polenta is all right with me.” We had no tablecloth, just a big dish
of polenta which is corn pudding made out of mutton. Giuseppe came
and saylooted me with his hello grin but no words. O Mother, when
I tasted that polenta I thought what will I do what will I do not
to offend more Concetta because so fierce I did not like it that
scarcely could my swallow act and besides there was not plenty for
all. In that minute Giuseppe winkt his eye on my side and I slipt my
share to him under the table which he ate with much joy and me the
same that he should.
Very quick was finished the polenta because it was not much and all
must hurry hurry to finish more coats. I begged very humble to try
again and Concetta let me most scornful but I finished one all right
and felt proud but there was no time for proudness, just grab another
and another. At first it was like play to try to get through quick as
the rest which I could not for even Marietta would beat me by both
sleeves. I liked to wonder what was the color of hair now growing on
the boy whose Papa would buy him this coat but soon no more because
I got a little ache in my back which spread and spread and my arms
ached fierce and my feet got asleep and my neck full of cricks. The
black color would come off on my hands to make them horrid and ugly.
I was hungry like I would starve and all my bones were full of pains
but I had shame to stop first, so it was grab another and another
till it seemed as if I had to sew down a long long road with no end
but just coats and coats until I died.
O Mother, all at once I lost my Giovanna feelings and caught Concetta
feelings instead. It was as if I was not me but her all poor and
tired and ever sewing and hungry and sleepy and anksyus. I could see
me, Giovanna, sitting there in the good clothes of your love clean
and fed up and lazy and smarty and selfish and crittykle. O Mother, I
hated me and not her so fierce that I cried to think how mean I was
and all times putting it on her.
Concetta got big astonish to see my cry, but said real sweet as I
never knew she could “Notta more sew--you tired, no? You stop now.”
Then I tried to explain and we all stopped and hugged and Concetta
embraced me most of all and said I was not proud and hawty like she
thought and for me to forgive and I hugged back most crazy with glad.
Uncle Nicolo came in and Concetta begged him to play the piccolo so
they might dance to sellybrate. It is a fine father who can always
have music in his pocket that his children may dance. I told Uncle
Nicolo how my Mama that died said the neighbors called him Mr.
Piccolo instead and he laughed a little for the first time in America
I guess by his looks.
Isn’t it funny that my feet have not forgot the tarantella learned
from my Mama that died while my head forgets many capitals of States
in vacation? So Concetta and I were fine in love and danced it to
each other like our Mothers usto, only Uncle Nicolo would have his
sad thoughts again and forget to blow.
The Principal stood in the door and Dolly with her because Dolly had
met her in a store and wanted to come. They begged and begged and
coaxed and coaxed until Aunt Maddalena took her little shoes out of a
chest and nobody could dance the tarantella like her. She looked old
but danced young just as when all would walk miles to see the steps
of her teeny feet.
O Mother, what do you think our dear Principal said--that her grand
wonderful actress friend who visited us once at the school wants
to learn the tarantella because she must dance it in a play named
“Ibsen’s doll’s house” and nobody could teach her to do it like my
Aunt Maddalena and the actress lady will pay Aunt Maddalena plenty of
money to be taught. In that minute I got back my Italian proudness to
think of that way-way-up-to-the-sky actress lady taking lessons off
my Aunt.
O and Uncle Nicolo can buy that fruit stand and he was so glad he
sang a long song which the Principal named grand opera. All the time
he sang Dolly was scribbling with her pencil on the cuffs of my white
waist but not so anybody would notice her much and then she whispered
to me “Don’t send my limmyricks to the laundry.”
Next Uncle Nicolo played like he would break his cheeks and we all
danced. Even the Principal made some whirls with Marietta.
We parted in joy and now I am home back at the school and happy
happy! And I have looked in Dolly’s closet but I can’t find any
limmyricks not to send to the laundry. I know all her clothes and she
never said she wore any or what color.
Here is the poetry off my left cuff.
“There was an Aunt Maddalena
Whom Giovanna never had seena
She’s wrinkled and old
But her heart is fine gold
So her looks don’t count for a beana.”
Here is her poetry on my right cuff.
“There was a proud Cousin Concetta
Whose eyes were black as the jetta
She seemed full of hate
But that’s all a mistake
She’s so darling we’re glad to have metta.”
