Mr. Quimby’s Spunky Gal

Chapter 9

Mr. Quimby’s Spunky Gal

Filled with spirit and pluck, Ramona started off to school with her lunch box in her hand. She was determined that today would be different. She would make it different. She was her father’s spunky gal, wasn’t she? She twirled around for the pleasure of making her pleated skirt stand out beneath her car coat.

Ramona was so filled with spunk she decided to go to school a different way, by the next street over, something she had always wanted to do. The distance to Glenwood School was no greater.There was no reason she should not go to school any way she pleased as long as she looked both ways before she crossed the street and did not talk to strangers.

Slowpoke Howie, half a block behind, called out when he saw her turn the corner,

“Ramona, where are you going?”

“I’m going to school a different way,” Ramona called back, certain that Howie would not follow to spoil her feeling of adventure. Howie was not a boy to change his ways.

Ramona skipped happily down the street, singing to herself, “Hippity-hop to the barber shop to buy a stick of candy. One for you and one for me and one for sister Mandy.” The sky through the bare branches was clear, the air was crisp, and Ramona’s feet in their brown oxfords felt light. Beezus’s old boots, which so often weighed her down, were home in the hall closet. Ramona was happy. The day felt different already.

Ramona turned the second corner, and as she hippity-hopped down the unfamiliar street past three white houses and a tan stucco house, she enjoyed a feeling of free-dom and adventure. Then as she passed a gray shingle house in the middle of the block, a large German shepherd dog, license tags jingling, darted down the driveway toward her. Terrified, Ramona stood rooted to the sidewalk. She felt as if her bad dream had come true. The grass was green, the sky was blue. She could not move; she could not scream.

The dog, head thrust forward, came close.

He sniffed with his black nose. Here was a stranger. He growled. This was his territory, and he did not want a stranger to trespass.

This is not a dream, Ramona told herself.

This is real. My feet will move if I make them.“Go ‘way!” she ordered, backing away from the dog, which answered with a sharp bark. He had teeth like the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood. Oh, Grandmother, what big teeth you have!

The better to eat you with, my dear. Ramona took another step back.

Growling, the dog advanced. He was a dog, not a wolf, but that was bad enough.

Ramona used the only weapon she had—her lunch box. She slung her lunch box at the dog and missed.The box crashed to the sidewalk, tumbled, and came to rest.

The dog stopped to sniff it. Ramona forced her feet to move, to run. Her oxfords pounded on the sidewalk. One shoelace came untied and slapped against her ankle.

She looked desperately at a passing car, but the driver did not notice her peril.

Ramona cast a terrified look over her shoulder. The dog had lost interest in her unopened lunch box and was coming toward her again. She could hear his toenails on the sidewalk and could hear him growling deep in his throat. She had to do something, but what?

Ramona’s heart was pounding in her ears as she stopped to reach for the only weapon left—her shoe. She had no choice. She yanked off her brown oxford and hurled it at the dog. Again she missed.The dog stopped, sniffed the shoe, and then to Ramona’s horror, picked it up, and trotted off in the direction from which he had come.

Ramona stood aghast with the cold from the concrete sidewalk seeping through her sock. Now what should she do? If she said, You come back here, the dog might obey, and she did not want him any closer. She watched helplessly as he returned to his own lawn, where he settled down with the shoe between his paws like a bone. He began to gnaw.

Her shoe! There was no way Ramona could take her shoe away from the dog by herself.

There was no one she could ask for help on this street of strangers.And her blue lunch box, now dented, lying there on the sidewalk.

Did she dare try to get it back while the dog was busy chewing her shoe? She took a cau-tious step toward her lunch box. The dog went on gnawing. She took another step. I really am brave, she told herself. The dog looked up. Ramona froze. The dog began to gnaw again. She darted forward, grabbed her lunch box, and ran toward school, slap-pat, slap-pat, on the cold concrete.

Ramona refused to cry—she was brave, wasn’t she?—but she was worried. Mrs. Griggs frowned on tardiness, and Ramona was quite sure she expected everyone in her class to wear two shoes. Ramona would probably catch it from Mrs. Griggs at school and from her mother at home for losing a shoe with a lot of wear left in it. Ramona was always catching it.

