A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

by Betty Smith

  "Your mother's fine."

  "So that's why I was sent to the store."

  "We thought you knew too much already for fourteen," said Evy coming out of the bedroom.

  "I just want to know the one thing," said Francie fiercely. "Did Mama send me out?"

  "Yes, Francie, she did," said Sissy gently. "She said something about sparing those you love."

  "All right then," said Francie mollified.

  "Don't you want to see the baby?"

  Sissy stepped aside. Francie lifted the blanket from the baby's head. The baby was a beautiful little thing with white skin and downy black curls which grew down into a point on her forehead, like Mama's. The baby's eyes opened briefly. Francie noticed that they were a milky blue. Sissy explained that all new babies had blue eyes and that probably they'd be dark as coffee beans as she grew older.

  "It looks like Mama," Francie decided.

  "That's what we thought," said Sissy.

  "Is it all right?"

  "Perfect," Evy told her.

  "Not crooked or anything?"

  "Certainly not. Where do you get such ideas?"

  Francie didn't tell Evy how she was afraid the baby would be born crooked because Mama had worked on her hands and knees up to the last minute.

  "May I go in and see Mama?" she asked humbly, feeling like a stranger in her own home.

  "You can bring the plate in to her." Francie took the plate holding two buttered crackers in to her mother.

  "Hello, Mama."

  "Hello, Francie."

  Mama looked like Mama again, only very tired. She couldn't raise her head so Francie held the crackers while she ate them. After they were gone, Francie stood holding the empty plate. Mama said nothing. It seemed to Francie that she and Mama were strangers again. The closeness of the last few days was gone.

  "And you had a boy's name picked out, Mama."

  "Yes. But I don't mind a girl, really."

  "She's pretty."

  "She'll have black curling hair. And Neeley has blond curling hair. Poor Francie got the straight brown hair."

  "I like straight brown hair," Francie said defiantly. She was dying to know the baby's name but Mama seemed like such a stranger now that she didn't like to ask outright. "Shall I write the information out to send to the Board of Health?"

  "No. The priest will send it in when she's christened."

  "Oh!"

  Katie recognized the disappointment in Francie's tone. "But bring in the ink and the book and I'll let you write down her name."

  Francie took the Gideon Bible that Sissy had swiped nearly fifteen years ago, from the mantelpiece. She looked at the four entries on the fly-leaf. The first three were in Johnny's fine careful hand.

  January 1, 1901. Married. Katherine Rommely and John Nolan.

  December 15, 1901. Born. Frances Nolan.

  December 23, 1902. Born. Cornelius Nolan.

  The fourth entry was in Katie's firm back-hand slant.

  December 25, 1915. Died. John Nolan. Age, 34.

  Sissy and Evy followed Francie in to the bedroom. They, too, were curious as to what Katie would name the baby. Sarah? Eva? Ruth? Elizabeth?

  "Write this down." Katie dictated. "May 28, 1916. Born." Francie dipped her pen in the ink bottle. "Annie Laurie Nolan."

  "Annie! Such an ordinary name," groaned Sissy.

  "Why, Katie? Why?" demanded Evy patiently.

  "A song that Johnny sang once," explained Katie.

  As Francie wrote the name, she heard the chords; she heard her father singing, "And 'twas there that Annie Laurie."...Papa...Papa....

  "...a song, he said, that belonged to a better world," Katie went on. "He would have liked the child named after one of his songs."

  "Laurie is a pretty name," said Francie.

  And Laurie became the baby's name.

  41

  LAURIE WAS A GOOD BABY. SHE SLEPT CONTENTEDLY MOST OF THE time. When she was awake, she put in the time lying quietly and trying to focus her berry brown eyes on her infinitesimal fist.

  Katie nursed the baby, not only because it was the instinctive thing to do, but because there was no money for fresh milk. Since the baby couldn't be left alone, Katie started her work at five in the morning, doing the other two houses first. She worked until nearly nine when Francie and Neeley left for school. Then she cleaned her own house leaving the door of her flat ajar in case Laurie cried. Katie went to bed immediately after supper each night and Francie saw so little of her mother that it seemed as if Mama had gone away.

