A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

by Betty Smith

  After she left, the children amused themselves for a time by staring at the picture. They shook the box. A dull swishing mysterious sound resulted.

  "They is snakes in there and not zingarettes," decided Neeley.

  "No," corrected Francie. "Worms are in there. Live ones."

  They argued, Francie saying the box was too small for snakes and Neeley insisting that they were rolled-up snakes like herring in a glass jar. Curiosity grew to such a pitch that Sissy's instructions were forgotten. The seals were so lightly pasted, it was a simple matter to pull them off. Francie opened the box. There was a sheet of soft dulled tin foil over the contents. Francie lifted the foil carefully. Neeley prepared to crawl under the table if the snakes became active. But there were neither snakes, worms nor cigarettes in the box and its contents were very uninteresting. After trying to devise some simple games, Francie and Neeley lost interest, clumsily tied the contents of the box to a string, trailed the string out of the window and finally secured the string by shutting the window on it. They then took turns jumping on the denuded box and became so absorbed in breaking it into bits that they forgot all about the string hanging out of the window.

  Consequently, there was a great surprise waiting for Johnny when he sauntered home to get a fresh dicky and collar for his evening's job. He took one look and his face burned with shame. He told Katie when she came home.

  Katie questioned Francie closely and found out everything. Sissy was condemned. That night after the children had been put to bed and Johnny was away working, Katie sat in her dark kitchen with blushes coming and going. Johnny went about his work with a dull feeling that the world had come to an end.

  Evy came over later in the evening and she and Katie discussed Sissy.

  "That's the end, Katie," said Evy, "the very end. What Sissy does is her own business until her own business makes a thing like this happen. I've got a growing girl, so have you, we mustn't let Sissy come into our homes again. She's bad and there's no getting around it."

  "She's good in many ways," temporized Katie.

  "You say that after what she did to you today?"

  "Well...I guess you're right. Only don't tell Mother. She doesn't know how Sissy lives and Sissy is her eye-apple."

  When Johnny came home, Katie told him that Sissy was never to come to their house again. Johnny sighed and said he guessed that was the only thing to do. Johnny and Katie talked away the night, and in the morning they had their plans all made for moving when the end of the month came.

  Katie found a janitor place on Grand Street in Williamsburg. She took up the tin-can bank when they moved. There was a little over eight dollars in it. Two had to go to the movers, the rest was put back when the can was nailed down in the new home. Again Mary Rommely came and sprinkled the flat with holy water. Again there was the settling process and the establishing of trust or credit at the neighborhood stores.

  There was resigned regret that the new flat was not as nice as their Lorimer Street home. They lived on the top floor instead of the ground floor. There was no stoop as a store occupied the street floor of the house. There was no bathroom and the toilet was in the hall and shared by two families.

  The only bright spot was that the roof was theirs. By an unwritten agreement, the roof belonged to the people who lived on the top floor as the yard belonged to the people who lived on the first floor. Another advantage was that there was no one living overhead to make vibrations on the ceiling and cause the Welsbach gas mantle to crumble into powder.

  While Katie was arguing with the movers, Johnny took Francie up on the roof. She saw a whole new world. Not far away was the lovely span of the Williamsburg Bridge. Across the East River, like a fairy city made of silver cardboard, the skyscrapers loomed cleanly. There was the Brooklyn Bridge further away like an echo of the nearer bridge.

  "It's pretty," said Francie. "It's pretty the same way pictures of in-the-country are pretty."

  "I go over that bridge sometimes when I go to work," Johnny said.

  Francie looked at him in wonder. He went over that magic bridge and still talked and looked like always? She couldn't get over it. She put out her hand and touched his arm. Surely the wonderful experience of going over that bridge would make him feel different. She was disappointed because his arm felt as it had always felt.

  At the child's touch, Johnny put his arm around her and smiled down at her. "How old are you, Prima Donna?"

  "Six going on seven."

  "Why, you'll be going to school in September."

