Beezus and Ramona (7 page)

Beezus opened the door to the attic. Up
the steps marched the parade. Stamp, stamp, stamp went their feet overhead. Stamp, stamp, stamp.

Beezus remembered something Ramona had enjoyed when she was still in diapers. She lugged Willa Jean up the basement steps, sat her in the middle of the kitchen floor, and handed her the egg beater. “There. Don't step on her,” she said to her mother.

“Thank goodness,” sighed Mother.

“Maybe they'll play parade long enough for us to fix something for them to eat.”

“What'll we give them?” Beezus asked.

Mother laughed. “This is a wonderful chance to get rid of all that applesauce. Let's hurry and get it ready before they get tired of their game. Get the colored paper napkins out of the cupboard and—oh, dear, what shall we do for chairs?”

“They can sit on the floor,” suggested
Beezus, looking through the cupboard for napkins.

“I guess they'll have to.” Mother took the applesauce out of the refrigerator. “If we put a couple of sheets down for them to sit on, maybe they won't get applesauce on the rug.”

The parade tramped down the attic stairs and through the kitchen. “But Mother,” said Beezus, when the drum and horns had disappeared into the basement again, “the only napkins I can find are for St. Valentine's Day and Halloween. They won't do.”

“They'll have to do,” said Mother.

Beezus spread two sheets in the middle of the living-room floor. Then she went into the kitchen to help Mother, who was tearing open three boxes of fig Newtons. “It's a good thing I bought these at that sale last week,” she remarked.

“Are we going to give them lemonade or
anything to drink?” Beezus asked.

“Not on my living-room rug.” Mother rapidly spooned applesauce into dishes.

“Applesauce and fig Newtons are bad enough.”

“Maybe if we feed them right away some of them will think the party is over and go home.” Beezus piled fig Newtons on two plates.

“I hope so. This many small children in the house on a rainy day is too much.” The parade stamped across the attic floor again, and Mother had to raise her voice to make herself heard. “It sounds as if they were coming through the ceiling.”

“Let's catch them the next time they come through the kitchen and hand out the applesauce,” Beezus shouted back. “Then maybe we can get them to march into the living room.”

It was not long before Howie led the
parade into the kitchen again. He stopped so suddenly that the children bumped into one another. “When do we eat?” he demanded.

“Now.” Beezus thrust a dish of applesauce and a spoon into his hands.

“I want some,” cried the others.

Mother handed a second child some applesauce. “Forward march!” she ordered.

Beezus led Howie into the living room, and the rest of the parade followed with their applesauce. “You sit there,” she said to Howie, pointing to a place on the sheet. She was relieved to see the others seat themselves around the edge of the sheet. Quickly she handed around paper napkins.

“I want one with witches on it,” demanded a boy who had a Valentine napkin.

“I want one with hearts on it,” wailed a girl who had a Halloween napkin.

Beezus hastily counted the napkins. Yes, there were enough of each kind to go
around. Two napkins apiece would be safer anyway. She handed each child a second napkin and they all began to eat their applesauce, except one little girl who didn't like applesauce. Ramona was beaming, because refreshments were the most important part of any party and now at last her guests were behaving the way she wanted them to.

Mother came out of the kitchen with the plates of fig Newtons, which she handed to Beezus. “Here, pass these around,” she said. “I think I'd better help Willa Jean.” Willa Jean knew how to eat with a spoon. The trouble was, she had to pick up the food with her left hand and put it into the spoon, which she held in her right hand. Then, most of the time, she was able to get it into her mouth.

Ramona, her face shining with happiness, looked at her friends sharing the applesauce. “Those cookies are filled with worms.
Chopped-up worms!” she gleefully told everyone.

“Why, Ramona!” Beezus was shocked.

“They aren't either. They're filled with ground-up figs. You know that.”

Ramona did not answer. Her mouth was full of fig Newtons.

Beezus passed the plate to a boy named Joey. “I don't like worms,” he said.

“I don't like worms,” said the next little girl, who had applesauce all over her chin.

Beezus noticed that Ramona was beginning to scowl. When Howie refused a cookie, it was too much for Ramona. “You eat that!” she shouted.

“I won't,” yelled Howie. “You can't make me.”

Ramona jumped up, spilling her applesauce on the sheet. She thrust a nibbled fig Newton at Howie. “You eat that,” she repeated as she stepped into the applesauce.
“It's my party and I want you to eat it!”

Howie knocked the cookie out of her hand. Ramona grabbed a handful of fig Newtons and thrust them at Susan. “Eat these,” she shouted.

Susan began to cry. “They're full of
worms,” she sobbed. “I don't like worms.”

“They're
pretend
worms,” yelled Ramona.

“No, they're not,” cried Susan. “They're real!”

