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!

I pulled again and there was the real hand of a man

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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.

I ran and looked out of the window and twinkled my eyes hard not to cry. I stared at a girl walking with a blue parrysol and I had awful jealous feelings to be just an old rag doll adoption out of an asylum and now not wanted by you any more. I had those feelings while that girl passed by seven lamp posts and then I saw what a mean, selfish, horrid, piggy thing I was, not to like you to be a romantic and have such happy looks on you as I never saw there before!

Then you and Daddy hugged me on both sides and asked what was my sadness and I was ashamed but must tell with all those coaxes and you both said this wasn’t any Dolly deffynition kind of honeymoon but you two wanted it all trimmed up with children. For that we are going next week to a cottage by the same lake where the orphans stay in a big camp with the money out of the kind old gentleman’s hat at Christmas. And Daddy says in its turn of ten at once every orphan gets a ride in his gassylean launch on the lake.

I can’t hardly believe yet that Isabella is to come for her vacation from the school where she was put by the will of her deadngone Bennyfactor and that Dolly is to visit for a month and my Italian cousins out of their tenement. Joy! joy! joy! joy!

O! O! O! and Daddy Dear took a dockument out of his pocket about you and him adopting me leegully for all my life! That dockument is my dipploma to be graduated out of the orphan school; only I made no down-head, up-chest bow but plenty of hugs to you and Daddy Dear instead.

O and he don’t bring fractions in our family and divide our loves as I was afraid! It was before he came we were fractionary but now complete. And my love for him is not cut off my love for you but is new by itself.

This is my last blank page, but I don’t need any more because now I’m all finished up like a once-on-a-time story in my green fairy book to “live happy ever after” with my adored parents. Amen! Amen! Amen!

Giovanna.

THE END.