to me like a secret, so last night after supper I ran with her very
happy to our room, and O dear! O dear! how I wish that inspuration
had never dropped on her. When she began to read we were the
lovingest friends and when she stopped we were the hatingest enemies.
The play makes its start with the King and Queen discovered on top
of their thrones talking about their believed-to-be child, the Wrong
Princess--how vile and evil is her dishpishum and how dark her
looks--just like me. Her name is Zeerooty as any girl so wicked must
have her name spelled with Z to hiss like the snakes in her black
heart.
The King says “Adzooks! cheer up, Mrs. Queen. This is the day the
Noble Prince of the Long Feather comes to be her sooter. He will
marry her away from us and good riddants to our Zeerooty.” The Queen
has scares the Noble Prince won’t like the blackness and tempers of
Zeerooty and says weddings in the dark are real stylish among her
set, but the king only zooks some more.
Dolly must read hard and fast to finish before the electric light
would go off, so she never looked at me to know the feelings
sprouting in my soul. I kept myself still and spoke not with hopes
the King and Queen were some mistaken and me not to be so mean as
their thinks.
Then in the play a Hop-lively announces the Noble Prince of the Long
Feather who enters the stage followed by the other three Hop-livelys.
When all finish their politeness, that Zeerooty comes along tagged by
Dolly dressed in her white silk with a big black patch basted on its
front breath to show how poor and dispized she is because believed
to be just the child of the Wicked Witch and given to Zeerooty for
a sort of slave since the Witch has got everybody spelled so they
don’t know that Zeerooty is her own black brat and Dolly the Right
Princess.
Zeerooty never notices the Prince and all those Hop-livelys though I
don’t see how she can help it and not be blind. She saucys her Mama
Queen and kicks her Papa King on his foot. Then she discovers the
Prince and has much astonish for that. She likes him fine and her
manners are quick honeytaffy. She puts out her hand for him to kiss
like she is the sunflower of the world, but scarcely can the Prince
kiss that hand for his looks of love on Dolly.
Zeerooty perceeves those looks and goes back to acting like scandles.
She throws her gloves, hat, and hanky on the floor for Dolly to pick
them up and slaps her on the cheek.
O that slap was the worst ever to go from me to Dolly in her drama!
It is the true, Mother, I slapped Dolly my first day in this school
because I spilled the gravy on her and she put the name goosey to you
for thinking I could get made into a lady. But that is so long past
and see how we have been chums ever since the girls took the tayboo
off me and now for her to go put that slap in her play when I thought
it all forgiven up--O Mother, it hurt so bad I couldn’t even speak
that first minute like once when I caught my finger in the door.
When Dolly read on, our electric study lamp went to bobbing itself
round in funny ways and throwing out long strings of light into my
eyes.
In the second act, Dolly is discovered dusting and dusting those
thrones and the Prince tells her how sweetysweet she is and that
Zeerooty so bominable which is the true--I could put no blame on him
for that. He wants to marry Dolly instead of me and her young heart
beats for him alone. Then I, which is Zeerooty come on and catch
them in their actions. I stamp and yell so fierce all the court rush
there with scares of fire. Zeerooty demands to have the Noble Prince
boiled in oil with chilly sauce, mean old thing that I am! The King
answers boiling a guest would be inhospittable and no good form and
make war with his parents but to our lowest dunjun let him go until
he can love Zeerooty and he is halled off by the Cruel Jailor while
Dolly weeps into her hanky.
After that things are truly awfuller than they can be Dolly tries
to rescew the Noble Prince and gets caught and dunjuned herself by
the cruel Jailer, so it looks like all is over with the lovery pair.
But the Cruel Jailer gets a tender spot in his tough breast and the
Wicked Witch falls into her own kettle and then her spells don’t work
and Zeerooty is found out to be the Wrong Princess and Dolly the
Right One. Dolly is let to marry the Noble Prince of the Long Feather
and Zeerooty is put out the castle gate scratching firce all the
Hop-livelys who got the job to reject her and screeching swears of
“Zounds! Zounds!” like the cat vickson she is to the last and no lady!
When she finished reading, my used-to-be chum actually asked if my
part wasn’t just grand? I felt as a volcano when it is volcanoizing.
I told her my opinion of that despizable old black snubbish Zeerooty
mean as mud. I asked her what sort of mad she had kept hid away in
her heart all our months of being chums that she could make me such
a part to slap Dollys in her play and saucy mothers and kick fathers
and boil princes like a cannible heathen?
