Picky-picky

4

Picky-picky

Strangely, when Ramona’s heart was heavy, so were her feet. She trudged to the school bus, plodded through the halls at school, and clumped home from the bus after school.The house felt lonely when she let herself in, so she turned on the television set for company. She sat on the couch and stared at one of the senseless soap operas Mrs. Kemp watched. They were all about rich people—none of them looking like Howie’s Uncle Hobart—who accused other people of doing something terrible; Ramona didn’t understand exactly what, but it all was boring, boring, boring.

Beezus came home, left her books in her room, and probably hung up her jacket instead of throwing it on her bed. She then went to the basement door, her back saying silently to Ramona, You didn’t let Picky-picky out. Ramona realized she had not let the cat out because she had not heard him meow.

When Beezus opened the door, no cat came out to investigate his dish. Beezus snapped on the basement light and descended the steps.

That’s funny, thought Ramona.

“Ramona!” screamed Beezus. “Come quick!”

At last! Beezus had spoken, but her voice told Ramona something dreadful must have happened. Frightened, Ramona ran down the basement steps, skipping the last two and jumping to the concrete floor. Her sister needed her.

Beezus, with her hands clasped to her chest, was standing over Picky-picky’s basket.

“He’s dead.” Beezus stared at the motionless cat in disbelief, tears in her eyes.“Picky-picky is dead.”

“How can he be?” asked Ramona. “He was alive this morning.” Both girls had forgotten, or at least put aside, their feelings toward one another.

“He just is,” said Beezus. “I don’t know why, unless he died of old age. I started to pick him up, and he’s all limp and cold. Go ahead and touch him and you’ll see.” Ramona summoned courage to touch timidly with one finger the lifeless Picky-picky. He felt like cold, limp fur.

“What are we going to do?” asked distraught Beezus.

“Wait till Mother and Daddy come home,” suggested Ramona.

“But Daddy said we weren’t to worry Mother,” Beezus reminded her. The sisters looked helplessly at one another.“I know we didn’t do anything to Picky-picky, but I think coming home and finding a dead cat in the basement would upset her a lot.” “Yes,” agreed Ramona. “It sure would, especially at dinner time.” The two looked sadly at the remains of their pet.“I guess we should bury him,” said Ramona,“and have a funeral.” “We’ll have to hurry,” said Beezus, “and I don’t know if I can dig a grave.” She lifted her father’s heavy shovel from the wall, where it hung upside down between two nails, and started up the steps.“Come on, help me find a place.” Ramona was glad to follow. Somehow she did not want to be alone with the ghost of Picky-picky. Silly, but that was the way she felt.

The girls walked across the wet grass to choose a spot in the corner of the backyard where their father had grubbed out an old laurel bush that had grown too large for the space. Beezus jabbed the shovel into the muddy soil, stepped on the top of the blade to push it farther down, lifted out a shovelful of dirt, and laid it aside. “What will we bury him in?” she asked, struggling with another shovelful of wet dirt.

“I’ll find a box.” Now that Beezus was speaking to her, Ramona was eager to do her part. Besides, even though she felt sad and awed by her first experience with the death of someone she knew—birds didn’t count—burying the cat was interesting. In the basement she picked up a cardboard carton and ran upstairs. In her room she found a doll’s pillow and two doll’s blankets. She lined the box with one blanket and placed the pillow at one end. She forced herself to return to the basement, where she found she could not bring herself to lift the lifeless Picky-picky. She would leave that to Beezus.

Out in the backyard, Ramona found Beezus panting as she wrestled with the shovel. “Let me try,” she offered, but soon discovered the shovel was too long and unwieldy for her to manage. “I’ll get a trowel,” she said. Together, the girls worked, Ramona on her knees digging with the trowel and finally with her hands, until they had dug a small grave just right for a cat.

“Beezus, will you put Picky-picky in the box?” asked Ramona. “I’m—not exactly scared, but I don’t want to.”

Back in the basement, Beezus lifted Picky-picky into his cardboard coffin and laid his head on the pillow. Ramona tucked the second doll blanket around him, and together they set the lid in place.

Beezus carried the box out to the grave-site. “It doesn’t seem right just to bury him,” she said, “and I don’t remember much about Grandma Day’s funeral except everyone whispered, there were lots of flowers, and I had to sit very still.You were just a baby then.” Ramona knew about funerals. “On TV when they bury somebody, they stand around the grave and pray,” she said.“Then the wife of the dead person cries until someone leads her away.” “I suppose we should pray.” Beezus sounded uncertain as to the proper way to pray for a cat.

Ramona had no doubts. She bowed her head and began, “Now I lay me down to sleep—”

“That’s not right,” interrupted Beezus.

“You’re not the one who’s being buried.”

“Oh. Okay.” Ramona began again. “Now we lay Picky-picky down to sleep. We pray thee, Lord, his soul to keep.Thy love stay with him through the night and wake him with the morning light.Amen.”When she finished the prayer, she said, “There.That’s that.” Beezus frowned in thought.“But he won’t wake with the morning light. He isn’t supposed to. He’s dead.” Ramona was not worried.“Cats have nine lives, so tomorrow he will wake up someplace as somebody’s kitten and start a new life.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” said Beezus, “but it sounds logical. I hope his new owners give him melon rind. Picky-picky loved melon rind.” She picked up the shovel and began to fill in the grave. “We should have some flowers for him, but there aren’t any.” “I wonder which of his lives we got him on,” said Ramona as she gathered damp brown leaves to strew on the grave.The girls stood looking sadly at the little mound left by Picky-picky’s coffin.“He was a good cat,” said Ramona, “even if he didn’t like me much when I was little.” “I can barely remember when he was a little tiny kitten who climbed the curtains,” said Beezus.

“I’ll make him a tombstone.” After shar-ing the sad experience, Ramona felt closer to her sister, close enough to speak of something other than their cat.

“Beezus—” she said with a gulp.“I’m sorry about yesterday when I called you—you know—and I didn’t mean it the way you took it.” She explained how she happened to change Pieface to Pizzaface. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. I—I won’t say it again, no matter how mad I get.” “That’s okay,” said Beezus with a big sigh.

“I shouldn’t have been so cross with you.

Mom says I’ll outgrow skin problems, but it seems like forever. Now maybe I better put something on these blisters on my hands.” In spite of the funeral, Ramona felt light and happy.

She and her sister had both apol-ogized and forgiven one another. “And we didn’t worry Mother,” Ramona pointed out as she skipped off to the basement to find a short board in a pile of scrap lumber.

By the time Beezus had changed out of her muddy clothes, scrubbed her hands, applied disinfectant, and covered her blisters with Band-Aids, the grave bore a marker made from a scrap of board. Printed in crayon were the words: Beneath the words, Ramona had drawn a picture of a yellow cat.

“But we’ll have to tell Mother and Daddy,” said Beezus. “They’re sure to miss him.”

“Won’t that upset Mother?” asked Ramona.

Beezus was filled with uncertainty. “Well—I don’t think our burying him will upset her as much as finding him dead in the basement.” She rearranged the Band-Aids on her hands.“You’d better get into some clean clothes, or she’ll really be upset. And don’t forget to use the nailbrush on your fingernails.” Before Ramona had time to change her clothes, her parents came home. As Mr. Quimby set a bag of groceries on the kitchen counter, he looked at his younger daughter and remarked with a grin, “Add water and get instant Ramona.You’d better add some soap, too.” Mrs. Quimby, used to seeing Ramona covered with dirt, only said, “I found a bar-gain in cat food.”

Ramona exchanged an anguished look with her sister and went off to scrub her hands and change to clean clothes. What a waste of money, buying cat food now. The sisters exchanged another anguished look when Ramona returned to set the table. Beezus was washing lettuce with the tips of her fingers to keep her Band-Aids dry.

“Why Beezus, what has happened to your hands?” asked her mother as she laid a bunch of carrots on the counter.“You’ve hurt yourself.” “It’s nothing much,” said Beezus.

“Here, let me finish the lettuce,” said Mr. Quimby as he took one of his daughter’s hands to examine her wounds. “Why, this is terrible,” he said.“How did you get all those blisters?” Beezus did not want to tell. She cast a look at Ramona that asked,What do I do now?

This is dumb, thought Ramona. Their parents had to know sometime. “She blistered her hands digging a hole in the backyard,” she informed her parents and added in her saddest, most sorrowful voice, “a little grave.We dug a little grave.” She really enjoyed the looks of astonishment the announcement produced.

Mr. Quimby, who was first to recover, looked amused. “And whom, may I ask, or what did you bury in a grave big enough to raise blisters on Beezus’s hands?” Ramona knew he was thinking of the little graves they had dug for dead birds when they were younger. She sighed to make her announcement seem even more mournful.

“We buried Picky-picky. He passed away today.”

The parents’ look of surprise and amuse-ment turned to shock. They looked even more shocked than Ramona had expected.

She began to feel frightened. Perhaps she had upset her mother after all.

“Why, you poor children—” said Mrs.Quimby with tears in her eyes.“Burying the cat all by yourselves.”

“Why didn’t you wait for me?” asked their father. “I could have taken care of him.”

“You said we shouldn’t upset Mother,” explained Beezus. “And we didn’t want her to come home and find Picky-picky dead.”

“We made a nice grave, with leaves and a marker,” said Ramona.“And we remembered to say a prayer like they do on TV before somebody leads the dead person’s wife away.” Mrs. Quimby brushed away a tear with the back of her hand.“I’m a very lucky mother to have such dear girls,” she said.

“And I’m really proud of you,” said Mr.Quimby. “I hope we have such good luck the next time.”

The sisters stared at their mother’s waistline. Her uniform was tight. It was not their imagination. They raised their eyes to her face. She was smiling.

“Then it’s true!” Beezus was filled with excitement and joy.

“You’re going to have a baby.” Although she had suspected the truth, Ramona was as disbelieving as if she were charging her mother with magic.

“When are you going to have it?” asked Beezus.

“In July,” confessed her mother.

“Correction,” said Mr. Quimby. “We are going to have a baby. I’m going to be a proud father.”

“You just said you were proud of us,” Ramona reminded him.

“So I did,” said her father.“But now I can be proud of three instead of two.”

“And I don’t think we need worry about leaving the girls alone until I stop working,” said Mrs. Quimby.

“Whee!” cried Ramona. “No more Mrs. Kemp!” At the same time she was thinking, a third Quimby child? Her mind was full of excited questions, but deep down inside where she hid her most secret thoughts, Ramona realized she would lose her favored place as the baby of the family. She would become the middle child, neither big nor little. She thought maybe she would rather have another cat.