A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

by Betty Smith

  And as he talked, a remarkable thing happened. He felt his lost manhood stirring within him. It wasn't the physical fact of Katie in the room with him. Her body was swollen and distorted and he couldn't look at her without wincing inwardly. It wasn't the woman. It was the talking to her that was doing it.

  It grew dark in the room. McGarrity stopped talking. He was hoarse and tired. But it was a new peaceful kind of tiredness. He thought, reluctantly, that he had to get back. The saloon would be filling up with men on their way home from work, stopping in for a pre-supper drink. He didn't like Mae behind the bar when a crowd of men were there. He got to his feet slowly.

  "Mrs. Nolan," he said fumbling with his brown derby, "could I come up here once in a while to talk?" She shook her head slowly. "Just to talk?" he repeated pleadingly.

  "No, Mr. McGarrity," she said as gently as she could.

  He sighed and went away.

  Francie was glad to be so busy. It kept her from missing Papa too much. She and Neeley got up at six in the morning and helped Mama with the cleaning for two hours before they got ready for school. Mama couldn't work hard now. Francie polished the brass bell plates in the three vestibules and cleaned each banister spoke with an oiled cloth. Neeley swept out the cellars and swept down the carpeted stairs. Both of them got the filled ash cans up on the curb each day. It had been a problem because the two of them together couldn't so much as budge the heavy cans. Francie got the idea of tipping over the cans, dumping the ashes on the cellar floor, carrying the empty cans up to the curb and then refilling them with coal buckets. It worked fine, even if it meant a lot of trips up and down the cellar. That left only the linoleum-laid halls for Mama to scrub. Three of the tenants offered to scrub their own hallways until after Katie had had her baby and that helped a whole lot.

  After school, the children had to go to church for "instruction" since both were being confirmed that spring. After instruction, they worked for McGarrity. As he had promised, the work was easy. Francie made up four tumbled beds and washed a few breakfast dishes and swept the rooms. It took less than an hour.

  Neeley had the same schedule as Francie, except that his paper route was added on. Sometimes he didn't get home for supper until eight o'clock. He worked in the kitchen back of McGarrity's saloon. His job was to take the shells off four dozen hard-boiled eggs, cut hard cheese into inch cubes and stick a toothpick in each cube, and slice big pickles lengthwise.

  McGarrity waited a few days until the children got used to working for him. Then he decided it was time to have them talk to him the way Johnny had. He went into the kitchen, sat down, and watched Neeley working. "He's the spitting image of his father," thought McGarrity. He waited a long time letting the boy get used to him there, then he cleared his throat.

  "Make any wooden book ends lately?" he asked.

  "No...no, sir," stammered Neeley, startled at the odd question.

  McGarrity waited. Why didn't the boy start talking? Neeley shelled eggs faster. McGarrity tried again. "Think Wilson will keep us out of the war?"

  "I don't know," said Neeley.

  McGarrity waited a long time. Neeley thought he was checking up on the way he worked. Anxious to please, the boy worked so fast that he was finished ahead of time. He placed the last shelled egg in the glass bowl and looked up. "Ah! Now he's going to talk to me," thought McGarrity.

  "Is that all you want done?" asked Neeley.

  "That's all." Still McGarrity waited.

  "I guess I'll go, then," ventured Neeley.

  "All right, son," sighed McGarrity. He watched the boy walk out of the back door. "If he'd only turn around and say something...something...personal," thought McGarrity. But Neeley didn't turn around.

  McGarrity tried Francie the next day. He came upstairs to the flat, sat down and said nothing. Francie got a little frightened and started sweeping towards the door. "If he comes at me," she thought, "I can run out." McGarrity sat quiet for a long time, thinking he was getting her used to him. He didn't know he was frightening her.

  "Write any grade A, number one compositions lately?" he asked.

  "No, sir."

  He waited a while. "Do you think we'll get into this war?"

  "I...I don't know." She edged closer to the door.

  He thought, "I'm scaring her. She thinks I'm like that fellow in the hallway." Aloud he said, "Don't be afraid, I'm going. You can lock the door after me, if you want."