  "No. Mama said I must wait until next year till Neeley's old enough so we can start together."

  "Why?"

  "So we can help each other against the older kids who might lick us if there was only one."

  "Your mother thinks of everything."

  Francie turned around and looked at the other roofs. Nearby was one with a pigeon coop on it. The pigeons were safely locked up. But the pigeon owner, a youth of seventeen, stood on the edge of the roof with a long bamboo stick. It had a rag on the end and the boy stood waving the stick in circles. Another flock of pigeons was flying around in a circle. One of them left the group to follow the flying rag. The boy lowered the stick cautiously and the silly pigeon followed the rag. The boy grabbed him and stuck him in the coop. Francie was distressed.

  "The boy stole a pigeon."

  "And tomorrow someone will steal one of his," said Johnny.

  "But the poor pigeon, taken away from his relations. Maybe he's got children." Tears came into her eyes.

  "I wouldn't cry," said Johnny. "Maybe the pigeon wanted to get away from his relatives. If he doesn't like the new coop, he'll fly back to the old one when he gets out again." Francie was consoled.

  They didn't say anything for a long time. They stood hand-in-hand on the roof's edge looking across the river to New York. Finally Johnny said, as if to himself, "Seven years."

  "What, Papa?"

  "Your mama and I have been married seven years already."

  "Was I here when you got married?"

  "No."

  "I was here, though, when Neeley came."

  "That's right." Johnny went back to thinking aloud. "Married seven years and we've had three homes. This will be my last home."

  Francie didn't notice that he said my last home instead of our last home.

  Book Three

  15

  FOUR ROOMS MADE UP THE NEW FLAT. THEY LED ONE INTO THE OTHER and were called railroad rooms. The high narrow kitchen faced on the yard which was a flagstone walk surrounding a square of cementlike sour earth out of which nothing could possibly grow.

  Yet, there was this tree growing in the yard.

  When Francie first saw it, it was only up to the second story. She could look down on it from her window. It looked like a packed crowd of people of assorted sizes, standing umbrella-protected in the rain.

  There was a lean clothes pole in the back of the yard from which six washlines on pulleys connected with six kitchen windows. The neighborhood boys kept themselves in pocket money by climbing the poles to replace a washline when it slipped off a pulley. It was believed that the boys climbed the pole in the dead of night and sneaked the line off the pulley to guarantee the next day's dime.

  On a sunny windy day, it was pretty to see the lines filled, the square white sheets taking the wind like the sails of a storybook boat and the red, green and yellow clothes straining at the wooden pins as though they had life.

  The pole stood against a brick wall which was the windowless side of the neighborhood school. Francie found that no two bricks were alike when she looked real close. It was a soothing rhythm the way they were put together with crumbly thin lines of white mortar. They glowed when the sun shone on them. They smelled warm and porous when Francie pressed her cheek against them. They were the first to receive the rain and they gave off a wet clay odor that was like the smell of life itself. In the winter, when the first snow was too delicate to last on the sidewalks, it clung to the ro
ugh surface of the brick and was like fairy lace.

  Four feet of the school yard faced on Francie's yard and was segregated from it by an iron mesh fence. The few times Francie got to play in the yard (it was preempted by the boy who lived on the ground floor who would let no one in it while he was there), she managed to be there at recess time. She watched the horde of children playing in the yard. Recess consisted of getting several hundred children herded into this small, stone-paved enclosure and then getting them out again. Once in the yard, there was no room for games. The children milled about angrily and raised their voices in one steady, monotonous shrieking which continued unabated for five minutes. It was cut off, as if with a sharp knife, when the end-of-recess bell clanged. For an instant after the bell there was dead silence and frozen motion. Then the milling changed to pushing. The children seemed as desperately anxious to get in as they had been to get out. The high shrieking changed to subdued wailing as they fought their way back.