  McGarrity didn't fire them after the baby's birth as he had planned. He really needed them now because his business boomed suddenly in that spring of 1916. His saloon was crowded all the time. Great changes were taking place in the country, and his customers, like Americans everywhere, had to get together to talk things over. The corner saloon was their only gathering place, the poor man's club.

  Francie, working in the flat above the saloon, heard their raised voices through the thin floor boards. Often she paused in her work and listened. Yes, the world was changing rapidly and this time she knew it was the world and not herself. She heard the world changing as she listened to the voices.

  It's a fact. They're gonna stop making liquor and in a few years the country will be dry.

  A man that works hard has a right to his beer.

  Tell that to the president and see how far you get.

  This is a people's country. If we don't want it dry, it won't be dry.

  Sure it's a people's country but they're gonna push prohibition down your throat.

  By Jesus, I'll make my own wine, then. My old man used to make it in the old country. You take a bushel of grapes....

  G'wan! They'll never give wimmen the vote.

  Don't lay any bets on it.

  If that comes, my wife votes like I do, otherwise I'll break her neck.

  My old woman wouldn't go to the polls and mix in with a bunch of bums and rummies.

  ...a woman president. That might be.

  They'll never let a woman run the government.

  There's one running it right now.

  Like hell!

  Wilson can't turn around and go to the bathroom 'less he asks Mrs. Wilson if it's okay by her.

  Wilson's an old woman himself.

  He's keeping us out of war.

  That college professor!

  What we need in the White House is a sound politician and not a schoolteacher.

  *

  ...automobiles. Soon the horse will be a thing of the past. That feller out in Dee-troit's making cars so cheap that soon every working man can have one.

  A laborer driving his own car! You should live so long!

  Airplanes! Just a crazy fad. Won't last long.

  The moving pitchers is here to stay. The thee-ayters is closing up one by one in Brooklyn. Take me: I'd rather see this here Charlie Chaplin any day than this here Corset Payton the wife goes for.

  ...wireless. Greatest thing ever invented. Words come through the air, mind you, without wires. You need a kind of a machine to ketch it and earphones to listen in....

  They call it twilight sleep and a woman don't feel a thing when the kid comes. So when this friend tells my wife, she says that it's about time they invented something like that.

  What're you talking about! Gaslight's out of date. They're putting 'lectricity even in the cheapest tenements.

  Don't know what's got into the youngsters nowadays. They're all dance crazy. Dance...dance...dance....

  So I changed my name from Schultz to Scott. The judge says what do you want to go and do that for? Schultz is a good name. He was German himself, see? Listen, Mac, I says...that's just how I talked to him; judge or no judge. I'm through with the old country, I says. After what they done to them Belgian babies, I says, I want no part of Germany. I'm an American now, I says, and I want an American name.

  And we're heading straight for war. Man, I can see it coming.

  All we got to do
is to elect Wilson again this fall. He'll keep us out of war.

  Don't bet on them campaign promises. When you got a Democrat president, you got a war president.

  Lincoln was a Republican.

  But the south had a Democrat president and they was the ones started the Civil War.

  I ask you how long we gotta stand for it? The bastards sunk another one of our ships. How many do they gotta sink before we get up enough nerve to go over there and lick hell out of them?

  We got to stay out. This country's getting along fine. Let them fight their own wars without dragging us in.

  We don't want war.

  War's declared, I'll enlist the next day.

  You can talk. You're past fifty. They wouldn't take you.

  I'd sooner go to jail than to war.

  A feller's got to fight for what he thinks is right. I'd be glad to go.

  I got nothing to worry about. I got a double hernia.

  Let the war come. They'll need us working men then to build their ships and their guns. They'll need the farmer to grow their food. Then watch them come sucking around us. Us laborers will have the God-damned capitalists by the throat. They won't tell us. We'll tell them. By Jesus, we'll make them sweat. War can't come quick enough to suit me.

