Ramona and The Three Wise Persons

7

Ramona and The Three Wise Persons

Suddenly, a few days before Christmas when the Quimby family least expected it, the telephone rang for Ramona’s father. He had a job! The morning after New Year’s Day he was to report for training as a checker in a chain of supermarkets.The pay was good, he would have to work some evenings, and maybe someday he would get to manage a market!

After that telephone call Mr. Quimby stopped reaching for cigarettes that were not there and began to whistle as he ran the vacuum cleaner and folded the clothes from the dryer. The worried frown disappeared from Mrs. Quimby’s forehead. Beezus looked even more calm and serene. Ramona, however, made a mistake. She told her mother about her tight shoes. Mrs. Quimby then wasted a Saturday afternoon shopping for shoes when she could have been sewing on Ramona’s costume. As a result, when they drove to church the night of the Christmas-carol program, Ramona was the only unhappy member of the family.

Mr. Quimby sang as he drove:

“There’s a little wheel

a-turning in my heart.

There’s a little wheel

a-turning in my heart.”

Ramona loved that song because it made her think of Howie, who liked machines.

Tonight, however, she was determined not to enjoy her father’s singing.

Rain blew against the car, headlights shone on the pavement, the windshield wipers splip-splopped. Mrs. Quimby leaned back, tired but relaxed. Beezus smiled her gentle Virgin Mary smile that Ramona had found so annoying for the past three weeks.

Ramona sulked. Someplace above those cold, wet clouds the very same star was shining that had guided the Three Wise Men to Bethlehem. On a night like this they never would have made it.

Mr. Quimby sang on, “Oh, I feel like shouting in my heart. . . .”

Ramona interrupted her father’s song. “I don’t care what anybody says,” she burst out.

“If I can’t be a good sheep, I am not going to be a sheep at all.” She yanked off the white terry-cloth headdress with pink-lined ears that she was wearing and stuffed it into the pocket of her car coat. She started to pull her father’s rolled-down socks from her hands because they didn’t really look like hooves, but then she decided they kept her hands warm. She squirmed on the lumpy terry-cloth tail sewn to the seat of her pajamas. Ramona could not pretend that faded pajamas printed with an army of pink rabbits, half of them upside down, made her look like a sheep, and Ramona was usually good at pretending.

Mrs. Quimby’s voice was tired. “Ramona, your tail and headdress were all I could manage, and I had to stay up late last night to finish those. I simply don’t have time for complicated sewing.” Ramona knew that. Her family had been telling her so for the past three weeks.

“A sheep should be woolly,” said Ramona.

“A sheep should not be printed with pink bunnies.”

“You can be a sheep that has been shorn,” said Mr. Quimby, who was full of jokes now that he was going to work again. “Or how about a wolf in sheep’s clothing?” “You just want me to be miserable,” said Ramona, not appreciating her father’s humor and feeling that everyone in her family should be miserable because she was.

“She’s worn out,” said Mrs. Quimby, as if Ramona could not hear.“It’s so hard to wait for Christmas at her age.”

Ramona raised her voice.“I am not worn out! You know sheep don’t wear pajamas.”

“That’s show biz,” said Mr. Quimby.

“Daddy!” Beezus-Mary was shocked.“It’s church!”

“And don’t forget, Ramona,” said Mr. Quimby, “as my grandmother would have said, ‘Those pink bunnies will never be noticed from a trotting horse.’” Ramona disliked her father’s grandmother even more. Besides, nobody rode trotting horses in church.

The sight of light shining through the stained-glass window of the big stone church diverted Ramona for a moment. The window looked beautiful, as if it were made of jewels.

Mr. Quimby backed the car into a park-ing space.“Ho-ho-ho!” he said, as he turned off the ignition.“’Tis the season to be jolly.” Jolly was the last thing Ramona was going to be. Leaving the car, she stooped down inside her car coat to hide as many rabbits as possible. Black branches clawed at the sky, and the wind was raw.

“Stand up straight,” said Ramona’s heart-less father.

“I’ll get wet,” said Ramona. “I might catch cold, and then you’d be sorry.”

“Run between the drops,” said Mr.

Quimby.

“They’re too close together,” answered Ramona.

“Oh, you two,” said Mrs. Quimby with a tired little laugh, as she backed out of the car and tried to open her umbrella at the same time.

“I will not be in it,” Ramona defied her family once and for all. “They can give the program without me.”

Her father’s answer was a surprise. “Suit yourself,” he said. “You’re not going to spoil our evening.”

Mrs. Quimby gave the seat of Ramona’s pajamas an affectionate pat. “Run along, little lamb, wagging your tail behind you.” Ramona walked stiff-legged so that her tail would not wag.

At the church door the family parted, the girls going downstairs to the Sunday-school room, which was a confusion of chattering children piling coats and raincoats on chairs. Ramona found a corner behind the Christmas tree, where Santa would pass out candy canes after the program. She sat down on the floor with her car coat pulled over her bent knees.

