A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

by Betty Smith

  Soon after the midwife left, Evy came over. A neighbor's boy had been sent for her. Evy brought along some sweet butter and a package of soda crackers and made tea. It tasted so good to Katie. Evy examined the baby and thought it didn't look like much but she said nothing to Katie.

  When Johnny got home, Evy started to lecture him. But when she saw how pale and frightened he looked and when she considered his age--just twenty years old, she choked up inside, kissed his cheek, told him not to worry and made fresh coffee for him.

  Johnny hardly looked at the baby. Still clutching the avocados, he knelt by Katie's bed and sobbed out his fear and worry. Katie cried with him. During the night, she had wanted him with her. Now she wished she could have had that baby secretly and gone away somewhere and when it was over come back and tell him that everything was fine. She had had the pain; it had been like being boiled alive in scalding oil and not being able to die to get free of it. She had had the pain. Dear God! Wasn't that enough? Why did he have to suffer? He wasn't put together for suffering but she was. She had borne a child but two hours ago. She was so weak that she couldn't lift her head an inch from the pillow, yet it was she who comforted him and told him not to worry, that she would take care of him.

  Johnny began to feel better. He told her that after all it was nothing; that he had learned that a lot of husbands had been "through the mill."

  "I've been through the mill, now, too," he said. "And now I'm a man."

  He made a big fuss over the baby then. At his suggestion, Katie agreed to name her Francie, after the girl, Francie Melaney, who had never married his brother, Andy. They thought it would help to mend her broken heart if she were made godmother. The child would have the name she would have carried had Andy lived: Francie Nolan.

  He fixed the avocados with sweet oil and pickled vinegar and brought the salad in to Katie. She was disappointed at the flat taste. Johnny said you had to get used to it, like olives. For his sake and because she was touched by his thinking of her, Katie ate the salad. Evy was urged to try some. She did and said that she'd sooner have tomatoes.

  While Johnny was in the kitchen drinking coffee, a boy came from the school with a note from the principal which said that Johnny was fired because of neglect. He was told to come around and get what money was due him. The note ended by telling Johnny not to ask for a recommendation. Johnny's face got pale as he read it. He gave the kid a nickel for bringing the note and a message saying he would be around. He destroyed the note and said nothing about it to Katie.

  Johnny saw the principal and tried to explain. The principal told Johnny that since he knew the baby was coming, he should have been more careful of his job. As a kindly afterthought, he told the boy that he wouldn't have to pay the damage caused by the burst pipes; the Board of Education would see to that. Johnny thanked him. The principal paid him from his own pocket after Johnny had signed a voucher turning over the coming paycheck to the principal. All in all, the principal did the best he could according to the way he saw things.

  Johnny paid the midwife and gave the landlord the next month's rent. He got a little frightened when he realized that now there was a baby and that Katie wouldn't be strong enough to do much for quite some time, and that they were out of a job. He consoled himself finally with the thought that the rent was paid and that they were safe for thirty days. Surely something would turn up in that time.

  In the afternoon, he walked over to tell Mary Rommely about the new baby. On the way there, he stopped at the rubber factory and asked for Sissy's foreman. He asked the man to tell her about the baby and would she stop over after work? The foreman said he would, winked, poked Johnny in the ribs and said, "Good for you, Mac." Johnny grinned and gave him ten cents with instructions:

  "Buy a good cigar and smoke it on me."

  "I'll do that, Mac," promised the foreman. He pumped Johnny's hand and again promised to tell Sissy.

  Mary Rommely wept when she heard the news. "The poor child! The poor little one," she lamented. "Born into this world of sorrow; born for suffering and hardship. Ai, there'll be a little happiness, but more of hard work. Ai, ai."

  Johnny was all for telling Thomas Rommely but Mary begged him not to just yet. Thomas hated Johnny Nolan because he was Irish. He hated the Germans, he hated Americans, he hated the Russians, but he just couldn't stand the Irish. He was fiercely racial in spite of his stupendous hatred of his race and he had a theory that marriage between two of alien races would result in mongrel children.

