by Betty Smith
Francie ordered a nice bone with some meat on it for Sunday soup for five cents. Hassler made her wait while he told the stale joke: how a man had bought two cents' worth of dog meat and how Hassler had asked, should he wrap it up or do you want to eat it here? Francie smiled shyly. The pleased butcher went into the icebox and returned holding up a gleaming white bone with creamy marrow in it and shreds of red meat clinging to the ends. He made Francie admire it.
"After your mama cooks this," he said, "tell her to take the marrow out, spread it on a piece of bread with pepper, salt, and make a nice samwish for you."
"I'll tell Mama."
"You eat it and get some meat on your bones, ha, ha."
After the bone was wrapped and paid for, he sliced off a thick piece of liverwurst and gave it to her. Francie was sorry that she deceived that kind man by buying the other meat elsewhere. Too bad Mama didn't trust him about chopped meat.
It was still early in the evening and the street lights had not yet come on. But already, the horseradish lady was sitting in front of Hassler's grinding away at her pungent roots. Francie held out the cup that she had brought from home. The old mother filled it halfway up for two cents. Happy that the meat business was over, Francie bought two cents' worth of soup greens from the green grocer's. She got an emasculated carrot, a droopy leaf of celery, a soft tomato and a fresh sprig of parsley. These would be boiled with the bone to make a rich soup with shreds of meat floating in it. Fat, homemade noodles would be added. This, with the seasoned marrow spread on bread, would make a good Sunday dinner.
After a supper of fried fricadellen, potatoes, smashed pie, and coffee, Neeley went down on the street to play with his friends. Although there was no signal nor agreement, the boys always gathered on the corner after supper where they stood the whole evening, hands in pockets, shoulders hunched forward, arguing, laughing, pushing each other around and jigging in time to whistled tunes.
Maudie Donavan came around to go to confession with Francie. Maudie was an orphan who lived with two maiden aunts who worked at home. They made ladies' shrouds for a living at so much per dozen for a casket company. They made satin tufted shrouds: white ones for dead virgins, pale lavender for the young married, purple for the middle-aged and black for the old. Maudie brought some pieces. She thought Francie might like to make something out of them. Francie pretended to be glad but shuddered as she put the gleaming scraps away.
The church was smoky with incense and guttering candles. The nuns had put fresh flowers on the altars. The Blessed Mother's altar had the nicest flowers. She was more popular with the sisters than either Jesus or Joseph. People were lined up outside the confessionals. The girls and fellows wanted to get it over with before they went out on their dates. The line was longest at Father O'Flynn's cubicle. He was young, kind, tolerant and easy on the penances.
When her turn came, Francie pushed aside the heavy curtain and knelt in the confessional. The old, old mystery took hold as the priest slid open the tiny door that separated him from the sinner and made the sign of the cross before the grilled window. He started whispering rapidly and monotonously in Latin with his eyes closed. She caught the mingled odors of incense, candle wax, flowers, and the good black cloth and shaving lotion of the priest.
"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned...."
Quickly were her sins confessed and quickly absolved. She came out with her head bowed over her clasped hands. She genuflected before the altar, then knelt at the rail. She said her penance using her mother-of-pearl rosary to keep count of the prayers. Maudie, who lived a less complicated life, had had fewer sins to confess and had gotten out sooner. She was sitting outside on the steps waiting when Francie came out.
They walked up and down the block, arms about each other's waists, the way girl friends did in Brooklyn. Maudie had a penny. She bought an ice cream sandwich and treated Francie to a bite. Soon Maudie had to go in. She wasn't allowed out on the street after eight at night. The girls parted after mutual promises were asked and given to go to confession together the following Saturday.
"Don't forget," called Maudie, walking backwards away from Francie, "I called for you this time and it's your turn to call for me next time."
"I won't forget," promised Francie.
There was company in the front room when Francie got home. Aunt Evy was there with her husband, Willie Flittman. Francie liked Aunt Evy. She looked a lot like Mama. She was full of fun and said things to make you laugh like people did in a show and she could mimic anybody in the world.