“You eat these,” Ramona yelled, thrusting her handful of cookies at the children, who backed away. Ramona stamped her feet and screamed. Then she threw the fig Newtons at her guests as hard as she could.

“My mother won't let me eat worms!” shouted a little boy.

Ramona threw herself on the floor and kicked.

“Ramona, stop that!” Mother appeared from the kitchen with Willa Jean balanced on one hip. She grabbed Ramona by one arm and tried to drag her to her feet, but Ramona's legs were like rubber.

“All right, Howie, forward march!” Beezus ordered, hoping to draw attention from Ramona. No one moved. It was much
more fun to see what was going to happen to Ramona.

“This is my party! They're supposed to eat the refreshments!” Ramona howled, banging her heels on the floor.

“Ramona, you're acting like a two-year-old. You may go to your room and close the door until you can behave yourself,” said Mother quietly.

Ramona kicked harder to show that she was not going to mind unless she felt like it.

“Ramona,” said Mother even more quietly. “Don't make me count to ten.”

Gasping with sobs, Ramona got up from the floor and ran into the bedroom, where she slammed the door as hard as she could.

“All right, parade,” said Mother wearily.

“Forward march.”

Up and down, whistling, banging, tooting, marched the parade. Mother sat Willa Jean down and was just beginning to gather up the
dishes and sheets when a car stopped in front of the house and Mrs. Kemp got out. “At last,” sighed Mother, hurrying to the door.

“I've come for Howie and Willa Jean,” said Mrs. Kemp, as several other cars stopped in front of the Quimbys'. The parade marched into the living room.

“I don't want to go home,” protested Howie, when he saw his mother.

“The party must have been a success,” Mrs. Kemp observed.

“It certainly was.” Mother tried to push the uncurled side of her hair behind her ear and to smooth out her rumpled old dress.

“I like to play parade,” said Howie, “but I didn't like what they had to eat.”

“Why, Howie,” scolded Mrs. Kemp. “We must remember our manners.”

Ramona, her face streaked with tears, came out of her room and stood staring unhappily at her departing guests. When the
last child had struggled into his boots, she looked tearfully at her mother. “I'm behaving myself now,” she said meekly.

Mother dropped wearily into a chair. “Ramona, if you wanted a party, why didn't you ask me to have one?”

“Because when I ask you don't let me do things,” explained Ramona, sniffing.

Beezus couldn't help feeling there was some truth in Ramona's remark. She had often felt that way herself, especially when she was younger. “Mother, did I do things like Ramona when I was four?” she asked.

“You did some of the things Ramona does now,” said Mother thoughtfully, “but you were really very different. You were quieter, for one thing.”

This pleased Beezus. One of the reasons she sometimes disliked Ramona was that she was never quiet when she could manage to be noisy.

“Of course there are some things that all four-year-olds do,” Mother continued, “but even sisters are usually different. Just the way your Aunt Beatrice and I were different when we were girls. I was a bookworm and went to the library two or three times a week. She was the best hopscotch player and the fastest rope jumper in the neighborhood. And she was better at jacks than anybody in our whole school.”

This surprised Beezus. She had never thought about her mother and aunt as children before. She tried to picture her schoolteacher aunt jumping rope and found to her surprise that it was not very hard to do. Of course Mother and Aunt Beatrice must have been different when they were girls, because they were so different now that they were grown up. And she was glad they were different. She loved them both.

“Did I have tantrums, too?” Beezus asked.

“Once in a while,” said Mother. “I always dreaded cutting your fingernails, because you kicked and screamed.”

Beezus could not help feeling silly. Imagine having a tantrum over a little thing like having her fingernails cut!

Then Ramona spoke up. “I don't cry when you cut my fingernails,” she boasted.

“Yes, but you scream when you have your hair washed,” Beezus could not help reminding her.

“Ramona,” said Mother, “you were a very naughty girl this afternoon. What are we going to do with you?”

Ramona stopped sniffing and looked interested. “Lock me in a closet for a million years?” she suggested cheerfully.

Mother and Beezus exchanged glances. How quickly Ramona recovered!

“Make me sleep outdoors in the rain?” Obviously Ramona was enjoying herself.
“Not let me have anything to eat but carrots?”

Mother laughed and looked at Beezus. “I'm afraid all we can do is wait for her to grow up,” she said.

And when Mother said
we
like that, Beezus almost felt sorry for Ramona, because she would have to wait such a long time to be grown up.

W
hen Beezus came home from school on the afternoon of her tenth birthday, she felt that so far the day had been perfect—packages by her plate at breakfast, a new dress to wear to school, the whole class singing “Happy Birthday” just for her. But the best part was still to come. Aunt Beatrice was coming for dinner.