When Ramona reached Glenwood School, the bell had rung and the traffic boys were leaving their posts. The children crowding into the building did not notice Ramona’s predicament. Ramona slap-patted down the hall to Room One, where she quickly left her lunch box and car coat in the cloakroom before she sat down at her desk with one foot folded under her. She spread her pleated skirt to hide her dirty sock.

Susan noticed. “What happened to your other shoe?” she asked.

“I lost it, and don’t you tell!” If Susan told, Ramona would have a good excuse to pull Susan’s boing-boing curls.

“I won’t,” promised Susan, pleased to share a secret,“but how are you going to keep Mrs. Griggs from finding out?”

Ramona cast a desperate look at Susan.“I don’t know,” she confessed.

“Class,” said Mrs. Griggs in a calm voice.

This was her way of saying, All right, everyone quiet down and come to order because we have work to do, and we won’t accom-plish anything if we waste time talking to one another. Ramona tried to warm her cold foot by rubbing it through her pleated skirt.

Mrs. Griggs looked around her classroom.

“Who has not had a turn at leading the flag salute?” she asked.

Ramona stared at her desk while trying to shrink so small Mrs. Griggs could not see her.

“Ramona, you have not had a turn,” said Mrs. Griggs with a smile.“You may come to the front of the room.”

Ramona and Susan exchanged a look.

Ramona’s said, Now what am I going to do?

Susan’s said, I feel sorry for you.

“Ramona, we’re waiting,” said Mrs. Griggs.

There was no escape. Ramona slid from her seat and walked to the front of the room where she faced the flag and stood on one foot like a stork to hide her shoeless foot behind her pleated skirt. “I pledge allegiance,” she began, swaying.

“I pledge allegiance,” said the class.

Mrs. Griggs interrupted. “Both feet on the floor, Ramona.”

Ramona felt a surge of defiance.

Mrs. Griggs wanted two feet on the floor, so she put two feet on the floor. “—to the flag,” she continued with such determination that Mrs. Griggs did not have another chance to interrupt.When Ramona finished, she took her seat. So there, Mrs. Griggs, was her spunky thought.What if I am wearing only one shoe?

“Ramona, what happened to your other shoe?” asked Mrs. Griggs.

“I lost it,” answered Ramona.

“Tell me about it,” said Mrs. Griggs.

Ramona did not want to tell.“I was chased by a . . .” She wanted to say gorilla, but after a moment’s hesitation she said,“. . . dog, and I had to throw my shoe at him, and he ran off with it.” She expected the class to laugh, but instead they listened in silent sympathy.

They did not understand about a hole in a house, but they understood about big dogs.They too had faced big dogs and been frightened. Ramona felt better.

“Why, that’s too bad,” said Mrs. Griggs, which surprised Ramona. Somehow she had not expected her teacher to understand.

Mrs. Griggs continued. “I’ll call the office and ask the secretary to telephone your mother and have her bring you another pair of shoes.”

“My mother isn’t home,” said Ramona.

“She’s at work.”

“Well, don’t worry, Ramona,” said Mrs.

Griggs. “We have some boots without owners in the cloakroom.You may borrow one to wear when we go out for recess.” Ramona was familiar with those boots, none of them related and all of them a dingy brown, because no one would lose a new red boot. If there was one thing Ramona did not like, it was old brown boots. They were really ugly. She could not run and play kickball in one shoe and one boot. Spirit and spunk surged back into Ramona. Mrs. Griggs meant well, but she did not understand about boots. Miss Binney would never have told Ramona to wear one old boot.

Ramona did not want to wear an old brown boot, and she made up her mind she was not going to wear an old brown boot!

Once Ramona had made this decision, it was up to her to decide what to do about it.

If only she had some heavy paper and a stapler, she could make a slipper, one that might even be strong enough to last until she reached home. She paid attention to number combinations in one part of her mind, while in that private place in the back of her mind she thought about a paper slipper and how she could make one if she only had a stapler.A stapler, a stapler, where could she find a stapler? Mrs. Griggs would want an explanation if she asked to borrow Room One’s stapler. To borrow Miss Binney’s stapler, Ramona would have to run across the playground to the temporary building, and Mrs. Griggs was sure to call her back.There had to be another way. And there was, if only she could make it work.

