A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Page 5

  ...a field of snowy white.

  Hear the darkies singing soft and low.

  I long there to be, for someone waits for me,

  Down where the cotton blossoms blow.

  Francie kissed his cheek softly. "Oh, Papa, I love you so much," she whispered.

  He held her tight. Again the stab-wound feeling. "Oh, God! Oh, God!" he repeated to himself in almost unendurable agony. "What a hell of a father I am." But when he spoke to her again, it was quietly enough.

  "All this isn't getting my apron ironed, though."

  "It's all done, Papa." She folded it into a careful square.

  "Is there any money in the house, Baby?"

  She looked into the cracked cup on the shelf. "A nickel and some pennies."

  "Would you take seven cents and go out and get me a dicky and a paper collar?"

  Francie went over to the dry-goods store to get her father's Saturday-night linen. A dicky was a shirt front made of stiffly starched muslin. It fastened around the neck with a collar button and the vest held it in place. It was used instead of a shirt. It was worn once and then thrown away. A paper collar was not exactly made out of paper. It was called that to differentiate it from a celluloid collar which was what poor men wore because it could be laundered simply by being wiped with a wet rag. A paper collar was made out of thin cambric stiffly starched. It could be used only once.

  When Francie got back, papa had shaved, wetted his hair down, shined his shoes and put on a clean undershirt. It was unironed and had a big hole in the back but it smelled nice and clean. He stood on a chair and took down a little box from the top cupboard shelf. It contained the pearl studs that Katie had given him for a wedding present. They had cost her a month's salary. Johnny was very proud of them. No matter how hard up the Nolans were, the studs were never pawned.

  Francie helped him put the studs in the dicky. He fastened the wing collar on with a golden collar button, a present that Hildy O'Dair had given him before he became engaged to Katie. He wouldn't part with that either. His tie was a piece of heavy black silk and he tied an expert bow with it. Other waiters wore readymade bows attached to elastics. But not Johnny Nolan. Other waiters wore soiled white shirts or clean shirts indifferently ironed, and celluloid collars. But not Johnny. His linen was immaculate, if temporary.

  He was dressed at last. His wavy blond hair gleamed and he smelled clean and fresh from washing and shaving. He put his coat on and buttoned it up jauntily. The satin lapels of the tuxedo were threadbare but who would look at that when the suit fitted him so beautifully and the crease in his trousers was so perfect? Francie looked at his well-polished black shoes and noticed how the cuffless trousers came down in the back over the heel, and what a nice break they made across his instep. No other father's pants hung just that way. Francie was proud of her father. She wrapped up his ironed apron carefully in a piece of clean paper saved for that purpose.

  She walked with him to the trolley car. Women smiled at him until they noticed the little girl clinging to his hand. Johnny looked like a handsome, devil-may-care Irish boy instead of the husband of a scrubwoman and the father of two children who were always hungry.

  They passed Gabriel's Hardware Store and stopped to look at the skates in the window. Mama never had time to do this. Papa talked as though he would buy Francie a pair someday. They walked to the corner. When a Graham Avenue trolley came along, he swung up on to the platform suiting his rhythm to the car's slowing down. As the car started up again, he stood on the back platform holding on to the bar while he leaned way out to wave to Francie. No man had ever looked so gallant as her father, she thought.

  4

  AFTER SHE HAD SEEN PAPA OFF, FRANCIE WENT UP TO SEE WHAT KIND of costume Floss Gaddis had for the dance that night.

  Flossie supported her mother and brother by working as a turner in a kid-glove factory. The gloves were stitched on the wrong side and it was her job to turn them right side out. Often she brought work home to do at night. They needed every cent they could get on account of her brother not being able to work. He had consumption.

  Francie had been told that Henny Gaddis was dying but she didn't believe it. He didn't look it. In fact, he looked wonderful. He had clear skin with a beautiful pink color in his cheeks. His eyes were large and dark and burned steadily like a lamp protected from the wind. But he knew. He was nineteen and avid for life and he couldn't understand why he was doomed. Mrs. Gaddis was glad to see Francie. Company took Henny's thoughts off himself.

