A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

by Betty Smith

  "Take a drink, new girl," she ordered. "Them samwishes is dry going down alone." Francie shrank back and declined hastily. "Go ahead! It's only cold tea." Francie thought of the washroom towel and shook her head "no" emphatically. "Ah!" exclaimed the girl. "I know why you don't drink from my bottle. In the terlet, Anastasia scared you. Don't you believe her, new girl. The boss started that clappy talk hisself so's we wouldn't use the towels. That way he saves a couple dollars each week on laundry."

  "Yeah?" said Anastasia, "I don't see none of youse using the towel."

  "Hell, we only got half a hour for lunch. Who wants to waste time washing hands? Drink up, new girl."

  Francie took a long drink from the bottle. The cold tea was strong and refreshing. She thanked the girl and then tried to thank the donor of the tomato. Immediately each girl in turn denied giving it.

  "What are you talking about?"

  "What termater?"

  "Don't see no termater."

  "New girl brings a termater for lunch and don't even remember."

  So they teased her. But now there was something warmly companionable about the teasing. Francie enjoyed the lunch period and was glad she had found out what they wanted from her. They had just wanted her to laugh--such a simple thing and so hard to find out.

  The rest of the day passed pleasantly. The girls told her not to break her neck--that it was seasonable work and they'd all be laid off when the fall orders had been made up. The quicker the orders were finished, the sooner they'd be fired. Francie, pleased at being taken into the confidence of these older, more experienced workers, obligingly slowed down. They told jokes all afternoon and Francie laughed at them all, whether they were funny or just plain dirty. And her conscience bothered her only a little bit when she joined the others in tormenting Mark, the martyr, who didn't know that if he would laugh but once, his troubles in the shop would be over.

  It was a few minutes past noon on Saturday. Francie stood at the foot of the Flushing Avenue station of the Broadway El waiting for Neeley. She held an envelope containing five dollars--her first week's pay. Neeley was bringing home five dollars too. They had agreed to arrive home together and make a little ceremony out of giving the money to Mama.

  Neeley worked as errand boy in a downtown New York brokerage house. Sissy's John had gotten him the job through a friend already working there. Francie envied Neeley. Each day he crossed the great Williamsburg Bridge and went into the strange big city while Francie walked to her work on the north side of Brooklyn. And Neeley ate in a restaurant. Like Francie, he had brought his lunch the first day but the boys made fun of him, calling him the country boy from Brooklyn. After that, Mama gave him fifteen cents a day for lunch. He told Francie how he ate in a place called the Automat where you put a nickel in a slot and coffee and cream came out together--not too little, not too much, just a cupful. Francie wished she could ride across the bridge to work and eat in the Automat instead of carrying sandwiches from home.

  Neeley ran down the El steps. He carried a flat package under his arm. Francie noticed how he put his feet down at an angle so that the whole foot was on the step instead of just the heel part. This gave him sure footing. Papa had always come down stairs that way. Neeley wouldn't tell Francie what was in the package, saying that would spoil the surprise. They stopped in a neighborhood bank which was just about to close for the day and asked a teller to give them new one-dollar bills in exchange for their old money.

  "What do you want new bills for?" asked the teller.

  "It's our first pay and we'd like to bring it home in new money," explained Francie.

  "First pay, eh?" said the teller. "That takes me back. It certainly takes me back. I remember when I took home my first pay. I was a boy at the time...working on a farm in Manhasset, Long Island. Well, sir...." He went off into a biographical sketch while people in line shuffled impatiently. He ended, "...and when I turned my first pay over to my mother, the tears stood in her eyes. Yes, sir, the tears stood in her eyes."

  He tore the wrapper from a bundle of new bills and exchanged their old money. Then he said, "And here's a present for you." He gave each a fresh-minted gold-looking penny which he took from the cash drawer. "New 1916 pennies," he explained. "The first in the neighborhood. Don't spend them, now. Save them." He took two old coppers from his pocket and put them in the drawer to make up the deficiency. Francie thanked him. As they moved away, she heard the man next in line say as he leaned his elbow on the ledge,

  "I remember when I brought my first pay home to my old lady."