  "Yes, sir," she said. After he had gone, Francie thought: "I guess he only wanted to talk. But I have nothing to say to him."

  Mae McGarrity came up once. Francie was on her knees trying to poke out some dirt from behind the water pipes under the sink. Mae told her to get up and forget it.

  "Lord love you, child," she said. "Don't be killing yourself working. This flat will be standing here long after you and I are dead and gone."

  She took a mound of rosy Jell-O out of the icebox, cut it in half and slid a portion on another plate. She garnished it liberally with whipped cream, plunked two spoons on the table, sat down and indicated that Francie do the same.

  "I'm not hungry," lied Francie.

  "Eat anyhow, to be sociable," Mae said.

  It was the first time Francie had ever eaten Jell-O and whipped cream. It was so good, she had to remember her manners and not gobble it down. As she ate, she thought, "Why, Mrs. McGarrity's all right. Mr. McGarrity's all right, too. Only I guess they aren't all right to each other."

  Mae and Jim McGarrity sat alone at a little round table in back of the saloon eating their usual hurried and silent supper. Unexpectedly, she placed her hand on his arm. He trembled at the unexpected touch. His small light eyes looked into her large mahogany-colored ones and saw pity in them.

  "It won't work out, Jim," she said gently. Excitement churned up in him. "She knows!" he thought. "Why...why...she understands."

  "There's an old saying," Mae continued. "Money won't buy everything."

  "I know," he said. "I'll let them go, then."

  "Wait until a couple of weeks after her kid is born. Give them a show." She got up and walked out to the bar.

  McGarrity sat there, torn apart by his feelings. "We held a conversation," he thought in wonder. "No names were mentioned and nothing was said exactly in the words. But she knew what I was thinking and I knew what she was thinking." He hurried after his wife. He wanted to hold on to that understanding. He saw Mae standing at the end of the bar. A husky teamster had his arm around her waist and was whispering something in her ear. She had her hand over her mouth to hold back her laughter. As McGarrity came in, the teamster removed his arm sheepishly and moved down to stand with a group of men. As McGarrity went behind the bar, he looked into his wife's eyes. They were blank and had no understanding in them. McGarrity's face fell into the old lines of grievous disappointment as he started his evening's work.

  Mary Rommely was getting old. She was no longer able to go about Brooklyn alone. She had a longing to see Katie before her confinement, so she gave the insurance collector a message.

  "When a woman gives birth," she told him, "death holds her hand for a little while. Sometimes he doesn't let go. Tell my youngest daughter that I would see her once more before her time comes."

  The collector gave the message. The following Sunday, Katie went over to see her mother, taking Francie with her. Neeley begged off, saying he had promised to pitch for the Ten Eycks who were trying to get up a ball game in the lots.

  Sissy's kitchen was big and warm and sunny and spotlessly clean. Granma Mary Rommely was sitting by the stove in a low rocker. It was the only piece of furniture she had brought from Austria and it had stood by the hearth in her family's hut for more than a hundred years.

  Sissy's husband sat by the window, holding the baby while he gave it its bottle. After Mary and Sissy had been greeted, Francie and Katie greeted him.

  "Hello, John," said Katie.

  "Hello, Kate," he answered.

  "Hello, Uncle John."

 
"Hello, Francie."

  He never said another word during the entire visit. Francie stared at him, wondering about him. The family regarded him as temporary, as they had regarded Sissy's other husbands and lovers. Francie wondered whether he, himself, felt temporary. His real name was Steve but Sissy always referred to him as "my John" and when the family spoke of him, they called him "The John" or "Sissy's John." Francie wondered whether the men in the publishing house where he worked called him John, too. Did he ever protest? Did he ever say, "Look here, Sissy. My name is Steve and not John. And tell your sisters to call me Steve, too."

  "Sissy, you're getting stouter," mama was saying.

  "It's natural for a woman to put on a little weight after she's had a baby," said Sissy with a straight face. She smiled at Francie. "Would you like to hold the baby, Francie?"

  "Oh, yes!"