Through the branches Ramona watched carolers putting on their white robes. Girls were tying tinsel around one another’s heads while Mrs. Russo searched out boys and tied tinsel around their heads, too. “It’s all right for boys to wear tinsel,” Mrs. Russo assured them. Some looked as if they were not cer-tain they believed her.

One boy climbed on a chair.“I’m an angel. Watch me fly,” he announced and jumped off, flapping the wide sleeves of his choir robe. All the carolers turned into flapping angels.

Nobody noticed Ramona. Everyone was having too much fun. Shepherds found their cloaks, which were made from old cotton bedspreads. Beezus’s friend, Henry Huggins, arrived and put on the dark robe he was to wear in the part of Joseph.

The other two sheep appeared. Howie’s acrylic sheep suit, with the zipper on the front, was as thick and as fluffy as Ramona knew it would be.

Ramona longed to pet Howie; he looked so soft. Davy’s flannel suit was fastened with safety pins, and there was something wrong about the ears. If his tail had been longer, he could have passed for a kitten, but he did not seem to mind. Both boys wore brown mittens. Davy, who was a thin little sheep, jumped up and down to make his tail wag, which surprised Ramona.

At school he was always so shy. Maybe he felt brave inside his sheep suit. Howie, a chunky sheep, made his tail wag, too. My ears are as good as theirs, Ramona told herself. The floor felt cold through the seat of her thin pajamas.

“Look at the little lambs!” cried an angel.

“Aren’t they darling?”

“Ba-a, ba-a!” bleated Davy and Howie.

Ramona longed to be there with them, jumping and ba-a-ing and wagging her tail, too. Maybe the faded rabbits didn’t show as much as she had thought. She sat hunched and miserable. She had told her father she would not be a sheep, and she couldn’t back down now. She hoped God was too busy to notice her, and then she changed her mind.

Please, God, prayed Ramona, in case He wasn’t too busy to listen to a miserable little sheep, I don’t really mean to be horrid. It just works out that way. She was frightened, she discovered, for when the program began, she would be left alone in the church basement. The lights might even be turned out, a scary thought, for the big stone church filled Ramona with awe, and she did not want to be left alone in the dark with her awe. Please, God, prayed Ramona, get me out of this mess.

Beezus, in a long blue robe with a white scarf over her head and carrying a baby’s blanket and a big flashlight, found her little sister. “Come out, Ramona,” she coaxed. “Nobody will notice your costume. You know Mother would have made you a whole sheep suit if she had time. Be a good sport. Please.” Ramona shook her head and blinked to keep tears from falling. “I told Daddy I wouldn’t be in the program, and I won’t.”

“Well, OK, if that’s the way you feel,” said Beezus, forgetting to act like Mary. She left her little sister to her misery.

Ramona sniffed and wiped her eyes on her hoof. Why didn’t some grown-up come along and make her join the other sheep?

No grown-up came. No one seemed to remember there were supposed to be three sheep, not even Howie, who played with her almost every day.

Ramona’s eye caught the reflection of her face distorted in a green Christmas ornament. She was shocked to see her nose look huge, her mouth and red-rimmed eyes tiny. I can’t really look like that, thought Ramona in despair. I’m really a nice person. It’s just that nobody understands.

Ramona mopped her eyes on her hoof again, and as she did she noticed three big girls, so tall they were probably in the eighth grade, putting on robes made from better bedspreads than the shepherd’s robes. That’s funny, she thought. Nothing she had learned in Sunday school told her anything about girls in long robes in the Nativity scene.

Could they be Jesus’s aunts?

One of the girls began to dab tan cream from a little jar on her face and to smear it around while another girl held up a pocket mirror. The third girl, holding her own mirror, used an eyebrow pencil to give herself heavy brows.

Makeup, thought Ramona with interest, wishing she could wear it. The girls took turns darkening their faces and brows.They looked like different people. Ramona got to her knees and peered over the lower branches of the Christmas tree for a better view.

One of the girls noticed her. “Hi, there,” she said. “Why are you hiding back there?”

“Because,” was Ramona’s all-purpose answer. “Are you Jesus’s aunts?” she asked.

The girls found the question funny.“No,” answered one. “We’re the Three Wise Persons.”

Ramona was puzzled. “I thought they were supposed to be wise men,” she said.

“The boys backed out at the last minute,” explained the girl with the blackest eyebrows.“Mrs. Russo said women can be wise too, so tonight we are the Three Wise Persons.” This idea seemed like a good one to Ramona, who wished she were big enough to be a wise person hiding behind makeup so nobody would know who she was.

“Are you supposed to be in the program?” asked one of the girls.

“I was supposed to be a sheep, but I changed my mind,” said Ramona, chang-ing it back again. She pulled out her sheep headdress and put it on.

“Isn’t she adorable?” said one of the wise persons.

Ramona was surprised. She had never been called adorable before. Bright, lively, yes; adorable, no. She smiled and felt more lovable. Maybe pink-lined ears helped.

“Why don’t you want to be a sheep?” asked a wise person.

Ramona had an inspiration. “Because I don’t have any makeup.”

“Makeup on a sheep! ” exclaimed a wise person and giggled.

Ramona persisted. “Sheep have black noses,” she hinted. “Maybe I could have a black nose.”