  Like I'm telling you. Everything is machines. I heard a joke the other day. Feller and his wife going around getting food, clothes, everything out of machines. So they come to this baby machine and the feller puts money in and out comes a baby. So the feller turns around and says, give me the good old days.

  The good old days! Yeah. I guess they're gone forever.

  Fill 'em up again, Jim.

  And Francie, pausing in her sweeping to listen, tried to put everything together and tried to understand a world spinning in confusion. And it seemed to her that the whole world changed in between the time that Laurie was born and graduation day.

  42

  FRANCIE HARDLY HAD TIME TO GET USED TO LAURIE WHEN GRADUATION night came around. Katie couldn't go to both graduations so it was decided that she go to Neeley's. And that was right. Neeley shouldn't be deprived because Francie had felt like changing schools. Francie understood but felt a bit hurt just the same. Papa would have gone to see her graduate if he were living. They arranged that Sissy go with Francie. Evy would stay with Laurie.

  On the last night in June 1916, Francie walked for the last time to the school she so loved. Sissy, quiet and changed since she got her baby, walked sedately beside her. Two firemen passed and Sissy never so much as noticed and there had been a time when Sissy couldn't resist a uniform. Francie wished Sissy hadn't changed. It made her feel lonesome. Her hand crept into Sissy's and Sissy squeezed it. Francie was comforted. Sissy was still Sissy underneath.

  The graduates sat in the front part of the auditorium and the guests in the back. The principal made an earnest speech to the children about how they were going out into a troubled world and about how it would be up to them to build a new world after the war which was sure to come to America. He urged them on to higher education so that they would be better equipped for this world building. Francie was impressed and vowed in her heart that she'd help carry the torch like he said.

  Then came the graduation play. Francie's eyes burned with unshed tears. As the diluted dialogue droned on, she thought, "My play would have been better. I would have taken the ash can out. I would have done whatever Teacher said if she had only let me write the play."

  After the play, they marched up, got their diplomas and were graduates at last. The oath of allegiance to the flag and the singing of "The Star-Spangled Banner" clinched it.

  And now came the time of Francie's Gethsemane.

  It was the custom to present bouquets to the girl graduates. Since flowers were not allowed in the auditorium, they were delivered to the classrooms where the teachers placed them on the recipient's desk.

  Francie had to go back to her room to get her report card; also her pencil box and autograph book from her desk. She stood outside nerving herself for the ordeal, knowing her desk would be the only one without flowers. She was sure, because she hadn't told Mama about the custom, knowing there was no money at home for such things.

  Deciding to get it over with, she went in and walked straight to the teacher's desk, not daring to look at her own. The air was thick with flower scents. She heard the girls chattering and squealing with delight over their flowers. She heard the exchange of triumphant admiration.

  She got her report card: four "A"s and one "C minus." The latter was her English mark. She used to be the best writer in school and here she ended up barely passing English. Suddenly, she hated the school and all the teachers, especially Miss Garnder. And she didn't care about not getting flowers. She didn't care. It was a silly custom, anyway. "I'll go to my desk and get my things," she decided. "And if anyone speaks to me, I'll tell them to shut up. And then I'll walk out of this school forever and not say good-bye to anyone." She raised her eyes. "The desk without flowers on it will be mine." But there were no empty desks! There were flowers on every single one!

  Francie went to her desk, reasoning that a girl had placed one of her bouquets there for a moment. Francie planned to pick it up and hand it to the owner saying coolly, "Do you mind? I have to get something out of my desk."

  She picked up the flowers--two dozen dark red roses on a sheaf of ferns. She cradled them in her arm, the way the other girls did, and pretended for a moment that they were hers. She looked for the owner's name on the card. But her own name was on the card! Her name! The card said: For Francie on graduation day. Love from Papa.

  Papa!

