A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

by Betty Smith

  Once she left home ten minutes earlier to have more time. In spite of no need of hurry, she still pushed her way out of the train, flew up the steps, rushed through the streets economically and crowded into a full elevator. She was fifteen minutes early. The big room was echoingly empty and she felt desolate and lost. When the other workers rushed in seconds before nine, Francie felt like a traitor. The next morning, she slept ten minutes longer and returned to her original timing.

  She was the only Brooklyn girl in the Bureau. The others came from Manhattan, Hoboken, the Bronx, and one commuted from Bayonne, New Jersey. Two of the oldest readers there, sisters, had originally come from Ohio. The first day Francie worked at the Bureau one of the sisters said to her, "You have a Brooklyn accent." It had sounded like a shocked accusation and made Francie self-conscious of her speech. She took to pronouncing words carefully, lest she say things like "goil" for "girl," and "apperntment" instead of "appointment."

  There were but two people in the Bureau to whom she could talk without embarrassment. One was the boss-manager. He was a Harvard graduate and in spite of a broad "a" which he used indiscriminately, his speech was plain and his vocabulary less affected than those of the readers, most of whom had graduated from high school and had picked up an extensive vocabulary from years of reading. The other person was Miss Armstrong, who was the only other college graduate.

  Miss Armstrong was the special city reader. Her desk was isolated in the choicest corner of the room where there was a north and an east window, the best light for reading. She read nothing but the Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, and New York City newspapers. A special messenger brought her each edition of the New York City newspapers soon after it left the presses. When her papers were read up, she didn't have to pitch in, as the other readers did, and help the girls who were behind. She crocheted or manicured her nails while waiting for the next edition. She was the highest paid, receiving thirty dollars a week. Miss Armstrong was a kindly person and she took a helpful interest in Francie and tried to draw her out in conversation so that she wouldn't feel lonely.

  Once in the washroom, Francie overheard a remark about Miss Armstrong being the boss's mistress. Francie had heard of, but never seen one of those fabulous beings. Immediately, she examined Miss Armstrong closely as a mistress. She saw that Miss Armstrong wasn't pretty; her face was almost simian with its wide mouth and flat thick nostrils, and her figure was merely passable. Francie looked at her legs. They were long, slender and exquisitely molded. She wore the sheerest of flawless silk stockings, and expensively made high-heeled pumps shod her beautifully arched feet. "Beautiful legs, then, is the secret of being a mistress," concluded Francie. She looked down at her own long thin legs. "I'll never make it, I guess." Sighing, she resigned herself to a sinless life.

  There was a class system in the Bureau engendered by the cutter, printer, paster, paper baler, and delivery boy. These workers, illiterate but sharp-witted, who for some reason called themselves The Club, assumed that the better-educated readers looked down on them. In retaliation, they stirred up as much trouble as possible among the readers.

  Francie's loyalties were divided. By background and education, she belonged to The Club class but by ability and intelligence she belonged to the readers' class. The Club was shrewd enough to feel this division in Francie and tried to use her as a go-between. They informed her of trouble-making office rumors, expecting that she would relay them to the readers and create dissension. But Francie wasn't friendly enough with the readers to exchange gossip with them and the rumors died with her.

  So one day, when the cutter told her that Miss Armstrong was leaving in September, and that she, Francie, was to be promoted to the city reader job, Francie assumed this to be a rumor invented to arouse jealousy among the readers, all of whom expected the city reading job when and if Miss Armstrong resigned. She thought it was preposterous, that she, a girl of fourteen, with nothing but a grade school education, would be considered eligible to take over the work of a thirty-year-old college graduate like Miss Armstrong.

  It was nearing the end of August and Francie was worried because Mama hadn't mentioned anything about her going to high school. She wanted desperately to go back to school. All the years of talk about higher education she had heard from her mother, grandmother, and aunts not only made her anxious to get more education, but gave her an inferiority complex about her present lack of education.

  She remembered with affection the girls who had written in her autograph book. She wanted to be one of them again. They came out of the same life as she did; they were no further along. Her natural place was going to school with them, not working competitively with older women.