Uncle Flittman had brought his guitar along. He was playing it and all were singing. Flittman was a thin dark man with smooth black hair and a silky mustache. He played the guitar pretty well considering that the middle finger of his right hand wasn't there. When he came to where he was supposed to use that finger, he'd give the guitar a thumping whack to do for the time when the note should be played. This gave a queer rhythm to his songs. He had nearly reached the end of his repertoire when Francie came in. She was just in time to hear his last selection.
After the music, he went out and got a pitcher of beer. Aunt Evy treated them to a loaf of pumpernickel bread and a dime's worth of Limburger cheese and they had sandwiches and beer. Uncle Flittman got confidential after the beer.
"Look on me, Kate," he said to Mama, "and you look on a man that's a failure." Aunt Evy rolled her eyes up and sighed, pulling in her lower lip. "My children don't respect me," he said. "My wife has no use for me and Drummer, my milk wagon horse, is got it in for me. Do you know what he did to me just the other day?"
He leaned forward and Francie saw his eyes brighten with unshed tears.
"I was washing him in the stable and I was washing under his belly and he went and wet on me."
Katie and Evy looked at each other. Their eyes were dancing with hidden laughter. Katie looked suddenly at Francie. The laughter was still in her eyes but her mouth was stern. Francie looked down on the floor and frowned although she was laughing inside.
"That's what he did. And all the men in the stable laughed at me. Everyone laughs at me." He drank another glass of beer.
"Don't talk like that, Will," said his wife.
"Evy doesn't love me," he said to Mama.
"I love you, Will," Evy assured him in her soft tender voice that was a caress in itself.
"You loved me when you married me but you don't love me now, do you?" He waited. Evy said nothing. "You see, she don't love me anymore," he said to Mama.
"It's time we went home," said Evy.
Before they went to bed, Francie and Neeley had to read a page of the Bible and a page from Shakespeare. That was a rule. Mama used to read the two pages to them each night until they were old enough to read for themselves. To save time, Neeley read the Bible page and Francie read from Shakespeare. They had been at this reading for six years and were halfway through the Bible and up to Macbeth in Shakespeare's Complete Works. They raced through the reading and by eleven, all the Nolans, excepting Johnny, who was working, were in bed.
On Saturday nights Francie was allowed to sleep in the front room. She made a bed by pushing two chairs together in front of the window where she could watch the people on the street. Lying there, she was aware of the nighttime noises in the house. People came in and went to their flats. Some were tired and dragged their feet. Others ran up the stairs lightly. One stumbled, cursing the torn linoleum in the hall. A baby cried half-heartedly and a drunken man in one of the downstairs flats synopsized the wicked life he claimed his wife had led.
At two in the morning, Francie heard Papa singing softly as he came up the stairs.
...sweet Molly Malone.
She drove her wheel barrow,
Through streets wide and narrow,
Crying....
Mama had the door open on "crying." It was a game Papa had. If they got the door opened before he finished the verse, they won. If he was able to finish it out in the hall, he won.
Francie and Neeley got out of
bed and they all sat around the table and ate after Papa had put three dollars down on the table and given the children each a nickel which Mama made them put in the tin-can bank explaining they had already received money that day from the junk. Papa had brought home a paper bagful of food not used at the wedding because some of the guests hadn't come. The bride had divided the unconsumed food among the waiters. There was half of a cold broiled lobster, five stone-cold fried oysters, an inch jar of caviar and a wedge of Roque-fort cheese. The children didn't like the lobster and the cold oysters had no taste and the caviar seemed too salty. But they were so hungry that they ate everything on the table and digested it too, during the night. They could have digested nails had they been able to chew them.
After she had eaten, Francie at last faced the fact that she had broken the fast which started at midnight and was to have lasted until after mass next morning. Now she could not receive communion. Here was a real sin to confess to the priest next week.
