A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

by Betty Smith

  "Yes, he's a good boy," conceded Francie, "but even if he was bad, you wouldn't notice it. But where I'm concerned..." her voice went ragged on a sob.

  Katie sighed sharply but said nothing. She got up and started to clear the table. Her hand reached for a cup, and Francie, for the first time in her life, saw her mother's hand fumble. It trembled and couldn't connect with the cup. Francie put the cup in her mother's hand. She noticed a big crack in the cup.

  "Our family used to be like a strong cup," thought Francie. "It was whole and sound and held things well. When Papa died, the first crack came. And this fight tonight made another crack. Soon there will be so many cracks that the cup will break and we'll all be pieces instead of a whole thing together. I don't want this to happen, yet I'm deliberately making a deep crack." Her sharp sigh was just like Katie's.

  The mother went to the washbasket in which the baby was sleeping peacefully in spite of the bitter talking. Francie saw her mother's still fumbling hands take the sleeping child from the basket. Katie sat in her rocker near the window, held her baby tightly and rocked.

  Francie almost went blind with pity. "I shouldn't be so mean to her," she thought. "What has she ever had but hard work and trouble? Now she has to turn to her baby for comfort. Maybe she's thinking that Laurie whom she loves so and who is so dependent on her now, will grow up to turn against her like I'm doing now."

  She put her hand awkwardly on her mother's cheek. "It's all right, Mama. I didn't mean it. You're right and I'll do as you say. Neeley must go to school and you and I will see that he gets through."

  Katie put her hand over Francie's. "That's my good girl," she said.

  "Don't be mad at me, Mama, because I fought you. You, yourself, taught me to fight for what I thought was right and I...I thought I was right."

  "I know. And I'm pleased that you can and will fight for what you should have. And you'll always come out all right--no matter what. You're like me that way."

  "And that's where the whole trouble is," thought Francie. "We're too much alike to understand each other because we don't even understand our own selves. Papa and I were too different persons and we understood each other. Mama understands Neeley because he's different from her. I wish I was different in the way that Neeley is."

  "Then everything's all right now between us?" Katie asked with a smile.

  "Of course." Francie smiled back and kissed her mother's cheek.

  But in their secret hearts, each knew that it wasn't all right and would never be all right between them again.

  45

  CHRISTMAS AGAIN. BUT THIS YEAR THERE WAS MONEY FOR PRESENTS and lots of food in the icebox and the flat was always warm now. When Francie came in off the cold street she thought that the warmth was like a lover's arms around her drawing her into the room. She wondered, incidentally, exactly what a lover's arms felt like.

  Francie took comfort out of not returning to school in the realization that the money she earned made life easier for them. Mama had been very fair. When Francie was raised to twenty dollars a week, Mama gave her five dollars a week for herself to pay for her carfare, lunches, and clothes. Also, Katie deposited five dollars each week in Francie's name in the Williamsburg Savings Bank--for college, she explained. Katie managed well on the remaining ten dollars and a dollar that Neeley contributed. It wasn't a fortune, but things were cheap in 1916 and the Nolans got along fine.

  Neeley had taken to school cheerfully when he found that many of his old gang were entering Eastern District High. He had his old after-school job back at McGarrity's and Mama gave him one of the two dollars for pocket money. He was somebody in school. He had more spending money than most boys and he knew Julius Caesar backwards, forwards, and upside-down.

  When they opened the tin-can bank, there was nearly four dollars in it. Neeley added another dollar, and Francie, five, and they had ten dollars to spend for Christmas presents. The three of them went shopping the afternoon before Christmas, taking Laurie with them.

  First they went to buy Mama a new hat. In the hat store they stood behind Mama's chair while she held the baby in her lap and tried on hats. Francie wanted her to have a jade-green velvet one but there wasn't a hat of that color to be found in Williamsburg. Mama thought she ought to get a black hat.

  "We're buying the hat, not you," Francie told her, "and we say, no more mourning hats."

  "Try on this red one, Mama," suggested Neeley.

  "No. I'll try on that very dark green one in the window."

  "It's a new shade," said the woman proprietor, getting it out of the window. "We call it moss green." She set it straight on Katie's brow. With an impatient flick of her hand, Katie tilted the hat over one eye.