Beezus could hardly wait to tell her aunt
about acting the part of Sacajawea leading Lewis and Clark across the plains to Oregon at a P.T.A. meeting. And of course Aunt Beatrice would bring more presents—very special presents, because she was Aunt Beatrice's namesake. And at dinner there would be a beautiful birthday cake with ten candles. Mother had probably worked all afternoon baking and decorating the cake and now had it hidden away in a cupboard.

When Mother kissed Beezus she had said, “I'm sorry, Beezus, but I'll have to ask you to keep Ramona out of the kitchen for a while.”

“Why?” asked Beezus, thinking her mother was planning a surprise.

“So I can bake your birthday cake,” Mother explained.

“Isn't it baked yet?” exclaimed Beezus.

“Oh, Mother.”

“This has been one of those days when I
couldn't seem to get anything done,” said Mother. “It was my morning for the nursery-school car pool. After I picked up all the children and drove them to nursery school and came home and did the breakfast dishes and made the beds, it was time to pick up the children and take them all home again. And after lunch I started the cake and had just creamed the sugar and butter in the electric mixer when I was called to the telephone. When I came back, what do you think had happened?”

“What?” asked Beezus, pretty sure Ramona had something to do with it.

“Ramona had dropped all the eggs in the house into the batter and had started the mixer,” said Mother.

“Shells and all?” asked Beezus, horrified.

“Shells and all,” repeated Mother wearily.

“And so I had to get out the car again and drive to the market and buy more eggs.”

“Ramona, what did you have to go and do a thing like that for?” Beezus demanded of her little sister, who was playing with her doll Bendix.

“To see what would happen,” answered Ramona.

She doesn't look a bit sorry, thought Beezus crossly. Spoiling my birthday cake like that!

“Don't worry, dear. There's still plenty of
time to bake another,” said Mother. “If you'll just keep Ramona out of the kitchen, I can get it into the oven in no time at all.”

That made Beezus feel better. At least she would have a birthday cake, even if it did mean looking after Ramona for a while.

“Read to me,” Ramona demanded.

“Read about Big Steve.”

“I'll read to you, but I won't read that book,” said Beezus, going to the bookcase. She really wanted to read one of her birthday books, called
202 Things to Do on a Rainy Afternoon
, but she knew Ramona would insist on a story. “How about Hänsel and Gretel?” she asked. Next to stories with lots of noise, Ramona liked stories about witches, goblins, or ogres.

“Yes, I like Hänsel and Gretel,” agreed Ramona, as she climbed on the davenport and sat Bendix beside her. “O.K., I'm ready. Now you can begin.”

Beezus curled up at the other end of the davenport with
Grimm's Fairy Tales.
“Once upon a time…” she began, and Ramona listened contentedly. When she did not have to make noises like machinery Beezus enjoyed reading to Ramona, and this afternoon reading aloud was particularly pleasant, with Mother in the kitchen baking a birthday cake. As Beezus read she listened to the whir of the mixer and the sound of eggs being cracked against a bowl.

Beezus read about Hänsel's leaving a trail of crumbs behind him as he and Gretel went into the woods. She read the part Ramona liked best, about the witch's trying to fatten Hänsel. Ramona listened wide-eyed until Beezus came to the end of the story, where Gretel pushed the witch into the oven and escaped through the woods with her brother.

“That's a good story,” said Ramona, as she
jumped down from the davenport.

Surprised that Ramona didn't demand another story, Beezus picked up
202 Things to Do on a Rainy Afternoon
and began to read. She was learning how to make a necklace out of beans and pumpkin seeds painted with fingernail polish when a lovely sweet vanilla fragrance began to fill the house, and Beezus knew her birthday cake was safely in the oven at last.

Ramona's unusual silence made Beezus glance up from her book. “Ramona!” she cried, when she saw what her little sister was doing. “Stop that right away!”

Ramona was busy pulling graham-cracker crumbs out of the pocket of her overalls and sprinkling them across the rug. “I'm Hänsel leaving a trail of crumbs through the woods,” she said, digging more crumbs out of her pocket. “My father is a poor woodcutter.”

“Oh, Ramona,” said Beezus, but she had to giggle at the picture of Father as a poor woodcutter.

Ramona sprinkled more crumbs on the rug, and Beezus knew she had to do something about it. “Why don't you pretend you're Gretel?” she suggested, because Gretel would not leave crumbs on the rug.

“O.K.,” agreed Ramona.

That was easy, thought Beezus, and went on reading about making a complete set of doll furniture out of old milk cartons. How good her birthday cake smelled! She hoped Mother would remember she had asked for pink frosting. She heard the oven door open and close. Mother must be peeking into the oven to see how my cake is coming along, she thought.

