see so much imagination in such a little girl?” the neighbors asked one another when Ramona hopped around the yard pretending she was the Easter bunny.

One spring day Ramona had got lost, because she started out to find the pot of
gold at the end of the rainbow. The rainbow had appeared to end in the park until she reached the park, but then it looked as if it ended behind the Supermarket. When the police brought Ramona home, Father said, “Sometimes I think Ramona has too much imagination.”

Nobody, reflected Beezus, ever says anything about my imagination. Nobody at all. And she wished, more than anything, that she had imagination. How pleased Miss Robbins, the art teacher, would be with her if she had an imagination like Ramona's!

Unfortunately, Beezus was not very good at painting—as least not the way Miss Robbins wanted boys and girls to paint. She wanted them to use their imagination and to feel free. Beezus still squirmed with embarrassment when she thought of her first painting, a picture of a dog with
bowwow
coming out of his mouth in a balloon.
Miss Robbins pointed out that only in the funny papers did dogs have
bowwow
coming out of their mouths in balloons.
Bowwow
in a balloon was not art. When Miss Robbins did think one of Beezus's paintings was good enough to put up on the wall, she always tacked it way down at the end, never in the center. Beezus wished she could have a painting in the center of the wall.

“Hurry up, Ramona,” Beezus coaxed. Then she noticed that her sister was dragging a string along behind her. “Oh, Ramona,” she protested, “why did you have to bring Ralph with you?” Ralph was an imaginary green lizard Ramona liked to pretend she was leading by a string.

“I love Ralph,” said Ramona firmly, “and Ralph likes to go to the park.”

Beezus knew it was easier to pretend along with Ramona than to make her stop. Anyway, it was better to have her pretend to
lead a lizard than to pretend to be a lizard herself. “Can't you carry him?” she suggested.

“No,” said Ramona. “He's slimy.”

When the girls came to the shopping district, Ramona had to stop at the drugstore
scales and pretend to weigh herself while Beezus held Ralph's string. “I weigh fifty-eleven pounds,” she announced, while Beezus smiled at Ramona's idea of her weight. It just goes to show how much imagination Ramona has, she thought.

At the radio-and-phonograph store Ramona insisted on petting His Master's Voice, the black-and-white plaster dog, bigger than Ramona, that always sat with one ear cocked in front of the door. Beezus thought admiringly about the amount of imagination it took to pretend that a scarred and chipped plaster dog was real. If only she had an imagination like Ramona's, maybe Miss Robbins would say her paintings were free and imaginative and would tack them on the middle of the wall.

When they reached the park, Beezus left Ramona and Ralph at the sand pile and, feeling more and more discouraged at her
own lack of imagination, hurried to the recreation center. The class had already poured paints into their muffin tins and were painting on paper thumbtacked to drawing boards. The room hummed with activity. Miss Robbins, wearing a gay paint-smeared smock, flew from one artist to another, praising, correcting, suggesting.

Beezus waited until Miss Robbins finished explaining to a boy that he should not outline a mouth with black paint. Her mouth wasn't outlined in black, was it? Then Beezus said, “I'm sorry I'm late, Miss Robbins.” She stared in fascination at Miss Robbins's earrings. They came almost to her shoulders and were made of silver wire twisted and bent into interesting shapes—not the shape of anything in particular, just interesting shapes.

“That's all right.” Miss Robbins, her earrings swinging, smiled at Beezus. “Get your
paints and paper. Today everyone is painting an imaginary animal.”

“An imaginary animal?” Beezus repeated blankly. How could she possibly think of an imaginary animal? As Beezus poured paints into her muffin tin and tacked a sheet of paper to her drawing board, she tried to think of an imaginary animal, but all the animals she could think of—cats and dogs, cows and horses, lions and giraffes—were discouragingly real.

Reluctantly Beezus took the only vacant seat, which was beside a boy named Wayne who came to the class only because his mother made him. Once Beezus had hung her sweater on the back of a chair, and Wayne had printed “Post No Bills” on it in chalk. Beezus had worn it all the way home before she discovered it. Since then she did not care to sit beside Wayne. Today she noticed he had parked a grape-flavored lollipop on a
paper towel beside his muffin tin of paints.

“Hi, Beez,” he greeted her. “No fair licking my sucker.”

“I don't want your old sucker,” answered Beezus. “And don't call me Beez.”

“O.K., Beez,” said Wayne.

At that moment the door opened and Ramona walked into the room. She was still dragging the string behind her and she looked angry.

“Why, hello,” said Miss Robbins pleasantly.

“Oh, Ramona, you're supposed to be playing in the sand pile,” said Beezus, going over to her.

“No,” said Ramona flatly. “Howie threw sand on Ralph.” Her dark eyes were busy taking in the paints, the brushes, the drawing boards. “I'm going to paint,” she announced.

“Mother said you were supposed to play in the sand pile,” protested Beezus. “You're
too little for this class.”

