The Princess and the Witch

5

The Princess and the Witch

Ramona was impatient to go to Daisy’s house again, especially now that Beezus was talking so much about the upcoming party. She liked the Kidds’ big untidy house with a dog, a cat, and a big brother. She also liked licking juice bars while watching Big Hospital. When the next visit was arranged, Ramona and Daisy ran from the school bus to Daisy’s house. Jeremy was already lounging in front of the television set watching an ice hockey game.

The girls exchanged looks.“Germy, aren’t you going to walk Mutley?” Daisy asked as if the dog were all she had on her mind. On hearing his name, Mutley raised his head, decided Daisy’s words were not important, and rested his nose on his paws once more.

“Nope.” Jeremy was definite. “And no, I’m not going to let you have the TV this time.”

“Oh, well.” Daisy was used to her big brother. “Come on, Ramona, let’s go upstairs to my room and play dress-up.”

“Nice try,” said Jeremy.

As the girls climbed the stairs, Ramona could not help thinking that if the Quimbys’

house had a second story they would have more bedrooms, and she and Beezus would not always be arguing over whose turn it was to dust the crowded space they now had to share because Roberta had Ramona’s old room. Daisy, Ramona could see, was not neat at all.

Daisy pulled a carton to the center of her room and began to pull out clothes: satins, velvets, hats with flowers and veils, a long black cape, high-heeled shoes.

“Wow!” breathed Ramona. “Where did you get all this?”

“Oh—around,” said Daisy. “Mom collected most of it for me, because she loved to dress up when she was my age, only she couldn’t find much to dress up in.” Nice mom, thought Ramona as she chose a long red dress with a flounce around the bottom and slipped it over her head.

Daisy pulled out a long yellow dress trimmed with little things that glittered, but before she poked her head into it she pulled off her slacks.“Dresses don’t look good over pants, and besides, I like the swishy feeling against my legs,” she explained.

Ramona, deciding she was right, pulled her pants off, too. Her dress felt smooth and silky against her bare legs. She snatched up a hat trimmed with some battered roses and set it on her head. Then she pulled off her shoes (her nice shoes!) and stuck her feet into high-heeled sandals, which made her glamorous, she felt, even if they were too big. “Look! I’m a star!” Ramona lifted her arms as if she were a dancer before she clonked across the room to look at herself in the mirror. “I’m gorgeous,” she announced, pretending she had long blond hair. “I’m beautiful. I’m me, gorgeous, beautiful me!” “I’m Miss America.” Daisy twirled around.

“I’m so beautiful all the other girls in the competition went home.”

Both girls clonked around, turning and swishing as if they were in a television fashion show. When they both turned their ankles and fell off their shoes, they collapsed on the bed it a fit of giggles.

Then Ramona discovered a long pink dress and because she was already gorgeous and beautiful decided to promote herself to princess. She quickly changed while Daisy switched from Miss America to a witch in a long black velvet gown and a small green hat with only three small holes in the veil.

“I’m wicked!” cried Daisy.

“Great,” said Ramona.“I never liked books with nice witches.”

“I’m going to shut the beautiful princess in a dungeon!” Daisy made a witch face.

“Where are you going to find a dungeon to shut me in?” Ramona was a defiant princess.

“That’s easy.” The wicked witch pushed aside the clothes in her closet to reveal a small door, which she opened. Behind it was a dark space under the eaves, which was the attic.

Inside, in the half-light, Ramona saw a few boards laid across the joists to make a place for storing luggage. Beyond, Ramona could see, barely, the lath and plaster that made the ceilings of the rooms downstairs.

“See!” cried Daisy. “The wicked witch is going to shut the beautiful princess in the dark dungeon full of rats and feed her bread and water.” She grabbed Ramona and pushed her toward the closet within a closet.

“No, she isn’t!” cried Ramona, twisting away from Daisy. “The princess is going to throw the witch in the dungeon and feed her cold oatmeal!” “Yuck,” gagged Daisy. She shoved Ramona. Ramona shoved back. One shoe fell off. Daisy pushed harder and shoved Ramona through the little door into the dim space beyond. Ramona, in one shoe, stepped on her pink dress, lost her balance, turned, grabbed at nothing, and stepped off the boards 77 onto the lath and plaster. There was an ominous cracking sound beneath her feet.

“Oh, no!” cried Daisy.

“Help!” shouted Ramona as the lath began to break beneath her weight, and she found herself sinking. Daisy screamed. The lath made snapping sounds. The pink dress ripped. Ramona heard bits of plaster hitting something below and felt her legs being scratched as the pink dress bunched up around her waist. Her other shoe fell off and hit something downstairs with a thump. She heard Mrs. Kidd cry out, “Oh my!” Jeremy yelled, “Hey!” Mutley barked.

Desperate, Ramona bent forward over the joist to stop her fall and searched frantically with her feet to find something to stand on.

There was nothing, only air. Above her, rain pattered on the roof.

“Ramona, hang on!” Daisy called out.

“Jeremy, come quick!”

“I’m hanging.” Ramona was terrified.

The sharp edge of the joist was pressing into her waist and her legs were cold. She wondered how much longer she could hang on.

What if there really were rats in the attic?

Dust was everywhere. Ramona sneezed.

Below, Mutley barked harder, as if he were warning off an intruder.“Hurry,” she wailed.

On the television a referee blew a whistle and a crowd roared.

“They’re coming,” cried equally terrified Daisy, grabbing at the back of the pink dress.

Thumping feet were heard on the stairs.

In a moment Jeremy pushed his sister aside and, standing on the boards, seized Ramona under the arms and tugged.“Dumb kids” was his comment.

“Ow,” said Ramona. Jeremy tugged harder and managed to pull her out of the hole she had made. “Yow!” escaped from Ramona even though she was grateful to be rescued.

As she was pulled out of the hole, she had a glimpse below of the dining room table covered with rubble.

“Oh, you poor child.” Mrs. Kidd was filled with sympathy, concern, and relief.

Ramona was so glad to be standing on the hard floor with the remains of the pink dress heaped around her feet that she began to cry.

Mrs. Kidd hugged her and murmured,

“There, there.You’re safe now. Everything is all right.”

“No, it isn’t,” wept Ramona. “I made a big hole in the floor—ceiling—”

“Whatever,” said Jeremy, and left the room to clump down to the television set.

“Thank you,” sniffled Ramona, remembering her manners even though Jeremy had left. “You saved my life.” She began to cry harder. She had broken the ceiling and could never come to the Kidds’ house again and she and Daisy couldn’t be best friends and she would be left with Howie and messy old Willa Jean to play with and—“Daisy, find Ramona some Kleenex,” said Mrs. Kidd. Daisy produced a box from her dresser. Ramona mopped her nose and eyes as Mrs. Kidd helped her down the stairs.

“I’ll get her pants,” said Daisy.

Downstairs, in the bathroom, Mrs. Kidd pulled off the pink dress. “Oh, my dear—” she said when she saw Ramona’s legs. She began to clean the scratches with cotton and stinging liquid from a bottle. Then she covered them with Band-Aids, all sizes.

When she had finished, Ramona gave a final sniff. Mrs. Kidd washed her face, kissed her, and said, “There. You’re as good as new.”

A fresh worry, paying for the damage, crept into Ramona’s mind. Payday, the checks her mother wrote to pay bills, taxes, and all those grown-up things whirled around in her mind.

“That was some hole you made,” said Jeremy as she and Mrs. Kidd went into the living room, where Clawed was peeking out from under the couch. Mutley, his tail drooping, looked anxious.

Ramona suddenly had a new thought. If Daisy hadn’t been trying to shut her in a dungeon, none of this would have happened.

Maybe it was Daisy’s fault. Maybe she should be angry with Daisy. She was confused. She didn’t want to be angry with her best friend. Still . . . she didn’t know what to think.

Only then did Ramona gather her courage to look toward the dining room, where she saw in the ceiling a dark hole edged with broken lath and bits of plaster.

The dining room table was covered with dust, rubble, and, in the midst of the mess, one high-heeled sandal.

And the table had been set for—this made Ramona feel really bad—five places, one for her. Suddenly she didn’t want to stay for dinner. She wanted to go home. She wanted to be home with her own mother comforting her for her scratches and for the loss of her best friend. She looked at Daisy, wanting to say, It was all your fault for pushing me, but she did not say it, not in front of Mrs. Kidd. She would wait until school Monday and then she would— Mrs. Kidd put her arm around Ramona.

“Would you rather not stay for dinner?” she asked. Ramona nodded.“Then come along,” said Mrs. Kidd.“I’ll have you home in a jiffy.”

“Ramona—” Daisy was blinking back tears.“It was all my fault. I—I shouldn’t have pushed.”

Ramona instantly felt both ashamed and much better. So often things that went wrong turned out to be her mistake. She should have known Daisy wasn’t the kind of girl to blame people.“No, it wasn’t your fault. It was both our faults, I guess.” Ramona hesitated.

“Promise you won’t tell the kids at school.” Daisy crossed her heart, smiled shakily, and said,“Of course, if the beautiful princess had gone peacefully to the dungeon—” Ramona interrupted, “And if the witch had been a nice witch—” Daisy finished for her.“The kind you don’t like to read about.”

Ramona managed to smile back over her shoulder as she followed Mrs. Kidd out the door. On the way home she ventured a question that had been hovering in the back of her mind.“Will—will it cost a lot of money to fix the ceiling?” she asked Mrs. Kidd.