  "What would I get if I mated a canary with a crow?" was his argument.

  After Johnny had escorted his mother-in-law over to his house, he went out looking for work.

  Katie was glad to see her mother. With the memory of her own birth pangs still lingering, she had knowledge now of what her mother had suffered when she, Katie, was born. She thought of her mother bearing seven children, bringing them up, watching three of them die, and knowing that those who lived were doomed to hunger and hardship. She had a vision that the same cycle was destined for her less than day-old child. She became frantic with worry.

  "What do I know?" Katie asked her mother. "I can't teach her anything more than I, myself, know and I know so little. You are poor, Mother. Johnny and I are poor. The baby will grow up to be poor. We can't be any more than we are this day. Sometimes I think that the year past was the best we will ever know. As the years go by and Johnny and I get older, nothing will grow better. All we have now is that we are young and strong enough to work and that will go from us as time passes."

  Then the real truth came to her. "I mean," she thought, "that I can work. I can't count on Johnny. I'll always have to look after him. Oh, God, don't send me any more children or I won't be able to look after Johnny and I've got to look after Johnny. He can't look after himself." Her mother interrupted her thoughts. Mary was saying:

  "What did we have in the old country? Nothing. We were peasants. We starved. Well, then, we came over here. It wasn't so much better except that they didn't take your father for the military the way they would do in the old country. But otherwise, it's been harder. I miss the home-land, the trees and broad fields, the familiar way of living, the old friends."

  "If you could expect nothing better, why did you come to America?"

  "For the sake of my children whom I wished to be born in a free land."

  "Your children haven't done so well, Mother." Katie smiled bitterly.

  "There is here, what is not in the old country. In spite of hard unfamiliar things, there is here--hope. In the old country, a man can be no more than his father, providing he works hard. If his father was a carpenter, he may be a carpenter. He may not be a teacher or a priest. He may rise--but only to his father's state. In the old country, a man is given to the past. Here he belongs to the future. In this land, he may be what he will, if he has the good heart and the way of working honestly at the right things."

  "That is not so. Your children have not done better than you."

  Mary Rommely sighed. "That may be my fault. I knew not how to teach my daughters because I have nothing behind me excepting that for hundreds of years, my family has worked on the land of some overlord. I did not send my first child to the school. I was ignorant and did not know at first that the children of folk like us were allowed the free education of this land. Thus, Sissy had no chance to do better than me. But the other three...you went to school."

  "I finished the sixth grade, if that is what is called education."

  "And your Yohnny"--she could not pronounce "j"--"did too. Don't you see?" Excitement came into her voice. "Already, it is starting--the getting better." She picked up the baby and held it high in her arms.

  "This child was born of parents who can read and write," she said simply. "To me, this is a great wonder."

  "Mother, I am young. Mother, I am just eighteen. I am strong. I will work hard, Mother. But I do not want this child to grow up just to work hard. What must I do, Mother, what must I do to make a different wo
rld for her? How do I start?"

  "The secret lies in the reading and the writing. You are able to read. Every day you must read one page from some good book to your child. Every day this must be until the child learns to read. Then she must read every day, I know this is the secret."

  "I will read," promised Katie. "What is a good book?"

  "There are two great books. Shakespeare is a great book. I have heard tell that all the wonder of life is in that book; all that man has learned of beauty, all that he may know of wisdom and living are on those pages. It is said that these stories are plays to be acted out on the stage. I have never spoken to anyone who has seen this great thing. But I heard the lord of our land back in Austria say that some of the pages sing themselves like songs."

  "Is Shakespeare a book in the German?"

  "It is of the English. I so heard our lord of the land tell his young son who was setting out for the great university of Heidelberg long ago."

  "And what is the other great book?"

  "It is the Bible that the Protestant people read."