That’s the true just as if it wasn’t poetry, but all the rellytives
in this big world dont = one precious darling Mother always first in
the heart of
Giovanna.
GIOVANNA’S FIRST REMEMBERS
_Angelickal Mother of my gloryous new times_,
Such a hurry I got to put my first remembers in this letter because
to-morrow we girls must fix them in compositions to oblige the Chair
of Professor Sighkology who lectured to us in Assembly and I cannot
make secrets with that Chair away from you who must ever be the Queen
of all my deepmost thinks.
A senior said Professor Sighkology’s smile was Heavenly, but Dolly
answered it was so impursynal it fell down between the desks. I never
noticed which way flew his smile for wondering what sort of magic
Chair to read my writing and put red ink on top of my mistakes. I’d
like to see it only to feel that Chair staring at me without eyes
would be worse than the evil eye of the old shoeman--I’ll tell about
him when I get to his spot in my letter.
The girls are Odearing something dreadful about this composition
(except Dolly who says hers will then be ready for her byography) but
they don’t really mind--it’s just their Odear habit. Boosted up here
as I am by your love and my orphan feelings not forgotten, I don’t
see how they can fuss and fuss at nothing, I don’t indeed. But then
a beggar of the street might peep in at the asylum window and hear
the orphans Odear the same and say “What have those orphans all safe
and fed got to Odear about?” and wonder at them just as I do at the
Exclusives of this school.
No other girl here could make news to her mother of her first
remembers since they had them together which we never could the ones
I got now, because if I had been your daughter from the beginning
all these first remembers would have been diferents. Anyway no
daughter could belong any fiercer than I do now, _could_ they Mother?
My days are trimmed up and deckorated with my thinks of you. And when
I tell you these remembers we will belong some more for you to know
all that passed with me in my years before I sewed by your side at
the College Settlement where we used to take our first start with
each other.
And even if we didn’t begin so early to belong, I hope we can finish
up together and have our funerals the same afternoon. Sometimes I get
scares in my bed to wonder if, you being older, God expects you to
die first, but please live to be an aged lady and I won’t mind dying
some young not to be left orphan again.
How strange that Dolly and I were babies in the world at the same
time and her with a nurse of white cap and apron to ride her in the
Park and embroidery dresses and her rattle silver, so no angel could
guess she would ever be chums with the brown tenement baby which
grew up me. And you, Precious Mother, were in the world too and God
had you waiting for me like a grand surprise hid way back on the top
cubboard shelf.
Dolly read a book out of the library so her composition is very
intelleckchewel. She writes about her infantyle conceps but they were
too much style for a Dago tenement kid so I am very sure I had none.
O Mother, wouldn’t it be fun if we could remember way far backer than
we can and not forget how it feels to be teeny in laps and pull hair
and talk guggy guggy? But no--we must grow to some bigness before
memory sprouts in us.
Dolly’s earlyest reckylection is shook in church for badness to
go sit on the pulpit steps and hug and kiss her new hat with the
minister up there preaching how wicked is vanity. Can’t you just see
her looking dear and cute and funny like anything?
I will tell you my own very firstest remember I got. I never knew
there was any me in this world until the day the saloon burned across
our street. All stands in my head just like a picture only myself I
cannot see though I feel I am in the middle of it and little to hold
on that way to the back of the chair where my Papa lifted me up to
look. He was an awful handsome man of big black mustash. I can see
very plain my Mama that died and hear her prayers of scare that our
house would not burn also. All the front of that picture is blazing
fire close close till it seems as if I could reach it with my hands.
I had not then my “dawn of conshus fear” but jumped and danced on the
chair like a little crazy with joy of the big red and yellow flames.
Dolly’s best scare was on a ghost which never skooted in at the
window all white with eyes green and ringing its hands and moaning
fierce to fly her off into the dark, but of nights she lay on her
little bed expecting and expecting that ghost which the nurse said
would come if she did not go quick to sleep, and she could not for
scare of the ghost. It was all just a wicked lie of that nurse so she
could run talk with her bow over the fence.