Mrs. Kidd patted Ramona’s knee. “Don’t worry about it. It was an accident, and I’m sure our insurance will take care of it. And you know something? Even before we moved in, I didn’t like the color of the dining room.

Now we have an excuse to repaint it.” Ramona felt so much better, except for the scratches and stiffness in her legs, that she began to consider the drama of the afternoon.

When Mrs. Kidd delivered her to the Quimbys’ door, she merely said to Mrs. Quimby,“Ramona had a little accident. She will tell you about it.” It was a big accident, thought Ramona, pleased that Mrs. Kidd did not spoil her chance to tell. She really was a nice mother, the nicest she had ever known, next to her own, of course.

Mrs. Quimby immediately wanted to know what had happened but was distracted by Roberta. Ramona stalled for time by going to the bathroom and by darting into her room. When she came out, the family was seated at the dinner table. She then had the attention of her entire family, even 86 Roberta, who was lying in her playpen nearby. Mrs. Quimby said, “Ramona, I thought you were going to have dinner at Daisy’s house. And what did her mother mean about a little accident?” Ramona assumed a sorrowful expression.

“I was going to stay, but a terrible thing happened.” Her family stopped eating. Ramona paused dramatically. Here was her chance to keep Beezus from talking so much about Abby and the party.

“Yes. Go on,” said Mr. Quimby.

Ramona took a deep breath.“I broke the ceiling”—another dramatic pause—“I broke it all to smithereens and it’s going to cost a bazillion dollars to fix and it fell all over the dining room and made a terrible mess, so I decided not to stay for dinner.” Mr. Quimby became more impatient.

“Ramona, get to the point. What on earth are you talking about?”

Ramona basked in the attention.“I was a princess trying to escape from a wicked witch who was shutting me in a dungeon, and there I was all alone in the dark with spiders and bats—well, maybe not bats”—Ramona felt if she exaggerated too much her family would not believe her—“and I was terrified because the wicked witch was about to break down the door”—maybe she was stretching the truth a tiny bit, but perhaps no one would notice—“and I was terrified because I felt something bump against my leg, something big, something evil and crawly”—of course, suitcases weren’t evil and crawly, but by then Ramona did not want to spoil her story with the truth—“and I was so terrified all alone in the creepy dark full of cobwebs that I tried to flee—” “Eeee!” crowed Roberta.

“Ramona.” Mrs. Quimby spoke quietly.

“I think you’re getting carried away.” Beezus, who had been quiet until now, spoke up. “So you stepped back on the unfinished part of the attic and fell through the ceiling. I know all about those attics because mothers were always telling us to stay off the lath and plaster, and I know someone who really did fall through.” Of course, Ramona was annoyed with Beezus for spoiling her story. “Sort of like that,” she admitted with a scowl.

Mrs. Quimby was shocked. “Why, Ramona—Did you fall all the way through? You might have been seriously hurt.”

“I hung on, but I was wounded.” Ramona tried to regain her family’s sympathy. “My legs got all scratched and scraped and it hurt a lot. I was in agony.” There, take that, Beezus, she thought. “And then a handsome prince, I mean Daisy’s brother, rescued me.” “Jeremy Kidd?” Beezus began to laugh.

“He’s in my math class. Wait till I tell him you called him a handsome prince!”

“Don’t you dare!” Ramona was furious.

“Girls!” warned Mr. Quimby. “Beezus, there are some things we keep in the family.” Beezus stopped laughing. Finally she asked,

“Weren’t you wearing pants?” Ramona said in her most dignified way,

“Princesses don’t wear pants.” She paused and added, “Unless they are in disguise.” The family found this funny. Beezus recovered enough to say, “You must have looked weird, just your bare legs hanging down from the ceiling.” And my underpants, thought Ramona in horror, not having pictured the scene from below until this moment. Did I fall far enough for them to show? What if Jeremy saw them? She could never face him again.

She could see that her family was hiding their smiles at the picture of Ramona’s bare legs hanging from the ceiling. This made Ramona sulky. “It really did hurt, because I was wounded. I bled.” That ought to impress her family.

Her father patted her hand. “I know it was painful and you could have been badly hurt.”

“But I was brave.” Ramona held her head high. “I hung on with all my might and main.” She wasn’t quite sure what that meant.

She had read it in a book someplace and it sounded right.

“Maybe you have a fairy godmother,” suggested Mrs. Quimby.

A best friend is better, thought Ramona.

“Maybe,” agreed Mr. Quimby,“but I think she has been reading fairy tales.”

“I like fairy tales,” said Ramona. “Fairy tales always have happy endings.” She paused before she added,“And so does mine, I guess.” Her family had paid attention to her and she still had a best friend. Then she thought to herself, A happy ending except for my underpants showing.