  As they went out, Francie wondered whether everyone in line would tell about his first pay. "Everyone who works," said Francie, "has this one thing together: They remember about bringing home their first pay."

  "Yeah," agreed Neeley.

  As they turned a corner, Francie mused, "'And the tears stood in her eyes.'" She had never heard that expression before and it caught her fancy.

  "How could that be?" Neeley wanted to know. "Tears have no legs. They can't stand."

  "He didn't mean that. He meant it like when people say, 'I stood in bed all day.'"

  "But 'stood' is no word that way."

  "It is so," countered Francie. "Here in Brooklyn 'stood' is like the past tense of 'stay.'"

  "I guess so," agreed Neeley. "Let's walk down Manhattan Avenue instead of Graham."

  "Neeley, I have an idea. Let's make a tin-can bank without telling Mama and nail it in your closet. We'll start it off with these new pennies and if Mama gives us any spending money, we'll each put ten cents in every week. We'll open it Christmas and buy presents for Mama and Laurie."

  "And for us, too," stipulated Neeley.

  "Yeah. I'll buy one for you and you buy one for me. I'll tell you what I want when the time comes."

  It was agreed.

  They walked briskly, outdistancing loitering kids homeward bound from the junk shops. They looked towards Carney's as they passed Scholes Street and noticed the crowd outside of Cheap Charlie's.

  "Kids," said Neeley contemptuously, jingling some coins in his pockets.

  "Remember, Neeley, when we used to go out selling junk?"

  "That was a long time ago."

  "Yeah," agreed Francie. It was, in fact, two weeks since they had dragged their last haul to Carney's.

  Neeley presented the flat package to Mama. "For you and Francie," he said. Mama unwrapped it. It was a pound box of Loft's peanut brittle. "And I didn't buy it out of my salary, either," explained Neeley mysteriously. They made Mama go into the bedroom for a minute. They arranged the ten new bills on the table, then called Mama out.

  "For you, Mama," said Francie with a grand wave of her hand.

  "Oh, my!" said Mama. "I can hardly believe it."

  "And that's not all," said Neeley. He took eighty cents in change from his pocket and placed it on the table. "Tips for running errands fast," he explained. "I saved 'em all week. There was more, but I bought the candy."

  Mama slid the change across the table to Neeley. "All the tips you make, you keep for spending money," she said.

  (Just like Papa, thought Francie.)

  "Gee! Well, I'll give Francie a quarter out of it."

  "No." Mama got a fifty-cent piece from the cracked cup and gave it to Francie. "That's Francie's spending money. Fifty cents a week." Francie was pleased. She hadn't expected that much of an allowance. The children overwhelmed their mother with thanks.

  Katie looked at the candy, at the new bills and then at her children. She bit her lip, turned suddenly and went into the bedroom, closing the door after her.

  "Is she mad about something?" whispered Neeley.

  "No," said Francie. "She's not mad. She just didn't want us to see her start crying."

  "How do you know she's going to cry?"

  " 'Cause. When she looked at the money, I saw that tears stood in her eyes."

  44

  FRANCIE HAD BEEN WORKING TWO WEEKS WHEN THE LAYOFF CAME. The girls exchanged looks while the boss
explained that it was just for a few days.

  "A few days, six months long," explained Anastasia for Francie's information.

  The girls were going over to a Greenpoint factory which needed hands for winter orders, poinsettias and artificial holly wreaths. When the layoff came there, they'd go on to another factory. And so on. They were Brooklyn migratory workers following seasonal work from one part of the borough to the other.

  They urged Francie to go along with them but she wanted to try new work. She figured that since she had to work, she'd get variety in it by changing her job each chance she got. Then, like the sodas, she could say she had tried every work there was.

