The Magic Cape

________________________________________________
Title:     The Magic Cape
Author: Myra Kelly [More Titles by Kelly]

The heart of the janitor of an East Side school is not commonly supposed to be a tender organ. And yet to Miss Bailey, busy with roll-books and the average attendance of First Readers, there entered the janitor with an air half apologetic, half defiant. There was snow upon the janitor's cap and little icicles upon his red mustache, for a premature blizzard had closed down upon New York during the last days of November.

"Well, Mr. McGrath, what can I do for you?" asked Miss Bailey pleasantly, for McGrath was the true despot of the school, controlling light and air and heat and cold, and his good-will was a thing worth having.

"I just stepped in," answered this kindly god of the machine, "to pass the remark that there's one of your children, a girl what oughtn't to be left down in the yard with the others, waiting for the bell to ring and let them up. She ain't dressed for it."

"So few of them are," said Miss Bailey sadly. "I wish you could send them all straight up here instead of lining them up in the cold. Some of them are so determined to be in time that they have to wait down there for ten or fifteen minutes."

"I know they do," the janitor acquiesced. "But I can't let them all up. But this little girl I'm telling you about--you know her--she wears a blue gingham dress, and"--he dropped his voice to confidential pitch--"and mighty little else as I can see."

"Yes, yes," said Miss Bailey, "that is Becky Zabrowsky."

"Well, I could pass her right straight up to you here where it's warm. I'm a married man myself, and I've got kids of my own, so I guess you'll excuse me butting in on this."

"But I shall be very grateful to you," cried Teacher. "It breaks my heart to see her. And she comes dressed just as you say, whatever the weather may be."

After a few professional questions as to heating and sweeping, after taking the temperature of the radiators with a thermometric hand, and examining their valves, the janitor withdrew, and when Miss Bailey reached Room 18 on the next morning, Becky Zabrowsky, as blue of lips and fingers as of vesture, was waiting for her. And indeed her costume gave cause for pity, even as her smile and her bravery gave cause for tears. Besides the gingham dress referred to by the janitor, she wore a pair of black and pink stockings, of mature growth and many holes, flapping adult shoes with all the buttons gone, and a hair ribbon which had begun life as a bandage. That was all. But she was clean. And her self-respect made her seven years as high a barrier against patronage as though they had been seventy. She was as proudly and as sensitively on her guard as though she were an old marquise fallen upon evil days, and obliged to give lessons in French or die, and who was restrained from the bitter and pleasanter alternative only by religion.

Miss Bailey was accustomed to more normal children. As a rule her little First Readers took all that was offered to them, and a good deal that was not. Their consumption of Kindergarten materials--colored paper, colored sticks, chalks, pencils, books--anything which could be cached upon the human body--was colossal, and only an eagle eye and a large corps of subsidized monitors kept the balance true between the number of "young learners" and the number of readers. But this particular little Becky had none of these taking ways. Had she been like other Beckies and Rachels, Miss Bailey would have bought her a little shawl and a few suits of underwear. With this particular Becky such a liberty was out of the question. Teacher had encountered the Zabrowsky spirit once, and had been defeated by it.

That had been upon the question of lunch. Teacher had noticed that Becky frequently remained at school during the luncheon hour, but that she never ate anything. Other little girls sometimes urged refreshment upon her in vain. Miss Bailey, wise by this time in the laws of kosher and of traff, the clean and the unclean, according to Mosaic dietary laws, suggested a glass of milk at a neighboring dairy, or a roll from the delicatessen shop across the street. Any one of her charges would starve cheerfully to death or at the hospital ward before they would touch any of her food. She was a Christian, and though they loved her, learned from her, and honored her, they, like Shylock of old, would not eat with her. And Becky Zabrowsky, adding pride unto faith, and manners unto both, would smile her heart-breaking smile, shake her bandage-bowed head, and go on starving.

"Teacher, I tells you s'cuse, I don't needs I shall eat," was her always courteous answer. And not all Miss Bailey's tact or wiles could prevail against it.

It was at about this time that Miss Bailey in her unofficial capacity accepted an invitation to a costume dance. Looking through old trunks and long-neglected shelves, she came upon a little tight-fitting shoulder cape of prehistoric date and fashion. It was such a cape as you can find in some of Du Maurier's drawings. It pinned the wearer's arms to her side, it gagged her tightly around the throat, it was of velvet, and its color was royal blue.

Constance Bailey, peering back into the dim vista of the years, could remember the pride and happiness which she had felt when her over-indulgent grandmother had given her, then a child of about twelve, this gorgeous garment. She could remember how it had dwarfed and faded the rest of her wardrobe, how she had wept to wear it upon all possible and impossible occasions, and how tragic had been the moment when it refused to meet across her loving breast.

Here, she thought triumphantly, was something before which the Zabrowsky spirit would break down. It did not in any way suggest the useful, serviceable, humiliating, charitable devotion. It was gay and festive, palpably a gift, and Teacher, with many misgivings but some hope, submitted it to Becky's consideration. She represented that she had herself outgrown it, that she had no costume with which it could appropriately be worn, that it was menaced by moths, a prey to creases, and a responsibility under which she could no longer find peace or security. Under the circumstances, she pleaded, would Becky relieve her of it? And Becky was delighted, translated, enchanted. She would never allow that cape to hang with the ordinary outdoor apparel of the other members of the class. It rested in her desk when she was busy, and she lulled it in her arms when she was not. Before coming into this shining fortune she had been rather looked down upon by other members of the class, and had avoided publicity in every possible way. She had with chattering teeth and livid lips assured her more warmly clad classmates that she was "all times too hot on the skin," and that her mamma considered her Sunday coat too stylish to wear at school. But, girded in blue velvet, she was another child. Once the most retiring of the class, she now became the least so. Once the most studious, she now yearned to be sent on outpost duty, on small shopping expeditions for her teacher, to the Principal's office, or to other class rooms with notes or with new students. And upon all these expeditions she wore an air of conscious correctness and the royal-blue velvet cape. She had once been the most truthful of small persons, but the glory of the cape tinged everything, and she allowed the other children to infer--nay, she even definitely stated--that this was the Sunday coat earlier referred to, and that she was wearing it to school because it had been superseded by another even more wonderful. Her auditors were too impressed to be unconvinced, and, to cover her very literal nakedness in every other respect, she invented for herself an entirely new disease.

"Say, Becky," one of the little girls in her class asked her, "don't you never put yourself on mit underwear nor underclothes? Ain't you scared you should to get cold in your bones? My mamma, she puts me on mit all from wool underwear--costs twenty-seven cents a suit by Grand Street--and I puts them on when the school opens, and I don't takes them off to the fourth of July."

"Oh," retorted Becky, with more truth than she knew, "it ain't so awful healthy you should make like that. My mamma says it is healthy for me the wind shall come on my skin. She says sooner no wind comes outside of your skin, no blood could go inside of your skin. And don't you know how teacher says what somebody what ain't got blood going in them is dead ones?"

"Und you likes," marvelled her friend, "you likes the wind shall blow on you?"

"Sure," lied Becky, with a shiver, and she certainly had her wish.

But these appearances were only kept up for the eyes of the common herd. In the sanctuary of Teacher's confidence she was more unreserved, and whenever she could secure that young lady's kind ear, she bombarded it with gratitude and with reports of the impression made in the neighborhood of her one-roomed home by the shining splendor of that precious gift.

"Sooner I comes on mine house," she reported, "sooner all the ladies opens the doors and rubbers on mine cape. Sooner I walks by my block all the children wants I shall let them wear it. Only I won't let nobody wear it the while it is a present off of you."

"That's very nice of you," smiled Miss Bailey, not surprised at this new delicacy of feeling in so small and unfortunate and sorely tried a heart. "Very nice of you indeed."

"Sure I won't let anybody wear it," reiterated Becky, "not 'out they pays me a penny for walkin' up and down the block, and two cents for walkin' all round the block mit mine stylish from-plush cape."

"Of course not," Teacher agreed, hastily adjusting herself to this standard of right dealing.

"No, ma'am," said Becky. "I should never leave nobody have nothings what you gives me 'out they pays me good. The lady of our floor, she goes on a dancing-ball over yesterday, and she wants I shall leave her put her on mit mine cape--she's a awful little lady--only she don't wants she shall pay me. Und so I ain't let her take it, the while you gives it to me, and I am loving much mit you."

A teacher who gains the confidence of her small charges, even to a slight degree, is sure to be made familiar with their family history unto the third or fourth generation. And so Teacher knew that the poverty of Becky's home life was embittered and made even harder to bear by the contrasting elegance of an aunt, who lived, amid rank and fashion, in the "tony" purlieus of Cherry Street. Her abode consisted, according to her smarting small relative, of "a room and a closet," a lavish and extravagant area for a household as small as hers.

"Why," Becky informed Miss Bailey, with upturned palms, upscrewed shoulders, and upturned eyes, "my aunt, she ain't got only five children and three boarders!"

It had been the habit of this rich and fashionable dame to pay visits of state and ceremony to her less fortunate sister-in-law, whose abode differed from hers only by the subtraction of the room. There, in the chaste consciousness of an incredible wig and an impenetrable shawl, she would monopolize many hundreds of cubic feet of space and air; indulge in conversations of the elegant and fashionable kind, which, so Becky reported to her teacher, "makes the tears in my mamma's eyes, and gives my papa shamed feelings," and caused an epidemic of ill-temper, with resulting slaps and kicks and yelling among her nephews and nieces.

"And what you think?" Becky had sadly added; "she says like that all times on my mamma, out of Jewish, she says: 'Why don't you never come over for see me?' Und my mamma, she says all times, mit more tears in the eyes--bend down your head, Teacher. I likes I shall whisper mit you in your ear--she couldn't come the whiles she ain't got nothing she could wear on the block. My papa has fierce feelings over it. He says like that, his sister--that's my aunt--is awful nosy."

Teacher often pondered as to whether it were possible, or even desirable, to provide the means to more frequent intercourse between the two families. She knew that this would mean shopping; that any article of her own apparel, or that of any of her friends, would be inadequate to enshroud the matronly form of Becky's mother, for years of confinement to the house, years of sedentary occupation, and years of ill-considered and ill-adapted diet had co-operated to produce almost geographical outlines in Mrs. Zabrowsky. Mountains, valleys, promontories, and plains seemed the terms most suitable to describe her, and she looked about as movable as these natural formations. Teacher thought of waiting until Christmas time, and of then doing something anonymously. Meanwhile the episode of the cape occurred, and some weeks later Becky reported with triumph:

"Teacher, what you think?" this was always her opening phrase; "my stylish aunt by Cherry Street, she goes and has a party, und my papa he goes on the party, und my mamma, she goes by my papa's side."

"Then she bought a shawl," cried Teacher. "I am ever and ever so glad."

Becky shook her head.

"No, ma'am, she don't needs she shall buy no shawl. She puts her on mit mine blue from-plush cape."

A vision of Becky's mother rose before Teacher's eyes, flanked by another of the tiny cape, and she laughed.

"But that is impossible, my dear. She couldn't."

"Teacher, she does."

"But, Becky," cried Teacher, "how could she? You know that the cape is too small for me, and it is only the right size for you, and you know your mamma is twice as big as both of us. So how could she wear it, dear? It never could have hooked up the front."

"No, ma'am, it didn't hook," Becky admitted. "My mamma's back needs the most of it, und in front it don't fits very good, only that makes mit my mamma nothings. She goes on my nosy auntie's party mit proud feelings, the while she knows how her back is stylish. Und in the front where the cape don't goes, my mamma, she wears my little sister."

"What!" gasped my friend. "What did you say she wore in the front?"

"She wears the baby," Becky repeated. "Und my nosy auntie's awful fresh. She says like that on my mamma: 'Don't you likes you shall lay the baby down by the bed?' She says like that, the while she knows my mamma ain't got capes only in back, und she wants my mamma shall have shamed feelings before all the peoples what is on the party. Und my mamma, she says like that, just as smart, she says: 'No, I guess I don't likes I shall lay my baby on no strange beds. It ain't healthy, maybe.' And she holds the baby, and nobody knows how the front from that cape is, und my mamma enjoyed a pleasant time, and my papa had a proud."

[The end]
Myra Kelly's short story: Magic Cape

________________________________________________



GO TO TOP OF SCREEN