  Without a word, Sissy's tall husband got up, gave over the baby and its bottle to Francie, and still without a word, walked out of the room. No one commented on his going.

  Francie sat in his vacated chair. She had never held a baby in her arms before. She touched the baby's soft round cheek with her fingers as she had seen Joanna do. A thrill started at her fingertips, went up her arm, and through her entire body. "When I get big," she decided, "I'll always have a new baby in the house."

  While she held the baby, she listened to Mama and Granma talking and watched Sissy making up a month's supply of noodles. Sissy took a ball of stiff yellow dough, rolled it flat with the rolling pin, then rolled the flat dough up like a jelly roll. With a sharp knife, she cut the roll into paper-thin strips, unwound the strips and hung them on a rack made of slender dowel sticks, which stood before the kitchen stove. This was to dry out the noodles.

  Francie felt that there was something different about Sissy. She wasn't the old Aunt Sissy. It wasn't that she was a bit less slender than usual; the being different was something that did not have to do with the way she looked. Francie puzzled over it.

  Mary Rommely wanted to hear every word of news and Katie told her everything, starting from the end and working back. First she told of the children working for McGarrity's, and how the money they brought in was keeping them. Then she went back to the day McGarrity had sat in her kitchen and talked about Johnny. She ended up with saying:

  "I tell you, Mother, if McGarrity hadn't come along when he did, I don't know what would have happened. I was so low, that just a few nights before that, I had prayed to Johnny to help me. That was foolish. I know."

  "Not foolish," said Mary. "He heard you and he helped you."

  "A ghost can't help anyone, Mother," said Sissy.

  "Ghosts are not always those who pass through closed doors," said Mary Rommely. "Katie has told how her husband used to talk to this saloon man. In all those years of the talking, Yohnny gave away pieces of himself to this man. When Katie called on her man for help, the pieces of him came together in this man, and it was Yohnny within the saloon man's soul that heard and came to her help."

  Francie turned it over in her mind. "If that is so," she thought, "then Mr. McGarrity gave us back all those pieces of Papa when he talked so long about him. There is nothing of Papa in him now. Maybe that's why we can't talk to him the way he wants us to."

  When it was time to leave, Sissy gave Katie a shoebox full of noodles to take home. As Francie kissed her grandmother in good-bye, Mary Rommely held her close and whispered in her own language:

  "In the month to come, give unto thy mother more than obedience and respect. She will have great need of love and understanding."

  Francie didn't understand a word of what her grandmother had said, but she answered, "Yes, Granma."

  Going home in the trolley, Francie held the shoebox in her lap because Mama had no lap now. Francie thought deep thoughts during the ride. "If what Granma Mary Rommely said is true, then it must be that no one ever dies, really. Papa is gone, but he's still here in many ways. He's here in Neeley who looks just like him and in Mama who knew him so long. He's here in his mother who began him and who is still living. Maybe I will have a boy some day who looks like Papa and has all of Papa's good without the drinking. And that boy will have a boy. And that boy will have a boy. It might be there is no real death." Her thoughts went to McGarrity. "No one would ever believe there was any part of Papa in him." She thought of Mrs. McGarrity and how she had made it easy for her to sit down and eat that jello. Something clicked in Francie's mind! She knew all of a sudden what was different about Sissy. She spoke to her mother.

  "Aunt Sissy doesn't use that strong sweet perfume any more, does she, Mama?"

  "No. She doesn't have to, any more."

  "Why?"

  "She's got her baby now and a man to look after her and the baby."

  Francie wanted to ask more questions but Mama had her eyes closed and was leaning her head back against the seat. She looked white and tired and Francie decided not to bother her any more. She'd have to figure it out for herself.

  "It must be," she thought, "that this using strong perfume is tied up somehow with a woman wanting a baby and wanting to find a man who can give her a baby and look after it and her too." She put that nugget of knowledge away with all the others that she was continually collecting.

  Francie was beginning to get a headache. She didn't know whether it was caused by the excitement of holding the baby, the bouncing trolley car, the idea of Papa or the discovery about Sissy's perfume. Maybe it was because she was getting up so early in the mornings now, and being so busy all day. Maybe it was because it was the time in the month when she could look for a headache anyhow.