  Katie found an ad in The World that said a file clerk was wanted; beginner considered, age sixteen, state religion. Francie bought a sheet of writing paper and an envelope for a penny and carefully wrote an application and addressed it to the ad's box number. Although she was only fourteen, she and her mother agreed that she could pass for sixteen easily. So she said she was sixteen in the letter.

  Two days later, Francie received a reply on an exciting letterhead: a pair of shears lying on a folded newspaper with a pot of paste nearby. It was from the Model Press Clipping Bureau on Canal Street, New York, and it asked Miss Nolan to report for an interview.

  Sissy went shopping with Francie and helped her buy a grown-up dress and her first pair of high-heeled pumps. When she tried on her new outfit, Mama and Sissy swore that she looked sixteen except for her hair. Her braids made her look very kiddish.

  "Mama, please let me get it bobbed," begged Francie.

  "It took you fourteen years to grow that hair," said Mama, "and I'll not let you have it cut off."

  "Gee, Mama, you're way behind the time."

  "Why do you want short hair like a boy?"

  "It would be easier to care for."

  "Taking care of her hair should be a woman's pleasure."

  "But Katie," protested Sissy, "all the girls are bobbing their hair nowadays."

  "They're fools, then. A woman's hair is her mystery. Daytimes, it's pinned up. But at night, alone with her man, the pins come out and it hangs loose like a shining cape. It makes her a special secret woman for the man."

  "At night, all cats are gray," said Sissy wickedly.

  "None of your remarks," said Katie sharply.

  "I'd look just like Irene Castle if I had short hair," persisted Francie.

  "They make Jew women cut off their hair when they marry, so no other man will look at them. Nuns get their hair cut off to prove they're done with men. Why should any young girl do it when she doesn't have to?" Francie was about to reply when Mama said, "We'll have no more arguments."

  "All right," said Francie. "But when I'm eighteen, I'll be my own boss. Then you'll see."

  "When you're eighteen, you can shave your scalp for all I care. In the meantime..." She wound Francie's two heavy braids around her head and pinned them in place with bone hairpins which she took from her own hair. "There!" She stepped back and surveyed her daughter. "It looks just like a shining crown," she announced dramatically.

  "It does make her look at least eighteen," conceded Sissy.

  Francie looked in the mirror. She was pleased that she looked so old the way Mama had fixed her hair. But she wouldn't give in and say so.

  "All my life I'll have headaches carrying this load of hair around," she complained.

  "Lucky you, if that's all gives you a life of headaches," said Mama.

  Next morning, Neeley escorted his sister to New York. As the train came on to the Williamsburg Bridge after leaving Marcy Avenue station, Francie noticed that many people seated in the car rose as if in accord and then sat down again.

  "Why do they do that, Neeley?"

  "Just as you get on the bridge, there's a bank with a big clock. People stand up to look at the time so's they know whether they're early or late for work. I betcha a million people look at that clock every day," figured Neeley.

  Francie had anticipated a thrill when she rode over that bridge for the first time. But the ride wasn't half as thrilling as wearing grown-up clothes for the first time.

  The interview was short. She was hired on trial. Hours, nine to five-thirty, half an hour for lunch, salary, seven dollars a week to start. First, the boss took her on a tour of inspection of the Press Clipping Bureau.

  The ten readers sat at long sloping desks. The newspapers of all the states were divided among them. The papers poured into the Bureau every hour of every day from every city in every state of the Union. The girls marked and boxed items sought and put down their total and their own identifying number on the top of the front page.

  The marked papers were collected and brought to the printer who had a hand press containing an adjustable date apparatus, and racks of slugs before her. She adjusted the paper's date on her press, inserted the slug containing the name, city, and state of the newspaper and printed as many slips as there were items marked.

  Then, slips and newspaper went to the cutter who stood before a large slanting desk and slashed out the marked items with a sharp curved knife. (In spite of the letterhead, there wasn't a pair of shears on the premises.) As the cutter slashed out the items, throwing the discarded paper to the floor, a sea of newspaper rose as high as her waist each fifteen minutes. A man collected this waste paper and took it away for baling.

