A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

by Betty Smith

  The thrifty man had gathered up the bits of gouged-out wood and taken them home. Stubbornly he had fitted and glued the scraps together and carved out three small crucifixes from the blessed wood. Mary gave one to each of her daughters on their wedding day with instructions that the crosses were to be passed on to the first daughter in each succeeding generation.

  Katie's crucifix hung high on the wall over the mantelpiece at home. It would be Francie's when she married and she was proud that it had come from the wood of that fine altar.

  Today the altar was lovely with banked scarlet poinsettias and fir boughs with the golden points of lighted slender white candles gleaming among the leaves. The thatched creche was inside the altar rail. Francie knew that the tiny hand-carved figures of Mary, Joseph, the kings, and shepherds were grouped about the Child in the manger as they had first been grouped a hundred years ago when they had been brought over from the old country.

  The priest entered, followed by the altar boys. Over his other vestments, he wore a white satin chasuble with a golden cross on the front and back. Francie knew that the chasuble was symbolic of the seamless garment, supposedly woven by Mary, that they had removed from Christ before they nailed Him to the cross. It was said that on Calvary, the soldiers, not wishing to divide the garment, had cast dice for it while Jesus was dying.

  Absorbed in her thoughts, Francie missed the beginning of the mass. She picked it up now, following the familiar Latin in translation.

  To Thee, O God, my God, I will give praise upon the harp. Why art thou sad, my soul, and why dost thou disquiet me, chanted the priest in his deep rich voice.

  Hope in God, for I will still give praise to Him, responded the altar boy.

  Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost.

  As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end, Amen, came the response.

  I will go unto the altar of God, chanted the priest.

  To God, Who giveth joy to my youth, came the response.

  Our help is in the name of the Lord.

  Who made Heaven and earth.

  The priest bowed and recited the Confiteor.

  Francie believed with all her heart that the altar was Calvary and that again Jesus was offered up as a sacrifice. As she listened to the consecrations, one for His Body and one for His Blood, she believed that the words of the priest were a sword which mystically separated the Blood from the Body. And she knew, without knowing how to explain why, that Jesus was entirely present, Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity in the wine in the golden chalice and in the bread on the golden plate.

  "It's a beautiful religion," she mused, "and I wish I understood it more. No. I don't want to understand it all. It's beautiful because it's always a mystery, like God Himself is a mystery. Sometimes I say I don't believe in God. But I only say that when I'm mad at Him...Because I do! I do! I believe in God and Jesus and Mary. I'm a bad Catholic because I miss mass once in a while and I grumble when, at confession, I get a heavy penance for something I couldn't help doing. But good or bad, I am a Catholic and I'll never be anything else.

  "Of course, I didn't ask to be born a Catholic, no more than I asked to be born an American. But I'm glad it turned out that I'm both these things."

  The priest ascended the curved steps to the pulpit. "Your prayers are requested," intoned his magnificent voice, "for the repose of the soul of John Nolan."

  "Nolan...Nolan..." sighed the echoes of the vaulted ceiling.

  With a sound like an anguished whisper, nearly a thousand people knelt to pray briefly for the soul of a man only a dozen of them had known. Francie began the prayer for the souls in Purgatory.

  Good Jesus, Whose loving heart was ever troubled by the sorrows of others, look with pity on the soul of our dear one in Purgatory. Oh You, Who loved Your own, hear my cry for mercy....

  46

  "IN TEN MORE MINUTES," ANNOUNCED FRANCIE, "IT WILL BE 1917."

  Francie and her brother were sitting side by side with their stockinged feet inside the oven of the kitchen range. Mama, who had given strict orders to be called five minutes before midnight, was resting on her bed.

  "I have a feeling," continued Francie, "that 1917 will be more important than any year we've ever had."

  "You say that about every year," claimed Neeley. "First, 1915 was going to be the most important. Then 1916, and now, 1917."

  "It will be important. For one thing, in 1917 I'll be sixteen for real instead of just in the office. And other important things have started already. The landlord's putting in wires. In a few weeks we'll have 'lectricity instead of gas."

  "Suits me."