  Francie was in her yard one mid-afternoon when a little girl came out alone into the school yard and importantly clapped two blackboard erasers together to free them from chalk dust. To Francie, watching, her face close to the iron mesh, this seemed the most fascinating occupation ever devised. Mama had told her that this was a task reserved for teachers' pets. To Francie, pets meant cats, dogs and birds. She vowed that when she was old enough to go to school, that she would meow, bark and chirp as best she could so that she would be a "pet" and get to clap the erasers together.

  On this afternoon, she watched with a heart full of admiration in her eyes. The clapper, aware of Francie's admiration, showed off. She clapped the erasers on the brick wall, on the stone walk and, as a finale, behind her back. She spoke to Francie.

  "Want to see 'em real close?"

  Francie nodded shyly. The girl brought an eraser close to the mesh. Francie poked a finger through to touch the vari-colored felt layers blended together by a film of powdered chalk. As she was about to touch this soft beautifulness, the little girl snatched it away and spat full in Francie's face. Francie closed her eyes tightly to keep the hurt bitter tears from spilling out. The other girl stood there curiously, waiting for the tears. When none came, she taunted:

  "Why don't you bust out crying, you dockle? Want I should spit in your face again?"

  Francie turned and went down into the cellar and sat in the dark a long time waiting until the waves of hurt stopped breaking over her. It was the first of many disillusionments that were to come as her capacity to feel things grew. She never liked blackboard erasers after that.

  The kitchen was living room, dining room and cooking room. There were two long narrow windows in one wall. An iron coalrange was recessed in another wall. Above the stove the recess was made of coral-colored bricks and creamy white plaster. It had a stone mantelpiece and a slate hearthstone on which Francie could draw pictures with chalk. Next to the stove was a water boiler which got hot when the fire was going. Often on a cold day, Francie came in chilled and put her arms around the boiler and pressed her frosty cheek gratefully against its warm silveriness.

  Next to the boiler was a pair of soapstone washtubs with a hinged wooden cover. The partition could be removed and the two thrown into one for a bath tub. It didn't make a very good bath tub. Sometimes when Francie sat in it, the cover banged down on her head. The bottom was rubbly and she came out of what should have been a refreshing bath all sore from sitting on that wet roughness. Then there were four faucets to contend with. No matter how the child tried to remember that they were inflexibly there and wouldn't give way, she would jump up suddenly out of the soapy water and get her back whacked good on a faucet. Francie had a perpetual angry welt on her back.

  Following the kitchen, there were two bedrooms, one leading into the other. An airshaft dimensioned like a coffin was built into the bedrooms. The windows were small and dingy gray. You could open an airshaft window, maybe, if you used a chisel and hammer. But when you did, you were rewarded with a blast of cold dank air. The airshaft was topped by a miniature, slant-roofed skylight whose heavy, opaque, wrinkled glass was protected from breakage by heavy iron netting. The sides were corrugated iron slats. This arrangement supposedly supplied light and air to the bedrooms. But the heavy glass, iron fencing and dirt of many years refused to filter the light through. The openings in the sides were choked with dust, soot and cobwebs. No air could come in, but, stubbornly enough, rain and snow could get in. On stormy days, the wooden bottom of the airshaft was wet and smoky and gave out a tomby smell.

  The airshaft was a horrible invention. Even with the windows tightly sealed, it served as a sounding box and you could hear everybody's business. Rats scurried around the bottom. There was always the danger of fire. A match absently tossed into the airshaft by a drunken teamster under the impression that he was throwing it into the yard or street would set the house afire in a moment. There were vile things cluttering up the bottom. Since this bottom couldn't be reached by man (the windows being too small to admit the passage of a body), it served as a fearful repository for things that people wanted to put out of their lives. Rusted razor blades and bloody cloths were the most innocent items. Once Francie looked down into the airshaft. She thought of what the priest said about Purgatory and figured it must be like the airshaft bottom only on a larger scale. When Francie went into the parlor, she passed through the bedrooms shuddering and with her eyes shut.

