A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

by Betty Smith

  Maxwellton's braes are bonny,

  Whe' early fae's the dew.

  (Chord--chord.)

  An' 't was there that Annie Laurie,

  Gied me her promise true.

  (Chord--chord--chord--chord.)

  Francie looked away, not wanting Papa to see her tears. She was afraid he'd ask her why she was crying and she wouldn't be able to tell him. She loved him and she loved the piano. She could find no excuse for her easy tears.

  Katie spoke. Her voice had some of the old soft tenderness in it which Johnny had been missing in the last year or so. "Is that an Irish song, Johnny?"

  "Scotch."

  "I never heard you sing it before."

  "No, I guess not. It's just a song I know. I never sing it because it's not the kind of song people want to hear at the rackets where I work. They'd sooner hear 'Call Me Up Some Rainy Afternoon.' Except when they're drunk. Then nothing but 'Sweet Adeline' will do."

  They were quickly settled in the new place. The familiar furniture looked strange. Francie sat on a chair and was surprised that it felt the same as it had in Lorimer Street. She felt different. Why didn't the chair feel different?

  The front room looked pretty after Papa and Mama got it fixed up. There was a bright green carpet which had great pink roses. There were starched cream-colored lace curtains for the windows, a table with a marble top for the center of the room and a three-piece green plush parlor suit. A bamboo stand in the corner held a plush-covered album in which were pictures of the Rommely sisters as babies lying on their stomachs on a fur rug, and patient-looking great-aunts standing at the shoulders of seated, big-mustached husbands. Little souvenir cups stood on the small shelves. The cups were pink and blue and had gold-encrusted designs of blue forget-me-nots and red American Beauty roses. There were phrases like Remember Me and True Friendship painted in gold. The tiny cups and saucers were memories of Katie's old girl friends and Francie was never permitted to play house with them.

  On the bottom shelf stood a curly, bone-white conch shell with a delicate rosy interior. The children loved it dearly and had given it an affectionate name: Tootsy. When Francie held it to her ear, it sang of the great sea. Sometimes for the delight of his children Johnny listened to the shell, then held it dramatically at arm's length, looked at it meltingly and sang:

  Upon the shore I found a shell.

  I held it to my ear.

  I listened gladly while it sang,

  A sea song sweet and clear.

  Later, Francie saw the sea for the first time when Johnny took them to Canarsie. The sea was remarkable only in that it sounded like the tiny sweet roar of Tootsy, the conch shell.

  16

  THE NEIGHBORHOOD STORES ARE AN IMPORTANT PART OF A CITY child's life. They are his contact with the supplies that keep life going; they hold the beauty that his soul longs for; they hold the unattainable that he can only dream and wish for.

  Francie liked the pawnshop almost the best--not for the treasures prodigiously thrown into its barred windows; not for the shadowy adventure of shawled women slipping into the side entrance, but for the three large golden balls that hung high above the shop and gleamed in the sun or swayed languorously like heavy golden apples when the wind blew.

  There was a bakery store to one side of it which sold beautiful charlotte russes with red candied cherries on their whipped cream tops for those who were rich enough to buy.

  On the other side was Gollender's Paint Shop. There was a stand in front of it from which was suspended a plate with a dramatically mended crack across it and a hole bored into the bottom from which hung a heavy rock suspended on a chain. This proved how strong Major's Cement was. Some said the plate was made of iron and painted to resemble cracked china. But Francie preferred to believe it was a real plate that had been broken and then made whole again by the miracle of the cement.

  The most interesting store was housed in a little shanty which had been there when the Indians prowled through Williamsburg. It looked queer among the tenements with its tiny small-paned windows, clapboards and steep slanting roof. The store had a great small-paneled bay window behind which a dignified man sat at a table and made cigars--long thin dark-brown ones which sold four for a nickel. He chose the outside leaf very carefully from a hand of tobacco and filled it expertly with bits of tobacco of mixed browns and rolled it all very beautifully so that it was tight and thin and the ends had squared corners. A craftsman of the old school, he scorned progress. He refused to have gaslight in his store. Sometimes when the days grew dark early and he still had a lot of cigars to finish, he worked by candlelight. He had a wooden Indian outside his store which stood in a threatening stance on a wooden block. He held a tomahawk in one hand and a hand of tobacco in the other. He wore Roman sandals with the lacings coming to his knees, a short skirt of feathers and a war bonnet all of which were painted in bright reds, blues and yellows. The cigar maker gave him a fresh coat of paint four times a year and carried him inside when it rained. The neighborhood children called the Indian "Aunt Maimie."