  "Henny, here's Francie," she called out cheerfully.

  "Hello, Francie."

  "Hello, Henny."

  "Don't you think Henny's looking good, Francie? Tell him that he's looking good."

  "You're looking good, Henny."

  Henny addressed an unseen companion. "She tells a dying man that he's looking good."

  "I mean it."

  "No, you don't. You're just saying that."

  "How you talk, Henny. Look at me--how skinny I am and I never think about dying."

  "You won't die, Francie. You were born to lick this rotten life."

  "Still and all, I wish I had nice red cheeks like you."

  "No, you don't. Not if you know where they come from."

  "Henny, you should sit on the roof more," said his mother.

  "She tells a dying man he should sit on the roof," reported Henny to his invisible companion.

  "Fresh air is what you need, and sunshine."

  "Leave me alone, Mama."

  "For your own good."

  "Mama, Mama, leave me alone! Leave me alone!"

  Suddenly he put his head down on his arms and pulled tormented coughing sobs out of his body. Flossie and her mother looked at each other and silently agreed to let him alone. They left him coughing and sobbing in the kitchen and went into the front room to show Francie the costumes.

  Flossie did three things each week. She worked on the gloves, she worked on her costumes, and she worked on Frank. She went to a masquerade ball every Saturday night, wearing a different costume each time. The costumes were especially designed to hide her disfigured right arm. As a child, she had fallen into a wash boiler of scalding hot water carelessly left standing on the kitchen floor. Her right arm had been horribly burned and she grew up with its skin withered and purple. She always wore long sleeves.

  Since it was essential that a masquerade costume be decollete, she had devised a backless costume, the front cut to display her over-full bust and with one long sleeve to cover that right arm. The judges thought that the one flowing sleeve symbolized something. Invariably, she won first prize.

  Flossie got into the costume she was going to wear that night. It resembled the popular conception of what a Klondike dance hall girl wore. It was made of a purple satin sheath with layers of cerise tarleton underskirts. There was a black sequin butterfly stitched over the place where her left breast came to a blunt point. The one sleeve was made of pea green chiffon. Francie admired the costume. Flossie's mother threw open the closet door and Francie looked at the row of brilliantly colored garments.

  Flossie had six sheaths of various colors and the same number of tarleton underskirts and at least twenty chiffon sleeves of every color that a person could imagine. Each week, Flossie switched the combinations to make a new costume. Next week the cerise underskirt might froth out from beneath a sky-blue sheath with one black chiffon sleeve. And so on. There were two dozen tightly rolled, never-used silk umbrellas in that closet; prizes she had won. Flossie collected them for display the way an athlete collects cups. Francie felt happy looking at all the umbrellas. Poor people have a great passion for huge quantities of things.

  While Francie was admiring the costumes, she began to grow uneasy. While looking at the brilliant frothing colors, cerise, orange, bright blue, red and yellow, she had a feeling that something was stealthily concealed behind those costumes. It was something wrapped in a long somber cloak with a grinning skull, and bones for hands. And it was hiding b
ehind these brilliant colors waiting for Henny.

  5

  MAMA CAME HOME AT SIX WITH AUNT SISSY. FRANCIE WAS VERY GLAD to see Sissy. She was her favorite aunt. Francie loved her and was fascinated by her. So far, Sissy had led a very exciting life. She was thirty-five now, had been married three times, and had given birth to ten children, all of whom had died soon after being born. Sissy often said that Francie was all of her ten children.

  Sissy worked in a rubber factory and was very wild as far as men were concerned. She had roving black eyes, black curling hair, and a high clear color. She liked to wear a cherry-colored bow in her hair. Mama was wearing her jade green hat which made her skin look like cream off the top of the bottle. The roughness of her pretty hands was hidden by a pair of white cotton gloves. She and Sissy came in talking excitedly and laughing as they recalled to each other the jokes they had heard at the show.

