Payday

1

Payday

“Ye-e-ep!” sang Ramona Quimby one warm September afternoon, as she knelt on a chair at the kitchen table to make out her Christmas list. She had enjoyed a good day in second grade, and she looked forward to working on her list. For Ramona a Christmas list was a list of presents she hoped to receive, not presents she planned to give. “Ye-e-ep!” she sang again.

“Thank goodness today is payday,” remarked Mrs. Quimby, as she opened the refrigerator to see what she could find for supper.

“Ye-e-ep!” sang Ramona, as she printed mice or ginny pig on her list with purple crayon. Next to Christmas and her birthday, her father’s payday was her favorite day. His payday meant treats. Her mother’s payday from her part-time job in a doctor’s office meant they could make payments on the bedroom the Quimbys had added to their house when Ramona was in first grade.

“What’s all this yeeping about?” asked Mrs. Quimby.

“I’m making a joyful noise until the Lord like they say in Sunday school,” Ramona explained. “Only they don’t tell us what the joyful noise sounds like so I made up my own.” Hooray and wow, joyful noises to Ramona, had not sounded right, so she had settled on yeep because it sounded happy but not rowdy.

“Isn’t that all right?” she asked, as she began to add myna bird that talks to her list.

“Yeep is fine if that’s the way you feel about it,” reassured Mrs. Quimby.

Ramona printed coocoo clock on her list while she wondered what the treat would be this payday. Maybe, since this was Friday, they could all go to a movie if her parents could find one suitable. Both Ramona and her big sister, Beezus, christened Beatrice, wondered what went on in all those other movies. They planned to find out the minute they were grown up. That was one thing they agreed on. Or maybe their father would bring presents, a package of colored paper for Ramona, a paperback book for Beezus.

“I wish I could think of something interesting to do with leftover pot roast and creamed cauliflower,” remarked Mrs. Quimby.

Leftovers—yuck!, thought Ramona.

“Maybe Daddy will take us to the Whopperburger for supper for payday,” she said. A soft, juicy hamburger spiced with relish, French fries crisp on the outside and mealy inside, a little paper cup of cole slaw at the Whopperburger Restaurant were Ramona’s favorite payday treat. Eating close together in a booth made Ramona feel snug and cozy. She and Beezus never quarreled at the Whopperburger.

“Good idea.” Mrs. Quimby closed the refrigerator door. “I’ll see what I can do.” Then Beezus came into the kitchen through the back door, dropped her books on the table, and flopped down on a chair with a gusty sigh.

“What was that all about?” asked Mrs.

Quimby, not at all worried.

“Nobody is any fun anymore,” complained Beezus. “Henry spends all his time running around the track over at the high school getting ready for the Olympics in eight or twelve years, or he and Robert study a book of world records trying to find a record to break, and Mary Jane practices the piano all the time.” Beezus sighed again. “And Mrs. Mester says we are going to do lots of creative writing, and I hate creative writing. I don’t see why I had to get Mrs. Mester for seventh grade anyway.” “Creative writing can’t be as bad as all that,” said Mrs. Quimby.

“You just don’t understand,” complained Beezus.“I can never think of stories, and my poems are stuff like,’See the bird in the tree.

He is singing to me.’”

“Tee-hee, tee-hee,” added Ramona without thinking.

“Ramona,” said Mrs. Quimby, “that was not necessary.”

Because Beezus had been so grouchy lately, Ramona could manage to be only medium sorry.

“Pest!” said Beezus. Noticing Ramona’s work, she added, “Making out a Christmas list in September is silly.”

Ramona calmly selected an orange crayon.

She was used to being called a pest. “If I am a pest, you are a rotten dinosaur egg,” she informed her sister.

“Mother, make her stop,” said Beezus.

When Beezus said this, Ramona knew she had won. The time had come to change the subject. “Today’s payday,” she told her sister.

“Maybe we’ll get to go to the Whopperburger for supper.”