When recess finally came, Ramona was careful to leave the room with several other members of her class and to slip down to the girls’ bathroom in the basement before Mrs. Griggs could remind her to put on the boot.

She jerked four rough paper towels out of the container by the sinks. She folded three of the paper towels in half, making six layers of rough paper.The fourth towel she folded in thirds, which also made six layers of paper.

Now came the scary part of her plan.

Ramona returned to the hall, which was empty because both first grades were out on the playground.The doors of the classrooms were closed. No one would see the brave thing she was about to do. Ramona climbed the stairs to the first landing, where she paused to take a fresh grip on her courage.

She had never gone to the upstairs hall alone. First graders rarely ventured there unless accompanied by their parents on Open House night. She felt small and frightened, but she held fast to her courage, as she ran up the second half of the flight of stairs.

Ramona found Mr. Cardoza’s room. She quietly opened the door a crack. Mr. Cardoza was telling his class, “Spelling secretary is easy. Just remember the first part of the word is secret and think of a secretary as someone who keeps secrets. You will never again spell the word with two a’s instead of two e’s.” Ramona opened the door a little wider and peeked inside. How big the desks looked compared to her own down in Room One! She heard the whir of a wheel spinning in a mouse’s cage.

Mr. Cardoza came to investigate. He opened the door wider and said, “Hello, Ramona Q.What may we do for you?” There was Ramona standing on one foot, trying to hide her dirty sock behind her shoe while Beezus’s whole class, and especially Beezus, stared at her. Beside her classmates Beezus did not look so big as Ramona had always thought her to be.

Ramona was secretly pleased to discover her sister was a little less than medium-sized.

Ramona wondered how Beezus would report this scene at home. Mother! The door opened, and there was Ramona standing with one shoe on. . . .

Ramona refused to let her courage fail her. She remembered her manners and asked, “May I please borrow your stapler? I can use it right here in the hall, and it will only take a minute.” Once again she had that strange feeling of standing aside to look at herself. Was she a funny little girl whom Mr. Cardoza would find amusing? Apparently not because Mr. Cardoza did not hesitate.

“Certainly,” he said and strode to his desk for the stapler, which he handed to her without question.

Mrs. Griggs would have said,Tell me why you want it, Ramona. Miss Binney would have said, Won’t you let me help you with it? Mr. Cardoza closed the door, leaving Ramona in the privacy of the hall.

Ramona knelt on the floor and went to work. She stapled the three paper towels together. The towel folded in thirds she placed at one end of the other towels and stapled it on three sides to make the toe of a slipper. She had to push down hard with both hands to force the staples through so much paper. Then she turned her slipper over and sent staples through in the other direction to make it stronger. There.

Ramona slid her foot into her slipper. With more time and a pair of scissors, she could have made a better slipper with a rounded toe, but this slipper was better than an old boot, and it should last all day, school paper towels being what they were.

Ramona opened the door again and held out the stapler. Mr. Cardoza looked up from the book in his hand and walked over to take the stapler from her. “Thank you, Mr. Cardoza,” she said, because she knew he expected good manners.

“You’re welcome, Ramona Q.,” said Mr. Cardoza with a smile that was a friendly smile, not an amused-by-a-funny-little-girl smile. “We’re always glad to be of help.” Ramona had not felt so happy since she was in Miss Binney’s kindergarten. Too bad Beezus had first dibs on Mr. Cardoza.

Ramona might have married him herself someday if she ever decided to get married.

She reached Room One just as the two first grades were returning from recess. She heard someone from Room Two say, “Ramona must have hurt her foot.”

Someone else said, “I bet it hurts.”

Ramona began to limp. She was enjoying the attention her slipper attracted.

“Oh, there you are, Ramona,” said Mrs.