Dolly just laughed and said Zeerooty was dandy and a real actress
would know her for a splendid part.
I answered I was awear that while I might be Dago black and lean
like broomsticks and used to be a slapper when I came, I was one no
more but had learned better in this school where my Mother put me
for such manners not to stay on me any more as the manners of that
Zeerooty whom I hated and detested and bominated like a poison weed
and never would I play myself to be her!
Then Dolly got mad at me like I already was at her, only she had no
cause as she can ask her consceince and let it tell her what she did
first to me--not counting that way-back slap.
Dolly exclaimed that genius never gets its dews this side of the
silentomb, so she don’t expect it, but to think I could take such an
ignoranty pursonal view of Zeerooty. She asked if after she wrote
special for me that almost starry part did I really refuse to be it?
I answered “Yes, I refuse forever and ever and all the time after
that to be Zeerooty.” Dolly said “This breaks the chain which binds
us” and I spoke back that chain to be already busted when she read
me about that mean slapping Zeerooty thing she wrote to put me into.
Dolly answered she would never never speak to me again and I told her
I would not to her in all my long life and we both cried on our beds.
When we must get up to undress, Dolly took off the nugget bracelet I
gave her Christmas and put it on my bureau and me the same on hers
with the silver candlestick she gave me.
So now I lost my chum all on account of that Zeerooty. I never
expected to slap any girl again but I would Zeerooty if she were only
in the world to receive my slap. And I won’t play her! I won’t! I
won’t! I wont!
Your mad and Sorry
Giovanna.
* * * * *
_Angel Mother All I Got_,
It is now three days that Dolly and I don’t speak any more than
frozen icicles and I most wish I was one to fall down and break
into little pieces and be finished. My heart is so heavy, it’s like
carrying the coal-hod at the asylum to get upstairs with it to my
room. Dolly and I both got the proudness not to tell what our mad is
about so the other girls guess much but know nothing.
O Mother, if I had never been born, what troubles I would have
missed, most of all this cold mad lonesome to be a deafndumb with
Dolly studying on her side of our room a deafndumb also, and she my
used-to-be-dearest next to you.
If Dolly would only say she is sorry she wrote that Zeerooty on me I
could forgive her in a minute, but she never will. And I don’t blame
Dolly, Mother, as I do Zeerooty her own self. You know how Dolly told
that those characters would fuss back at her and dicktate how they
wanted to be fixed. Dolly is ever a quick forgiver and never would
have thought to stick in that blow for all the girls to remember me
as I was in my slapping days if Zeerooty has not hipnotized her to
do it.
But now she has chozen between me and that Zeerooty whom she loves
like a mother her bad child to think all its meanness darling and
cute. She cannot see me write in this letter “Dear Dolly, take me and
not your old Zeerooty,” but I wouldn’t say it to her out loud, not
for the big round world in my pocket. Goodbye my Dolly chum, I hope
Zeerooty makes you happy you don’t look happy though, but sorry and
frozeup same as me.
I feel my cry is coming Mother, and I must get to bed quick and sqush
it in the pillow for Dolly not to hear. I’m glad you are not a chum
to bandon me for some old Zeerooty. Mothers are just the one thing in
the world you can always keep unless God takes them up to Heaven.
Goodnight truest and darlingist,
Giovanna.
* * * * *
_Treasure Mother_,
A real lady actress, friend to the Principal, came and performed like
Lady Macbeth in Assembly this afternoon just for us girls. I was
so blue I didn’t want to go but we all must. She was dressed very
curious and talked for her husband Mr. Macbeth also just as I used
to for my doll only she made her voice big instead of little. He
wanted to be king as the witches proffyside but he had some feelings
not to kill the nice gentle old really truly king come to visit him
like an uncle and explained how murdering your company is not good
form. I guess Lady Macbeth’s first name must begin with Z. O Mother,
I shook till it squeeked the seat when she dared him and called him
old fraidcat. Of course he didn’t have to mind her but a wife ought
to keep her husband out of meanness all she can and not put him up to
more like Lady Macbeth.
I was sure that actress lady must be very bad by nature to look
like that out of her eyes and dangerous, ever full of meanness to do
somebody. I wondered how our dear Principal could stand her for a
friend.