  The writing was in his fine careful hand, in the black ink from the bottle in the cupboard at home. Then it was all a dream, a long mixed-up dream. Laurie was a dream, and the working at McGarrity's, and the graduation play, and the bad mark in English. She was waking up now and everything would be all right. Papa would be waiting out in the hall.

  But there was only Sissy in the hall.

  "Then Papa is dead," she said.

  "Yes," said Sissy. "And it's six months now."

  "But he can't be, Aunt Sissy. He sent me flowers."

  "Francie, about a year ago he gave me that card all written out and two dollars. He said, 'When Francie graduates, send her some flowers for me--in case I forget.'"

  Francie started to cry. It wasn't only because she was sure, now, that nothing was a dream; it was because she was unstrung from working too hard and worrying about Mama; because she didn't get to write the graduation play; because she got a bad mark in English; because she had been too well prepared not to receive flowers.

  Sissy took her to the girls' washroom and pushed her into a booth. "Cry loud and hard," she ordered, "and hurry up. Your mother will be wondering what's keeping us."

  Francie stood in the booth, clutching her roses and sobbing. Each time the washroom door opened and chattering announced incoming girls, she flushed the toilet so that the noise of the water would drown out her sobs. Soon she was over it. When she came out, Sissy had a handkerchief wet with cold water to hand her. As Francie mopped her eyes, Sissy asked whether she felt better. Francie nodded yes, and begged her to wait a moment while she said her good-byes.

  She went into the principal's office and shook hands with him. "Don't forget the old school, Frances. Come back and see us sometime," he said.

  "I will," promised Francie. She went back to say good-bye to her classroom teacher.

  "We'll miss you, Frances," said Teacher.

  Francie got her pencil box and autograph book from her desk. She started to say good-bye to the girls. They crowded around her. One put her arm around her waist and two others kissed her cheek. They called out good-bye messages.

  "Come to my house to see me, Frances."

  "Write to me, Frances, and let me know how you're getting along."

  "Frances, we have a telephone now. Ring me up sometime. Ring me up tomorrow."

  "Write something in my autograph
book, huh, Frances? So's I can sell it when you get famous."

  "I'm going to summer camp. I'll put down my address. Write to me. Hear, Frances?"

  "I'm going to Girls High in September. You come to Girls High, too, Frances."

  "No. Come to Eastern District High with me."

  "Girls High!"

  "Eastern District!"

  "Erasmus Hall High's the best. You come there, Frances, with me and we'll be friends all through high school. I'll never have any other friend but you, if you'll come."

  "Frances, you never let me write in your autograph book."

  "Me neither."

  "Gimme, gimme."

  They wrote in Francie's all but empty book. "They're nice," Francie thought. "I could have been friends with them all the time. I thought they didn't want to be friends. It must have been me that was wrong."

  They wrote in the book. Some wrote small and cramped; others, loose and sprawling. But all the writing was the handwriting of children. Francie read as they wrote:

  I wish you luck, I wish you joy.

  I wish you first, a baby boy.

  And when his hair begins to curl,

  I wish you then, a baby girl.

  Florence Fitzgerald.

  When you are married

  And your husband gets cross,

  Sock him with the poker,

  And get a divorce.

  Jeannie Leigh.

  When night draws back the curtain,

  And pins it with a star,

  Remember I am still your friend,

  Though you may wander far.

  Noreen O'Leary.

  Beatrice Williams turned to the last page in the book and wrote:

  Way back here and out of sight,

  I sign my name, just for spite.

  She signed it, Your Fellow Writer, Beatrice Williams. "She would say fellow writer," thought Francie, still jealous about the play.

  Francie got away at last. Out in the hall she said to Sissy, "Just one more good-bye."

  "It's taking you the longest time to graduate," protested Sissy good-naturedly.

  Miss Garnder sat at her desk in her brilliantly lighted room. She was alone. She wasn't popular and so far no one had been in to say good-bye. She looked up eagerly as Francie entered.

  "So you've come to say good-bye to your old English teacher," she said, pleased.

  "Yes, ma'am."