  She didn't like working in New York. The crowds continually swarming about her made her tremble. She felt that she was being pushed into a way of life that she wasn't ready to handle. And the things she dreaded worst about working in New York was the crowded El trains.

  There had been that time in the train when, hanging from a strap and so tightly wedged in the crowd that she couldn't so much as lower her arm, she had felt a man's hand. No matter how she twisted and squirmed, she couldn't get away from that hand. When she swayed with the crowd as the cars swerved, the hand tightened. She was unable to twist her head to see whose hand it was. She stood in desperate futility, helplessly enduring the indignity. She could have called out and protested but she was too ashamed to call public attention to her predicament. It seemed an eternity before the crowd thinned out enough for her to move to a different part of the car. After that, standing in a crowded train became a dreaded ordeal.

  One Sunday, when she and Mama brought Laurie over to see Granma, Francie told Sissy about the man on the train, expecting that Sissy would comfort her. But her aunt treated it as a great joke.

  "So a man pinched you on the El," she said. "I wouldn't let that bother me. It means you're getting a good shape and there are some men who can't resist a woman's shape. Say! I must be getting old! It's been years since anybody pinched me on the El. There was a time when I couldn't ride in a crowd without coming home black and blue," she said proudly.

  "Is that anything to brag about?" asked Katie.

  Sissy ignored that remark. "The day will come, Francie," she said, "when you're forty-five and have a shape like a bag of horses' oats tied in the middle. Then you'll look back and long for the old days when men wanted to pinch you."

  "If she does look back," said Katie, "it will be because you put it in her mind and not because it's anything wonderful to remember." She turned to Francie. "As for you, learn to stand in the train without holding on to a strap. Keep your hands down and keep a long sharp pin in your pocket. If you feel a man's hand on you, stick it good with the pin."

  Francie did as Mama said. She learned to keep her feet without holding to a strap. She kept her hand closed on a long vicious pin in her coat pocket. She hoped someone would pinch her again. She just hoped so, so that she could stab him with the pin. "It's all very well for Sissy to talk about shapes and men, but I don't like to be pinched in the back. And when I get to be forty-five, I certainly hope that I have something nicer to look back on and long for than being pinched by a stranger. Sissy ought to be ashamed....

  "What's the matter with me, anyhow? Here I stand criticizing Sissy--Sissy who's been so darn good to me. I'm dissatisfied with my job when I should feel lucky having such interesting work. Imagine getting paid to read when I like to read so much anyhow. And everyone thinks New York is the most wonderful city in the world and I can't even get to like New York. Seems like I'm the most dissatisfied person in the whole world. Oh, I wish I was young again when everything seemed so wonderful!"

  Just before Labor Day, the boss called Francie into his private office and informed her that Miss Armstrong was leaving to be married. He cleared his throat and added that Miss Armstrong was marrying him, in fact.

  Francie's conception of a mistress broke and scattered. She had believed that men never married their m
istresses--that they cast them aside like worn-out gloves. So Miss Armstrong was to become a wife instead of a worn-out glove. Well!

  "So we'll need a new city reader," the boss was saying. "Miss Armstrong herself suggested that we...ah...try you out, Miss Nolan."

  Francie's heart jumped. She, city reader! The most coveted job in the Bureau! There had been truth, then, in The Club's rumors. Another preconceived idea gone. She had always assumed that all rumors were false.

  The boss planned to offer her fifteen a week, figuring he'd get as good a reader as his future wife at half the salary. The girl should be tickled to death, too--a youngster like that...fifteen a week. She said she was past sixteen. She looked thirteen. Of course her age was none of his business as long as she was competent. The law couldn't touch him--hiring someone under age. All he'd have to say was that she deceived him as to her true age.

  "There's a little raise along with the job," he said benignly. Francie smiled happily and he worried. "Have I put my foot in it?" he thought. "Maybe she didn't expect a raise." He covered his blunder hastily. "...a small raise after we see how you work out."

  "I don't know..." began Francie doubtfully.

  "She's over sixteen," decided the boss, "and she's going to hold me up for a big raise." To forestall her, he said, "We'll give you fifteen a week, starting..." He hesitated. No use being too good-natured. "...starting the first of October." He leaned back in his chair feeling as gracious as God Himself.

  "I mean, I don't think I'll be here much longer."

  "She's working me for more money," he thought. Aloud, he asked, "Why not?"

  "I'm going back to school after Labor Day, I think. I meant to tell you as soon as my plans were settled."

  "College?"

  "High school."

  "I'll have to put Pinski on city," he thought. "She's getting twenty-five now, she'll expect thirty and I'm right back where I started. This Nolan is better than Pinski, too. Damn Irma! Where does she get the idea that a woman shouldn't work after marriage? She could keep right on...keep the money in the family...buy a home with it." He spoke to Francie.

  "Oh! I'm sorry to hear that. Not that I don't approve of higher education. But I consider newspaper reading a darn fine education. It's a good live ever-growing contemporary education. While in school...it's merely books. Dead books," he said contemptuously.

  "I'll...I'll have to talk it over with my mother."

  "By all means. Tell her what your boss said about education. And tell her I said," he closed his eyes and took the plunge, "that we'll pay you twenty dollars a week. Starting the first of November," he shaved off a month.

  "That's an awful lot of money," she said in all honesty.

  "We believe in paying our workers well so they stick with us. And...ah...Miss Nolan, please don't mention your future salary. It's more than anyone else is getting," he lied, "and if they found out..." he spread his hands in a gesture of futility. "You understand? No washroom gossip."

  Francie felt gracious as she set his mind at ease by assuring him that she'd never betray him in the washroom. The boss started to sign letters, indicating that the interview was over.

  "That's all, Miss Nolan. And we must have your decision the day after Labor Day."

  "Yes, sir."

  Twenty dollars a week! Francie was stunned. Two months ago, she was glad to earn five dollars a week. Uncle Willie only earned eighteen a week and he was forty. Sissy's John was smart and earned but twenty-two-fifty a week. Few men in her neighborhood earned as much as twenty a week and they had families, too.

  "With that money, our troubles would be over," thought Francie. "We could pay rent on a three-room flat somewhere, Mama wouldn't have to go out to work and Laurie wouldn't be left alone so much. I guess I'd be mighty important if I could manage something like that.

  "But I want to go back to school!"

  She recalled the constant harping on education in the family.

  Granma: It will raise you up on the face of the earth.

  Evy: Each of my three children will get three diplomas.

  Sissy: And when Mother goes--pray God not for a long time yet--and baby is big enough to start kindergarten, I'm going out to work again. And I'll bank my pay and when Little Sissy grows up, I'll put her in the best college there is.

  Mama: And I don't want my children to have the same hardworking life I have. Education will fix it so that their lives are easier.

  "Still it's such a good job," thought Francie. "That is, good right now. But my eyes will get worn out from the work. All the older readers have to wear glasses. Miss Armstrong said a reader's only good as long as her eyes hold out. Those other readers were fast, too, when they first started. Like me. But now their eyes.... I must save my eyes...not read away from the job.

  "If Mama knew I could get twenty a week, maybe she wouldn't send me back to school and I couldn't blame her. We've been poor so long. Mama is very fair in all things but this money might make her see things in a different way and it wouldn't be her fault. I won't tell her about the raise until after she decides about school."

  Francie spoke to Mama about school and Mama said, yes, they'd have to talk about it. They'd talk about it right after supper that night.

  After finishing their supper coffee, Katie announced needlessly (since everybody knew it) that school was opening next week. "I want both of you to go to high school but it's working out that only one of you can start this fall. I'm saving every cent I can out of your pay so that next year, both of you will be back in school." She waited. She waited a long time. Neither of the children answered. "Well? Don't you want to go to high school?"

  Francie's lips were stiff as she spoke. So much depended on Mama, and Francie wanted her words to make a good impression. "Yes, Mama. I want to go back to school more'n I'll ever want anything in my life."