  "We have our own Bible, the Catholic one."

  Mary looked around the room furtively. "It is not fitting for a good Catholic to say so but I believe that the Protestant Bible contains more of the loveliness of the greatest story on this earth and beyond it. A much-loved Protestant friend once read some of her Bible to me and I found it as I have said.

  "That is the book, then, and the book of Shakespeare. And every day you must read a page of each to your child--even though you yourself do not understand what is written down and cannot sound the words properly. You must do this that the child will grow up knowing of what is great--knowing that these tenements of Williamsburg are not the whole world."

  "The Protestant Bible and Shakespeare."

  "And you must tell the child the legends I told you--as my mother told them to me and her mother to her. You must tell the fairy tales of the old country. You must tell of those not of the earth who live forever in the hearts of people--fairies, elves, dwarfs and such. You must tell of the great ghosts that haunted your father's people and of the evil eye which a hex put on your aunt. You must teach the child of the signs that come to the women of our family when there is trouble and death to be. And the child must believe in the Lord God and Jesus, His Only Son." She crossed herself.

  "Oh, and you must not forget the Kris Kringle. The child must believe in him until she reaches the age of six."

  "Mother, I know there are no ghosts or fairies. I would be teaching the child foolish lies."

  Mary spoke sharply. "You do not know whether there are not ghosts on earth or angels in heaven."

  "I know there is no Santa Claus."

  "Yet you must teach the child that these things are so."

  "Why? When I, myself, do not believe?"

  "Because," explained Mary Rommely simply, "the child must have a valuable thing which is called imagination. The child must have a secret world in which live things that never were. It is necessary that she believe. She must start out by believing in things not of this world. Then when the world becomes too ugly for living in, the child can reach back and live in her imagination. I, myself, even in this day and at my age, have great need of recalling the miraculous lives of the Saints and the great miracles that have come to pass on earth. Only by having these things in my mind can I live beyond what I have to live for."

  "The child will grow up and find out things for herself. She will know that I lied. She will be disappointed."

  "That is what is called learning the truth. It is a good thing to learn the truth one's self. To first believe with all your heart, and then not to believe, is good too. It fattens the emotions and makes them to stretch. When as a woman life and people disappoint her, she will have had practice in disappointment and it will not come so hard. In teaching your child, do not forget that suffering is good too. It makes a person rich in character."

  "If that is so," commented Katie bitterly, "then we Rommelys are rich."

  "We are poor, yes. We suffer. Our way is very hard. But we are better people because we know of the things I have told you. I could not read but I told you of all of the things I learned from living. You must tell them to your child and add on to them such things as you will learn as you grow older."

  "What more must I teach the child?"

  "The child must be made to believe in heaven. A heaven, not filled with flying angels with God on a throne"--Mary articulated her thoughts painfully, half in German and half in English--"but a heaven which means a wondrous place that people may dream of--as of a place where desires come true. This is probably a different kind of a religion. I do not know."

  "And then, what else?"

  "Before you die, you must own a bit of land--maybe with a house on it that your child or your children may inherit."

  Katie laughed. "Me own land? A house? We're lucky if we can pay our rent."

  "Even so." Mary spoke firmly. "Yet you must do that. For thousands of years, our people have been peasants working the land of others. This was in the old country. Here we do better working with our hands in the factory. There is a part of each day that does not belong to the master but which the worker owns himself. That is good. But to own a bit of land is better; a bit of land that we may hand down to our children...that will raise us up on the face of the earth."

  "How can we ever get to own land? Johnny and I work and we earn so little. Sometimes after the rent is paid and the insurance there is hardly enough left for food. How could we save for land?"

  "You must take an empty condensed-milk can and wash it well."

  "A can...?"