  One of Francie's favorite stores was the one which sold nothing but tea, coffee and spices. It was an exciting place of rows of lacquered bins and strange, romantic, exotic odors. There were a dozen scarlet coffee bins with adventurous words written across the front in black China ink: Brazil! Argentine! Turkish! Java! Mixed Blend! The tea was in smaller bins: beautiful bins with sloping covers. They read: Oolong! Formosa! Orange Pekoe! Black China! Flowering Almond! Jasmine! Irish Tea! The spices were in miniature bins behind the counter. Their names marched in a row across the shelves: cinnamon--cloves--ginger--all-spice--ball nutmeg--curry--peppercorns--sage--thyme--marjoram. All pepper when purchased was ground in a tiny pepper mill.

  There was a large hand-turned coffee grinder. The beans were put into a shiny brass hopper, and the great wheel was turned with two hands. The fragrant grounds pattered down into a scarlet box that was shaped like a scoop at the back.

  (The Nolans ground their coffee at home. Francie loved to see Mama sitting debonairly in the kitchen with the coffee mill clutched between her knees, grinding away with a furious turn of her left wrist and looking up to talk sparklingly to Papa while the room filled up with the rich satisfying odor of freshly ground coffee.)

  The tea man had a wonderful pair of scales: two gleaming brass plates which had been rubbed and polished daily for more than twenty-five years until now they were thin and delicate and looked like burnished gold. When Francie bought a pound of coffee or an ounce of pepper she watched while a polished silver block with the weight mark was placed in one scale and the fragrant purchase was conveyed gently by means of a silverlike scoop into the other. Francie, watching, held her breath while the scoop dropped in a few more grains or gently eased some out. It was a beautiful peaceful second when both golden plates were stilled and stood there in perfect balance. It was as if nothing wrong could happen in a world where things balanced so stilly.

  The mystery of mysteries to Francie was the Chinaman's one-windowed store. The Chinaman wore his pigtail wound around his head. That was so he could go back to China if he wanted to, Mama said. Once he cut it off, they would never let him return. He shuffled back and forth silently in his black felt slippers and listened patiently to instructions about shirts. When Francie spoke to him, he folded his hands in the wide sleeves of his nankeen shirt coat and kept his eyes on the ground. She thought that he was wise and contemplative and listened with all his heart. But he understood nothing of what she said, having little English. All he knew was tickee and shirtee.

  When Francie brought her father's soiled shirt there, he whisked it under the counter, took a square of mysteriously textured paper, dipped a thin brush into a pot of India ink, made a few strokes and gave her this magic document in exchange for a common dirty shirt. It seemed a wonderful barter.

  The inside of the store had a clean, warm but fragile scent, like odorless flowers in a hot room. He did the washing in some mysterious recess and it
must have been in the dead of night because all day, from seven in the morning until ten at night, he stood in the store at his clean ironing board pushing a heavy black iron back and forth. The iron must have had a tiny gasoline arrangement inside it to keep it hot. Francie did not know this. She thought it part of the mystery of his race that he could iron with an iron never heated on a stove. She had a vague theory that the heat came from something he used in place of starch in the shirts and collars.

  When Francie brought a ticket and a dime back and pushed them across the counter, he gave her the wrapped shirt and two lichee nuts in exchange. Francie loved these lichee nuts. There was a crisp easily broken shell and the soft sweet meat inside. Inside the meat was a hard stone that no child had ever been able to break open. It was said that this stone contained a smaller stone and that the smaller stone contained a smaller stone which contained a yet smaller stone and so on. It was said that soon the stones got so small you could only see them with a magnifying glass and those smaller ones got still smaller until you couldn't see them with anything but they were always there and would never stop coming. It was Francie's first experience with infinity.