“You say that about everything,” complained Ramona. Then she turned to Miss Robbins. “Don't step on Ralph,” she said.

“Ralph is a make-believe green lizard she pretends she leads around on a string.” Beezus was embarrassed at having to explain such a silly thing.

Miss Robbins laughed. “Well, here is a little girl with lots of imagination. How would you like to paint a picture of Ralph for us, Ramona?”

Beezus could not help feeling annoyed. Miss Robbins was letting Ramona stay in the class—the one place where she was never allowed to tag along! Miss Robbins would probably like her painting, because it would be so full of imagination. Ramona's pictures, in fact, were so full of imagination that it took even more imagination to tell what they were.

Ramona beamed at Miss Robbins, who found a drawing board for her and a stool, which she placed between Beezus and Wayne. She lifted Ramona onto the stool. “There. Now you can share your sister's paints,” she said.

Ramona looked impressed at being allowed to paint with such big boys and girls. She sat quietly on her stool, watching everything around her.

Maybe she'll behave herself after all, thought Beezus as she dipped her brush into blue paint, and now I don't have to sit next to Wayne. Since Beezus still had not thought of an imaginary animal, she decided to start with the sky.

“Do the sky first,” Beezus whispered to Ramona, who looked as if she did not know how to begin. Then Beezus faced her own work, determined to be free and imaginative. To be free on a piece of paper was not
as easy as it sounded, she thought. Miss Robbins always said to start with the big areas of a picture and paint them bravely and boldly, so Beezus spread the sky on her paper with brave, bold strokes. Back and forth across the paper she swept her brush. Brave and bold and free—that was the way to do it.

Her sky turned out to be too wet, so while it dried a little, Beezus looked at what the other boys and girls were doing. Celia, who sat on her left, had already filled in a brave, bold background of pink, which she had sprinkled with big purple dots. Now she was painting a long gray line that wound all over her paper, in and out around the dots.

“What's that supposed to be?” whispered Beezus.

“I'm not sure yet,” answered Celia.

Beezus felt better, because Celia was the kind of girl who usually knew exactly what she was doing and whose pictures were often tacked in the center of the wall. The boy on the other side of Celia, who always wanted to paint airplanes, was painting what looked like a giraffe made of pieces of machinery, and another boy was painting a thing that had two heads.

Beezus looked across Ramona to Wayne. He had not bothered with a sky at all. He had painted a hen. Beezus knew it was a hen, because he had printed in big letters, “This is a real hen,” with an arrow pointing to it. Wayne always tried to do just the opposite of what Miss Robbins wanted.

“Hey, quit peeking,” said Wayne in a loud voice.

“I'm not peeking,” said Beezus, hastily trying to look as if she had been interested in Ramona's paper all the time.

Ramona had dipped her brush into blue paint and had painted a blue stripe across the top of her paper. “That's the sky,” she said happily.

“But that's not the way the sky is.” Beezus was trying to be helpful. She felt better, because Ramona had not plunged in and painted a picture full of imagination. “Skies should come farther down on the paper.”

“The sky is up,” said Ramona firmly.

Beezus decided she couldn't waste time explaining about skies, not when she still hadn't thought of an imaginary animal. Maybe she could take a real animal and sort of change it around. Let's see, she thought, I could take a horse and put feathers on it. No, all those feathers would be too hard to paint. Wings? That was it! A horse with wings was an imaginary animal—a real imaginary animal—because Mother had once read aloud a story about Pegasus, the winged horse, out of a library book. In the story Pegasus had been white, which was a real horse color. Beezus decided to be extra-imaginative. She would make her horse green—a green horse against a blue sky. Miss Robbins ought to like that. Beezus did not think blue and green looked very pretty together, but Miss Robbins often liked colors that Beezus thought did not really go together.

Beezus dipped her brush into green paint and outlined a wing against the sky. Next she outlined the body of the horse and a long tail that hung down. It was a magnificent horse. At least, Beezus hoped it would look magnificent when she finished it. Anyway, it was big, because Miss Robbins liked her artists to cover the whole paper. Quickly and neatly Beezus filled in the outline of the horse, because Miss Robbins, who was looking at Celia's picture, would look at hers next. Somehow the horse was not exactly what Beezus had in her mind's eye, but even so, compared to whatever Celia was painting, a green horse with wings was really a very good imaginary animal. And except for a few soggy places in the sky, her work was much neater than Celia's. Beezus waited for Miss Robbins to point this out.

Instead, Miss Robbins said, “Celia, your
picture is work to be proud of. It is a difficult thing to get to be as free as this.”

Then Miss Robbins moved on to Beezus, her long earrings swinging forward as she leaned over the drawing board. Beezus waited anxiously. Maybe her picture wasn't so good, after all. If Miss Robbins liked a gray line winding around a lot of purple dots, maybe she wouldn't like a flying horse. Maybe she liked things with no special shape, like those earrings.

“You have a good sky even if it is a little wet,” said Miss Robbins.