  "That's it!" declared Neeley.

  "Mama, you look beautiful," was Francie's verdict.

  "I like it," decided Mama. "How much?" she asked the woman. The woman drew a long breath and the Nolans girded themselves for bargaining.

  "It's like this..." began the woman.

  "How much?" repeated Katie inflexibly.

  "In New York, ten dollars would you pay for the same merchandise. But...."

  "If I wanted to pay ten dollars, I'd go to New York for a hat."

  "Is that a way to talk? Exact copy, same hat in Wanamaker's is seven-fifty." Pregnant pause. "I'm going to give you identical hat for five dollars."

  "I have exactly two dollars to spend on a hat."

  "Get out from my store!" shouted the woman dramatically.

  "All right." Katie gathered up the baby and got to her feet.

  "You must be so hasty?" The woman pushed her back into the chair. She thrust the hat into a paper bag. "I'm letting you take it home for four-fifty. Believe me, my own mother-in-law shouldn't have it for that price!"

  "I believe you," thought Katie, "especially if she's like my mother-in-law." Aloud she said: "The hat's nice but I can only afford two dollars. There are lots of other hat stores and I ought to get one for that--not as good as this one but good enough to keep the wind off my head."

  "I want you should listen." The woman made her voice deep and sincere. "They say that by the Jews, money is everything. By me is different. When I got a pretty hat and it goes with a pretty customer, something happens to me here." She put her hand on her heart. "I get so...profits is nothing. I give free." She pushed the bag into Katie's hand. "Take the hat for four dollars. That's what it cost me wholesale." She sighed. "Believe me, a business woman I shouldn't be. Better I should be a picture painter."

  And the bargaining went on. Katie knew when the price finally reached two-fifty the woman wouldn't go lower. She tested her by pretending she was leaving. But this time the woman made no attempt to stop her. Francie nodded to Neeley. He gave the woman two dollars and fifty cents.

  "You shouldn't tell nobody how cheap you got it," warned the woman.

  "We won't," promised Francie. "Put the hat in a box."

  "Ten cents extra is a box--what it costs me wholesale."

  "A bag's good enough," protested Katie.

  "This is your Christmas present," said Francie, "and it goes in a box."

  Neeley got out another dime. The hat was wrapped in tissue and put in a box. "I give it to you so cheap, you should come back next time you buy a hat. But don't expect such bargains next time." Katie laughed. As they left, the woman said, "Wear it in good health."

  "Thank you."

  As the door closed on them, the woman whispered bitterly, "Goyem!" and spat after them.

  On the street Neeley said, "No wonder Mama waits five years to buy a new hat if it's all that trouble."

  "Trouble?" said Francie. "Why, that's fun!"

  Next they went to Seigler's to buy a sweater suit for Laurie's Christmas. When Seigler saw Francie, he let loose a flood of abuse.

  "So! At last you come in mine store! Is something maybe, other dry-goods stores ain't got and you come by me? Maybe by other store is dicky penny cheaper but damaged stock, no?" He turned to Katie and explained: "So many
years comes this girl by me to buy dickies and paper collars for the papa. Now for a whole year already, she don't come."

  "Her father died a year ago," explained Katie.

  Mr. Seigler gave his forehead a mighty blow with the flat of his hand. "Oi! By me is so big the mouth, so my foot always goes in," he apologized.

  "That's all right," said Katie soothingly.

  "It's this way by me: Nobody tells me nothing and I don't know till now."

  "That's the way it always is," said Katie.

  "And now," he asked briskly, getting down to business, "what can I show you?"

  "A sweater suit for a seven months' old baby."

  "I got here exzactle size."

  He took a blue wool outfit from a box. But when they held it up to Laurie, the sweater reached only to her navel and the leggings went to just below her knees. They measured other sizes and found a two-year-old size that was just right. Mr. Seigler went into ecstasies.

  "I'm in dry-goods business twenty years--fifteen on Grand Stritt and five on Graham Am-yer and never ins leben do I see a seven months so big." And the Nolans glowed with pride.