  The best times were when he had to make change. He brought out a small wooden frame strung with thin rods on which were blue, red, yellow and green balls. He slid the balls up the brass rods, pondered swiftly, clicked them all back into place and announced "dirty-nine cent." The tiny balls told him how much to charge and how much change to give.

  Oh, to be a Chinaman, wished Francie, and have such a pretty toy to count on; oh, to eat all the lichee nuts she wanted and to know the mystery of the iron that was ever hot and yet never stood on a stove. Oh, to paint those symbols with a slight brush and a quick turn of the wrist and to make a clear black mark as fragile as a piece of a butterfly wing! That was the mystery of the Orient in Brooklyn.

  17

  PIANO LESSONS! MAGIC WORDS! AS SOON AS THE NOLANS WERE SETTLED, Katie called on the lady whose card announced piano lessons. There were two Miss Tynmores. Miss Lizzie taught piano and Miss Maggie cultivated the voice. The charge was twenty-five cents per lesson. Katie proposed a bargain. She'd do one hour's cleaning work for the Tynmores in exchange for a lesson each week. Miss Lizzie demurred, claiming her time had more value than Katie's time. Katie argued that time was time. Finally she got Miss Lizzie to agree that time was time, and arrangements were made.

  The history-making day of the first lesson arrived. Francie and Neeley were instructed to sit in the front room during the lesson and to keep their eyes and ears open. A chair was placed for the teacher. The children sat side by side on the other side of the piano, Katie nervously adjusted and readjusted the seat and the three sat waiting.

  Miss Tynmore arrived on the dot of five. Although she only came from downstairs, she was formally attired in street clothes. A taut spotted veil was stretched over her face. Her hat was the breast and wing of a red bird tormentingly pierced by two hatpins. Francie stared at the cruel hat. Mama took her into the bedroom and whispered that the bird wasn't a bird at all just some feathers glued together and that she mustn't stare. She believed Mama, yet her eyes kept going back to the tormented effigy.

  Miss Tynmore brought everything with her but the piano. She had a nickel alarm clock and a battered metronome. The clock said five o'clock. She set it for six and stood it on the piano. She took the privilege of using up part of the precious hour. She removed her pearl-gray, skin-tight kid gloves, blew into each finger, smoothed and folded them and placed them on the piano. She undid her veil and threw it back over her hat. She limbered up her fingers, glanced at the clock, was satisfied she had taken enough minutes, started the metronome, took her seat and the lesson began.

  Francie was so fascinated by the metronome that she found it hard to listen to what Miss Tynmore said and to watch the way she placed Mama's hands on the keys. She weaved dreams in time to the soothing monotonous clicking. As for Neeley, his round blue eyes rolled back and forth following the little swinging rod until he hypnotized himself into unconsciousness. His mouth relaxed and his blond head rolled over on his shoulder. A little bubble came and went as he breathed moistly. Katie dared not wake him lest Miss Tynmore catch on that she was teaching three for the price of one.

  The metronome clicked on dreamily; the clock ticked querulously. Miss Tynmore, as if not trusting the metronome, counted, one, two, three; one, two, three. Katie's work-swollen fingers struggled doggedly with her first scale. Time passed and it grew dark in the room. Suddenly the alarm clock rang out shatteringly. Francie's heart jumped and Neeley fell off his chair. The first lesson was ended. Katie's words tumbled over each other in gratitude.

  "Even if I never take another lesson, I could go on with what you taught me today. You are a good teacher."

  Miss Tynmore, while pleased by the flattery, nevertheless told Katie what was what. "I won't charge extra for the children. I just want you to know you're not fooling me." Katie blushed and the children looked down on the floor, ashamed of being found out. "I will permit the children to stay in the room."

  Katie thanked her. Miss Tynmore stood up and waited. Katie verified the time she was to do Miss Tynmore's housework. Still she waited. Katie felt that something was expected of her. Finally she inquired,

  "Yes?"

  Miss Tynmore flushed a shell pink and spoke proudly. "The ladies...where I give lessons...well...they offer me a cup of tea afterwards." She put her hand to her heart and explained vaguely, "Those stairs."