Griggs, who was standing by her door to make sure her class entered the room in an orderly manner.“Where have you been? We missed you on the playground.” “I was making a slipper.” Ramona looked up at Mrs. Griggs. “I didn’t want to wear a dirty old boot.” She had not felt so brave since the day she started off to the first grade.

“After this you should ask permission to stay in during recess.” Mrs. Griggs looked down at the slipper and said, “You have made a very good slipper.” Encouraged by this bit of praise, Ramona said, “I could make a better slipper if I had scissors and crayons. I could draw a bunny face on the toe and make ears like a real bunny slipper.” Mrs. Griggs’s expression was thoughtful.

She seemed to be studying Ramona, who shrank inside herself, uncertain as to what her teacher might be about to say. Mrs. Griggs looked more tired than cross, so Ramona summoned her spunk and said, “Maybe I could finish my slipper instead of making a Thanksgiving turkey.” “We always—” began Mrs. Griggs and changed her mind. “I don’t see why not,” she said.

Mrs. Griggs approved of her! Ramona smiled with relief and pretended to limp to her seat as her teacher closed the door.

She no longer had to dread turkeys—or her teacher.

The class took out arithmetic workbooks. While Ramona began to count cowboy boots and butterflies and circled the correct number under the pictures, she was busy and happy in the private corner of her mind planning improvements in her slipper.

She would round the heel and toe. She would draw a nose with pink crayon and eyes, too, and cut two ears. . . . Ramona’s happy thoughts were interrupted by another less happy thought. Her missing brown oxford. What was her mother going to say when she came home without it? Tell her she was careless? Tell her how much shoes cost these days? Ask her why on earth she didn’t go to school the usual way? Because I was feeling full of spunk, Ramona answered in her thoughts. Her father would understand. She hoped her mother would, too.

Workbooks were collected. Reading circles were next. Prepared to attack words, Ramona limped to a little chair in the front of the room with the rest of her reading group. She felt so much better toward Mrs. Griggs that she was first to raise her hand on almost every question, even though she was worried about her missing oxford. The reader was more interesting now that her group was attacking bigger words. Fire engine. Ramona read to herself and thought, Pow! I got you, fire engine. Monkey. Pow! I got you, monkey.

The buzz of the little black telephone beside Mrs. Griggs’s desk interrupted work in Room One. Everyone wanted to listen to Mrs. Griggs talk to the principal’s office, because they might hear something important.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Griggs to the telephone.

“Yes, we do.” With the receiver pressed to her ear, she turned away from the telephone and looked at Ramona. Everyone else in Room One looked at her, too. Now what? thought Ramona. Now what have I done?

“All right,” said Mrs. Griggs to the telephone. “I’ll send her along.” She replaced the receiver. Room One, most of all Ramona, waited.

“Ramona, your shoe is waiting for you in the office,” said the teacher. “When the dog’s owner found it on the lawn, he brought it to school and the secretary guessed it was a first-grade size.You may be excused to go get it.” Whew! thought Ramona in great relief, as she limped happily off to the office. This day was turning out to be better than she had expected. She accepted her shoe, now interestingly scarred with toothmarks, from Mrs. Miller, the school secretary.

“My goodness,” said Mrs. Miller, as Ramona shoved her foot into her shoe and tied the lace, still damp from being chewed, in a tight bow. “It’s a good thing your foot came out of your shoe when the dog got hold of it. He must have had pretty big teeth.” “He did,” Ramona assured the secretary.

“Great big teeth. Like a wolf. He chased me.”

Now that Ramona was safe in her two shoes, she was eager for an audience. “He chased me, but I took off my shoe and threw it at him, and that stopped him.” “Fancy that!” Mrs. Miller was plainly impressed by Ramona’s story. “You took off your shoe and threw it right at him! You must be a very brave girl.” “I guess maybe I am,” said Ramona, pleased by the compliment. Of course, she was brave. She had scars on her shoe to prove it. She hoped her mother would not be in too much of a hurry to hide the toothmarks with fresh shoe polish. She hippity-hopped, paper slipper in hand, down the hall to show off her scars to Room One.

Brave Ramona, that’s what they would think, just about the bravest girl in the first grade. And they would be right. This time Ramona was sure.