[Illustration: “I must hold my horny hand at my back for
politeness” Page 110]
My first afraid was on that old Dago shoeman. He pozest the evil eye
and always plenty of work because the neighbors had scares of what
would fall on them if another should mend their shoes. He sat close
to the door in his little shop where I must pass on errands to the
grocery. My Mama that died hung a charm about my neck to keep off
his bad looks; also she showed me how to make horns with my hand but
I must hold my horny hand at my back for politeness. With the charm
and horns I felt safe when I was in the house just going to start,
but soon as I heard his hammer tinky tinky I would go slow and slow
grabbing my charm and making my horns and shake and shake and whisper
little prayers and creep soft on my tippy toes till I was half past
and then run like crazyness.
Dolly says her scare was worse than mine because the old shoeman
stayed in his shop and didn’t go flopping round into windows. I told
her but he was really in the world and the ghost was not, and she
answers that’s the eyedentickle reason for the ghost to be worst.
I never dreamed that richness living upstairs and downstairs in its
house could think of anything to want and not get it and there Dolly
and I had the same wish which was a new baby in the family, girl for
choice. Poorness got waited on up in Heaven and richness didn’t, so
my going-to-be-chum Dolly had to stay an only like she was.
I wish she could have had hers too. She needed it worse than me
because I was not quite an only on account of Tony. I never noticed
when he came. He was in our house not so big as I when I first
thought about him. He was too big though to make a good baby and
wouldn’t play it anyway. All the girls my size on the tenement
doorstep had babies to tend, so it was no good form to be without and
I must ever play old maid which is very stupid with no children to
lick. It was only nice when the hand organ would come to our block
because a baby is awful heavy to dance with for several tunes while
an old maid can dance all tunes very free and glad.
My best friend was named Katy. She was proud to be Irish and no Dago.
Her father was a man of pollyticks who could shake hands with the
alderman just whenever he pleased, and the alderman got him a job to
sweep the dirt of the streets into a great big dustpan with a long
handle. Katy was so haughty for that she would not be much friends
with Dago kids but with me yes, because we had the other front
tenement to look on the street and lived in good style with always
something to pawn when there was not money enough for the rent. So
she liked me at home but not at school--there she walked at recess
with her arms around the Irish and not me. But after school she was
my friend again and said the rest in our tenement were ginneys and
could not sit on the top step along with us.
One day when Katy got home from school she found a bran new baby in
her house and she was stucker up than ever because it was a sister
which is more stylish than brothers and it was blonde white with
teeny gold curls like no other baby in that tenement. I was its old
maid Aunt and must hold it most all the time while Katy was busy
chasing kids off the top step.
I loved Katy’s baby so fierce I had most forgotten to want one of
my own when Isabella came in the night and the next morning I heard
her cry in Mama’s bed and was crazy glad and ran to look but such a
dizzypoint fell on me for her to be little and red and blackfuzzy and
Katy’s baby so beautiful. O Mother, I write this with red shame on
my cheeks to think of me so mean and wicked but I must tell you all
even if it makes you have a black spot of dispizement for me in your
soul _I tried to trade babies with Katy_! I offered her all my hair
ribbons and my red beads and even my badeye charm but she said not on
her sweet life for mine was the common Dago kind so if you dropped
her on the steps you couldn’t tell again which one she was and so
little I would be getting ten pounds more baby.
God was good to me as I never deserved not to let her trade since
her baby died and I would have been left without any little sister
and serve me right for my evil heart. I saw that dear baby just the
day before in Katy’s house and I thought it not to be sick as they
said with its cheeks so pink, but the next tomorrow it was dead.
The Chairs asks which is your beautifullest remember and that is
mine--Katy’s baby lying on the table among its candles, its face all
over clean at once and dressed in white embroidery like richness. It
seemed as if it must wake up in surprise and reach for those teeny
blue shoes such as it never dreamed on itself. The look on its face
was just as though an angel was whispering creepymouse in its ear.
I cried more than Katy which she said was no fair and I kissed many
times its little hands like cold snow. They took it away with grand
style and much weeps out loud and three carriages and a white hurse
and a bouquet of genuine flowers bigger than it, a present from the
alderman which must have cost plenty.
Isabella had grown some bigger by that time and her curls had started
only they were still black and not gold. When the funeral proceshun
was gone, I went again upstairs and hugged her not to be dead and
cold and whispered did she forgive her wicked sister to try to trade
and she guggled “yes” and I cried some more into her apron for my
little Irish niece deadngone to the semitary.