  The clipped items and slips were turned over to the paster who affixed the clippings to the slips. Then they were filed, collected and placed in envelopes and mailed.

  Francie got on to the filing system very easily. In two weeks, she had memorized the two thousand or so names or headings on the file box. Then she was put into training as a reader. For two more weeks, she did nothing but study the clients' cards which were more detailed than the file box headings. When an informal examination proved that she had memorized the orders, she was given the Oklahoma papers to read. The boss went over her papers before they went to the cutter and pointed out her mistakes. When she got expert enough not to need checking, the Pennsylvania papers were added. Soon after she was given the New York state papers, and now had three states to read. By the end of August, she was reading more papers and marking more items than any other reader in the Bureau. She was fresh to the work, anxious to please, had strong clear eyes (she was the only reader not wearing glasses), and had developed a photographic eye very quickly. She could take in an item at a glance and note immediately whether it was something to mark. She read between a hundred and eighty and two hundred newspapers a day. The next best reader averaged from a hundred to a hundred and ten papers.

  Yes, Francie was the fastest reader in the Bureau--and the poorest paid. Although she had been raised to ten dollars a week when she went on reading, her runner-up received twenty-five dollars a week and the other readers received twenty. Since Francie never became friendly enough with the girls to be taken into their confidence, she had no way of knowing how grossly underpaid she was.

  Although Francie liked reading newspapers and was proud to earn ten dollars a week, she was not happy. She had been excited about going to work in New York. Since such a tiny thing as a flower in a brown bowl at the library had thrilled her so, she expected that the great city of New York would thrill her a hundred times more. But it was not so.

  The Bridge had been the first disappointment. Looking at it from the roof of her house, she had thought that crossing it would make her feel like a gossamer-winged fairy flying through the air. But the actual ride over the Bridge was no different than the ride above the Brooklyn streets. The Bridge was paved in sidewalks and traffic roads like the streets of Broadway and the tracks were the same tracks. There was no different feeling about the train as it went over the Bridge. New York was disappointing. The buildings were higher and the crowds thicker; otherwise it was little different from Brooklyn. From now on, would all new things be disappointing, she wondered?

  She had often studied the map of the United States and crossed its plains, mountains, dese
rts, and rivers in her imagination. And it had seemed a wonderful thing. Now she wondered whether she wouldn't be disappointed in that, too. Supposing, she thought, she was to walk across this great country. She'd start out at seven in the morning, say, and walk westward. She'd put one foot down in front of the other to cover distance, and, as she walked to the west, she'd be so busy with her feet and with the realization that her footsteps were part of a chain that had started in Brooklyn, that she might think nothing at all of the mountains, rivers, plains, and deserts she came upon. All she'd notice was that some things were strange because they reminded her of Brooklyn and that other things were strange because they were so different from Brooklyn. "I guess there is nothing new, then, in the world," decided Francie unhappily. "If there is anything new or different, some part of it must be in Brooklyn and I must be used to it and wouldn't be able to notice it if I came across it." Like Alexander the Great, Francie grieved, being convinced that there were no new worlds to conquer.

  She adapted herself to the split-second rhythm of the New Yorker going to and from work. Getting to the office was a nervous ordeal. If she arrived one minute before nine, she was a free person. If she arrived a minute after, she worried because that made her the logical scapegoat of the boss if he happened to be in a bad mood that day. So she learned ways of conserving bits of seconds. Long before the train ground to a stop at her station, she pushed her way to the door to be one of the first expelled when it slid open. Out of the train, she ran like a deer, circling the crowd to be the first up the stairs leading to the street. Walking to the office, she kept close to the buildings so she could turn corners sharply. She crossed streets kittycorner to save stepping off and on an extra pair of curbs. At the building, she shoved her way into the elevator even though the operator yelled "Car's full!" And all this maneuvering to arrive one minute before, instead of after nine!