  Sissy brought Francie a present, a corncob pipe that you blew into and a rubber hen popped up and swelled over the pipe bowl. The pipe came from Sissy's factory. The factory made a few rubber toys as a blind. It made its big profits from other rubber articles which were bought in whispers.

  Francie hoped that Sissy would stay for supper. When Sissy was around, everything was gay and glamorous. Francie felt that Sissy understood how it was with little girls. Other people treated children like lovable but necessary evils. Sissy treated them like important human beings. But although Mama urged her, Sissy wouldn't stay. She had to go home, she said, and see if her husband still loved her. This made Mama laugh. Francie laughed too, although she didn't understand what Sissy meant. Sissy left after promising that she would come back on the first of the month with the magazines. Sissy's current husband worked for a pulp magazine house. Each month he received copies of all their publications: love stories, wild west stories, detective stories, supernatural stories and what not. They had shiny colorful covers and he received them from the stock room tied up in a length of new yellow twine. Sissy brought them over to Francie just as they came. Francie read them all avidly, then sold them at half price to the neighborhood stationery store and put the money in Mama's tin-can bank.

  After Sissy left, Francie told Mama about the old man at Losher's with the obscene feet.

  "Nonsense," said Mama. "Old age isn't such a tragedy. If he was the only old man in the world--yes. But he has other old men to keep him company. Old people are not unhappy. They don't long for the things we want. They just want to be warm and have soft food to eat and remember things with each other. Stop being so foolish. If there's one thing certain, it's that we all have to get old someday. So get used to the idea as quickly as you can."

  Francie knew that Mama was right. Still...she was glad when Mama spoke of something else. She and Mama planned what meals they'd make from the stale bread in the week to come.

  The Nolans practically lived on that stale bread and what amazing things Katie could make from it! She'd take a loaf of stale bread, pour boiling water over it, work it up into a paste, flavor it with salt, pepper, thyme, minced onion and an egg (if eggs were cheap), and bake it in the oven. When it was good and brown, she made a sauce from half a cup of ketchup, two cups of boiling water, seasoning, a dash of strong coffee, thickened it with flour and poured it over the baked stuff. It was good, hot, tasty and staying. What was left over, was sliced thin the next day and fried in hot bacon fat.

  Mama made a very fine bread pudding from slices of stale bread, sugar, cinnamon and a penny apple sliced thin. When this was baked brown, sugar was melted and poured over the top. Sometimes she made what she had named Weg Geschnissen, which laboriously translated meant something made with bread bits that usually would be thrown away. Bits of bread were dipped into a batter made from flour, water, salt and an egg and then fried in deep hot fat. While they were frying, Francie ran down to the candy store and bought a penny's worth of brown rock candy. This was crushed with a rolling pin and sprinkled on top of the fried bits just before eating. The crystals didn't quite melt and that made it wonderful.

  Saturday supper was a red-letter meal. The Nolans had fried meat! A loaf of stale bread was made into pulp with hot water and mixed with a dime's worth of chopped meat into which an onion had been cleavered. Salt and a penny's worth of minced parsley were added for flavor. This was made up into little balls, fried and served with hot ketchup. These meat balls had a name, fricadellen, which was a great joke with Francie and Neeley.

  They lived mostly on these things made from stale bread, and condensed milk and coffee, onions, potatoes, and always the penny's worth of something bought at the last minute, added for fillip. Once in a while, they had a banana. But Francie always longed for oranges and pineapple and especially tangerines which she got only at Christmas.

  Sometimes when she had a spare penny, she bought broken crackers. The groceryman would make a toot, which was a poke made of a bit of twisted paper, and fill it with bits of sweet crackers that had been broken in the box and could no longer be sold as whole crackers. Mama's rule was: don't buy candy or cake if you have a penny. Buy an apple. But what was an apple? Francie found that a raw potato tasted just as good and this she could have for free.

  There were times though, especially towards the end of a long cold dark winter, when, no matter how hungry Francie was, nothing tasted good. That was big pickle time. She'd take a penny and go down to a store on Moore Street that had nothing in it but fat Jew pickles floating around in a heavy spiced brine. A patriarch with a long white beard, black skull cap and toothless gums presided over the vats with a big forked wooden stick. Francie ordered the same as the other kids did.

