Ramona and Her Father (3 page)

Ramona was indignant at this criticism. “I do not! She's just making that up.” Then she remembered what she had said about her teacher's pantyhose and felt subdued. She hoped her teacher had not repeated her remark to her father.

“I remember my manners most of the time,” said Ramona, wondering what her teacher had meant by showing off. Being first to raise her hand when she knew the answer?

“Of course you do,” agreed Mr. Quimby. “After all, you are my daughter. Now tell me, how are you going to get that crown off?”

Using both hands, Ramona tried to lift her crown but only succeeded in pulling her hair. The tiny hooks clung fast. Ramona tugged. Ow! That hurt. She looked helplessly up at her father.

Mr. Quimby appeared amused. “Who do you think you are? A Rose Festival Queen?”

Ramona pretended to ignore her father's question. How silly to act like someone on television when she was a plain old second grader whose tights bagged at the knees again. She hoped her father would not guess. He might. He was good at guessing.

By then Ramona and her father were home. As Mr. Quimby unlocked the front door, he said, “We'll have to see what we can do about getting you uncrowned before your mother gets home. Any ideas?”

Ramona had no answer, although she was eager to part with the crown before her father guessed what she had been doing. In the kitchen, Mr. Quimby picked off the top of the crown, the part that did not touch Ramona's hair. That was easy. Now came the hard part.

“Yow!” said Ramona, when her father tried to lift the crown.

“That won't work,” said her father. “Let's try one bur at a time.” He went to work on one bur, carefully trying to untangle it from Ramona's hair, one strand at a time. To Ramona, who did not like to stand still, this process took forever. Each bur was snarled in a hundred hairs, and each hair had to be pulled before the bur was loosened. After a very long time, Mr. Quimby handed a hair-entangled bur to Ramona.

“Yow! Yipe! Leave me some hair,” said Ramona, picturing a bald circle around her head.

“I'm trying,” said Mr. Quimby and began on the next bur.

Ramona sighed. Standing still doing nothing was tiresome.

After what seemed like a long time, Beezus came home from school. She took one look at Ramona and began to laugh.

“I don't suppose you ever did anything dumb,” said Ramona, short of patience and anxious lest her sister guess why she was wearing the remains of a crown. “What about the time you—”

“No arguments,” said Mr. Quimby. “We have a problem to solve, and it might be a good idea if we solved it before your mother comes home from work.”

Much to Ramona's annoyance, her sister sat down to watch. “How about soaking?” suggested Beezus. “It might soften all those millions of little hooks.”

“Yow! Yipe!” said Ramona. “You're pulling too hard.”

Mr. Quimby laid another hair-filled bur on the table. “Maybe we should try. This isn't working.”

“It's about time she washed her hair anyway,” said Beezus, a remark Ramona felt was entirely unnecessary. Nobody could shampoo hair full of burs.

Ramona knelt on a chair with her head in a sinkful of warm water for what seemed like hours until her knees ached and she had a crick in her neck. “Now, Daddy?” she asked at least once a minute.

“Not yet,” Mr. Quimby answered, feeling a bur. “Nope,” he said at last. “This isn't going to work.”

Ramona lifted her dripping head from the sink. When her father tried to dry her hair, the bur hooks clung to the towel. He jerked the towel loose and draped it around Ramona's shoulders.

“Well, live and learn,” said Mr. Quimby. “Beezus, scrub some potatoes and throw them in the oven. We can't have your mother come home and find we haven't started supper.”

When Mrs. Quimby arrived, she took one look at her husband trying to untangle Ramona's wet hair from the burs, groaned, sank limply onto a kitchen chair, and began to laugh.

By now Ramona was tired, cross, and hungry. “I don't see anything funny,” she said sullenly.

Mrs. Quimby managed to stop laughing. “What on earth got into you?” she asked.

Ramona considered. Was this a question grown-ups asked just to be asking a question, or did her mother expect an answer? “Nothing,” was a safe reply. She would never tell her family how she happened to be wearing a crown of burs. Never, not even if they threw her into a dungeon.

“Beezus, bring me the scissors,” said Mrs. Quimby.

Ramona clapped her hands over the burs. “No!” she shrieked and stamped her foot. “I won't let you cut off my hair! I won't! I won't! I won't!”

Beezus handed her mother the scissors and gave her sister some advice. “Stop yelling. If you go to bed with burs in your hair, you'll really get messed up.”

Ramona had to face the wisdom of Beezus's words. She stopped yelling to consider the problem once more. “All right,” she said, as if she were granting a favor, “but I want Daddy to do it.” Her father would work with care while her mother, always in a hurry since she was working full time, would go
snip-snip-snip
and be done with it. Besides, supper would be prepared faster and would taste better if her mother did the cooking.

“I am honored,” said Mr. Quimby. “Deeply honored.”

Mrs. Quimby did not seem sorry to hand over the scissors. “Why don't you go someplace else to work while Beezus and I get supper on the table?”

Mr. Quimby led Ramona into the living room, where he turned on the television set. “This may take time,” he explained, as he went to work. “We might as well watch the news.”

Ramona was still anxious. “Don't cut any more than you have to, Daddy,” she begged, praying the margarine boy would not appear on the screen. “I don't want everyone at school to make fun of me.” The newscaster was talking about strikes and a lot of things Ramona did not understand.

“The merest smidgin,” promised her father.
Snip. Snip. Snip
. He laid a hair-ensnarled bur in an ashtray.
Snip. Snip. Snip
. He laid another bur beside the first.

“Does it look awful?” asked Ramona.

“As my grandmother would say, ‘It will never be noticed from a trotting horse.'”

Ramona let out a long, shuddery sigh, the closest thing to crying without really crying.
Snip. Snip. Snip
. Ramona touched the side of her head. She still had hair there. More hair than she expected. She felt a little better.

The newscaster disappeared from the television screen, and there was that boy again singing:

Forget your pots, forget your pans.

It's not too late to change your plans.

Ramona thought longingly of the days before her father lost his job, when they could forget their pots and pans and change their plans. She watched the boy open his mouth wide and sink his teeth into that fat hamburger with lettuce, tomato, and cheese hanging out of the bun. She swallowed and said, “I bet that boy has a lot of fun with his million dollars.” She felt so sad. The Quimbys really needed a million dollars. Even one dollar would help.

Snip. Snip. Snip
. “Oh, I don't know,” said Mr. Quimby. “Money is handy, but it isn't everything.”

“I wish I could earn a million dollars like that boy,” said Ramona. This was the closest she would ever come to telling how she happened to set a crown of burs on her head.

“You know something?” said Mr. Quimby. “I don't care how much that kid or any other kid earns. I wouldn't trade you for a million dollars.”

“Really, Daddy?” That remark about any other kid—Ramona wondered if her father had guessed her reason for the crown, but she would never ask. Never. “Really? Do you mean it?”

“Really.” Mr. Quimby continued his careful snipping. “I'll bet that boy's father wishes he had a little girl who finger-painted and wiped her hands on the cat when she was little and who once cut her own hair so she would be bald like her uncle and who then grew up to be seven years old and crowned herself with burs. Not every father is lucky enough to have a daughter like that.”

Ramona giggled. “Daddy, you're being silly!” She was happier than she had been in a long time.

“P
lease pass the tommy-toes,” said Ramona, hoping to make someone in the family smile. She felt good when her father smiled as he passed her the bowl of stewed tomatoes. He smiled less and less as the days went by and he had not found work. Too often he was just plain cross. Ramona had learned not to rush home from school and ask, “Did you find a job today, Daddy?” Mrs. Quimby always seemed to look anxious these days, either over the cost of groceries or money the family owed. Beezus had turned into a regular old grouch, because she dreaded Creative Writing and perhaps because she had reached that difficult age Mrs. Quimby was always talking about, although Ramona found this hard to believe.

Even Picky-picky was not himself. He lashed his tail and stalked angrily away from his dish when Beezus served him Puss-puddy, the cheapest brand of cat food Mrs. Quimby could find in the market.

All this worried Ramona. She wanted her father to smile and joke, her mother to look happy, her sister to be cheerful, and Picky-picky to eat his food, wash his whiskers, and purr the way he used to.

“And so,” Mr. Quimby was saying, “at the end of the interview for the job, the man said he would let me know if anything turned up.”

Mrs. Quimby sighed. “Let's hope you hear from him. Oh, by the way, the car has been making a funny noise. A sort of
tappety-tappety
sound.”

“It's Murphy's Law,” said Mr. Quimby. “Anything that can go wrong will.”

Ramona knew her father was not joking this time. Last week, when the washing machine refused to work, the Quimbys had been horrified by the size of the repair bill.

“I like tommy-toes,” said Ramona, hoping her little joke would work a second time. This was not exactly true, but she was willing to sacrifice truth for a smile.

Since no one paid any attention, Ramona spoke louder as she lifted the bowl of stewed tomatoes. “Does anybody want any tommy-toes?” she asked. The bowl tipped. Mrs. Quimby silently reached over and wiped spilled juice from the table with her napkin. Crestfallen, Ramona set the bowl down. No one had smiled.

“Ramona,” said Mr. Quimby, “my grandmother used to have a saying. ‘First time is funny, second time is silly, third time is a spanking.'”

Ramona looked down at her place mat. Nothing seemed to go right lately. Picky-picky must have felt the same way. He sat down beside Beezus and meowed his crossest meow.

Mr. Quimby lit a cigarette and asked his older daughter, “Haven't you fed that cat yet?”

Beezus rose to clear the table. “It wouldn't do any good. He hasn't eaten his breakfast. He won't eat that cheap Puss-puddy.”

“Too bad about him.” Mr. Quimby blew a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling.

“He goes next door and mews as if we never give him anything to eat,” said Beezus. “It's embarrassing.”

“He'll just have to learn to eat what we can afford,” said Mr. Quimby. “Or we will get rid of him.”

This statement shocked Ramona. Picky-picky had been a member of the family since before she was born.

“Well, I don't blame him,” said Beezus, picking up the cat and pressing her cheek against his fur. “Puss-puddy stinks.”

Mr. Quimby ground out his cigarette.

“Guess what?” said Mrs. Quimby, as if to change the subject. “Howie's grandmother drove out to visit her sister, who lives on a farm, and her sister sent in a lot of pumpkins for jack-o'-lanterns for the neighborhood children. Mrs. Kemp gave us a big one, and it's down in the basement now, waiting to be carved.

“Me! Me!” cried Ramona. “Let me get it!”

“Let's give it a real scary face,” said Beezus, no longer difficult.

“I'll have to sharpen my knife,” said Mr. Quimby.

“Run along and bring it up, Ramona,” said Mrs. Quimby with a real smile.

Relief flooded through Ramona. Her family had returned to normal. She snapped on the basement light, thumped down the stairs, and there in the shadow of the furnace pipes, which reached out like ghostly arms, was a big, round pumpkin. Ramona grasped its scratchy stem, found the pumpkin too big to lift that way, bent over, hugged it in both arms, and raised it from the cement floor. The pumpkin was heavier than she had expected, and she must not let it drop and smash all over the concrete floor.

“Need some help, Ramona?” Mrs. Quimby called down the stairs.

“I can do it.” Ramona felt for each step with her feet and emerged, victorious, into the kitchen.

“Wow! That is a big one.” Mr. Quimby was sharpening his jackknife on a whetstone while Beezus and her mother hurried through the dishes.

“A pumpkin that size would cost a lot at the market,” Mrs. Quimby remarked. “A couple of dollars, at least.”

“Let's give it eyebrows like last year,” said Ramona.

“And ears,” said Beezus.

“And lots of teeth,” added Ramona. There would be no jack-o'-lantern with one tooth and three triangles for eyes and nose in the Quimbys' front window on Halloween. Mr. Quimby was the best pumpkin carver on Klickitat Street. Everybody knew that.

“Hmm. Let's see now.” Mr. Quimby studied the pumpkin, turning it to find the best side for the face. “I think the nose should go about here. With a pencil he sketched a nose-shaped nose, not a triangle, while his daughters leaned on their elbows to watch.

“Shall we have it smile or frown?” he asked.

“Smile!” said Ramona, who had had enough of frowning.

“Frown!” said Beezus.

The mouth turned up on one side and down on the other. Eyes were sketched and eyebrows. “Very expressive,” said Mr. Quimby. “Something between a leer and a sneer.” He cut a circle around the top of the pumpkin and lifted it off for a lid.

Without being asked, Ramona found a big spoon for scooping out the seeds.

Picky-picky came into the kitchen to see if something beside Puss-puddy had been placed in his dish. When he found that it had not, he paused, sniffed the unfamiliar pumpkin smell, and with his tail twitching angrily stalked out of the kitchen. Ramona was glad Beezus did not notice.

“If we don't let the candle burn the jack-o'-lantern, we can have pumpkin pie,” said Mrs. Quimby. “I can even freeze some of the pumpkin for Thanksgiving.”

Mr. Quimby began to whistle as he carved with skill and care, first a mouthful of teeth, each one neat and square, then eyes and jagged, ferocious eyebrows. He was working on two ears shaped like question marks, when Mrs. Quimby said, “Bedtime, Ramona.”

“I am going to stay up until Daddy finishes,” Ramona informed her family. “No ifs, ands, or buts.”

“Run along and take your bath,” said Mrs. Quimby, “and you can watch awhile longer.”

Because her family was happy once more, Ramona did not protest. She returned quickly, however, still damp under her pajamas, to see what her father had thought of next. Hair, that's what he had thought of, something he could carve because the pumpkin was so big. He cut a few C-shaped curls around the hole in the top of the pumpkin before he reached inside and hollowed out a candle holder in the bottom.

“There,” he said and rinsed his jackknife under the kitchen faucet. “A work of art.”

Mrs. Quimby found a candle stub, inserted it in the pumpkin, lit it, and set the lid in place. Ramona switched off the light. The jack-o'-lantern leered and sneered with a flickering flame.

“Oh, Daddy!” Ramona threw her arms around her father. “It's the wickedest jack-o'-lantern in the whole world.”

Mr. Quimby kissed the top of Ramona's head. “Thank you. I take that as a compliment. Now run along to bed.”

Ramona could tell by the sound of her father's voice that he was smiling. She ran off to her room without thinking up excuses for staying up just five more minutes, added a postscript to her prayers thanking God for the big pumpkin, and another asking him to find her father a job, and fell asleep at once, not bothering to tuck her panda bear in beside her for comfort.

 

In the middle of the night Ramona found herself suddenly awake without knowing why she was awake. Had she heard a noise? Yes, she had. Tense, she listened hard. There it was again, a sort of thumping, scuffling noise, not very loud but there just the same. Silence. Then she heard it again. Inside the house. In the kitchen. Something was in the kitchen, and it was moving.

Ramona's mouth was so dry she could barely whisper, “Daddy!” No answer. More thumping. Someone bumped against the wall. Someone, something was coming to get them. Ramona thought about the leering, sneering face on the kitchen table. All the ghost stories she had ever heard, all the ghostly pictures she had ever seen flew through her mind. Could the jack-o'-lantern have come to life? Of course not. It was only a pumpkin, but still—A bodyless, leering head was too horrifying to think about.

Ramona sat up in bed and shrieked, “Daddy!”

A light came on in her parents' room, feet thumped to the floor, Ramona's tousled father in rumpled pajamas was silhouetted in Ramona's doorway, followed by her mother tugging a robe on over her short nightgown.

“What is it, Baby?” asked Mr. Quimby. Both Ramona's parents called her Baby when they were worried about her, and tonight Ramona was so relieved to see them she did not mind.

“Was it a bad dream?” asked Mrs. Quimby.

“Th-there's something in the kitchen.” Ramona's voice quavered.

Beezus, only half-awake, joined the family. “What's happening?” she asked. “What's going on?”

“There's something in the kitchen,” said Ramona, feeling braver. “Something moving.”

“Sh-h!” commanded Mr. Quimby.

Tense, the family listened to silence.

“You just had a bad dream.” Mrs. Quimby came into the room, kissed Ramona, and started to tuck her in.

Ramona pushed the blanket away. “It was
not
a bad dream,” she insisted. “I did too hear something. Something spooky.”

“All we have to do is look,” said Mr. Quimby, reasonably—and bravely, Ramona thought. Nobody would get her into that kitchen.

Ramona waited, scarcely breathing, fearing for her father's safety as he walked down the hall and flipped on the kitchen light. No shout, no yell came from that part of the house. Instead her father laughed, and Ramona felt brave enough to follow the rest of the family to see what was funny.

There was a strong smell of cat food in the kitchen. What Ramona saw, and what Beezus saw, did not strike them as one bit funny. Their jack-o'-lantern, the jack-o'-lantern their father had worked so hard to carve, no longer had a whole face. Part of its forehead, one ferocious eyebrow, one eye, and part of its nose were gone, replaced by a jagged hole edged by little teeth marks. Picky-picky was crouched in guilt under the kitchen table.

The nerve of that cat. “Bad cat! Bad cat!” shrieked Ramona, stamping her bare foot on the cold linoleum. The old yellow cat fled to the dining room, where he crouched under the table, his eyes glittering out of the darkness.

Mrs. Quimby laughed a small rueful laugh. “I knew he liked canteloupe, but I had no idea he liked pumpkin, too.” With a butcher's knife she began to cut up the remains of the jack-o'-lantern, carefully removing, Ramona noticed, the parts with teeth marks.

“I
told
you he wouldn't eat that awful Puss-puddy.” Beezus was accusing her father of denying their cat. “Of course he had to eat our jack-o'-lantern. He's starving.”

“Beezus, dear,” said Mrs. Quimby. “We simply cannot afford the brand of food Picky-picky used to eat. Now be reasonable.”