Beezus read on, absorbed in the directions for making a vase out of an old tomato-juice can. Something smells funny,
she thought as she turned a page. Then she stopped and sniffed. The air was no longer filled with the lovely warm fragrance of a baking cake. It was filled with a horrid rubbery smell. That's funny, thought Beezus. I wonder what it can be. She sniffed again. Maybe somebody was burning trash outside and the smell was coming in through the window.

Mother came into the living room from the bedroom. “Beezus, do you smell something rubbery?” she asked anxiously.

“Yes, and it smells awful,” said Beezus. Ramona held her nose.

Mother sniffed again. “It smells as if something is scorching, too.”

Beezus went into the kitchen, where she found the smell so strong that it made her cough. “It's worse in here, Mother,” she called, as she looked to see if anything was burning on the stove. Then Beezus remembered the
oven. “Mother,” she said in a worried voice, “you don't suppose something has happened to my birthday cake again?”

“Of course not,” said Mother, coming into the kitchen and opening the window.

“What could happen to it?”

Just to be sure, Beezus cautiously opened the oven door. “Mother!” she cried, horrified at what she saw. “Look!” Ramona's rubber doll, Bendix, leaned over the edge of the cake pan, her head and arms buried in the batter. Her dress was scorched to a golden tan. “Oh, Mother!” repeated Beezus. Her birthday cake, her beautiful, fragrant birthday cake, was ruined.

“Is the witch done yet?” Ramona asked.

“Ramona—” began Mother and stopped. She couldn't think of anything to say. Silently she turned off the oven and, with a pot holder, pulled out the doll and the remains of the cake.

“Ramona Geraldine Quimby!” said Beezus angrily. “You're just awful, that's what you are! Just plain awful. Spoiling your own sister's birthday cake!”

“You told me to pretend I was Gretel,” protested Ramona. “And Gretel pushed the witch into the oven.”

Beezus looked at the cake and burst into tears.

Ramona promptly began to cry too. This made Beezus even angrier. “You stop crying,” she ordered Ramona furiously. “It was my birthday cake and I'm the one that's supposed to be crying.”

“Girls!” said Mother in a tired voice.

“Ramona, you have been very naughty. You know better than to put anything into the oven. Now go to your room and stay there until I say you can come out.”

Sniffling, Ramona started toward the bedroom.

“And don't you dare put your toys on my bed,” said Beezus. “Mother, can you fix the cake?”

“I'm afraid not.” Mother poked at the cake with her finger. “It's fallen, and anyway it would probably taste like burnt rubber.”

Beezus tried to brush the tears out of her eyes. “Ramona always spoils everything. Now I won't have any birthday cake, and Aunt Beatrice is coming and it won't be like a birthday at all.”

“I know Ramona is a problem but we'll just have to be patient, because she's little,” said Mother, as she scraped the cake into the garbage can. “And you will still have a cake. I'll phone your Aunt Beatrice and have her bring one from the bakery.”

“Oh, Mother, will you?” asked Beezus.

“That's what I'll do,” said Mother. “Now run along and wash your face and you'll feel better.”

But as Beezus held her face cloth under the faucet she was not at all sure she would feel better. For Ramona to spoil one birthday cake was bad enough, but
two…
Probably nobody else in the whole world had a little sister who had spoiled two birthday cakes on the same day.

Beezus scrubbed away the tear stains, feeling more and more sorry for herself for having such a little sister. If Ramona were only bigger, things might be different; but since she was so much younger, she would always be…well, a pest. Then the terrible thought came to Beezus again—the thought she had had the time Ramona bit into all the apples and the time she shoved the dog into the bathroom. She tried not to think the thought, but she couldn't help it. There were times when she did not love Ramona. This was one of them. Everyone knew sisters were supposed to love each other. Look
how much Mother and Aunt Beatrice loved each other. Beezus felt very gloomy indeed as she dried her face. She was a terrible girl who did not love her little sister. Like a wicked sister in a fairy tale. And on her birthday, too, a day that was supposed to be happy.

When Beezus went into the living room, Mother switched off the vacuum cleaner, which had been sucking up the crumbs Ramona had sprinkled on the rug. “Aunt Beatrice said she would be delighted to bring a cake. She knows a bakery that makes very special birthday cakes,” she said, smiling at Beezus. “You mustn't let Ramona spoil your birthday.”

Beezus felt a little better. She curled up on the davenport again with
202 Things to Do on a Rainy Afternoon
and read about making Christmas tree ornaments out of cellophane straws, until she heard her aunt's
car turn into the driveway. Then she flung her book aside and ran out to greet her.

“Happy birthday, darling!” cried Aunt Beatrice, as she set the brake and opened the door of her yellow convertible.

Joyfully Beezus ran over to the car and kissed her aunt. “Did you bring the cake?” she asked.

“I certainly did,” answered Aunt Beatrice.