Katy returned from her funeral very sad and hawty. I offered her
Isabella to hold for comfort but she sobbed “no, thanks, her own or
none” and she let everybody sit by her side on the top step. I saw by
such politeness her heart to be broke intirely as she said it was.
Katy’s family moved away pretty soon because the alderman fixed her
Papa with a better job to drive a big sweep-the-streets machine of
nights and they went to a grand Irish tenement with a bathtub and
foldup bed in the parlor glorybe.
I truly love this school, Mother, but not more than I loved the
First-Grade in that time. It was fine to be the monitor to all
the pencils in my row and the teacher’s petticoat rustled grand
and silken down the aisle and her smile was hardly ever off her
face--just when some boy was mean. My hand would most wave itself
broke to say the words on the blackboard and I loved to sing
“Twenty froggys went to school
Down beside the Russhen pool.”
I went home different ways to find that pool but none on our block
was Russhen, just all Dago with men hitting little balls and no
froggys to see.
You must have been the Dolly kind of little girl, Mother and O
so fine and wonderful! Please please write your youthfullest
rememberants to me in your next precious letter. My Mama that died
used to tell me about when she was a little girl in Italy. She would
get glad to talk of Italy--how it is warm, fresh and light, the
neighbors sing like the fountins; fig and olive trees grow thick
there as the garbige cans of America. We would dance the tarantella
very happy but pretty soon it would make worse her cough and then
she would cry and say how cold, sad, dark and ugly is this country
and all times like Good Friday. She was a very good kind of Mama and
where she was that place seemed ever sweet and shiney unto me.
The curious chair wants to know how we made our first start to feel
grownup. Dolly says her shoes keep climbing higher and higher up her
ankels and her skirts keep falling down lower and lower. When they
meet she will be a young lady.
I must have stayed kiddish forever to wait for that because my
dresses not like Dolly’s would get shrinker and shrinker and my legs
would grow longer and longer so my shoes and skirts must get more
apart for boys at school to holler “broomsticks! broomsticks!” as I
hated them to so holler.
I guess my grownup feelings sprouted in me one tragicky winter full
of woe when Papa’s fruit would freeze and freeze and lose him plenty
of money and we got all pawned out and had to move back into an old
behind tenement very dark and cold so I was glad Katy was gone not
to see. The cough of my Mama that died got awful worse and no fire
seemed to warm us with the little coal we had and Tony sat by the
stove and wouldn’t play anything but lame boy and his knee was bad
but he never said it was real--only his play. It was a good thing I
was eight that birthday to do the work. My Papa fixed a box by the
stove and a box by the cubboard so I could reach and also put our tub
on to wash, only Isabella always tried to fall in that tub and be
drounded. I had no time for doorsteps and anyway it was too cold.
The walk-in districk nurse came every day to put a new bandige on
Tony’s knee and fix Mama what comfy she could. One morning I put
Mama and Tony’s breakfast on the box by the stove while I filled
the teakettle and Tony never noticed and put his foot in it and I
slapped him--my poor little lame brother with a bandige on his knee!
O Mother, when he was awful sicker in the hospital I begged him to
slap me back but he wouldn’t, so that slap I put on Tony must stay on
me till I die.
And I can’t have the delishus dinner I got now in a basket and take
it to Mama and Tony to make them glad. When persons are in some other
place perhaps you can get there to walk enough, but you cannot walk
to them in a new time after theirs is all past and finished up.
I know that winter was when I got the habit of growing up for the
nurse to say as she did “you poor little old woman!”
Then one day very sudden it was spring and warm by the sun and some
grass trying to grow itself in a crack of the sidewalk and Tony went
outdoors with his new crutch. That day the walk-in nurse helped me
like a sick one into a pink dress terrible short with a big spot
where Isabella spillt her mackyrony on me but the best I had. She
led me to a beautiful house like no tenement because its rooms had
not beds or stoves but pictures and prettys and many parlors which
must be bigger and grander than the glorybe parlor of Katy. Some
children were firing little pillows full of beans at a hole--so silly
I thought and beans good to eat.
