by Betty Smith
Contents:
1 sealed envelope to be opened in 1967.
1 diploma.
4 stories.
Four stories, which Miss Garnder had told her to burn. Ah, well. Francie remembered how she had promised God she'd give up writing if He wouldn't let Mother die. She had kept her promise. But she knew God a little better, now. She was sure that He wouldn't care at all if she started to write again. Well, maybe she'd try again some day. She added her library card to the contents of the envelope, made an entry for it on the envelope and put that in the box. Her packing was finished. All her possessions, except her clothes, were in that box.
Neeley came running up the stairs whistling "At the Darktown Strutters' Ball." He burst into the kitchen peeling off his coat.
"I'm in a hurry, Francie. Have I got a clean shirt?"
"There's one washed but not ironed. I'll iron it for you."
She put the iron on to heat while she sprinkled the shirt and set up the ironing board on two chairs. Neeley got the shoe-shine kit from the closet and proceeded to put a higher shine on his already flawlessly polished shoes.
"Going somewhere?" she asked.
"Yup. Just got time to catch the show. They've got Van and Schenck and boy, can Schenck sing! He sits at the piano like this." Neeley sat at the kitchen table and demonstrated. "He sits sideways and crosses his legs, looking out at the audience. Then he leans his left elbow on the music rack and picks out the tune with his right hand while he sings." Neeley went into a fair imitation of his idol singing "When You're a Long, Long Way from Home."
"Yup, he's swell. Sings the way Papa used to...a little."
Papa!
Francie looked for the union label in Neeley's shirt and pressed that first.
("That label is like an ornament...like a rose that you wear.") The Nolans sought for the union label on everything they bought. It was their memorial to Johnny.
Neeley looked at himself in the glass hanging over the sink.
"Do you think I need a shave?" he asked.
"Not for five years, yet."
"Aw, shut up!"
"Don't-say-shut-up-to-each-other," said Francie, imitating her mother.
Neeley smiled and proceeded to scrub his face, neck, arms, and hands. He sang as he washed.
There's Egypt in your dreamy eyes, A bit of Cairo in your style....
Francie ironed away contentedly.
Neeley was dressed at last. He stood before her in his dark blue double-breasted suit, fresh white shirt with the soft turned-down collar and a polka-dot bow tie. He smelled fresh and clean from washing and his curly-blond hair gleamed.
"How do I look, Prima Donna?"
He buttoned up his coat jauntily and Francie saw that he wore their father's signet ring.
It was true then--what Granma had said: that the Rommely women had the gift of seeing the ghosts of their beloved dead. Francie saw her father.
"Neeley, do you still remember 'Molly Malone'?"
He put a hand in his pocket, turned away from her and sang.
In Dublin's fair city,
The girls are so pretty...
Papa...Papa!
Neeley had the same clear true voice. And how unbelievably handsome he was! So handsome that, even though he wasn't sixteen years old yet, women turned to look after him with a sigh when he walked down the street. He was so handsome that Francie felt like a dark drab alongside of him.
"Neeley, do you think I'm good-looking?"
"Look! Why don't you make a novena to St. Theresa about it? I think a miracle might fix you up."
"No, I mean it."
"Why don't you get your hair cut off and wear it in curls like the other girls instead of those chunks wound around your head?"
"I have to wait until I'm eighteen on account of Mother. But do you think I'm good-looking?"
"Ask me again when you fill out a little more."
"Please tell me."
He examined her carefully, then said, "You'll pass." She had to be satisfied with that.
He had said he was in a hurry, but now he seemed reluctant to go.
"Francie! McShane...I mean Dad, will be here for supper tonight. I'm working afterwards. Tomorrow will be the wedding and a party in the new house tomorrow night. Monday, I have to go to school. And while I'm there, you'll be getting on that Wolverine train for Michigan. There'll be no chance to say good-bye to you alone. So I'll say good-bye now."
"I'll be home for Christmas, Neeley."
"But it won't be the same."
"I know."
He waited. Francie extended her right hand. He pushed her hand aside, put his arms around her and kissed her on the cheek. Francie clung to him and started to cry. He pushed her away.