When she came in the reception room after she had acted I did not
know her in a tailor suit and smiling sweet, not a bit like that Lady
Macbeth. I was standing close by the Principal and my astonish jumped
right out of me to say how she looked not mean but a lovely lady. The
Principal laughed and told how good that actress is to her little
brothers and orphans and beggars and adored by all.
O the Principal made me most die of mortifide to lead me to the
actress lady and introdoose me by telling right out loud my thinks of
her. But she was so Heavenly tackfull Mother, that by and by I could
ask her the question sticking right out of my soul to be asked--how
she could act herself into a mean one like Lady Macbeth whom she must
ever hate and put on her looks and ways for all persons to detest
and not love.
When she was gone I ran quick upstairs with my heart no more like
coal hods. There sat Dolly on her side writing like crazy in her
play notebook. I never thought not to speak first and I cried out,
“O Dolly, it is the duty of my face to be a picture of Zeerooty’s
face and my voice to sound like hers and my actions to be same as her
actions to show the audients what Zeerooty is like and not what I am
like which does not count at such a time. What a silly I was--all
ignoranty and pursynal like you said--so please forgive and I will
play Zeerooty dandy as I can.”
Dolly looked up awful sweet out of her writing and answered, “No,
Giovanna, you had the right to hate Zeerooty because that actress
explained it to be the smartness of Shakespeare for Lady Macbeth
to have some good feelings mixed in with her badness and those
repentants in her sleep and to be no monster. My Zeerooty was a
fusser and a scowler and a screecher every minute which is to be a
monster. I’m glad you hated her; she is now detestable to me the
same, so here I sit writing some good feelings and repentants into
her.”
I asked “Shall Zeerooty walk in my sleep?” and she answered she would
be no copycat to Shakespeare but ever origynal and make me into a nun
at the last instead of a scratcher of Hop-livelys.
Then I remembered what my real maddest mad was about, only it was
so good to be speaking with my Dolly chum again I didn’t much care,
but I just asked, “Dolly, would it be the same with you if Zeerooty
should pull your hair instead of slap, for the girls to not remember
my dreadful scandle of slapping you during my first dinner in this
school?”
O Mother, Dolly had forgotten all about that slap or she never would
have put it in her play and she begged please forgive. We hugged and
kissed like crazy and went down to dinner with our arms around as
always. I am so happy I love even poor old naughty Zeerooty.
Your devoted daughter
The Wrong Princess.
GIOVANNA’S COMMENCEMENT
_O Mother Dear_,
Such high sky cheer but feelings queer rezembling fear though love
burns clear to know that we’re so close and near.
Why I almost made a sonnut! I must be catching poetry off Dolly’s
Muse. A Muse, Mother, is a ghosty person only not made of fog and
clam like a real ghost but just of air. It hawnts round waiting to
help you write poetry but you got to be a true genius first. No
other girl in this school has a Muse except Dolly and I don’t mind
it hawnting in our room because all it does is to keep the poetry
stirred up in Dolly’s soul.
This is not a real letter for the post office or for you to read
ever, but just scribble in the back of my composition book which
cannot be dissybedient now the term is over all but fun and exes.
Dolly down in the studyroom crams and crams till she daresent talk
for fear of losing something out of her mind. I am writing this
sortof letter just to keep myself out of crazyness while I wait alone
in my room the long, long, long hours before you come. My imaginer
can see you in the cars this minute. You seem to be looking out of
the window and I wonder if you got little thinks of your Giovanna
waiting here. On the seat by your side is some big package of my
surprise for which you did not wish me to meet you at the train,
but please I don’t need that surprise--just you! you! you! Since
receiving your letter, the big school clock has ever ticked “Mother’s
coming! Mother’s coming!” till I wrote it all round the edge of my
music book when I never knew I did.
I want you to come so bad I can hardly live and yet--O Dearest, all
the corners of my soul are full of scares. I stare in the mirror
until Dolly tells I am getting vanity on myself, but it is my wonder,
wonder what my looks and ways will be to you. I hope you do not
forget how Dago black I am and have dizzypoint in me for that. And my
manners--I have not worn them so long as the other girls--sometimes I
lose them off when I am embearest or forget.
Let’s count me up together, Mother, now before you come. I’m
bigger--that’s by the grace of God as the preacher says. I wear the
clothes of grandeur--that’s by the grace of your love. I am a teeny
smarter in my head--that’s by the grace of my teachers.
Spelling is still my ennemy. I don’t see why God made so many ways to
spell words and then only put one way in the Dictionery which He must
have written like the Bible and Encyclopedia since too big for any
person to write in his long life.
Fractions are mean too and I hate them! What is the good to divide
units in all those stingey parts which the denommynator shows how
many and the numerator what you give each person? Fractions is how
they used to cut the pie at the asylum on Saturday. If it wasn’t
for fractions there would be no poors in this world for everybody
would have good and plenty of all things. O Darlingest, there is no
numerator and denommynator between you and me; you are my entire
Mother instead of 1-90 of a matron I used to have.
And deffynitions are what Dolly calls my pon sassy norum which is
Latin for the hardest ever. I could not remember moonshiner away from
honeymoon till Dolly explained which one makes whisky on the still
and which one is two going off alone after the wedding on a journey
away from all encumbrants. They are still romantics and just hate to
have anybody close except themselves, especially children big enough
to be obzervant. Dolly learned that last outside of the book.
I was sure, Mother, I had scribbled away this whole hour and when I
saw it to be only half gone, I shook my little watch and then kissed
it to forgive me.
It is Commencement Week in this school and with me the same because
I commence to live by your side. I wonder if I will ever acheeve
the Senior kind to wear a graduated dress and make a grand bow
(down, head, neck and chest; up chest, neck and head) to receive my
dipploma tied with blue ribbon and you in the front row quite an
old lady (though plenty young now) for all the grades and classes I
must get promoted through. Dolly is a Freshy which is to be despized
by Seniors, but anyway Freshies have class things like a yell, a
color, and a spirit, while the grades have not and so are despized by
Freshies the same.
Mother, so near, so near.... O O I believe there comes the maid to
call me downstairs....
* * * * *
Sweet Mother dear did wait below, and I to talk with her did go, but
acted like when I was young, they used to say “Cat’s got your tongue.”
O Muse, go way and let me alone! Can’t you see I’m too miserable to
fool with poetry? Go and hawnt Dolly down in the study-room; only
you’ll find she’s dreadfully busy cramming math and she won’t bother
with you either; she’s got real troubles same as me--not the fancy
poetical kind!
Please excuse me, Muse, to be so cross and rude, but it’s real
aggervating of you when i’m just writing down my woe in this same old
composition book and you change it into doggyrells which is all the
kind you can unwind in me since I am no genius like my Dolly chum. I
suppose it’s missing her makes you try to poetize me. Now be good
and you may look over my shoulder though the Principal says for that
not to be polite.
I shook some as I opened the reception room door and there was
Mother, grander and wonderfuller than even my remembers. She met me
on the first oriental rug and hugged me in her arms and kissed my
cheeks and I was Heavenly happy.
But Odear! my orgins of speech wouldn’t act hardly at all. A teacher
says we are full of orgins--not the music kind which would be nicer
only I guess we wouldn’t stay in tune and then how bad we would
sound up to God. Mother sat down and me too just like any other
time to sit in a chair. O it was so funny and gloryous to have her
close like that, it got me awful dazzled up and all I could talk was
“Yes, Mother,” “No, Mother” like some silly doll when you pull its
string. Why didn’t you come down stairs Muse, and hawnt some poetry
into me--even that would have been better than “Yes, Mother,” “No,
Mother” every minute.
My orgin of thought worked right along but of course Mother couldn’t
hear it. When she asked was I in a hurry for my surprise I said
outside “No, Mother,” but my think spoke “Before you came, Dearest,
my soul was boiling over with hurry like a teakettle but by your side
I got no hurry in the big world.”
Mother asked didn’t I wish I had a father and I answered “No, Mother”
but my think exclaimed: “For the stupid I am, Mother Dear must
take up any question she can, like some tackfull lady talking to a
nidiot.” I felt so mortified I was almost some glad when she kissed
me goodbye on the red rug in the hall. O all the night I dreamed and
dreamed that first visit and the words we were going to speak, Mother
to me and me to Mother! O dear! O dear! O dear!
Come hawnt me, O Muse, if you want to, for Mother Sweet was just
sitting in that chair by the table right in this room, mine and
Dolly’s. It is evening but it seemed as if the sun shone in all the
windows at once!
Mother said “Here I am again, now don’t be so diffydent and sollum.”
My thinks hollered that I wouldn’t but “No, Mother,” was all I could
speak and there I was the same chumpy nidiot of the afternoon.
Mother laughed. O Musie, her laugh rezembles Men--somebody’s “Spring
Song” which Dolly ever plays on the piano for company, only Mother
tinklies softer and more sweet.
Then she wanted to see my “Girl’s School Memory Book” and I sat close
on my stool of putting on shoes to explain all with gladness, since
its writings and pasteings were done for her precious eyes. I got
my tongue back from the cat and talked and talked and talked--now, O
Muse, what do you think of that?
When the book was finished, Mother meddytated to herself. By and by
I put a little kiss to her hand and it fell on her rings, a diamond
solitary and another unfancy, “Daughter,” she said, “I love those
rings better than my fingers.” She meddytated some more while little
watch on top of my heart ticked “Mother’s here! Mother’s here!”
Pretty soon she sortof waked herself up and said, “Giovanna, when you
have a Mother and no father, you are still half of an orphan.”
I told her, “I don’t feel the least bit halffy, Mother, but so
wrapped all round by your love there isn’t any chilly side to my
soul!”
She spoke how splendid for me to own a father like Dolly and the
other girls.
I answered: “No thank you, please, because a father would divide our
loves and so bring fractions into our family, now a Heavenly unit of
you and me.”
I remembered her asking me in the reception room about wanting a
father and now I understood it was not just for tackfull but for
really truly. All my time as her daughter it has been her angelical
wish for me nevermore to see other girls with any pretty and me not.
I asked her, “If he is my father, mustn’t that make him your weddy
husband?”
“Yes,” answered Mother, and blushed as any really lady must all times
do when talk is about their husbands and they have none.
Then we meddytated some more and I thought how every man in the big
world who sees Mother must wish he could have her for his weddy wife
to sit forever by his side.
O Muse, I was afraid not to be respeckfull if I talked more to Mother
on that blushy subject, but she asked me for my thinks so I spoke
them out.
“Mother, he mightn’t suit you the leastest bit and perhaps you don’t
care for husbands anyways so please don’t trouble yourself since you
are to me plenty of parents.”
The Principal says there isn’t any joy like selfsacryfice and that
is the true, for Mother’s face was just angel shiney with happiness
to think of providing me to a father which she got to stand his long
life as an old weddy husband always round in her way.
She just tinklied some more laugh and told me I could come tomorrow
to her room at the hotel and receive my grand surprise. Then she went
away. Goodnight, O Dolly’s Muse.
* * * * *
_Precious, Funny, Darling Mother_,
It seems like the night of day after tomorrow but it isn’t it’s the
same evening tied right on to the same day of the afternoon I went
to receive my surprise. O I must write all down here quick, quick or
I will believe it to be just some perhaps I made up with myself and
it isn’t--it’s the true--the great big wonderful gloryous true! This
time I got to write it like a letter to you, Mother, as I so long
have the habit and not to any Muse of slim air. Anyway Musie is busy
this evening wispering a class song into Dolly.
In your room waited a big tall high bundle like no other in the whole
world tied round and round with white paper and white ribbon.
I cried out was it a statyou to stand in my room and you said a
little like that.
I asked was it a Pollo, god of handsome looks? You said better than a
Pollo, and the bundle shook as if wind was blowing it. I pulled some
paper off and there was cloth like a coat and I said I was glad for
my statyou to not be cold and pitiful like the Pollo of the Museum
seemed when I put my hand on him. That bundle shook more like mice
running up and down inside the paper and I felt creepyfied but I
pulled again and there was the real hand of a man.
I shreeked it was a burglar and ran away to you and shook and shook
but you laughed and said “Goosey, would I bring you a burglar for a
present?”
“O! O! O!” I screamed, “It’s my new father!” But I couldn’t pull any
more paper off him for shakes, so he did himself and stood there, a
big, grand, fine, dandy, shiverlrous gentleman! I said “Thank you,
Mother for this nice father which is handsomer than Dolly’s or a
Pollo but don’t make trouble to yourself just on account of me--does
he suit you for a weddy husband?”
How you both laughed and ran together and hugged and laughed like
anything and explained you were already married and having your
honeymoons!
[Illustration: “I pulled again and there was the real hand
of a man” Page 156]
O and then my happiness got an awful bumpy ripple when I had quick
remembers of Dolly explaining how honeymooners are romantic solitarys
with their worst hate on children old enough to be obzervant.