Neeley went back to bed and resumed his sound sleep. Francie went into the dark front room and sat by the window. She didn't feel like sleeping. Mama and Papa sat in the kitchen. They would sit there and talk until daybreak. Papa was telling about the night's work; the people he had seen, what they had looked like and how they spoke. The Nolans just couldn't get enough of life. They lived their own lives up to the hilt but that wasn't enough. They had to fill in on the lives of all the people they made contact with.
So Johnny and Katie talked away the night and the rise and fall of their voices was a safe and soothing sound in the dark. Now it was three in the morning and the street was very quiet. Francie saw a girl who lived in a flat across the street come home from a dance with her feller. They stood pressed close together in her vestibule. They stood embracing without talking until the girl leaned back and unknowingly pressed the bells. Then her father came down in his long underdrawers and, with quiet but intense profanity, told the fellow what he could go and do to himself. The girl ran upstairs giggling hysterically while the boy friend walked away down the street whistling, "When I Get You Alone, Tonight."
Mr. Tomony who owned the pawnshop came home in a hansom cab from his spendthrift evening in New York. He had never set foot inside his pawnshop which he had inherited along with an efficient manager. No one knew why Mr. Tomony lived in the rooms above the shop--a man with his money. He lived the life of an aristocratic New Yorker in the squalor of Williamsburg. A plasterer who had been in his rooms reported them furnished with statues, oil paintings, and white fur rugs. Mr. Tomony was a bachelor. No one saw him all week. No one saw him leave Saturday evenings. Only Francie and the cop on the beat saw him come home. Francie watched him, feeling like a spectator in a theater box.
His high silk hat was tipped over an ear. The street light picked up the gleam of his silver-knobbed cane as he tucked it under his arm. He swung back his white satin Inverness cape to get some money. The driver took the bill, touched the butt of his whip to the rim of his plug hat and shook the horse's reins. Mr. Tomony watched him drive away as though the cab were the last link in a life that he had found good. Then he went upstairs to his fabulous apartment.
He was supposed to frequent such legendary places as Reisenweber's and the Waldorf. Francie decided to see these places some day. Some day she would go across Williamsburg Bridge, which was only a few blocks away and find her way uptown in New York to where these fine places were and take a good look at the outside. Then she'd be able to place Mr. Tomony more accurately.
A fresh breeze blew in over Brooklyn from the sea. From far away on the north side where the Italians lived and kept chickens in their yards, came the crowing of a rooster. It was answered by the distant barking of a dog and an inquiring whinny from the horse, Bob, comfortably bedded in his stable.
Francie was glad for Saturday and hated to end it by going to sleep. Already the dread of the week to come made her uneasy. She fixed the memory of this Saturday in her mind. It was without fault except for the old man waiting for bread.
Other nights in the week she would have to lie on her cot and from the airshaft hear the indistinct voices of the childlike bride who lived in one of the other flats with her apelike truck-driver husband. The bride's voice would be soft and pleading, his, rough and demanding. Then there would be a short silence. Then he would start snoring and the wife would cry piteously until nearly morning.
Recalling the sobs, Francie trembled and instinctively her hands flew to cover her ears. Then she remembered it was Saturday; she was in the front room where she couldn't hear sounds from the airshaft. Yes, it was still Saturday and it was wonderful. Monday was a long time away. Peaceful Sunday would come in-between when she would think long thoughts about the nasturtiums in the brown bowl and the way the horse had looked being washed while standing in sunshine and shadow. She was growing drowsy. She listened a moment to Katie and Johnny talking in the kitchen. They were reminiscing.
"I was seventeen when I first met you," Katie was saying, "and I was working in the Castle Braid Factory."
"I was nineteen then," recalled Johnny, "and keeping company with your best friend, Hildy O'Dair."
"Oh, her," sniffed Katie.
The sweet-smelling warm wind moved gently in Francie's hair. She folded her arms on the window sill and laid her cheek on them. She could look up and see the stars high above the tenement roofs. After a while she went to sleep.