The girls looked at one another. “Don’t tell my mother,” said one, “but I have some mascara.We could make her nose black.”

“Please!” begged Ramona, getting to her feet and coming out from behind the Christmas tree.

The owner of the mascara fumbled in her shoulder bag, which was hanging on a chair, and brought out a tiny box. “Let’s go in the kitchen where there’s a sink,” she said, and when Ramona followed her, she moistened an elf-sized brush, which she rubbed on the mascara in the box. Then she began to brush it onto Ramona’s nose. It tickled, but Ramona held still. “It feels like brushing my teeth only on my nose,” she remarked. The wise person stood back to look at her work and then applied another coat of mascara to Ramona’s nose.“There,” she said at last.“Now you look like a real sheep.” Ramona felt like a real sheep. “Ba-a-a,” she bleated, a sheep’s way of saying thank you. Ramona felt so much better, she could almost pretend she was woolly. She peeled off her coat and found that the faded pink rabbits really didn’t show much in the dim light. She pranced off among the angels, who had been handed little flashlights, which they were supposed to hold like candles. Instead they were shining them into their mouths to show one another how weird they looked with light showing through their cheeks.

The other two sheep stopped jumping when they saw her.

“You don’t look like Ramona,” said Howie.

“B-a-a. I’m not Ramona. I’m a sheep.” The boys did not say one word about Ramona’s pajamas.They wanted black noses too, and when Ramona told them where she got hers, they ran off to find the wise persons. When they returned, they no longer looked like Howie and Davy in sheep suits. They looked like strangers in sheep suits. So I must really look like somebody else, thought Ramona with increasing happiness. Now she could be in the program, and her parents wouldn’t know because they wouldn’t recognize her.

“B-a-a!” bleated three prancing, black-nosed sheep. “B-a-a, b-a-a.”

Mrs. Russo clapped her hands. “Quiet, everybody!” she ordered. “All right, Mary and Joseph, up by the front stairs. Shepherds and sheep next and then wise persons.

Angels line up by the back stairs.” The three sheep pranced over to the shepherds, one of whom said, “Look what we get to herd,” and nudged Ramona with his crook.

“You cut that out,” said Ramona.

“Quietly, everyone,” said Mrs. Russo.

Ramona’s heart began to pound as if something exciting were about to happen.

Up the stairs she tiptoed and through the arched door. The only light came from can-delabra on either side of the chancel and from a streetlight shining through a stained-glass window. Ramona had never seen the church look so beautiful or so mysterious.

Beezus sat down on a low stool in the center of the chancel and arranged the baby’s blanket around the flashlight. Henry stood behind her. The sheep got down on their hands and knees in front of the shepherds, and the Three Wise Persons stood off to one side, holding bath-salts jars that looked as if they really could hold frankincense and myrrh. An electric star suspended above the organ began to shine. Beezus turned on the big flashlight inside the baby’s blanket and light shone up on her face, making her look like a picture of Mary on a Christmas card.

From the rear door a wobbly procession of kindergarten angels, holding their small flashlights like candles, led the way, glimmering, two by two. “Ah . . .” breathed the congre-gation.

“Hark, the herald angels sing,” the advanc-ing angels caroled.They looked nothing like the jumping, flapping mob with flashlights shining through their cheeks that Ramona had watched downstairs. They looked good and serious and . . . holy.

A shivery feeling ran down Ramona’s backbone, as if magic were taking place. She looked up at Beezus, smiling tenderly down at the flashlight, and it seemed as if Baby Jesus really could be inside the blanket.Why, thought Ramona with a feeling of shock, Beezus looks nice. Kind and—sort of pretty.

Ramona had never thought of her sister as anything but—well, a plain old big sister, who got to do everything first.

Ramona was suddenly proud of Beezus. Maybe they did fight a lot when Beezus wasn’t going around acting like Mary, but Beezus was never really mean.

As the carolers bore more light into the church, Ramona found her parents in the second row.

They were smiling gently, proud of Beezus, too. This gave Ramona an aching feeling inside. They would not know her in her makeup. Maybe they would think she was some other sheep, and she didn’t want to be some other sheep. She wanted to be their sheep. She wanted them to be proud of her, too.

Ramona saw her father look away from Beezus and look directly at her. Did he recognize her? Yes, he did. Mr. Quimby winked. Ramona was shocked. Winking in church! How could her father do such a thing? He winked again and this time held up his thumb and forefinger in a circle.

Ramona understood. Her father was telling her he was proud of her, too.

“Joy to the newborn King!” sang the angels, as they mounted the steps on either side of the chancel.

Ramona was filled with joy. Christmas was the most beautiful, magic time of the whole year. Her parents loved her, and she loved them, and Beezus, too. At home there was a Christmas tree and under it, presents, fewer than at past Christmases, but presents all the same.

Ramona could not contain her feelings. “B-a-a,” she bleated joyfully.

She felt the nudge of a shepherd’s crook on the seat of her pajamas and heard her shepherd whisper through clenched teeth,

“You be quiet!” Ramona did not bleat again.

She wiggled her seat to make her tail wag.