  "Would you sooner take coffee?" Katie asked. "We have no tea."

  "Gladly!" Miss Tynmore sat down in relief.

  Katie rushed out to the kitchen and heated the coffee which was always standing on the stove. While it was warming, she put a sugar bun and a spoon on a round tin tray.

  In the meantime, Neeley had fallen asleep on the sofa. Miss Tynmore and Francie sat exchanging stares. Finally Miss Tynmore asked,

  "What are you thinking about, little girl?"

  "Just thinking," Francie said.

  "Sometimes I see you sitting on the gutter curb for hours. What do you think of then?"

  "Nothing. I just tell myself stories."

  Miss Tynmore pointed at her sternly. "Little girl, you'll be a story writer when you grow up." It was a command rather than a statement.

  "Yes ma'am," agreed Francie out of politeness.

  Katie came in with the tray. "This may not be as refined as you're used to," she apologized, "but it's what we have in the house."

  "It's very good," stated Miss Tynmore daintily. Then she concentrated on trying not to wolf it down.

  To tell the truth, the Tynmores lived on the "tea" they got from their pupils. A few lessons a day at a quarter a lesson did not make for prosperity. After paying their rent, there was little left to eat on. Most of the ladies served them weak tea and soda crackers. The ladies knew what was polite and would come through with a cup of tea but they had no intention of supplying a meal and paying a quarter, too. So Miss Tynmore came to look forward to the hour at the Nolans. The coffee was heartening and there was always a bun or a bologna sandwich to sustain her.

  After each lesson, Katie taught the children what she had been taught. She made them practice half an hour each day. In time, all three of them learned to play the piano.

  When Johnny heard that Maggie Tynmore gave voice lessons, he figured that he could do no less than Katie. He offered to repair a broken sash cord in one of the Tynmore windows in exchange for two voice lessons for Francie. Johnny, who had never even seen a sash cord in all his life, got a hammer and screwdriver and took the whole window frame out of its case. He looked at the broken rope and that was as far as he could go. He experimented and got nowhere. His heart was willing but his skill was nil. In attempting to get the window back in to keep out the cold winter rain that was blowing into the room while he was figuring out about the sash cord, he broke a pane of glass. The deal fell through. The Tynmores had to get a regular window man in to fix it. Katie ha
d to do two washings free for the girls to make up for it and Francie's voice lessons were abandoned forever.

  18

  SCHOOL DAYS WERE EAGERLY ANTICIPATED BY FRANCIE. SHE WANTED all of the things that she thought came with school. She was a lonely child and she longed for the companionship of other children. She wanted to drink from the school water fountains in the yard. The faucets were inverted and she thought that soda water came out instead of plain water. She had heard Mama and Papa speak of the school room. She wanted to see the map that pulled down like a shade. Most of all, she wanted "school supplies": a notebook and tablet and a pencil box with a sliding top filled with new pencils, an eraser, a little tin pencil sharpener made in the shape of a cannon, a pen wiper and a six-inch, soft-wood, yellow ruler.

  Before school, there had to be vaccination. That was the law. How it was dreaded! When the health authorities tried to explain to the poor and illiterate that vaccination was a giving of the harmless form of smallpox to work up immunity against the deadly form, the parents didn't believe it. All they got out of the explanation was that germs would be put into a healthy child's body. Some foreign-born parents refused to permit their children to be vaccinated. They were not allowed to enter school. Then the law got after them for keeping the children out of school. A free country? they asked. You should live so long. What's free about it, they reasoned, when the law forces you to educate your children and then endangers their lives to get them into school? Weeping mothers brought bawling children to the health center for inoculation. They carried on as though bringing their innocents to the slaughter. The children screamed hysterically at the first sight of the needle and their mothers, waiting in the anteroom, threw their shawls over their heads and keened loudly as if wailing for the dead.

  Francie was seven and Neeley six. Katie had held Francie back wishing both children to enter school together so that they could protect each other against the older children. On a dreadful Saturday in August, she stopped in the bedroom to speak to them before she went off to work. She awakened them and gave instructions.