Book Two
7
IT WAS IN ANOTHER BROOKLYN SUMMER BUT TWELVE YEARS EARLIER, in nineteen hundred, that Johnny Nolan first met Katie Rommely. He was nineteen and she was seventeen. Katie worked in the Castle Braid Factory. So did Hildy O'Dair, her best friend. They got along well although Hildy was Irish and Katie came from parents who had been born in Austria. Katie was prettier but Hildy was bolder. Hildy had brassy blond hair, wore a garnet-colored chiffon bow around her neck, chewed sen-sen, knew all the latest songs and was a good dancer.
Hildy had a feller, a beau who took her dancing Saturday nights. His name was Johnny Nolan. Sometimes he waited for Hildy outside the factory. He always brought some of the boys along to wait with him. They stood loafing on the corner, telling jokes and laughing.
One day, Hildy asked Johnny to bring someone for Katie, her girl friend, the next time they went dancing. Johnny obliged. The four of them rode out to Canarsie on the trolley. The boys wore straw katies with a cord attached to the brim and the other end to their coat lapel. The stiff ocean breeze blew the hats off and there was much laughter when the boys pulled the skimmers back by the cords.
Johnny danced with his girl, Hildy. Katie refused to dance with the feller provided for her, a vacuous vulgar boy given to remarks like: "I thought you musta fallen in," when Katie returned from a trip to the ladies' room. However, she let him buy her a beer, and she sat at the table watching Johnny dancing with Hildy and thinking that in all the world, there was nobody like Johnny.
Johnny's feet were long and slender and his shoes were shiny. He danced with his toes pointed in and rocked from heel to toe with beautiful rhythm. It was hot, dancing. Johnny hung his coat over the back of his chair. His trousers settled well on his hips and his white shirt bloused over his belt. He wore a high stiff collar and a polka-dotted tie (which matched the band on his straw hat), baby-blue sleeve garters of satin ribbon shirred on to elastic, which Katie jealously suspected Hildy had made for him. So jealous was she that for the rest of her life she hated that color.
Katie couldn't stop looking at him. He was young, slender and shining with blond curly hair and deep blue eyes. His nose was straight and his shoulders broad and square. She heard the girls at the next table say that he was a nifty dresser. Their escorts said he was a nifty dancer, too. Although he did not belong to her, Katie was proud of him.
Johnny gave her a courtesy dance when the orchestra played "Sweet Rosie O'Grady." Feeling his arms around her and instinctively adjusting herself to his rhythm, Katie knew that he was the man she wanted. She'd ask nothing more
than to look at him and to listen to him for the rest of her life. Then and there, she decided that those privileges were worth slaving for all her life.
Maybe that decision was her great mistake. She should have waited until some man came along who felt that way about her. Then her children would not have gone hungry; she would not have had to scrub floors for their living and her memory of him would have remained a tender shining thing. But she wanted Johnny Nolan and no one else and she set out to get him.
Her campaign started the following Monday. When the whistle blew dismissal, she ran out of the factory, reached the corner before Hildy did and sang out,
"Hello, Johnny Nolan."
"Hello, Katie, dear," he answered.
After that, she'd manage to get a few words with him each day. Johnny found that he was waiting around on the corner for those few words.
One day Katie, falling back on a woman's always-respected excuse, told her forelady that it was her time of the month; she didn't feel so good. She got out fifteen minutes before closing time. Johnny was waiting on the corner with his friends. They were whistling "Annie Rooney" to pass the time away. Johnny cocked his skimmer over one eye, put his hands in his pockets and did a waltz clog there on the sidewalk. Passers-by stopped to admire. The cop, walking his beat, called out,
"You're losing time, Sport. You ought to be on the stage."
Johnny saw Katie coming along and stopped performing and grinned at her. She looked mighty fetching in a tight-fitting gray suit, trimmed with black braid from the factory. Intricately whorled and squirled, the braid trimming was designed to call attention to her modest bust already helped out by two rows of ruffles pinned to her corset cover. With the gray suit, she wore a cherry-colored tam pulled over one eye and vici-kid high buttoned shoes with spool heels. Her brown eyes sparkled and her cheeks glowed with excitement and shame as she thought how fresh she must look--running after a feller like that.