“Oh, Mother, will we?” Beezus’s unhappy mood disappeared as she swooped up Picky-picky, the Quimbys’ shabby old cat, who had strolled into the kitchen. He purred a rusty purr as she rubbed her cheek against his yellow fur.

“I’ll see what I can do,” said Mrs. Quimby.

Smiling, Beezus dropped Picky-picky, gathered up her books, and went off to her room. Beezus was the kind of girl who did her homework on Friday instead of waiting until the last minute on Sunday.

Ramona asked in a quiet voice,“Mother, why is Beezus so cross lately?” Letting her sister overhear such a question would lead to real trouble.

“You mustn’t mind her,” whispered Mrs.

Quimby. “She’s reached a difficult age.” Ramona thought such an all-purpose excuse for bad behavior would be a handy thing to have. “So have I,” she confided to her mother.

Mrs. Quimby dropped a kiss on the top of Ramona’s head. “Silly girl,” she said. “It’s just a phase Beezus is going through. She’ll outgrow it.” A contented silence fell over the house as three members of the family looked forward to supper at the Whopperburger, where they would eat, close and cozy in a booth, their food brought to them by a friendly waitress who always said, “There you go,” as she set down their hamburgers and French fries.

Ramona had decided to order a cheeseburger when she heard the sound of her father’s key in the front door. “Daddy, Daddy!” she shrieked, scrambling down from the chair and running to meet her father as he opened the door.“Guess what?” Beezus, who had come from her room, answered before her father had a chance to guess. “Mother said maybe we could go to the Whopperburger for dinner!” Mr. Quimby smiled and kissed his daughters before he held out a small white paper bag. “Here, I brought you a little present.” Somehow he did not look as happy as usual.

Maybe he had had a hard day at the office of the van-and-storage company where he worked.

His daughters pounced and opened the bag together.“Gummybears!” was their joyful cry.

The chewy little bears were the most popular sweet at Glenwood School this fall.

Last spring powdered Jell-O eaten from the package had been the fad. Mr. Quimby always remembered these things.

“Run along and divide them between you,” said Mr. Quimby. “I want to talk to your mother.”

“Don’t spoil your dinner,” said Mrs. Quimby.

The girls bore the bag off to Beezus’s room, where they dumped the gummybears onto the bedspread. First they divided the cinnamon-flavored red bears, one for Beezus, one for Ramona. Then they divided the orange bears and the green, and as they were about to divide the yellow bears, both girls were suddenly aware that their mother and father were no longer talking. Silence filled the house. The sisters looked at one another.

There was something unnatural about this silence. Uneasy, they waited for some sound, and then their parents began to speak in whispers. Beezus tiptoed to the door to listen.

Ramona bit the head off a red gummybear. She always ate toes last.“Maybe they’re planning a big surprise,” she suggested, refusing to worry.

“I don’t think so,” whispered Beezus,“but I can’t hear what they are saying.”

“Try listening through the furnace pipes,” whispered Ramona.

“That won’t work here. The living room is too far away.” Beezus strained to catch her parents’ words.“I think something’s wrong.” Ramona divided her gummybears, one heap to eat at home, the other to take to school to share with friends if they were nice to her.

“Something is wrong. Something awful,” whispered Beezus.“I can tell by the way they are talking.”

Beezus looked so frightened that Ramona became frightened, too. What could be wrong? She tried to think what she might have done to make her parents whisper this way, but she had stayed out of trouble lately.

She could not think of a single thing that could be wrong. This frightened her even more. She no longer felt like eating chewy little bears. She wanted to know why her mother and father were whispering in a way that alarmed Beezus.

Finally the girls heard their father say in a normal voice, “I think I’ll take a shower before supper.” This remark was reassuring to Ramona.

“What’ll we do now?” whispered Beezus.

“I’m scared to go out.”

Worry and curiosity, however, urged Beezus and Ramona into the hall.

