A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

by Betty Smith

  "We'll fix that leg," promised Papa.

  He put Francie back on the couch, got the carbolic acid and swabbed the spot with the strong raw stuff. Francie welcomed the burning pain of the acid. She felt that the evil of the man's touch was being seared away.

  Someone pounded at the door. They remained quiet and unanswering. They wanted no outsiders in their home at this time. A strong Irish voice called.

  "Open up the door. 'Tis the law, now."

  Katie opened the door. A policeman walked in followed by an ambulance intern carrying a bag. The cop pointed to Francie.

  "This the kid he tried to get?"

  "Yes."

  "Doc, here, has to make an examination."

  "I won't allow it," protested Katie.

  "It's the law," he answered quietly.

  So Katie and the intern took Francie into the bedroom and the terrified child had to submit to the indignity of an examination. The jaunty intern made a quick and careful examination. He straightened up and started to put his instruments back into the bag. He said, "She's okay. He never got near her." He took her swollen wrist in his hand. "How did this happen?"

  "I had to hit her with the gun to make her let go of the banister," Katie explained. He noticed her bruised knee.

  "What's this?"

  "That's where I had to drag her along the hall." Then he got to the angry burn just above her ankle. "And what in the name of God is this?"

  "That's where her father washed her leg with carbolic acid where that man touched her."

  "My God!" exploded the intern. "You trying to give her third-degree burns?" He opened the bag again, put cooling salve on the burn and bandaged it neatly. "My God!" he said again, "between the two of you, you did more damage than the criminal." He smoothed down Francie's dress, patted her cheek and said, "You'll be all right, girlie. I'm going to give you something to put you to sleep. When you wake up, just remember that you had a bad dream. That's all it was; a bad dream. Hear?"

  "Yes, sir," said Francie gratefully. Again she saw a poised needle. She remembered something from a long time ago. She worried. Was her arm clean? Would he say...

  "That's a brave girl," he said as the needle jabbed.

  "Why, he's on my side," thought Francie hazily. She went to sleep immediately after the hypodermic.

  Katie and the doctor came out into the kitchen. Johnny and the cop were sitting at the table. The cop had a bit of pencil clutched in his big paw and he was painfully making small notes in a small notebook.

  "Kid all right?" asked the cop.

  "Fine," the intern told him, "just suffering from shock and parentinitus." He winked at the cop. "When she wakes up," he said to Katie, "remember to keep telling her that she had a bad dream. Don't talk about it otherwise."

  "What do I owe you, Doc?" asked Johnny.

  "Nothing, Mac. This is on the city."

  "Thank you," whispered Johnny.

  The intern noticed Johnny's trembling hands. He pulled a pint flask from his hip pocket and thrust it at Johnny. "Here!" Johnny looked up at him. "Go ahead, Mac," insisted the intern. Gratefully, Johnny took a long swallow. The intern passed the flask to Katie. "You too, lady. You look as if you need it." Katie took a big drink. The cop spoke up.

  "What do you take me for? A orphan?"

  When the intern got the flask back from the cop, there was only an inch left in it. He sighed and emptied the bottle. The cop sighed, too, and turned to Johnny.

  "Now. Where do you keep the gun?"

  "Under my pillow."

  "Get it. I got to take it over to the station house."

  Katie, forgetting how she had disposed of the gun, went into the bedroom to look under the pillow. She came back, looking worried.

  "Why, it's not there!"

  The cop laughed. "Naturally. You took it out to shoot the louse."

  It took Katie a long time to remember that she had thrown it into the washtub. She fished it out. The cop wiped it off and took out the bullets. He asked Johnny a question.

  "You got a permit for this, Mac?"

  "No."

  "That's tough."

  "It's not my gun."

  "Who gave it to you?"

  "No----Nobody." Johnny didn't want to get the watchman in trouble.

  "How'd you get it then?"

  "I found it. Yes, I found it in the gutter."

  "All oiled and loaded?"

  "Honest."

  "And that's your story?"

  "That's my story."

  "It's okay by me, Mac. See that you stick to it."