  There was no bargaining because Seigler's was a one-price store. Neeley counted out three dollars. They put the suit on the baby then and there. She looked cute with the zitful cap pulled down over her ears. The bright blue color brought out the rosiness of her skin. You'd think she understood--the way she acted so pleased, flashing her two-toothed smile about indiscriminately.

  "Ach du Liebchen," crooned Seigler, hands clasped prayerfully, "she should wear it in good health." This time the wish was not nullified by his spitting after them.

  Mama went home with the baby and her new hat while Neeley and Francie continued their Christmas shopping. They bought small gifts for their Flittman cousins and something for Sissy's baby. Then it was time for their own gifts.

  "I'll tell you what I want and you can buy it for me," said Neeley.

  "All right. What?"

  "Spats."

  "Spats?" Francie's voice scaled up.

  "Pearl gray ones," he said firmly.

  "If that's what you want..." she began, dubiously.

  "Medium size."

  "How do you know the size?"

  "I went in and tried them on yesterday."

  He gave Francie a dollar and a half and she bought the spats. She had the man wrap them in a gift box. On the street, she presented the package to Neeley while they frowned solemnly at each other.

  "From me to you. Merry Christmas," said Francie.

  "Thank you," he replied formally. "And now, what do you want?"

  "A black lace dance set in the window of that store near Union Avenue."

  "Is that ladies' stuff?" asked Neeley uneasily.

  "Uh-huh. Twenty-four waist and 32 bust. Two dollars."

  "You buy it. I don't like to ask for anything like that."

  She bought the coveted dance set--panties and brassiere made of scraps of black lace held together by narrow black satin ribbon. Neeley disapproved and muttered an ungracious, "You're welcome," to her thanks.

  They passed the Christmas tree curb market. "Remember the time," said Neeley, "when we let the man chuck the biggest tree at us?"

  "Do I! Every time I get a headache, it's in the place where the tree hit me."

  "And the way Papa sang when he helped us get the tree up the stairs," recalled Neeley.

  Several times that day, the name or thought of Papa had come up. And each time, Francie had felt a flash of tenderness instead of the old stab of pain. "Am I forgetting him?" she thought. "In time to come, will it be hard to remember anything about him? I guess it's like Granma Mary Rommely says: 'With time, passes all.' The first year was hard because we could say last 'lection he voted. Last Thanksgiving he ate with us. But next year it will be two years ago that he...and as time passes it will be harder and harder to remember and keep track."

  "Look!" Neeley grabbed her arm and pointed to a two-foot fir tree in a wooden tub.

  "It's growing!" she cried out.

  "What did you think? They all have to grow in the beginning."

  "I know. Still and all you always see them cut off and get the idea that they grow chopped down. Let's buy it, Neeley."

  "It's awful little."

  "But it has roots."

  When they brought it home, Katie examined the tree and the line between her eyes deepened as she figured something out. "Yes," she said, "after Christmas we'll put it on the fire escape and see that it gets sun and water and, once a month, horse manure."

  "No, Mama," protested Francie. "You're not going to put that horse manure over on us."

  As small children, gathering horse manure had been one of their most dreaded chores. Granma Mary Rommely kept a row of scarlet geraniums on her window sill and they were strong and bright and clear-colored because once a month either Francie or Neeley had to go out on the streets with a cigar box and fill it with two neat rows of manure balls. On delivery, Granma made payment of two cents. Francie had been ashamed to gather horse manure. Once she had protested to Granma who had answered: "Ai, the blood runs thin in the third generation. Back in Austria, my good brothers loaded large wagons with the manure and they were strong and honorable men."

  "They'd have to be," Francie had thought, "to work with stuff like that."

  Katie was saying: "Now that we own a tree, we have to take care of it and make it grow. You can get manure in the dark of night if you're ashamed."

  "There's so few horses now--mostly automobiles. It's hard to get," argued Neeley.

  "Go on a cobblestoned street where autos don't go and if there isn't any manure, wait for a horse and follow him until there is."

  "Gee whiz," protested Neeley, "I'm sorry we ever bought the old tree."

  "What's the matter with us," said Francie. "These aren't olden times. We've got money now. All we have to do is give some old kid on the block a nickel and he'll collect it for us."