  "Then he's going to rip out these stoves and put in steam heat."

  "Gee, I'll miss this old stove. Remember how in olden times," (two years ago!) "I used to sit on the stove?"

  "And I used to be afraid you'd catch on fire."

  "I feel like sitting on the stove right now."

  "Go ahead." He sat on the surface furthest away from the firebox. It was pleasantly warm but not hot. "Remember," Francie went on, "how we did our examples on this hearthstone, and the time papa got us a real blackboard eraser and then the stone was like the blackboard in school, only lying down?"

  "Yeah. That was a long time ago. But look! You can't claim 1917's going to be important because we'll have 'lectricity and steam heat. Other flats have had 'em for years. That's nothing important."

  "The important thing about this year is that we'll get into the war."

  "When?"

  "Soon. Next week...next month."

  "How do you know?"

  "I read the papers every day, brother--two hundred of 'em."

  "Oh, boy! I hope it lasts 'til I'm old enough to join the navy."

  "Who's joining the navy?" They looked around, startled. Mama was standing in the bedroom doorway.

  "We're just talking, Mama," explained Francie.

  "You forgot to call me," said Mama reproachfully, "and I thought I heard a whistle. It must be New Year's now."

  Francie threw open the window. It was a frosty night without a wind. All was still. Across the yards, the backs of the houses were dark and brooding. As they stood at the window, they heard the joyous peal of a church bell. Then other bell sounds tumbled over the first pealing. Whistles came in. A siren shrieked. Darkened windows banged open. Tin horns were added to the cacophony. Someone fired off a blank cartridge. There were shouts and catcalls.

  1917!

  The sounds died away and the air was filled with waiting. Someone started to sing:

  Should auld acquaintance be forgot, And never brought to mind...

  The Nolans picked up the song. One by one, the neighbors joined in. And they all sang. But as they sang something disquieting came among them. A group of Germans were singing a round. The German words crowded into "Auld Lang Syne."

  Ja, das ist ein Gartenhaus,

  Gartenhaus,

  Gartenhaus.

  Ach, du schoenes,

  Ach, du schoenes,

  Ach, du schoenes Gartenhaus.

  Someone shouted: "Shut up, you lousy heinies!" In answer, the German song swelled mightily and drowned out "Auld Lang Syne."

  In retaliation, the Irish shouted a parody of the song across the dark back yards.

  Yeah, das is a God-damned song, God-damned song,

  God-damned song.

  Oh, du lousy,

  Oh, du lousy,

  Oh, du lousy heinie song.

  Windows could be heard shutting as the Jews and Italians withdrew leaving the fight to the Germans and Irish. The Germans sang lustier and more voices came in until they killed the parody even as they had killed "Auld Lang Syne." The Germans won. They finished their interminable rounds in shouting triumph.

  Francie shivered. "I don't like Germans," she said. "They're so...so persistent when they want something and they've always got to be ahead."

  Once more the night was quiet. Francie grabbed her mother and Neeley. "A
ll together now," she ordered. The three of them leaned out of the window and shouted,

  "Happy New Year, everybody!"

  An instant of silence, then out of the dark a thick Irish brogue shouted: "Happy New Year, youse Nolans!"

  "Now who could that be?" puzzled Katie.

  "Happy New Year, you dirty Irish mick!" Neeley screamed back.

  Mama clapped her hand over his mouth and pulled him away while Francie slammed the window down. All three of them were laughing hysterically.

  "Now you did it!" gasped Francie, laughing so hard that she cried.

  "He knows who we are and he'll come around here and fi...fi...fight," gurgled Katie so weak from laughing that she had to hold on to the table. "Who...who...was it?"

  "Old man O'Brien. Last week he cursed me out of his yard, the dirty Irish...."

  "Hush!" said Mama. "You know that whatever you do when the new year starts, you'll do all year."

  "And you don't want to go around saying 'dirty Irish mick' like a busted record, do you?" asked Francie. "Besides, you're a mick yourself."

  "You, too," accused Neeley.

  "We're all Irish, except Mama."

  "And I'm Irish by marriage," she said.

  "Well, do us Irish drink a toast on New Year's Eve, or don't we?" demanded Francie.

  "Of course," said Mama. "I'll mix us a drink."

  McGarrity had given the Nolans a bottle of fine old brandy for Christmas. Now Katie poured a small jiggerful of it into each of three tall glasses. She filled the rest of each glass with beaten egg and milk mixed with a little sugar. She grated nutmeg and sprinkled it on the top.

  Her hands were steady as she worked although she considered this drinking tonight as something crucial. She worried constantly that the children might have inherited the Nolan love of drink. She had tried to come to an attitude about liquor in the family. She felt that if she preached against it, the children, unpredictable individualists that they were, might consider drinking forbidden and fascinating. On the other hand, if she made light of it, they might consider drunkenness a natural thing. She decided neither to make nothing of it nor much of it; to proceed as though drinking was no more or less than something to be moderately indulged in at seasonal times. Well, New Year's was such a time. She handed each a glass. A lot depended on their reactions.

  "What do we drink to?" asked Francie.

  "To a hope," said Katie. "A hope that our family will always be together the way it is tonight."

  "Wait!" said Francie. "Get Laurie, so she's together with us, too."

  Katie got the patient sleeping baby out of her crib and carried her into the warm kitchen. Laurie opened her eyes, lifted her head and showed two teeth in a befuddled smile. Then her head went down on Katie's shoulder and she was asleep again.

  "Now!" said Francie holding up her glass. "To being together, always." They clicked glasses and drank.

  Neeley tasted his drink, frowned, and said he'd rather have plain milk. He poured the drink down the sink and filled another glass with cold milk. Katie watched, worried, as Francie drained her glass.

  "It's good," Francie said, "pretty good. But not half as good as a vanilla ice-cream soda."

  "What am I worrying about?" sang Katie inwardly. "After all, they're as much Rommely as Nolan and we Rommelys are not drinking people."

  "Neeley, let's go up on the roof," said Francie impulsively, "and see how the whole world looks at the beginning of a year."

  "Okay," he agreed.

  "Put your shoes on first," ordered Mama, "and your coats."

  They climbed the shaky wooden ladder, Neeley pushed the opening aside and they were on the roof.

  The night was heady and frosty. There was no wind and the air was cold and still. The stars were brilliant and hung low in the sky. There were so many stars that their light made the sky a deep cobalt blue. There wasn't a moon but the starlight served better than moonlight.

  Francie stood on tiptoe and stretched her arms wide. "Oh, I want to hold it all!" she cried. "I want to hold the way the night is--cold without wind. And the way the stars are so near and shiny. I want to hold all of it tight until it hollers out, 'Let me go! Let me go!'"

  "Don't stand so near the edge," said Neeley, uneasily. "You might fall off the roof."

  "I need someone," thought Francie desperately. "I need someone. I need to hold somebody close. And I need more than this holding. I need someone to understand how I feel at a time like now. And the understading must be part of the holding.

  "I love Mama and Neeley and Laurie. But I need someone to love in a different way from the way I love them.

  "If I talked to Mama about it, she'd say, 'Yes? Well, when you get that feeling don't linger in dark hallways with the boys.' She'd worry, too, thinking I was going to be the way Sissy used to be. But it isn't an Aunt Sissy thing because there's this understanding that I want almost more than I want the holding. If I told Sissy or Evy, they'd talk the same as Mama, although Sissy was married at fourteen and Evy at sixteen. Mama was only a girl when she married. But they've forgotten...and they'd tell me I was too young to be having such ideas. I'm young, maybe, in just being fifteen. But I'm older than those years in some things. But there is no one for me to hold and no one to understand. Maybe someday...someday...."

  "Neeley, if you had to die, wouldn't it be wonderful to die now--while you believed that everything was perfect, the way this night is perfect?"

  "You know what?" asked Neeley.

  "No. What?"

  "You're drunk from that milk punch. That's what."

  She clenched her hands and advanced on him. "Don't you say that! Don't you ever say that!"

  He backed away, frightened at her fierceness. "Tha...tha...that's all right," he stammered. "I was drunk myself, once."