Then the walk-in nurse opened a door and that was the door to all my
joy. Many girls sewed in a club and one hollered very mean “I know
her--that’s Giovanna Long-legs,” and all laughed. My wish was to cry
and run home, but O the wonderfulest enchantingest lady which was you
hugged me with your arm and put shame on those girls and asked me did
I want to sew doll rags? I was embearest dreadful but answered “no,
please I am too old.” Your smile was truly Heavenly as you gave me a
dress to make for Isabella and put me close by your side. That was
the day my love for you got planted in the ground of my heart.
But, Mother, I could not have sat there and sewed so happy if I had
known God was planning all those funerals for our family. And if
any angel had whispered in your ear that day how the funny little
new Dago kid of the long legs would get to be your ownest ownest
daughter, I think you would have told that angel “Guess again and
don’t be abzurd!”
Now in this letter you got me from the start and I am for keeps and
keeps and keeps
Your Giovanna.
GIOVANNA AS THE WRONG PRINCESS
_Adorablest Mother_,
My times in this school get better and better and now my tiptopest
joy of all is that I am to act in a real play. The Principal divided
us girls into program groops and my Dolly chum is writing O a gorjous
drama just out of her own thinks for our groop to give next month.
First Dolly read a book from the library how to make plays, but that
book only gave her much discurage and her head to ache therefore
she decided younity and atmosphear are too much style for a school
play and not to have them in hers. So she writes it absolootly by
inspuration same as poetry only worse for long and often which is
terrible. That inspuration falls on her in the middle of nights and
just in front of dessert and once when climbing the trapeeze so she
lost her hold, but on the floor stayed her play notebook and when the
gym teacher came running to see how bad she was hurt, there she lay
to scribble, scribble like crazy and never knew her bumps until they
turned their bumpy color. O Mother, how wonderful is genius!
The Age of Dolly’s play is Middle because then all persons wore
costumes instead of clothes and were romantic every minute. Dolly
adores romance which it is her grief and woe to be now so scarce and
most extinkt. The Principal likes that time because petticoats were
good form for gentlemen, so the King girl can be real modish in a red
kimono trimmed by bands of cotton decorated with ink blots, and the
other mail characters will keep on their long cloaks so their gym
suits won’t show.
Dolly can’t dyvulge the plot yet because the characters are so
opstreperus that whatever she writes them to do they fuss back at her
to fix it all different. She says that’s because, being the children
of her brains, they must take after her in temperment. But we girls
coaxed and teased her most crazy till she consented to give us just
an introduckshun no more to those desperit tempermental characters.
Dolly will act the Right Princess as the playwrite must ever be
leading lady or no fair, and I am the Wrong Princess which is the
next best part for being her chum. The rest are the King, Queen,
Noble, Prince of the Long Feather, Cruel Jailer, Wicked Witch, and
four Hop-livelys who must be sometimes pezzents (which means not
birds but the poor and humble obliged to dust with their aprons the
chairs of nobility) sometimes kitchen sculpins and sometimes pop-up
ghosts.
Dolly says the Wrong Princess gets taken for the real kind at first
but by and by she is expozed and found out to be nothing but a half
orphan of the Wicked Witch. Already I love my part because to be
any princess whatsoever will be magnificent like I never dreamed. I
try hard with my manners, Mother, I do indeed, but they are not the
teeniest bit enough good for even the wrong kind of princess. I must
just watch them now like cats and mice not to put shame on you by the
rudeness of my princess ways. But the half orphan piece of my part I
guess I will understand to act as some girl of two parents might not.
I knew a little girl in another dormitory of our asylum who was fairy
once at a genuine theater and she told how in a play you are always
fine and wonderful like makebelieve come true only she always wished
it wouldn’t be over so dreadful quick.
O Mother, I go upstairs and downstairs in all the rooms of this
school so happy to think on my character in Dolly’s drama that
scarcely can my feet walk and not skippity skippity as would be no
proper princess manners. I love Dolly more than I ever did, which was
lots already, to see her write in her play notebook those good grand
words for me to speak. It is diffycult not to feel haughty when I
think that a backward like me has genius for her chum.
Your joyful-up-to-the-sky
Wrong Princess.
* * * * *
_O Mother Dear and Only Comfort_,
I most wish I was an old old lady dead in my peaceful grave so Dolly
would get repentants on herself for her perfiddy and she calls
perfiddy on me the same when I perfidded nothing and she all. Now we
are no more chums and never can be in our long lives.