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.

I must hold my horny hand at my back for politeness

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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

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.