I Was an Easter Bunny

by PHOEBE LOW

PHOEBE LOW in a young Nebraskan who worked for a year in a London bookshop after her graduation from the University of Omaha. She is note in the book publishing field in New York.

MY EYES are finally uncrossing, my head straightening up, and if there is anything I shall remember from spring to spring, it is the separate world inside the long-eared papier-mâché head of a department store Easier Bunny.

Padding away from the artificial garden in my white felt rabbit’s feet for the last time, I took off my head with a sigh, climbed out of my pastel suit, collected my pay check, and flung open the doors to breathe the air above the five o’clock rush hour.

I thought of my new freedom. No more blinder-vision, no more muffled speech, no more struggles to keep my unwieldy head from crashing down upon my shoulder. Yes, freedom— I was only a passer-by in the crowd now, Just like everyone else.

I was no longer the Easter Bunny. Every other rush hour for the past month had been a joke to me, for in being just an ordinary passer-by I was living a lie, nourishing a delicious secret. I was the Easter Bunny, and nobody knew it. Tomorrow, I had told myself, I should take my place in the paradisiacal garden again, and this was simply time out.

But now? Now there would be no tomorrow, for it was the eve before Easter when all floor store bunnies die. Tomorrow my picture would not be in the paper, in the store windows; tomorrow no one would come to see me — from houses in the city, from small towns near by, from the country. Already I was nothing but a passer-by again.

And yet, I thought, how very nouveau of me to let all this attention go to my head. (And that is certainly where everyone’s attention had gone.) After all, my bunny beginnings were humble enough, simply ail answer to the need of money in a groveling period of unemployment.

But once I got the job, all hands in the store turned to the new promotion campaign. Fitting after fitting took place on my pink and blue bunny suit. “Is it comfortable?” “Would you rather have it this way?” “Are the paws too hot:” “Will your feet be warm enough?” And when the delightful creation was completed, “Don’t you think yoI’ll need a change of costume: How about lavender and yellow?” I was their first Easter Bunny to punch the time clock; I was the darling of the store.

Meanwhile, the men had rigged up ihe garden in the toy department. A sign calling “Bunnyland!” pointed to a little fence encircling bright green grass, a cobblesione path, and my throne of fake leaves, behind which gurgled a fountain all day long. The advertising was going full swing, and all was set.

But two days before the publicized “arrival” of the Easter Bunny, promotion department faces grew taut, employees began shouting at each other, and there was general tension in the air. I learned the reason — my long-eared head had not reached the store yet! Word traveled fast, and each face mirrored the increasing anxiety. Every day for a week one bigwig had greeted the other in the morning with a low “ Has the bunny’s head arrived yet ? until, with two days to go, only a desperate “Well?” was necessary. Indeed, not only the promotion department but the whole store was in an uproar over the mishap, and there was nothing but bunny-talk, until one long-employed woman, harassed to tears, zoomed away in an elevator with an irate “Bunny, bunny, bunny, I’m sick of this bunny business!”

And then, on the last day, it came, my large white head. All rejoiced, and I ran to put it on — and crumpled to the door. Someone picked me up — 1 don’t know who, because I couldn’t see. I remarked that it was just a little heavy, but no one heard me through the thick papier-mâché. At least no one answered, but then I couldn’t hear anyway. I finally got through to them the suggestion that they cut eyes in the head somewhere near my own eyes. This they did, and vision was mine with a slight tilt of the head — provided J kept it. slight, because if I didn’t, the weight of the tall ears might pull me over completely; in fact, I could count on it.

At nine o’clock the next morning I sat upright in my leafy garden, head quite on, the official Easter Bunny. I waited. Then suddenly panic struck me. What was I to say to the children as I lifted them to my knee? What does an Easter Bunny say? A department store Santa Claus knows very well what’s expected of him — he’s going to deliver the goods one day soon, and he’s there in the store to find out what kind. But an Easter Bunny? Eggs are eggs, and that’s all there is to it. I finally settled on color queries and figured that was the best I could do.

I needn’t have worried. By the time any child mustered up enough courage to walk up the path to me, I was so glad to have the ordeal over and he was so proud of himself that conversation usually flowed. I am not a large person, but, compared with a rabbit, I rather loom. And I fear most of the children expected to see something resembling the furry variety often visiting their yards, mouth-level to the petunias. But it became a thing with the parents for their child to go on up and see that Easter Bunny. So with their prodding and my long-distance wheedling from the throne, which ranged from dancing a jig to crying with my paws, I could boast of one hundred and seven knee conferences by the end of the first day.

The second day an enormous, whirring fan was brought to Bunnyland at my request. Heaven knows I was monstrous enough with skyscrapers for ears and a voice like Alexander Craham Bell’s over the first wires, but at least let me eliminate the wheezeful gasp.

With the luxury of breathing I got out of hand and demanded larger and larger eyes. And each time, like an elf in the night, an obliging employee stole up from the basement to do my bidding. During the morning rest period, which I always used to crawl to the lounge and remove my head, I sat dazed on the couch, looking at my nose, until his reckless knife had done. Staring baldly now from under a penciled human eyebrow, I slid into my chair with just a little less confidence, quick to hush the first cry of “Look! There’s a lady inside!”

But most of the children were shy, wide-eyed, and thoroughly believing, if not pleased with my gargantuan proportions. And though enamored of many of them, on the very last day I sought to rebel most gloriously against all the bunny abuses of the month — fingers in my eyes, candy on my suit, and, most of all, the strain of speaking gently while having to scream through my head to be heard. So, abandoning my saccharine voice, I growled, loudly and fiercely, into the face of the most doll-like little girl in the garden. Her eyes brightened. A smile began, a slow smile of wonder. And she looked up at me in surprise, delight, and satisfaction. She was utterly charmed! No one, from nine o’clock in the morning to five o’clock at night for thirty days, with all my honeyed words, had responded half so wholeheartedly!