  "Cut off the top neatly. Cut strips down into the can the length of your finger. Let each strip be so wide." She measured two inches with her fingers. "Bend the strips backward. The can will look like a clumsy star. Make a slit in the top. Then nail the can, a nail in each strip, in the darkest corner of your closet. Each day put five cents in it. In three years there will be a small fortune, fifty dollars. Take the money and buy a lot in the country. Get the papers that say it is yours. Thus you become a landowner. Once one has owned land, there is no going back to being a serf."

  "Five cents a day. It seems a little. But where is it to come from? We haven't enough now and with another mouth to feed...."

  "You must do it thus: You go to the green grocer's and ask how much are carrots the bunch. The man will say three cents. Then look about until you see another bunch, not so fresh, not so large. You will say: May I have this damaged bunch for two cents? Speak strongly and it shall be yours for two cents. That is a saved penny that you put in the star bank. It is winter, say. You bought a bushel of coal for twenty-five cents. It is cold. You would start a fire in the stove. But wait! Wait one hour more. Suffer the cold for an hour. Put a shawl around you. Say, I am cold because I am saving to buy land. That hour will save you three cents' worth of coal. That is three cents for the bank. When you are alone at night, do not light the lamp. Sit in the darkness and dream a while. Reckon out how much oil you saved and put its value in pennies in the bank. The money will grow. Someday there will be fifty dollars and somewhere on this long island is a piece of land that you may buy for that money."

  "Will it work, this saving?"

  "I swear by the Holy Mother it will."

  "Then why haven't you ever saved enough money to buy land?"

  "I did. When we first landed, I had a star bank. It took me ten years to save that first fifty dollars. I took the money in my hand and went to a man in the neighborhood of whom it was said that he dealt fairly with people who bought land. He showed me a beautiful piece of earth and told me in my own language, 'This is thine.' He took my money and gave me a paper. I could not read. Later, I saw men building the house of another on my land. I showed them my paper. They laughed at me with pity in their eyes. It was that the land had not been the man's to sell. It was...how do you say it in the English...a schwindle."

  "Swindle."

  "
Ai. People like us, known as greenhorns from the old country, were often robbed by men such as he because we could not read. But you have education. First you will read on the paper that the land is yours. Only then will you pay."

  "And you never saved again, Mother?"

  "I did. All over again. The second time it was harder because there were the many children. I saved, but when we moved your father found the bank and took the money. He would not buy land with it. He was always one for birds so he bought a rooster and many hens with the money and put them in the back yard."

  "I seem to remember those chickens," said Katie, "a long, long time ago."

  "He said the eggs would bring much money in the neighborhood. Ah, what dreams men have! The first night twenty starving cats came over the fence and killed and ate many chickens. The second night, the Italians climbed the fence and stole more. The third day the policeman came and said it was against the law to keep chickens in a yard in Brooklyn. We had to pay him five dollars not to take your father to the station house. Your father sold the few chickens that were left and bought canary birds which he could own without fear. Thus I lost the second savings. But I am saving again. Maybe sometime..." She sat in silence for a while. Then she got up and put on her shawl.

  "It grows dark. Your father will be coming home from his work. Holy Mary watch over thee and the child."

  Sissy came over right from work. She didn't even take time to brush the gray rubber powder from her hair bow. She went into choking hysterics over the baby, pronouncing it the most beautiful baby in the world. Johnny looked skeptical. The baby looked blue and wizened to him and he felt that there must be something wrong with it. Sissy washed the baby. (It must have been bathed a dozen times the first day.) She rushed out to the delicatessen store and beguiled the man into letting her open a charge account until Saturday payday. She bought two dollars' worth of delicacies: sliced tongue, smoked salmon, creamy-white slices of smoked sturgeon and crisp rolls. She bought a sack of charcoal and made the fire roar. She brought a tray of supper in to Katie, then she and Johnny sat in the kitchen and ate together. The house smelled of warmth, good food, sweet powder and a stronger candylike smell that came from a hard chalkish disc that Sissy wore in an imitation-silver filigree heart on a chain around her neck.