  The ambulance driver hollered from the hall that he was back from taking the man to the hospital and was Doc ready to leave.

  "Hospital?" Katie asked. "Then I didn't kill him."

  "Not quite," said the intern. "We'll get him on his feet so's he can walk to the electric chair by himself."

  "I'm sorry," said Katie. "I meant to kill him."

  "I got a statement from him before he passed out," said the cop. "That little kid down the block: he killed her. He was responsible for two other jobs, too. I got his statement, signed and witnessed." He patted his pocket. "I wouldn't be surprised if I got a promotion out of this when the Commissioner hears."

  "I hope so," said Katie bleakly. "I hope somebody gets some good out of it."

  When Francie woke the next morning, Papa was there to tell her that it was all a dream. And as time passed it did seem like a dream to Francie. It left no ugliness in her memories. Her physical terror had blunted her emotional perceptions. The terror on the stairs had been brief--a bare three minutes in time--and terror had served as an anesthetic. The events following were hazy in her mind on account of the unaccustomed hypodermic. Even the hearing in court where she had to tell her story seemed like a part in an unreal play in which her lines were brief.

  There was a hearing, but Katie was told beforehand that it was a technicality. Francie remembered little of it except that she told her story and Katie told hers. Few words were needed.

  "I was coming home from school," testified Francie, "and when I got in the hall, this man came out and grabbed me before I could scream. While he was trying to drag me off the stairs, my mother came down."

  Katie said: "I came down the stairs and saw him there pulling my daughter. I ran up and got the gun (it didn't take long) and I ran down and shot him while he was trying to sneak down the cellar."

  Francie wondered whether Mama would be arrested for shooting a man. But no, it ended up with the judge shaking Mama's hand and hers too.

  A lucky thing happened about the newspapers. A soused reporter, going through his nightly routine of calling up the station houses for police-blotter news, got the facts of the story but confused the Nolan name with the name of the policeman on the case. There was a half-column item in a Brooklyn paper which said that Mrs. O'Leary of Williamsburg had shot a prowler in the hallway of her home. The next day, two of the New York newspapers gave it two inches in which they stated that Mrs. O'Leary of Williamsburg had been shot by a prowler in the hallway of her home.

  Eventually, the whole affair faded away into the background. Katie was a neighborhood heroine for a while but as time passed, the neighborhood forgot the murdering pervert. They remembered only that Katie Nolan had shot a man. And in speaking of her, they said that she's not one to get into a fight with. Why, she'd shoot a person just as soon as look at them.

  The scar from the carbolic acid never left Francie's leg but it dwindled down to the size of a dime. Francie got used to it in time and as she grew older, she seldom noticed it any more.

  As for Johnny, they fined him five dollars for violating the Sullivan Law--having a gun without a permit. And, oh, yes! The watchman's young wife eventually ran away with an Italian a little nearer her own age.

  Some days later Sergeant McShane came over looking for Katie. He saw her lugging a can of ashes out to the curb and his heart turned over with pity. He gave her a hand with the ash can. Katie thanked him and looked up at him
. She had seen him once since the Mattie Mahony outing, the day he had asked Francie was she her mother. The other time was when he had brought Johnny home, the time when Johnny couldn't get himself home. Katie had heard that Mrs. McShane was now in a sanatorium for incurable tuberculosis patients. She was not expected to live long. "Would he marry again--afterwards?" Katie wondered. "Of course he will," she answered her own question. "He is a fine-looking, upstanding man with a good job and some woman will snap him up." He took off his hat while he spoke to her.

  "Mrs. Nolan, the boys down at the station house and myself do be thankin' you for helpin' us out in the catchin' of the murtherer."

  "You're welcome," said Katie conventionally.

  "And to show their appreciation, what did the boys do but pass the hat for you!" He extended an envelope.

  "Money?" she asked.

  "It is that."

  "Keep it!"

  "Sure you'll be needin' it with your man not workin' steady and the chilthern needin' this and that."

  "That's none of your business, Sergeant McShane. You can see that I work hard and we don't need anything from nobody."

  "Just as you say."

  He put the envelope back into his pocket, looking at her steadily all the while. "Here's a woman," he thought, "with a trim figure on her and a pretty white-faced skin and black curling hair. And she's got courage enough and pride for six like her. I'm a middle-aged man of forty-five," his thoughts went on, "and she's but a slip of a girl." (Katie was thirty-one but looked much younger.) "We've both had hard luck when it came to marryin'. That we did." McShane knew all about Johnny and knew that he wouldn't last long the way he was going on. He had nothing but pity for Johnny; he had nothing but pity for Molly, his wife. He wouldn't have harmed either of them. He had never once considered being physically unfaithful to his sickly wife. "But is hoping in my heart harming either one of them?" he asked himself. "Of course, there'll be the waitin'. How many years? Two? Five? Ah, well, I've waited a long time without hope of happiness. Sure and I can wait a bit longer, now."

  He thanked her again and said good-bye formally. As he held her hand in the handclasp, he thought, "She'll be my wife, someday, God and she willin'."

  Katie could not know what he was thinking. (Or could she?) Maybe. Because something prompted her to call after him.

  "I hope that someday you'll be as happy as you deserve to be, Sergeant McShane."

  34

  WHEN FRANCIE HEARD AUNT SISSY TELL MAMA THAT SHE WAS GOING to get a baby, she wondered why Sissy didn't say have a baby, like other women said. She found out there was a reason why Sissy said get instead of have.

  Sissy had had three husbands. There were ten tiny headstones in a small plot in St. John's Cemetery in Cypress Hills, belonging to Sissy. And on each stone, the date of death was the same as the date of birth. Sissy was thirty-five now, and desperate about not having children. Katie and Johnny often talked it over and Katie was afraid that Sissy would kidnap a child someday.

  Sissy wanted to adopt a child, but her John wouldn't hear of it.

  "I'll not support another man's bastard, see?" was his way of putting it.

  "Don't you like children, Lover?" she asked wheedlingly.

  "Sure I like children. But they got to be my own and not some other bum's," he answered, unintentionally insulting himself.

  In most things, her John was like soft dough in Sissy's hands. But in this one thing, he refused to allow himself to be kneaded her way. If there was to be a child, he kept insisting, it would have to be his and no other man's. Sissy knew he meant it. She even had a kind of respect for his attitude. But she had to have a living baby.

  By chance, Sissy found out that a beautiful sixteen-year-old girl out in Maspeth had gotten into trouble with a married man and was going to have a baby. Her parents, Sicilians lately come over from the other side, had shut up the girl in a dark room so that the neighbors could not see her shame increase. Her father kept her on a diet of bread and water. He had a theory that this would weaken her so that she and her child would die in childbirth. Lest the kind-hearted mother feed Lucia during his absence, the father left no money in the house when he went to work in the mornings. He brought a bagful of groceries each night when he returned home and watched that no food was sneaked out and set aside for the girl. After the family had eaten, he gave the girl her daily ration of half a loaf of bread and a jug of water.

  Sissy was shocked when she heard this story of starvation and cruelty. She thought out a plan. Feeling as they did, she thought the family might be glad to give away the baby when it was born. She decided to have a look at the people. If they seemed normal and healthy, she'd offer to take the baby.

  The mother wouldn't let her into the house when she called. Sissy came back the next day with a badge pinned to her coat. She knocked on the door. When it was opened a crack, she pointed to the badge and sternly demanded admittance. The frightened mother, thinking Sissy was from the immigration department, let her in. The mother could not read else she would have seen that the badge said "Chicken Inspector."

  Sissy took charge. The mother-to-be was frightened and defiant and also very thin from the starvation diet. Sissy threatened the girl's mother with arrest if she didn't treat the girl better. With many tears and in badly broken English, the mother told of the disgrace and of the father's plan to starve the girl and the unborn child to death. Sissy had a day-long talk with the mother and Lucia, the daughter. It was mostly in pantomime. At last Sissy made it understood that she was willing to take the child off their hands as soon as it was born. When the mother understood finally, she covered Sissy's hand with grateful kisses. From that day, Sissy became the adored and trusted friend of the family.

  After her John left for work in the morning, Sissy cleaned up her flat, cooked a potful of food for Lucia and took it over to the Italian home. She fed Lucia well on a combination Irish-German diet. She had a theory that if the child absorbed such food before birth, it wouldn't be so much of an Italian.

  Sissy took good care of Lucia. On nice days, she took her out to the park and made her sit in the sun. During the time of their unusual relationship, Sissy was a devoted friend and a gay companion to the girl. Lucia adored Sissy who was the only one in this new world who had treated her kindly. The whole family (except the father, who didn't know of her existence) loved Sissy. The mother and other children gladly entered into a conspiracy to keep the father in ignorance. They locked Lucia up in her dark room again when they heard the father's step on the stairs.

  The family couldn't speak much English and Sissy knew no Italian but as the months passed, they learned some English from her and she learned Italian from them and they were able to talk together. Sissy never told her name so they called her "Statch' Lib'ty" after the lady with the torch which had been the first thing they saw of America.

  Sissy took over Lucia, her unborn child and the family. When everything was settled and agreed upon, Sissy announced to her friends and family that she was starting another baby. No one paid any attention. Sissy was always starting babies.

  She found an obscure midwife and paid her in advance for the delivery. She gave her a paper on which she had asked Katie to write her name, her John's name and Sissy's maiden name. She told the midwife that the paper was to be turned over to the Board of Health immediately after the birth. The ignorant woman, who could not speak Italian (Sissy had made sure of that when she hired her) assumed that the names handed her were the names of the mother and father. Sissy wanted the birth certificate to be in order.

  Sissy was so realistic about her pregnancy by proxy that she simulated morning sickness in the beginning weeks. When Lucia announced that she felt life, Sissy told her husband that she felt life.

  On the afternoon that Lucia's labor pains started, Sissy went home and got into bed. When her John came home from work, she told him the baby was starting to come. He looked at her. She was as trim as a ballet dancer. He argued, but she was so insistent, that
he went and got her mother. Mary Rommely looked at Sissy and said she couldn't possibly be having a baby. For answer, Sissy let out a blood-curdling yell and said that her pains were killing her. Mary looked at her thoughtfully. She didn't know what Sissy had in mind but she did know it was useless to argue with her. If Sissy said she was going to have a baby, she was going to have a baby, and that's all there was to it. Her John protested.

  "But look how skinny she is. There's no baby in that belly, see?"

  "Maybe it will come from her head. That's big enough as one may see," said Mary Rommely.

  "Aw, there, don't give such things," said the John.

  "Who are you to say?" demanded Sissy. "Didn't the Virgin Mary herself get a baby without a man? If she could do it, I'm sure I could do it easier, being's I'm married and have a man."

  "Who knows?" asked Mary. She turned to the harassed husband and spoke gently. "There are a lot of things that men don't understand about." She urged the confused man to forget the whole thing, eat a nice supper which she would cook for him, and then go to bed and get a good night's sleep.

  The puzzled man lay beside his wife throughout the night. He couldn't get a good night's sleep. From time to time, he'd rise on his elbow and stare at her. From time to time, he'd run his hand over her flat stomach. Sissy slept soundly all through the night.

  When he left for work the next morning, Sissy announced that he'd be a father before he returned that night.

  "I give up," shouted the tormented man and went off to his work in the pulp magazine house.

  Sissy rushed over to Lucia's house. The baby had been born just an hour after the father had left. It was a beautiful healthy girl. Sissy was so happy. She said Lucia would have to nurse the baby for ten days to give it a start, then she'd take it home. She went out and bought a roasting chicken and a bakery store pie. The mother cooked the chicken Italian style. Sissy trusted a bottle of Chianti wine from the Italian grocer on the block and they all had a fine dinner. It was like a fiesta in the house. Everybody was happy. Lucia's stomach was almost flat again. There was no longer any monument to her disgrace. Now all was as it had been before...or would be when Sissy took the baby away.