  "Yeah," agreed Neeley, relieved.

  "I should think," said Mama, "that you'd want to take care of your tree with your own hands."

  "The difference between rich and poor," said Francie, "is that the poor do everything with their own hands and the rich hire hands to do things. We're not poor any more. We can pay to have some things done for us."

  "I want to stay poor, then," said Katie, "because I like to use my hands."

  Neeley, as always, became bored when his mother and sister began one of their figuring-out conversations. To change the subject, he said, "I bet Laurie's as big as that tree." They fished the baby out of her basket and measured her against the tree.

  "Exzactle the same height," said Francie, imitating Mr. Seigler.

  "I wonder which will grow the fastest?" said Neeley.

  "Neeley, we've never had a puppy or a kitten. So let's make a pet out of the tree."

  "Aw, a tree can't be a pet."

  "Why can't it? It lives and breathes, doesn't it? We'll give it a name. Annie! The tree's Annie and the baby's Laurie and together, they're the song."

  "You know what?" asked Neeley.

  "No. What?"

  "You're crazy. That's what."

  "I know it and isn't it wonderful? Today I don't feel like Miss Nolan, supposed to be seventeen and head reader of The Model Press Clipping Bureau. It's like olden times when I had to let you carry the junk money. I feel just like a kid."

  "And you are," said Katie. "A kid just turned fifteen."

  "Yeah? You won't think so when you see what Neeley bought me for Christmas."

  "What you made me buy you," corrected Neeley.

  "Show Mama what you made me buy you for Christmas, smarty. Just go on and show her," urged Francie.

  When he showed Mama, her voice scaled up like Francie's when she said, "Spats?"

  "Just to keep my ankles warm," explained Neeley.

  Francie showed her dance set and Mama let loose her "Oh, my!" of astonishment.

  "Do you think that's what fast women
wear?" asked Francie hopefully.

  "If they do, I'm sure they all come down with pneumonia. Now let's see: What'll we have for supper?"

  "Aren't you going to object?" Francie was disappointed because Mama wasn't making a fuss.

  "No. All women go through a black-lace-drawers time. You came to it earlier than most and you'll get over it sooner. I think we'll heat up the soup and have that and soup meat and potatoes...."

  "Mama thinks she knows everything," thought Francie resentfully.

  *

  They attended mass together Christmas morning. Katie was having a prayer said for the repose of Johnny's soul.

  She looked very pretty in her new hat. The baby looked nice, too, in her new outfit. Neeley, wearing his new spats, manfully insisted on carrying the baby. As they passed Stagg Street, some boys hanging out in front of a candy store, hooted at Neeley. His face got red. Francie knew they were making fun of his spats and to save his feelings, she pretended they hooted because he was carrying a baby and she offered to take Laurie. He refused the offer. He knew as well as she did that they were making fun of his spats and he was filled with bitterness at the narrow-mindedness of Williamsburg. He decided to put the spats away in the box when he got home and not wear them again until they moved to a more decent neighborhood.

  Francie was wearing her lace pants and freezing. Whenever an icy wind blew her coat apart and went through her thin dress, it was as if she had no underwear on at all. "I wish--oh, how I wish I had my flannel bloomers on," she mourned. "Mama was right. A person could get pneumonia. But I wouldn't give her the satisfaction of letting her know. I guess I'll have to put these lace things away until summer."

  Inside the church, they pre-empted a whole front pew by laying Laurie full-length on the seat. Several late-comers, thinking there was an empty seat, genuflected at the pew's entrance and prepared to enter. When they saw the baby stretched out over two places, they scowled fiercely at Katie who sat rigid and scowled back twice as fiercely.

  Francie thought it was the most beautiful church in Brooklyn. It was made of old gray stone and had twin spires that rose cleanly into the sky, high above the tallest tenements. Inside, the high vaulted ceilings, narrow deepset stained-glass windows and elaborately carved altars made it a miniature cathedral. Francie was proud of the center altar because the left side had been carved by Granpa Rommely more than half a century ago when, as a young fellow lately come from Austria, he had begrudgingly given his tithe of labor to his Church.