  "I don't want to go," said Neeley. "Don't make me go back to school, Mama. I like to work and I'm going to get a two-dollar raise the first of the year."

  "Don't you want to be a doctor?"

  "No. I want to be a broker and make lots of money like my bosses. I'll get on to the stock market and make a million dollars some day."

  "My son will be a great doctor."

  "How do you know? I might turn out like Dr. Hueller on Maujer Street with an office in a basement flat and always wear a dirty shirt like him. Anyhow, I know enough. I don't need to go back to school."

  "Neeley doesn't want to go back to school," said Katie. She spoke to Francie almost pleadingly. "You know what that means, Francie." Francie bit her lip. It wouldn't do to cry. She must keep calm. She must keep thinking clearly. "It means," said Mama, "that Neeley has to go back to school."

  "I won't!" cried Neeley. "I won't go back no matter what you say! I'm working and earning money and I want to keep on. I'm somebody now with the fellers. If I go back to school, I'm just a punk kid again. Besides, you need my money, Mama. We don't want to be poor again."

  "You'll go back to school," announced Katie quietly. "Francie's money will be enough."

  "Why do you make him go when he doesn't want to," cried Francie, "and keep me out of school when I want to go so much?"

  "Yeah," agreed Neeley.

  "Because if I don't make him, he'll never go back," said Mama, "where you, Francie, will fight and manage to get back somehow."

  "Why are you so sure all the time?" protested Francie. "In a year I'll be too old to go back. Neeley's only thirteen. He'll still be young enough next year."

  "Nonsense. You'll only be fifteen next fall."

  "Seventeen," corrected Francie, "going on eighteen; too old to start."

  "What kind of silly talk is that?"

  "Not silly. On the job, I'm sixteen. I have to look and act sixteen instead of fourteen. Next year I'll be fifteen in years but two years older in the way I'm living; too old to change back into a school girl."

  "Neeley will go back to school next week," said Katie stubbornly, "and Francie will go back next year." />
  "I hate both of you," shouted Neeley. "And if you make me go back, I'll run away from home. Yes, I will!" He ran out slamming the door.

  Katie's face set in lines of misery and Francie felt sorry for her. "Don't worry, Mama. He won't run away. He just said that." The instant relief that came into her mother's face angered Francie. "But I'm the one who'll go away and I won't make a speech about it. When the time comes that you don't need what I earn, I'll leave."

  "What's gotten into my children who used to be so good?" asked Katie poignantly.

  "Years have gotten into us." Katie looked puzzled. Francie explained: "We never did get working papers."

  "But they were hard to get. The priest wanted a dollar for each baptismal certificate and I would have had to go to City Hall with you. I was nursing Laurie every two hours then, and couldn't go. We all figured it was easier for you both to claim to be sixteen and not have all the fuss."

  "That part was all right. But saying we were sixteen, we had to be sixteen, and you treat us like thirteen-year-old children."

  "I wish your father were here. He understood things about you that I can't get to understand." Pain stabbed through Francie. After it passed, she told her mother that her salary was to be doubled on November first.

  "Twenty dollars!" Katie's mouth fell open in surprise. "Oh, my!" That was her usual expression when anything astonished her. "When did you know?"

  "Saturday."

  "And you didn't tell me till now."

  "No."

  "You thought if I knew that it would fix my mind about you keeping on working."

  "Yes."

  "But I didn't know when I said it was right for Neeley to go back to school. You can see that I did what I thought was right and the money didn't come into it. Can't you see?" she asked pleadingly.

  "No, I can't see. I can only see that you favor Neeley more than me. You fix everything for him and tell me that I can find a way myself. Some day I'll fool you, Mama. I'll do what I think is right for me and it might not be right in your way."

  "I'm not worrying, because I know that I can trust my daughter." Katie spoke with such simple dignity that Francie was ashamed of herself. "And I trust my son. He's mad now about doing what he doesn't want to do. But he'll get over it and do well in school. Neeley's a good boy."