  She lost her anger in curiosity. "Were you, Neeley? Honest?"

  "Yeah. One of the fellers had some bottles of beer and we went down the cellar and drank it. I drank two bottles and got drunk."

  "What did it feel like?"

  "Well, first the whole world turned upside down. Then everything was like--you know those cardboard toots you buy for a penny, and you look in the small end and turn the big end, and pieces of colored paper keep falling around and they never fall around the same way twice? Mostly though, I was very dizzy. Afterwards I vomited."

  "Then I've been drunk, too," admitted Francie.

  "On beer?"

  "No. Last spring, in McCarren's Park, I saw a tulip for the first time in my life."

  "How'd you know it was a tulip if you'd never seen one?"

  "I'd seen pictures. Well, when I looked at it, the way it was growing, and how the leaves were, and how purely red the petals were, with yellow inside, the world turned upside down and everything went around like the colors in a kaleidoscope--like you said. I was so dizzy I had to sit on a park bench."

  "Did you throw up, too?"

  "No," she answered. "And I've got that same feeling here on this roof tonight, and I know it's not the milk punch."

  "Gee!"

  She remembered something. "Mama tested us when she gave us that milk punch. I know it."

  "Poor Mama," said Neeley. "But she doesn't have to worry about me. I'll never get drunk again because I don't like to throw up."

  "And she doesn't have to worry about me, either. I don't need to drink to get drunk. I can get drunk on things like the tulip--and this night."

  "I guess it is a swell night," agreed Neeley.

  "It's so still and bright...almost...holy."

  She waited. If Papa were here with her now....

  Neeley sang.

  Silent night. Holy night.

  All is calm, all is bright.

  "He's just like Papa," she thought happily.

  She looked out over Brooklyn. The starlight half revealed, half concealed. She looked out over the flat roofs, uneven in height, broken once in a while by a slanting roof from a house left over from older times. The chimney pots on the roofs...and o
n some, the shadowing looming of pigeon cotes...sometimes, faintly heard, the sleepy cooing of pigeons...the twin spires of the Church, remotely brooding over the dark tenements.... And at the end of their street, the great Bridge that threw itself like a sigh across the East River and was lost...lost...on the other shore. The dark East River beneath the Bridge, and far away, the misty-gray skyline of New York, looking like a city cut from cardboard.

  "There's no other place like it," Francie said.

  "Like what?"

  "Brooklyn. It's a magic city and it isn't real."

  "It's just like any other place."

  "It isn't! I go to New York every day and New York's not the same. I went to Bayonne once to see a girl from the office who was home, sick. And Bayonne isn't the same. It's mysterious here in Brooklyn. It's like--yes--like a dream. The houses and streets don't seem real. Neither do the people."

  "They're real enough--the way they fight and holler at each other and the way they're poor, and dirty, too."

  "But it's like a dream of being poor and fighting. They don't really feel these things. It's like it's all happening in a dream."

  "Brooklyn is no different than any other place," said Neeley firmly. "It's only your imagination makes it different. But that's all right," he added magnanimously, "as long as it makes you feel so happy."

  Neeley! So much like Mama, so much like Papa; the best of each in Neeley. She loved her brother. She wanted to put her arms around him and kiss him. But he was like Mama. He hated people to be demonstrative. If she tried to kiss him, he'd get mad and push her away. So, she held out her hand instead.

  "Happy New Year, Neeley."

  "The same to you."

  They shook hands solemnly.

  47

  FOR THE LITTLE WHILE OF THE CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS, IT HAD BEEN almost like old times in the Nolan family. But after New Year's things reverted to the new routine which had grown on them since Johnny's death.

  There were no more piano lessons, for one thing. Francie hadn't practiced in months. Neeley did his piano playing evenings in the neighborhood ice-cream saloons. He had been expert at ragtime and was becoming even more expert at jazz. He could make a piano talk--so people said--and he was very popular. He played for free sodas. Sometimes Scheefly gave him a dollar on a Saturday night for playing the whole evening. Francie didn't like it and spoke to her mother about it.