  *

  The parlor or front room was The Room. Its two high narrow windows faced on the exciting street. The third floor was so high up that street noises were muted into a comforting sound. The room was a place of dignity. It had its own door leading into the hall. Company could be admitted without having to walk through the bedrooms from the kitchen. The high walls were covered with a somber wall paper, dark brown with golden stripes. The windows had inside shutters of slatted wood which telescoped into a narrow space on either side. Francie spent many happy hours pulling out these hinged shutters and watching them fold back again at a touch of her hand. It was a never-tiring miracle that that which could cover a whole window and blot out light and air, could still meekly compress itself in its little closet and present an innocently paneled front to the eye.

  A low parlor stove was built into a black marble fireplace. Only the front half of the stove was in view. It looked like a giant halved melon with the round side out. It was made of numerous isinglass windows with just enough thin carved iron to form a framework. At Christmas time, the only time Katie could afford to have a fire in the parlor, all of the little windows glowed and Francie felt a great joy sitting there, feeling the warmth and watching the windows change from rosy red to amber as the night wore on. And when Katie came in and lit the gas, chasing the shadows away and paling the light in the stove windows, it was like a great sin that she committed.

  The most wonderful thing about the front room was the piano. This was a miracle that you could pray for all your life and it would never come to pass. But there it stood in the Nolan parlor, a real true miracle that had come without a wish or a prayer. The piano had been left there by the previous tenants who could not afford to pay to have it moved.

  Piano-moving in those days was a project. No piano could be gotten down those narrow steep stairs. Pianos had to be bundled up, roped and hoisted out of the windows with an enormous pulley on the roof and with much shouting, arm-waving and brass-hatting on the part of the boss mover. The street had to be roped off, the policemen had to keep the crowds back and children had to play hooky from school when there was a piano moving. There was always that great moment when the wrapped bulk swung clear of the window and twisted dizzily in the air for a moment before it righted itself. Then began the slow perilous descent while the children cheered hoarsely.

  It was a job that cost fifteen dollars, three times what it cost to move all the rest of the furniture. So the owner asked Katie could she leave it and would Katie mind it for her? Katie was glad to give her the promise. Wistfully the wom
an asked Katie not to let it get damp or cold, to leave the bedroom doors open in winter so a little heat would get through from the kitchen and prevent warping.

  "Can you play it?" Katie asked her.

  "No," said the woman sorrowfully. "No one in the family can play. I wish I could."

  "Why did you ever buy it?"

  "It was in a rich house. The people were selling it cheap. I wanted it so much. No, I couldn't play it. But it was so beautiful...It dresses up the whole room."

  Katie promised to take good care of it until the woman could afford to send for it but as things turned out, the woman never did send for it and the Nolans had this beautiful thing for always.

  It was small and made of black polished wood that glowed darkly. The front of thin veneers was cut out to make a pretty pattern and there was old-rose silk behind this fretted wood design. Its lid did not fold back in sections like other uprights. It just turned back and rested against the designed wood like a lovely, dark, polished shell. There was a candle holder on either side. You could put pure white candles in them and play by the candlelight which threw dreamy shadows over the creamy ivoried keys. And you could see the keys again in the dark cover.

  When the Nolans walked into the front room on their first possessive tour of inspection, the piano was the only thing that Francie saw. She tried to get her arms around it but it was too big. She had to be content to hug the faded-rose brocade stool.

  Katie looked at the piano with dancing eyes. She had noticed a white card in the flat window below which said, "Piano Lessons." Katie had an idea.

  Johnny sat on the magic stool, which turned around and went up or down according to your size, and played. He couldn't play, of course. He couldn't read notes in the first place but he knew a few chords. He could sing a song and strike a chord now and then and really it sounded as though he were singing to music. He struck a minor chord, looked into the eyes of his oldest child and smiled a crooked smile. Francie smiled back, her heart waiting in anticipation. He struck the minor chord again; held it. To its soft echo, he sang in his clear true voice: