A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

by Betty Smith

  "I've given up writing."

  Katie knew then that whatever was on Francie's mind had to do with her compositions. "Did you get a bad mark on a composition today?"

  "No," lied Francie, amazed as always by her mother's guesswork. She got up. "I guess it's time for me to go to McGarrity's now."

  "Wait!" Katie put her brush and scrub rag in the pail. "I'm finished for the day." She held out her hands. "Help me to get up."

  Francie grasped her mother's hands. Katie pulled heavily on them as she got to her feet clumsily. "Walk back home with me, Francie."

  Francie carried the pail. Katie put one hand on the banister and put her other arm around Francie's shoulder. She leaned heavily on the girl as she walked downstairs slowly, Francie keeping time with her mother's uncertain steps.

  "Francie, I expect the baby any day now and I'd feel better if you were never very far away from me. Stay close to me. And when I'm working, come looking for me from time to time to see that I'm all right. I can't tell you how much I'm counting on you. I can't count on Neeley because a boy's no use at a time like this. I need you badly now and I feel safer when I know you're nearby. So stay close to me for a while."

  A great tenderness for her mother came into Francie's heart. "I won't ever go away from you, Mama," she said.

  "That's my good girl." Katie pressed her shoulder.

  "Maybe," thought Francie, "she doesn't love me as much as she loves Neeley. But she needs me more than she needs him and I guess being needed is almost as good as being loved. Maybe better."

  40

  TWO DAYS, FRANCIE CAME HOME FOR LUNCH AND DID NOT RETURN TO school in the afternoon. Mama was in bed. After Neeley was told to go back to school, Francie wanted to get Sissy or Evy but Mama said it wasn't time, yet.

  Francie felt important being in sole charge. She cleaned the flat and looked over the food in the house and planned their supper. Every ten minutes, she plumped up her mother's pillow and asked whether she wanted a drink of water.

  Soon after three, Neeley rushed in out of breath, flung his books in a corner and asked whether it was time to run for anybody yet. Katie smiled at his eagerness and said it was no use taking Evy or Sissy away from their own affairs until it was necessary. Neeley went off to work with instructions to ask McGarrity if he could do Francie's work as well as his own since Francie had to stay home with their mother. McGarrity not only agreed, but helped the boy with the free lunch so that Neeley was all finished at four-thirty. They had supper early. The sooner Neeley started with his papers, the quicker he'd be finished. Mama said she didn't want anything except a cup of hot tea.

  Mama didn't want the tea after Francie brewed it. Francie worried because she wouldn't eat anything. After Neeley left on his paper route, Francie brought in a bowl of stew and tried to make her mother eat it. Katie lashed out at her; told her to leave her alone; that when she wanted something to eat, she'd ask for it. Francie poured it back into the pot trying to hold back the hurt tears. She had only meant to help. Mama called her again and didn't seem mad anymore.

  "What time is it?" asked Katie.

  "Five to six."

  "Are you sure the clock isn't slow?"

  "No, Mama."

  "Maybe it's fast, then." She seemed so worried that Francie looked out the front window at Jeweler Woronov's large street clock.

  "Our clock's right," reported Francie.

  "Is it dark out yet?" Katie had no way of knowing because even at bright noon only a dull gray light filtered through the airshaft window.

  "No, it's still light outdoors."

  "It's dark in here," said Katie fretfully.

  "I'll light the night candle."

  Bracketed to the wall was a small shelf holding a plaster statue of the blue-robed Virgin Mary with her hands held out supplicatingly. At the foot of the image, was a thick red glass filled with yellow wax and a wick. Next to it, was a vase holding paper red roses. Francie put a lighted match to the wick. The candlelight glowed dully and ruby red through the thick glass.

  "What time is it?" Katie asked after a little while.

  "Ten after six."

  "You're sure the clock is neither slow nor fast?"

  "Just exactly right."

  Katie seemed satisfied. But five minutes later, she again demanded the time. It was as if she had an important rendezvous to keep and was fearful of being late.

  At half past six, Francie told her the time again and added that Neeley would be home in an hour. "The minute he comes in, send him for Aunt Evy. Tell him not to take the time to walk. Find a nickel carfare for him and tell him, Evy, because she lives closer than Sissy."

  "Mama, suppose the baby comes all of a sudden and I don't know what to do?"

  "I couldn't be that lucky--to have a baby all of a sudden. What time is it?"

  "Twenty-five to seven."

  "Sure?"

  "I'm sure. Mama, even if Neeley is a boy it would've been better if he stayed with you instead of me."

  "Why?"

  "Because he's always such a great comfort to you." She said it without malice or jealousy. It was a simple statement of fact. "While I...I...just don't know the right things to say to make you feel better."

  "What time is it?"

  "A minute after twenty-five to seven."

  Katie was silent for a long time. When she spoke, she said the words quietly, as if speaking to herself. "No, men shouldn't be around at that time. Yet, women make them stand next to them. They want them to hear every moan and groan and see every drop of blood and hear every tear of the flesh. What is this twisted pleasure they get out of making the man suffer along with them? They seem to be taking revenge because God made them women. What time is it?" Without waiting for an answer, she continued: "Before they're married, they'd die if a man saw them in curl crimpers or with their corsets off. But when they have a baby, they want him to see them in the ugliest way a woman can be seen. I don't know why. I don't know why. A man thinks of the pain and agony that came to her out of their being together and then it isn't good anymore to him. That's why many men start being unfaithful after the baby...." Katie hardly realized what she was saying. She was missing Johnny so terribly and thinking so, to rationalize his not being there. "Besides, there is this: If you love someone, you'd rather suffer the pain alone to spare them. So keep your man out of the house when your time comes."

  "Yes, Mama. It's five after seven."

  "See if Neeley's coming."

  Francie looked and had to report that Neeley wasn't in sight yet. Katie's mind went back to what Francie had said about Neeley being a comfort.

  "No, Francie, it's you who's the comfort to me now." She sighed. "If it's a boy, we'll call him Johnny."

  "It will be nice, Mama, when there are four of us again."

  "Yes, it will." After that, Katie didn't say anything for a while. When next she asked the time, Francie told her it was a quarter past seven and that Neeley would be home soon. Katie instructed her to wrap Neeley's nightshirt, toothbrush, a clean towel and a bit of soap in a newspaper, as Neeley was to remain at Evy's house for the night.

  Francie made two more trips to the street with the bundle under her arm before she saw Neeley coming. He was running down the street. She ran to meet him; gave him the bundle, carfare and instructions, and told him to hurry.

  "How's Mama?" he asked.

  "Good."

  "You sure?"

  "Sure. I hear a trolley coming. You better run." Neeley ran.

  When Francie got back, she saw that her mother's face was bathed in sweat and that there was blood on her lower lip as though she had bitten through it.

  "Oh, Mama, Mama!" She shook her mother's hand and held it to her own cheek.

  "Wring a cloth out of cold water and wipe my face," Mama whispered. After Francie had done so, Katie went back to what was incompleted in her mind. "Of course, you're a comfort to me." Her mind veered off to something that seemed irrelevant but wasn't. "I've always been meaning to read your
A compositions but I never had the time. I've a little time now. Would you like to read one to me?"

  "I can't. I burned them all up."

  "You thought about them, and wrote them, and handed them in, and got marks on them, and thought about them some more, and then you burned them up. And all through that, I never read one of them."

  "That's all right, Mama. They weren't much good."

  "It's on my conscience."

  "They weren't much good, Mama, and I know you never had the time."

  Katie thought, "But I always had time for anything the boy did. I made time for him." She continued her thought aloud. "But then, Neeley needs more encouragement. You can go on with what you have inside you, like I can. But he needs so much from outside."

  "That's all right, Mama," Francie repeated.

  "I couldn't do any different than I did," said Katie. "But it will always be on my conscience just the same. What time is it?"

  "Nearly seven-thirty."

  "The towel again, Francie." Katie's mind seemed to be trying to clutch at something. "And isn't there one left you can read?"

  Francie thought of the four about her father, what Miss Garnder had said about them, and answered, "No."

  "Then read something from the Shakespeare book." Francie got the book. "Read about ' 'twas on a night like this,' I'd like to have something pretty in my mind just before the baby comes."

  The print was so small that Francie had to light the gas to read. As the light flared up, she had a good look at her mother's face. It was gray and contorted. Mama didn't look like Mama. She looked like Granma Mary Rommely in pain. Katie winced away from the light and Francie shut it off quickly.

  "Mama, we've read these plays so many times over, that I almost know them by heart. I don't need a light or the book, Mama. Listen!" She recited:

  The moon shines bright!--In such a night as this When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees

  And they did make no noise; in such a night Troilus...

  "What time is it?"

  "Seven-forty."

  ...methinks mounted the Trojan walls, And sighed his soul toward the Grecian tents Where Cressida lay the night.

  "And did you ever find out who Troilus was, Francie? And Cressida?"

  "Yes, Mama."

  "Someday you must tell me. When I have time to listen."

  "I will, Mama."

  Katie moaned. Francie wiped the sweat away again. Katie held out her two hands as she had done that day in the hall. Francie took the hands and braced her feet. Katie pulled and Francie thought her arms would come out of their sockets. Then Mama relaxed and let go.

  So the next hour passed. Francie recited passages she knew by heart--Portia's speech, Marc Antony's funeral oration, "Tomorrow and tomorrow"--the obvious things that are remembered from Shakespeare. Sometimes Katie asked a question. Sometimes she put her hands over her face and moaned. Without knowing she did so, and taking no note of the answer, she kept asking the time. Francie wiped off her face at intervals, and three or four times in that hour, Katie held out her two hands to Francie.

  When Evy arrived at half past eight, Francie all but died of pure relief. "Aunt Sissy will be along in half an hour," announced Evy as she rushed into the bedroom. After a look at Katie, Evy pulled the sheet from Francie's cot, knotted one end to Katie's bedpost and put the other end in Katie's hand. "Try pulling on that for a change," she suggested.

  "What time is it?" whispered Katie after she had taken a tremendous tug on the sheet; a tug that made the sweat stand out on her face again.

  "What do you care," answered Evy, cheerfully. "You're not going any place." Katie started a smile but a pain spasm wiped it off her face. "We can do with a better light," decided Evy.

  "But the gas light hurts her eyes," objected Francie.

  Evy took the glass globe from the parlor fixture, coated the outside with soap and attached it to the bedroom fixture. When she lit the gas, there was a soft diffused light without glare. Although it was a warm May night, Evy built a fire in the range. She snapped out orders to Francie. Francie rushed around filling the kettle with water and placing it over the flames. She scoured the enameled wash basin and poured a bottle of sweet oil in it and set it on the back of the stove. The soiled clothes were dumped out of the wash basket and it was lined with a ragged but clean blanket and set up on two chairs near the stove. Evy put all the dinner plates in the oven to heat and instructed Francie to put hot plates into the basket, remove them when they cooled and substitute other hot plates.

  "Has your mother any baby clothes?" she asked.

  "What kind of people do you think we are?" asked Francie scornfully as she displayed a modest layette consisting of four handmade flannel kimonos, four bands, a dozen hand-hemmed diapers and four threadbare shirts which she and Neeley had worn in turn as babies. "And I made everything myself, excepting the shirts," admitted Francie proudly.

  "Hm. I see your mother's looking for a boy," commented Evy, examining the blue feather stitching on the kimonos. "Well, we shall see."

  When Sissy arrived, the two sisters went into the bedroom, ordering Francie to wait outside. Francie listened to them talking.

  "It's time to get the midwife," Sissy said. "Does Francie know where she lives?"

  "I didn't make arrangements," Katie said. "There just isn't five dollars in the house for a midwife."

  "Well, maybe Sissy and I can raise the money," began Evy, "if..."

  "Look," Sissy said. "I bore ten--no--eleven children. You had three and Katie had two. Among us, we had sixteen children. We ought to know enough to bring a baby."

  "All right. We'll bring the baby," decided Evy.

  Then they closed the bedroom door. Now Francie could hear the sound of their voices but couldn't hear what they said. She resented her aunts shutting her out like that, especially when she had been in complete charge until they came. She took the cool plates from the basket, put them into the oven and took out two heated plates. She felt all alone in the world. She wished that Neeley was home so that they could talk about olden times.

  Francie opened her eyes with a start. She couldn't have been drowsing, she thought. She just couldn't have. She felt the plates in the basket. They were cold. Quickly she substituted hot plates. The basket had to be kept warm for the baby. She listened to the sounds from the bedroom. They had changed since she nodded. There was no more leisurely moving to and fro; no more quiet talking. Her aunts seemed to be running back and forth with quick short steps and their voices came in short sentences. She looked at the clock. Nine-thirty. Evy came out of the bedroom, shutting the door behind her.

  "Here's fifty cents, Francie. Go out and get a quarter pound of sweet butter, a box of soda crackers and two navel oranges. Tell the man you want navel. Say they're for a sick lady."

  "But all the stores are closed."

  "Go down to Jewtown. They're always open."

  "I'll go in the morning."

  "Do as you're told," said Evy sharply.

  Francie went unwillingly. Going down the last flight of stairs, she heard a hoarse guttural scream. She stopped, undecided whether to run back or to continue. She remembered Evy's sharp command and continued down the stairs. As she reached the door, there was another and more agonized scream. She was glad to get out on to the street.

  In one of the flats, the apelike teamster, ordering his unwilling wife to prepare for bed, heard Katie's first scream and ejaculated, "Jesus!" When the second scream came, he said, "I hope to Christ she don't keep me awake all night." His childlike bride wept as she unfastened her dress.

  *

  Flossie Gaddis and her mother were sitting in their kitchen. Floss was sewing on another costume, one of white satin intended for her delayed marriage to Frank. Mrs. Gaddis was knitting on a gray sock for Henny. Henny was dead, of course, but all of his life the mother had knit socks for him and she couldn't let go of the habit. Mrs. Gaddis dropped a stitch when the first scream came.

  Floss said: "The
men have all the fun and women, the pain." The mother said nothing. She trembled when next Katie cried out. "It seems funny," said Floss, "to be making a costume with two sleeves."

  "Yes."

  They worked a while in silence before Floss spoke again. "I wonder are they worth it? The children, I mean."

  Mrs. Gaddis thought of her dead son and her daughter's withered arm. She said nothing. She bent her head over her knitting. She had come around to the place where she dropped a stitch. She concentrated on picking it up.

  The spare Tynmore spinsters lay in their hard virginal bed. They groped for each other's hands. "Did you hear it, Sister?" asked Miss Maggie.

  "Her time has come," answered Miss Lizzie.

  "That's why I didn't marry Harvey--long ago when he asked me. I was afraid of that. So afraid."

  "I don't know," Miss Lizzie said. "Sometimes I think it's better to suffer bitter unhappiness and to fight and to scream out, and even to suffer that terrible pain, than just to be...safe." She waited until the next scream died away. "At least she knows she's living."

  Miss Maggie had no answer.

  The flat across the hall from the Nolans was vacant. The remaining flat in the house was occupied by a Polish dock walloper, his wife and their four kids. He was filling a glass from a can of beer on the table when he heard Katie.

  "Women!" he grunted contemptuously.

  "Shut up, you," snarled his wife.

  And all the women in the house tensed each time Katie cried out, and they suffered with her. It was the only thing the women held in common--the sure knowledge of the pain of giving birth.

  Francie had to walk a long way up Manhattan Avenue before she found a Jewish dairy open. She had to go to another store for the crackers and then find a fruit stand that had navel oranges. As she came back, she glanced at the large clock in Knipe's Drug Store, and noted that it was nearly half past ten. She didn't care what time it was except that it seemed so important to her mother.

  When she walked into the kitchen, she felt a difference. There was a new quiet feeling and an indefinable smell, new and faintly fragrant. Sissy was standing with her back to the basket.

  "What do you think," she said. "You have a baby sister."

  "Mama?"