Beezus and Ramona
Authors: Beverly Cleary
Beezus and Ramona
Illustrated by
Tracy Dockray
B
eatrice Quimby's biggest problem was her little sister Ramona. Beatrice, or Beezus (as everyone called her, because that was what Ramona had called her when she first learned to talk), knew other nine-year-old girls who had little sisters who went to nursery school, but she did not know anyone with a little sister like Ramona.
Beezus felt that the biggest trouble with
four-year-old Ramona was that she was just plain exasperating. If Ramona drank lemonade through a straw, she blew into the straw as hard as she could to see what would happen. If she played with her finger paints in the front yard, she wiped her hands on the neighbors' cat. That was the exasperating sort of thing Ramona did. And then there was the way she behaved about her favorite book.
It all began one afternoon after school when Beezus was sitting in her father's big chair embroidering a laughing teakettle on a pot holder for one of her aunts for Christmas. She was trying to embroider this one neatly, because she planned to give it to Aunt Beatrice, who was Mother's younger sister and Beezus's most special aunt.
With gray thread Beezus carefully outlined the steam coming from the teakettle's spout and thought about her pretty young
aunt, who was always so gay and so understanding. No wonder she was Mother's favorite sister. Beezus hoped to be exactly like Aunt Beatrice when she grew up. She wanted to be a fourth-grade teacher and drive a yellow convertible and live in an apartment house with an elevator and a buzzer that opened the front door. Because she was named after Aunt Beatrice, Beezus felt she might be like her in other ways, too.
While Beezus was sewing, Ramona, holding a mouth organ in her teeth, was riding around the living room on her tricycle. Since she needed both hands to steer the tricycle, she could blow in and out on only one note. This made the harmonica sound as if it were groaning
oh dear, oh dear
over and over again.
Beezus tried to pay no attention. She tied a small knot in the end of a piece of red thread to embroider the teakettle's laughing
mouth. “Conceal a knot as you would a secret,” Grandmother always said.
Inhaling and exhaling into her mouth organ, Ramona closed her eyes and tried to pedal around the coffee table without looking.
“Ramona!” cried Beezus. “Watch where you're going!”
When Ramona crashed into the coffee table, she opened her eyes again.
Oh dear, oh
dear
, moaned the harmonica. Around and around pedaled Ramona, inhaling and exhaling.
Beezus looked up from her pot holder. “Ramona, why don't you play with Bendix for a while?” Bendix was Ramona's favorite doll. Ramona thought Bendix was the most beautiful name in the world.
Ramona took the harmonica out of her mouth. “No,” she said. “Read my Scoopy book to me.”
“Oh, Ramona, not Scoopy,” protested Beezus. “We've read Scoopy so many times.”
Instead of answering, Ramona put her harmonica between her teeth again and pedaled around the room, inhaling and exhaling. Beezus had to lift her feet every time Ramona rode by.
The knot in Beezus's thread pulled through the material of her pot holder, and she gave up trying to conceal it as she would
a secret and tied a bigger knot. Finally, tired of trying to keep her feet out of Ramona's way, she put down her embroidery. “All right, Ramona,” she said. “If I read about Scoopy, will you stop riding your tricycle around the living room and making so much noise?”
“Yes,” said Ramona, and climbed off her tricycle. She ran into the bedroom she shared with Beezus and returned with a battered, dog-eared, sticky book, which she handed to Beezus. Then she climbed into the big chair beside Beezus and waited expectantly.
Reflecting that Ramona always managed to get her own way, Beezus gingerly took the book and looked at it with a feeling of great dislike. It was called
The Littlest Steam Shovel
. On the cover was a picture of a steam shovel with big tears coming out of its eyes. How could a steam shovel have eyes, Beezus
thought and, scarcely looking at the words, began for what seemed like the hundredth or maybe the thousandth time, “Once there was a little steam shovel named Scoopy. One day Scoopy said, âI do not want to be a steam shovel. I want to be a bulldozer.'”
“You skipped,” interrupted Ramona.
“No, I didn't,” said Beezus.
“Yes, you did,” insisted Ramona. “You're supposed to say, âI want to be a
big
bulldozer.'”
“Oh, all right,” said Beezus crossly. “âI want to be a big bulldozer.'”
Ramona smiled contentedly and Beezus continued reading. “âG-r-r-r,' said Scoopy, doing his best to sound like a bulldozer.”
Beezus read on through Scoopy's failure to be a bulldozer. She read about Scoopy's wanting to be a trolley bus (“Beep-beep,” honked Ramona), a locomotive (“A-hooey, a-hooey,” wailed Ramona), and a pile driver
(“Clunk! Clunk!” shouted Ramona). Beezus was glad when she finally reached the end of the story and Scoopy learned it was best for little steam shovels to be steam shovels. “There!” she said with relief, and closed the book. She always felt foolish trying to make noises like machinery.
“Clunk! Clunk!” yelled Ramona, jumping down from the chair. She pulled her harmonica out of the pocket of her overalls and climbed on her tricycle.
Oh dear, oh dear
, she inhaled and exhaled.
“Ramona!” cried Beezus. “You promised you'd stop if I read Scoopy to you.”
“I did stop,” said Ramona, when she had taken the harmonica out of her mouth.
“Now read it again.”
“Ramona Geraldine Quimby!” Beezus began, and stopped. It was useless to argue with Ramona. She wouldn't pay any attention. “Why do you like that story anyway?”
Beezus asked. “Steam shovels can't talk, and I feel silly trying to make all those noises.”
“
I
don't,” said Ramona, and wailed, “A-hooey, a-hooey,” with great feeling before she put her harmonica back in her mouth.
Beezus watched her little sister pedal furiously around the living room, inhaling and exhaling. Why did she have to like a book about a steam shovel anyway? Girls weren't supposed to like machinery. Why couldn't she like something quiet, like
Peter Rabbit
?
Mother, who had bought
The Littlest Steam Shovel
at the Supermarket to keep Ramona quiet while she shopped one afternoon, was so tired of Scoopy that she always managed to be too busy to read to Ramona. Father came right out and said he was fed up with frustrated steam shovels and he would not read that book to Ramona and, furthermore, no one else was to read it to her while he was in the house. And that was that.
So only Beezus was left to read Scoopy to Ramona. Plainly something had to be done and it was up to Beezus to do it. But what? Arguing with Ramona was a waste of time. So was appealing to her better nature. The best thing to do with Ramona, Beezus had learned, was to think up something to take the place of whatever her mind was fixed upon. And what could take the place of
The Littlest Steam Shovel
? Another book, of course, a better book, and the place to find it was certainly the library.
“Ramona, how would you like me to take you to the library to find a different book?” Beezus asked. She really enjoyed taking Ramona places, which, of course, was quite different from wanting to go someplace herself and having Ramona insist on tagging along.
For a moment Ramona was undecided. Plainly she was torn between wanting
The
Littlest Steam Shovel
read aloud again and the pleasure of going out with Beezus. “O.K.,” she agreed at last.
“Get your sweater while I tell Mother,” said Beezus.
“Clunk! Clunk!” shouted Ramona happily.
When Ramona appeared with her sweater, Beezus stared at her in dismay. Oh, no, she thought. She can't wear those to the library.
On her head Ramona wore a circle of cardboard with two long paper ears attached. The insides of the ears were colored with pink crayon, Ramona's work at nursery school. “I'm the Easter bunny,” announced Ramona.
“Mother,” wailed Beezus. “You aren't going to let her wear those awful ears to the library!”
“Why, I don't see why not.” Mother
sounded surprised that Beezus should object to Ramona's ears.
“They look so silly. Whoever heard of an Easter bunny in September?” Beezus complained, as Ramona hopped up and down to make her ears flop. I just hope we don't meet anyone we know, Beezus thought, as they started out the front door.
But the girls had no sooner left the house when they saw Mrs. Wisser, a lady who lived in the next block, coming toward them with a friend. It was too late to turn back. Mrs. Wisser had seen them and was waving.
“Why, hello there, Beatrice,” Mrs. Wisser said, when they met. “I see you have a dear little bunny with you today.”
“Uhâ¦yes.” Beezus didn't know what else to say.
Ramona obligingly hopped up and down to make her ears flop.
Mrs. Wisser said to her friend, as if Beezus
and Ramona couldn't hear, “Isn't she adorable?”
Both children knew whom Mrs. Wisser was talking about. If she had been talking about Beezus, she would have said something quite different. Such a nice girl, probably. A
sweet child. Adorable, never.
“Just look at those eyes,” said Mrs. Wisser.
Ramona beamed. She knew whose eyes they were talking about. Beezus knew, too, but she didn't care. Mother said blue eyes were just as pretty as brown.
Mrs. Wisser leaned over to Ramona. “What color are your eyes, sweetheart?” she asked.
“Brown and white,” said Ramona promptly.
“Brown and white eyes!” exclaimed the friend. “Isn't that cunning?”
Beezus had thought it was cunning the first time she heard Ramona say it, about a year ago. Since then she had given up trying to explain to Ramona that she wasn't supposed to say she had brown and white eyes, because Ramona always answered, “My eyes
are
brown and white,” and Beezus had to admit that, in a way, they were.
“And what is the little bunny's name?” asked Mrs. Wisser's friend.
“My name is Ramona Geraldine Quimby,” answered Ramona, and then added generously, “My sister's name is Beezus.”
“Beezus!” exclaimed the lady. “What an odd name. Is it French?”
“Oh, no,” said Beezus. Wishing, as she so often did, that she had a more common nickname, like Betty or Patsy, she explained as quickly as she could how she happened to be called Beezus.
Ramona did not like to lose the attention of her audience. She hitched up the leg of her overalls and raised her knee. “See my scab?” she said proudly. “I fell down and hurt my knee and it bled and bled.”
“Ramona!” Beezus was horrified. “You aren't supposed to show people your scabs.”
“Why?” asked Ramona. That was one of the most exasperating things about
Ramona. She never seemed to understand what she was not supposed to do.