  "Well," Francie decided, "I guess the thing that is giving me this headache is life--and nothing else but."

  "Don't be silly," said Mama quietly, still leaning back with her eyes closed. "Aunt Sissy's kitchen was too hot. I have a headache, myself."

  Francie jumped. Was it getting so that Mama could look right into her mind even with her eyes closed? Then she remembered that she had forgotten she was thinking and had said that last thought about life out loud. She laughed for the first time since Papa had died and Mama opened her eyes and smiled.

  39

  FRANCIE AND NEELEY WERE CONFIRMED IN MAY. FRANCIE WAS ALMOST fourteen and a half years old and Neeley was just a year younger. Sissy, who was an expert seamstress, made Francie's simple white muslin dress. Katie managed to buy her white kid slippers and a pair of long white silk stockings. They were Francie's first silk stockings. Neeley wore the black suit he got for his father's funeral.

  There was a legend in the neighborhood that any three wishes made on that day, would come true. One had to be an impossible wish, another a wish that you could make come true yourself, and the third had to be a wish for when you grew up. Francie's impossible wish was that her straight brown hair change into golden curly hair like Neeley's. Her second wish was that she'd have a nice speaking voice like Mama and Evy and Sissy, and her third wish, for when she was grown up, was that she'd travel all over the world. Neeley wished: one, that he'd become very wealthy; two, that he'd get better marks on his report card; and, three, that he wouldn't drink like Papa when he grew up.

  There was an iron-bound convention in Brooklyn that children must have their picture taken by a regular photographer when they were confirmed. Katie couldn't afford to have pictures made. She had to be content with letting Flossie Gaddis, who had a box camera, take a snapshot. Floss posed them on the edge of the sidewalk and snapped the picture, unaware that a trolley lumbered by at the instant of exposure. She had the snapshot enlarged and framed and presented it to Francie as a Confirmation Day present.

  Sissy was there when the picture arrived. Katie held it and they all examined it over her shoulder. Francie had never been photographed before. For the first time, she saw herself as others saw her. She was standing stiff and straight on the edge of the curb, her back to the gutter and her dress blowing sidewise in the wind. Neeley stood close to her, was a head taller, and looked very w
ealthy and handsome in his freshly pressed black suit. The sun had slanted over the roofs in such a way that Neeley was in the sun and his face was clear and bright, while Francie looked dark and angry in the shadow. Behind both, was the blurred trolley going by.

  Sissy said, "I bet that's the only confirmation picture in the world with a trolley car in it."

  "It's a good picture," said Katie. "They look more natural standing on the street than in front of the picture-man's cardboard church window." She hung it up over the mantelpiece.

  "What name did you take, Neeley?" Sissy asked.

  "Papa's. Now I'm Cornelius John Nolan."

  "That's a good name for a surgeon," commented Katie.

  "I took Mama's name," said Francie importantly. "Now my full name is Mary Frances Katherine Nolan." Francie waited. Mama did not say that was a good name for a writer.

  "Katie, have you any pictures of Johnny?" Sissy asked.

  "No. Just the one of both of us taken on our wedding day. Why?"

  "Nothing. Only time passes so, doesn't it?"

  "Yes," sighed Katie. "That's one of the few things we can be sure of."

  Confirmation was over and Francie didn't have to go to instruction any more. She had an extra hour daily which she was devoting to the novel she was writing to prove to Miss Garnder, the new English teacher, that she did know about beauty.

  Since her father's death, Francie had stopped writing about birds and trees and My Impressions. Because she missed him so, she had taken to writing little stories about him. She tried to show that, in spite of his shortcomings, he had been a good father and a kindly man. She had written three such stories which were marked "C" instead of the usual "A." The fourth came back with a line telling her to remain after school.

  All the children had gone home. Miss Garnder and Francie were alone in the room with the big dictionary in it. Francie's last four compositions lay on Miss Garnder's desk.

  "What's happened to your writing, Frances?" asked Miss Garnder.

  "I don't know."