  "Gimme a penny sheeny pickle."

  The Hebrew looked at the Irish child with his fierce red-rimmed eyes, small, tortured and fiery.

  "Goyem! Goyem!" he spat at her, hating the word "sheeny."

  Francie meant no harm. She didn't know what the word meant really. It was a term applied to something alien, yet beloved. The Jew of course did not know this. Francie had been told that he had one vat from which he sold only to Gentiles. It was said that he spat or did worse in this vat once a day. That was his revenge. But this was never proven against the poor old Jew and Francie for one did not believe it.

  As he stirred with his stick, muttering curses into his stained white beard, he was thrown into a hysterical passion by Francie asking for a pickle from the bottom of the vat. This brought on eye rollings and clutchings of the beard. Eventually a fine fat pickle, greenish yellow and hard at the ends was fished out and laid on a scrap of brown paper. Still cursing, the Jew received her penny in his vinegar-scarred palm and retired to the rear of his store where his temper cooled as he sat nodding in his beard dreaming of old days in the old country.

  The pickle lasted all day. Francie sucked and nibbled on it. She didn't exactly eat it. She just had it. When they had just bread and potatoes too many times at home, Francie's thoughts went to dripping sour pickles. She didn't know why, but after a day of the pickle, the bread and potatoes tasted good again. Yes, pickle day was something to look forward to.

  6

  NEELEY CAME HOME AND HE AND FRANCIE WERE SENT OUT FOR THE weekend meat. This was an important ritual and called for detailed instructions by Mama.

  "Get a five-cent soup bone off of Hassler's. But don't get the chopped meat there. Go to Werner's for that. Get round steak chopped, ten cents' worth, and don't let him give it to you off the plate. Take an onion with you, too."

  Francie and her brother stood at the counter a long time before the butcher noticed them.

  "What's yours?" he asked finally.

  Francie started the negotiations. "Ten cents' worth of round steak."

  "Ground?"

  "No."

  "Lady was just in. Bought a quarter's worth of round steak ground. Only I ground too much and here's the rest on the plate. Just ten cents' worth. Honestly. I only just ground it."

  This was the pitfall Francie had been told to watch against. Don't buy it off the
plate no matter what the butcher says.

  "No. My mother said ten cents' worth of round steak."

  Furiously the butcher hacked off a bit of meat and slammed it down on the paper after weighing it. He was just about to wrap it up when Francie said in a trembling voice,

  "Oh, I forgot. My mother wants it ground."

  "God-damn it to hell!" He hacked up the meat and shoved it into the chopper. Tricked again, he thought bitterly. The meat came out in fresh red spirals. He gathered it up in his hand and was just about to slam it down on the paper when....

  "And mama said to chop up this onion in it." Timidly, she pushed the peeled onion that she had brought from home across the counter. Neeley stood by and said nothing. His function was to come along for moral support.

  "Jesus!" the butcher said explosively. But he went to work with two cleavers chopping the onion up into the meat. Francie watched, loving the drumbeat rhythm of the cleavers. Again the butcher gathered up the meat, slammed it down on the paper and glared at Francie. She gulped. The last order would be hardest of all. The butcher had an idea of what was coming. He stood there trembling inwardly. Francie said all on one breath,

  "And-a-piece-of-suet-to-fry-it-with."

  "Son-of-a-bitchin' bastard," whispered the butcher bitterly. He slashed off a piece of white fat, let it fall to the floor in revenge, picked it up and slammed it on the mound of meat. He wrapped it furiously, snatched the dime, and as he turned it over to the boss for ringing up, he cursed the destiny that had made him a butcher.

  After the chopped meat deal they went to Hassler's for the soup bone. Hassler was a fine butcher for bones but a bad butcher for chopped meat because he ground it behind closed doors and God knows what you got. Neeley waited outside with the package because if Hassler noticed you had bought meat elsewhere, he'd proudly tell you to go get your bone where you got your other meat.