Trying to pretend they were not concerned about their family, the girls walked into the kitchen where Mrs. Quimby was removing leftovers from the refrigerator.

“I think we’ll eat at home after all,” she said, looking sad and anxious.

Without being asked, Ramona began to deal four place mats around the dining-room table, laying them all right side up.

When she was cross with Beezus, she laid her sister’s place mat face down.

Mrs. Quimby looked at the cold creamed cauliflower with distaste, returned it to the refrigerator, and reached for a can of green beans before she noticed her silent and worried daughters watching her for clues as to what might be wrong.

Mrs. Quimby turned and faced Beezus and Ramona. “Girls, you might as well know. Your father has lost his job.”

“But he liked his job,” said Ramona, regretting the loss of that hamburger and those French fries eaten in the coziness of a booth. She had known her father to change jobs because he had not liked his work, but she had never heard of him losing a job.

“Was he fired?” asked Beezus, shocked at the news.

Mrs. Quimby opened the green beans and dumped them into a saucepan before she explained. “Losing his job was not your father’s fault. He worked for a little company.

A big company bought the little company and let out most of the people who worked for the little company.”

“But we won’t have enough money.” Beezus understood these things better than Ramona.

“Mother works,” Ramona reminded her sister.

“Only part time,” said Mrs. Quimby.“And we have to make payments to the bank for the new room.That’s why I went to work.” “What will we do?” asked Ramona, alarmed at last. Would they go hungry?

Would the men from the bank come and tear down the new room if they couldn’t pay for it? She had never thought what it might be like not to have enough money—not that the Quimbys ever had money to spare. Although Ramona had often heard her mother say that house payments, car payments, taxes, and groceries seemed to eat up money, Mrs. Quimby somehow managed to make their money pay for all they really needed with a little treat now and then besides.

“We will have to manage as best we can until your father finds work,” said Mrs. Quimby. “It may not be easy.”

“Maybe I could baby-sit,” volunteered Beezus.

As she laid out knives and forks, Ramona wondered how she could earn money, too.

She could have a lemonade stand in front of the house, except nobody ever bought lemonade but her father and her friend Howie. She thought about pounding rose petals and soaking them in water to make perfume to sell. Unfortunately, the perfume she tried to make always smelled like rotten rose petals, and anyway the roses were almost gone.

“And girls,” said Mrs. Quimby, lowering her voice as if she was about to share a secret, “you mustn’t do anything to annoy your father. He is worried enough right now.” But he remembered to bring gummybears, thought Ramona, who never wanted too annoy her father or her mother either, just Beezus, although sometimes, without even trying, she succeeded in annoying her whole family. Ramona felt sad and somehow lonely, as if she were left out of something important, because her family was in trouble and there was nothing she could do to help. When she had finished setting the table, she returned to the list she had begun, it now seemed, a long time ago.

“But what about Christmas?” she asked her mother.

“Right now Christmas is the least of our worries.” Mrs. Quimby looked sadder than Ramona had ever seen her look. “Taxes are due in November. And we have to buy groceries and make car payments and a lot of other things.” “Don’t we have any money in the bank?” asked Beezus.

“Not much,” admitted Mrs. Quimby, “but your father was given two weeks’ pay.” Ramona looked at the list she had begun so happily and wondered how much the presents she had listed would cost. Too much, she knew. Mice were free if you knew the right person, the owner of a mother mouse, so she might get some mice.

Slowly Ramona crossed out ginny pig and the other presents she had listed. As she made black lines through each item, she thought about her family. She did not want her father to be worried, her mother sad, or her sister cross. She wanted her whole family, including Picky-picky, to be happy.

Ramona studied her crayons, chose a pinky-red one because it seemed the happiest color, and printed one more item on her Christmas list to make up for all she had crossed out. One happy family. Beside the words she drew four smiling faces and beside them, the face of a yellow cat, also smiling.