Ramona Forever

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Ramona Forever Page 8

by Beverly Cleary


  Ramona could feel her heart pounding as she finally climbed the steps to the hospital. Visitors, some carrying flowers and others looking careworn, walked toward the elevators. Nurses hurried, a doctor was paged over the loudspeaker. Ramona could scarcely bear her own excitement. The rising of the elevator made her stomach feel as if it had stayed behind on the first floor. When the elevator stopped, Mr. Quimby led the way down the hall.

  “Excuse me,” called a nurse.

  Surprised, the family stopped and turned.

  “Children under twelve are not allowed to visit the maternity ward,” said the nurse. “Little girl, you will have to go down and wait in the lobby.”

  “Why is that?” asked Mr. Quimby.

  “Children under twelve might have contagious diseases,” explained the nurse. “We have to protect the babies.”

  “I’m sorry, Ramona,” said Mr. Quimby. “I didn’t know. I am afraid you will have to do as the nurse says.”

  “Does she mean I’m germy?” Ramona was humiliated. “I took a shower this morning and washed my hands at the Whopperburger so I would be extra clean.”

  “Sometimes children are coming down with something and don’t know it,” explained Mr. Quimby. “Now, be a big girl and go downstairs and wait for us.”

  Ramona’s eyes filled with tears of disappointment, but she found some pleasure in riding in the elevator alone. By the time she reached the lobby, she felt worse. The nurse called her a little girl. Her father called her a big girl. What was she? A germy girl.

  Ramona sat gingerly on the edge of a Naugahyde couch. If she leaned back, she might get germs on it, or it might get germs on her. She swallowed hard. Was her throat a little bit sore? She thought maybe it was, way down in back. She put her hand to her forehead the way her mother did when she thought Ramona might have a fever. Her forehead was warm, maybe too warm.

  As Ramona waited, she began to itch the way she itched when she had chickenpox. Her head itched, her back itched, her legs itched. Ramona scratched. A woman sat down on the couch, looked at Ramona, got up, and moved to another couch.

  Ramona felt worse. She itched more and scratched harder. She swallowed often to see how her sore throat was coming along. She peeked down the neck of her blouse to see if she might have a rash and was surprised that she did not. She sniffed from time to time to see if she had a runny nose.

  Now Ramona was angry. It would serve everybody right if she came down with some horrible disease, right there in their old hospital. That would show everybody how germfree the place was. Ramona squirmed and gave that hard-to-reach place between her shoulder blades a good hard scratch. Then she scratched her head with both hands. People stopped to stare.

  A man in a white coat, with a stethoscope hanging out of his pocket, came hurrying through the lobby, glanced at Ramona, stopped, and took a good look at her. “How do you feel?” he asked.

  “Awful,” she admitted. “A nurse said I was too germy to go see my mother and new sister, but I think I caught some disease right here.”

  “I see,” said the doctor. “Open your mouth and say ‘ah.’”

  Ramona ahhed until she gagged.

  “Mh-hm,” murmured the doctor. He looked so serious Ramona was alarmed. Then he pulled out his stethoscope and listened to her front and back, thumping as he did so. What was he hearing? Was there something wrong with her insides? Why didn’t her father come?

  The doctor nodded as if his worst suspicions had been confirmed. “Just as I thought,” he said, pulling out his prescription pad.

  Medicine, ugh. Ramona’s twitching stopped. Her nose and throat felt fine. “I feel much better,” she assured the doctor as she eyed that prescription pad with distrust.

  “An acute case of siblingitis. Not at all unusual around here, but it shouldn’t last long.” He tore off the prescription he had written, instructed Ramona to give it to her father, and hurried on down the hall.

  Ramona could not remember the name of her illness. She tried to read the doctor’s scribbly cursive writing, but she could not. She could only read neat cursive, the sort her teacher wrote on the blackboard.

  Itching again, she was still staring at the slip of paper when Mr. Quimby and Beezus stepped out of the elevator. “Roberta is so tiny.” Beezus was radiant with joy. “And she is perfectly darling. She has a little round nose and—oh, when you see her, you’ll love her.”

  “I’m sick.” Ramona tried to sound pitiful. “I’ve got something awful. A doctor said so.”

  Beezus paid no attention. “And Roberta has brown hair—”

  Mr. Quimby interrupted. “What’s this all about, Ramona?”

  “A doctor said I had something, some kind of it is, and I have to have this right away.” She handed her father her prescription and scratched one shoulder. “If I don’t, I might get sicker.”

  Mr. Quimby read the scribbly cursive, and then he did a strange thing. He lifted Ramona and gave her a big hug and a kiss, right there in the lobby. The itching stopped. Ramona felt much better. “You have acute siblingitis,” explained her father. “It is means inflammation.”

  Ramona already knew the meaning of sibling. Since her father had studied to be a teacher, brothers and sisters had become siblings to him.

  “He understood you were worried and angry because you weren’t allowed to see your new sibling, and prescribed attention,” explained Mr. Quimby. “Now let’s all go buy ice-cream cones before I fall asleep standing up.”

  Beezus said Roberta was too darling to be called a dumb word like sibling. Ramona felt silly, but she also felt better.

  For the next three nights, Ramona took a book to the hospital and sat in the lobby, not reading, but sulking about the injustice of having to wait to see the strange new Roberta.

  On the fourth day, Mr. Quimby took an hour off from the ShopRite Market, picked up Beezus and Ramona, who were waiting in clean clothes, and drove to the hospital to bring home his wife and new daughter.

  Ramona moved closer to Beezus when she saw her mother, holding a pink bundle, emerge from the elevator in a wheelchair pushed by a nurse and followed by Mr. Quimby carrying her bag. “Can’t Mother walk?” she whispered.

  “Of course she can walk,” answered Beezus. “The hospital wants to make sure people get out without falling down and suing for a million dollars.”

  Mrs. Quimby waved to the girls. Roberta’s face was hidden by a corner of a pink blanket, but the nurse had no time for a little girl eager to see a new baby. She pushed the wheelchair through the automatic door to the waiting car.

  “Now can I see her?” begged Ramona when her mother and Roberta were settled in the front, and the girls had climbed into the backseat.

  “Dear Heart, of course you may.” Mrs. Quimby then spoke the most beautiful words Ramona had ever heard, “Oh, Ramona, how I’ve missed you,” as she turned back the blanket.

  Ramona, leaning over the front seat for her first glimpse of the new baby sister, tried to hold her breath so she wouldn’t breathe germs on Roberta, who did not look at all like the picture on the cover of A Name for Your Baby. Her face was bright pink, almost red, and her hair, unlike the smooth pale hair of the baby on the cover of the pamphlet, was dark and wild. Ramona did not know what to say. She did not feel that words like darling or adorable fitted this baby.

  “She looks exactly like you looked when you were born,” Mrs. Quimby told Ramona.

  “She does?” Ramona found this hard to believe. She could not imagine that she had once looked like this red, frowning little creature.

  “Well, what do you think of your new sister?” asked Mr. Quimby.

  “She’s so—so little,” Ramona answered truthfully.

  Roberta opened her blue gray eyes.

  “Mother!” cried Ramona. “She’s cross-eyed.”

  Mrs. Quimby laughed. “All babies look cross-eyed sometimes. They outgrow it when they learn to focus.” Sure enough, Roberta’s eyes straightened out for a moment and then crossed again.
She worked her mouth as if she didn’t know what to do with it. She made little snuffling noises and lifted one arm as if she didn’t know what it was for.

  “Why does her nightie have those little pockets at the ends of the sleeves?” asked Ramona. “They cover up her hands.”

  “They keep her from scratching herself,” explained Mrs. Quimby. “She’s too little to understand that fingernails scratch.”

  Ramona sat back and buckled her seat belt. She had once looked like Roberta. Amazing! She had once been that tiny, but she had grown, her hair had calmed down when she remembered to comb it, and she had learned to use her eyes and hands. “You know what I think?” she asked and did not wait for an answer. “I think it is hard work to be a baby.” Ramona spoke as if she had discovered something unknown to the rest of the world. With her words came unexpected love and sympathy for the tiny person in her mother’s arms.

  “I hadn’t thought of it that way,” said Mrs. Quimby, “but I think you’re right.”

  “Growing up is hard work,” said Mr. Quimby as he drove away from the hospital. “Sometimes being grown up is hard work.”

  “I know,” said Ramona and thought some more. She thought about loose teeth, real sore throats, quarrels, misunderstandings with her teachers, longing for a bicycle her family could not afford, worrying when her parents bickered, how terrible she had felt when she hurt Beezus’s feelings without meaning to, and all the long afternoons when Mrs. Kemp looked after her until her mother came from work. She had survived it all. “Isn’t it funny?” she remarked as her father steered the car into their driveway.

  “Isn’t what funny?” asked her mother.

  “That I used to be little and funny-looking and cross-eyed like Roberta,” said Ramona. “And now look at me. I’m wonderful me!”

  “Except when you’re blunderful you,” said Beezus.

  Ramona did not mind when her family, except Roberta, who was too little, laughed. “Yup, wonderful, blunderful me,” she said and was happy. She was winning at growing up.

  About the Author

  BEVERLY CLEARY is one of America’s most popular authors. Born in McMinnville, Oregon, she lived on a farm in Yamhill until she was six and then moved to Portland. After college, as the children’s librarian in Yakima, Washington, she was challenged to find stories for non-readers. She wrote her first book, HENRY HUGGINS, in response to a boy’s question, “Where are the books about kids like us?”

  Mrs. Cleary’s books have earned her many prestigious awards, including the American Library Association’s Laura Ingalls Wilder Award, presented in recognition of her lasting contribution to children’s literature. Her DEAR MR. HENSHAW was awarded the 1984 John Newbery Medal, and both RAMONA QUIMBY, AGE 8 and RAMONA AND HER FATHER have been named Newbery Honor Books. In addition, her books have won more than thirty-five statewide awards based on the votes of her young readers. Her characters, including Henry Huggins, Ellen Tebbits, Otis Spofford, and Beezus and Ramona Quimby, as well as Ribsy, Socks, and Ralph S. Mouse, have delighted children for generations. Mrs. Cleary lives in coastal California.

  Visit Ramona Quimby and all of her friends in The World of Beverly Cleary at www.beverlycleary.com.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

  Enjoy all of Beverly Cleary’s books

  FEATURING RAMONA QUIMBY:

  Beezus and Ramona

  Ramona the Pest

  Ramona the Brave

  Ramona and Her Father

  Ramona and Her Mother

  Ramona Quimby, Age 8

  Ramona Forever

  Ramona’s World

  FEATURING HENRY HUGGINS:

  Henry Huggins

  Henry and Beezus

  Henry and Ribsy

  Henry and the Paper Route

  Henry and the Clubhouse

  Ribsy

  FEATURING RALPH MOUSE:

  The Mouse and the Motorcycle

  Runaway Ralph

  Ralph S. Mouse

  MORE GREAT FICTION BY BEVERLY CLEARY:

  Ellen Tebbits

  Otis Spofford

  Fifteen

  The Luckiest Girl

  Jean and Johnny

  Emily’s Runaway Imagination

  Sister of the Bride

  Mitch and Amy

  Socks

  Dear Mr. Henshaw

  Muggie Maggie

  Strider

  Two Times the Fun

  AND DON'T MISS BEVERLY CLEARY'S AUTOBIOGRAPHIES:

  A Girl from Yamhill

  My Own Two Feet

  Credits

  Jacket art © 2006 by Tracy Dockray

  Jacket design by Amy Ryan

  Copyright

  RAMONA FOREVER. Copyright © 1984 by Beverly Cleary. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  EPub © Edition SEPTEMBER 2009 ISBN: 9780061972331

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