"Gee, girls make me sick," he said. "Always so mushy." But his voice was ragged as though he, too, was going to cry.
He turned and ran out of the flat. Francie went out into the hallway and watched him run down the steps. He paused in the well of darkness at the foot of the stairs and turned to look back up at her. Although it was dark, there was brightness where he stood.
So like Papa...so like Papa, she thought. But he had more strength in his face than Papa had had. He waved to her. Then he was gone.
Four o'clock.
Francie decided to get dressed first, and then fix supper so that she'd be all ready when Ben came to call for her. He had tickets and they were going to see Henry Hull in The Man Who Came Back. It was their last date until Christmas because Ben was leaving for college tomorrow. She liked Ben. She liked him an awful lot. She wished that she could love him. If only he wasn't so sure of himself all the time. If only he'd stumble--just once. If only he needed her. Ah, well. She had five years to think it over.
She stood before the mirror in her white slip. As she curved her arm over her head in washing, she remembered how she had sat on the fire escape when a little girl and watched the big girls in the flats across the yards getting ready for their dates. Was someone watching her as she had once watched?
She looked towards the window. Yes, across two yards she saw a little girl sitting on a fire escape with a book in her lap and a bag of candy at hand. The girl was peering through the bars at Francie. Francie knew the girl, too. She was a slender little thing of ten, and her name was Florry Wendy.
Francie brushed out her long hair, braided it and wound the braids around her head. She put on fresh stockings and white high-heeled pumps. Before she slipped a fresh pink linen dress over her head, she sprinkled violet sachet powder on a square of cotton and tucked it inside her brassiere.
She thought she heard Fraber's wagon come in. She leaned out of the window and looked. Yes, the wagon had come in. Only it wasn't a wagon anymore. It was a small maroon motor truck with the name in gilt letters on the sides and the man making preparations to wash it wasn't Frank, the nice young man with rosy cheeks. He was a little bandy-legged draft-exempt fellow.
She looked across the yards and saw that Florry was still staring at her through the bars of the fire escape. Francie waved and called: "Hello, Francie."
"My name ain't Francie," the little girl yelled back. "It's Florry, and you know it, too."
"I know," said Francie.
She looked down into the yard. The tree whose leaf umbrellas had curled around, under and over her fire escape had been cut down because the housewives complained that wash on the lines got entangled in its branches. The landlord had sent two men and they had chopped it down.
But the tree hadn't died...it hadn't died.
A new tree had grown from the stump and its trunk had grown along the ground until it reached a place where there were no wash lines above it. Then it had started to grow towards the sky again.
Annie, the fir tree, that the Nolans had cherished with waterings and manurings, had long since sickened and died. But this tree in the yard--this tree that men chopped down...this tree that they built a bonfire around, trying to burn up its stump--this tree lived!
I
t lived! And nothing could destroy it.
Once more she looked at Florry Wendy reading on the fire escape.
"Good-bye, Francie," she whispered.
She closed the window.
About the Author
BETTY SMITH was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1896, the daughter of German immigrants, and grew up in the borough's Williamsburg section. In addition to A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith's novels include Tomorrow Will Be Better (1947), Maggie-Now (1958), and Joy in the Morning (1963). She also had a long career as a dramatist, during which she received both the Rockefeller Fellowship and the Dramatists Guild Fellowship. She died in 1972.
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Books by Betty Smith
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Tomorrow Will Be Better
Maggie-Now
Joy in the Morning
Credits
Jacket design by Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich
Copyright
A hardcover edition of this book was published in 1943 by Harper & Brothers.
A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN. Copyright (c) 1943, 1947 by Betty Smith. Foreword copyright (c) 2001 by Anna Quindlen. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition (c) DECEMBER 2003 ISBN: 9780061803024
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*Lyrics by George M. Cohan
*"I Didn't Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier." Words by Alfred Bryan, music by Al Piantadosi. Copyright (c) 1916 Leo Feist, Inc. Copyright renewal (c) 1943 Leo Feist, Inc. Used by Permission.
