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That was the kind of tree it was. It liked poor people.
People were paid on Saturday and it was a holiday without the rigidness of a Sunday. People had money to go out and buy things. They ate well for once, got drunk, had dates, made love and stayed up until all hours; singing, playing music, fighting and dancing because the morrow was their own free day. They could sleep late—until late mass anyhow.
True, there were a few girls there that Saturday…bold, brash ones, too developed for their age; girls who talked loud and horseplayed around with the boys—girls whom the neighbors prophesied would come to no good.
The girl felt that even if she had less than anybody in Williamsburg, somehow she had more. She was richer because she had something to waste.
Francie thought that all the books in the world were in that library and she had a plan about reading all the books in the world. She was reading a book a day in alphabetical order and not skipping the dry ones.
Once out there, she was living in a tree. No one upstairs, downstairs or across the way could see her. But she could look out through the leaves and see everything.
Still gently spoke Frank as he let a rill of water run over the horse’s rump: “Do you want to go away from here or do I have to break a couple of your asses?”
The difference was that Flossie Gaddis was starved about men and Sissy was healthily hungry about them. And what a difference that made.
“A day like this is like somebody giving you a present,” he said.
“Before I joined the Union the bosses paid me what they felt like. Sometimes they paid me nothing. The tips, they said, would take care of me. Some places even charged me for the privilege of working.
“I drink because I don’t stand a chance and I know it. I couldn’t drive a truck like other men and I couldn’t get on the cops with my build. I got to sling beer and sing when I just want to sing. I drink because I got responsibilities that I can’t handle.” There was another long pause. Then he whispered, “I am not a happy man. I got a wife and children and I don’t happen to be a hard-working man. I never wanted a family.”
Maybe someday it will be that the Unions will arrange for a man to work and to have time for himself too. But that won’t be in my time.
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.
Poor people have a great passion for huge quantities of things.
The Nolans just couldn’t get enough of life. They lived their own lives up to the hilt but that wasn’t enough. They had to fill in on the lives of all the people they made contact with.
She’d ask nothing more than to look at him and to listen to him for the rest of her life. Then and there, she decided that those privileges were worth slaving for all her life.
Maybe that decision was her great mistake. She should have waited until some man came along who felt that way about her. Then her children would not have gone hungry; she would not have had to scrub floors for their living and her memory of him would have remained a tender shining thing.
She really believed this because her husband told her so. “I am the devil himself,” he told her frequently.
She grieved when her children had to leave school after the sixth grade and go out working. She grieved when they married no-account men. She wept when they gave birth to daughters, knowing that to be born a woman meant a life of humble hardship.
But they were made out of thin invisible steel.
Johnny’s family was dying out. The Nolan men grew handsomer, weaker and more beguiling with each generation.
She was so weak that she couldn’t lift her head an inch from the pillow, yet it was she who comforted him and told him not to worry, that she would take care of him.
“There is here, what is not in the old country. In spite of hard unfamiliar things, there is here—hope.
“the child must have a valuable thing which is called imagination. The child must have a secret world in which live things that never were. It is necessary that she believe. She must start out by believing in things not of this world. Then when the world becomes too ugly for living in, the child can reach back and live in her imagination.
When as a woman life and people disappoint her, she will have had practice in disappointment and it will not come so hard. In teaching your child, do not forget that suffering is good too. It makes a person rich in character.”
There is a part of each day that does not belong to the master but which the worker owns himself.
“I never listen to what people tell me and I can’t read. The only way I know what is right and wrong is the way I feel about things. If I feel bad, it’s wrong. If I feel good, it’s right.
“Don’t say that,” Katie held her baby tightly. “It’s not better to die. Who wants to die? Everything struggles to live. Look at that tree growing up there out of that grating. It gets no sun, and water only when it rains. It’s growing out of sour earth. And it’s strong because its hard struggle to live is making it strong. My children will be strong that way.”
She exchanged her tenderness for capability. She gave up her dreams and took over hard realities in their place.
Katie had a fierce desire for survival which made her a fighter. Johnny had a hankering after immortality which made him a useless dreamer. And that was the great difference between these two who loved each other so well.
“Katie! Don’t nag! All of us are what we have to be and everyone lives the kind of life it’s in him to live.
You’ve got a good man, Katie.” “But he drinks.” “And he always will until he dies. There it is. He drinks. You must take that along with the rest.”
If Sissy dies before I do, I must have masses said for the repose of her soul. Maybe after a while she’ll get out of Purgatory because even if they say she is bad, she is good to all the people in the world who are lucky enough to run across her. God will have to take that into consideration.”
that it would be a better world if they were all sterilized and couldn’t breed anymore.
A person who pulls himself up from a low environment via the bootstrap route has two choices. Having risen above his environment, he can forget it; or, he can rise above it and never forget it and keep compassion and understanding in his heart for those he has left behind him in the cruel upclimb.
When the needle jabbed, Francie never felt it. The waves of hurt started by the doctor’s words were racking her body and drove out all other feeling.
He bandaged the arm. The cloth smelled of Johnny, warm and cigarish. But it was a comforting thing to the child. It smelled of protection and love.
Francie, huddled with other children of her kind, learned more that first day than she realized. She learned of the class system of a great Democracy.
Teacher acted as though they had no right to be in the school but that she was forced to accept them and was doing so with as little grace as possible.
It would seem as if all the unwanted children would stick together and be one against the things that were against them. But not so. They hated each other as much as the teacher hated them. They aped teacher’s snarling manner when they spoke to each other.
They taught because no one wanted to marry them. Married women were not allowed to teach in those days, hence most of the teachers were women made neurotic by starved love instincts.
These barren women spent their fury on other women’s children in a twisted authoritative manner.
“Forgiveness,” said Mary Rommely, “is a gift of high value. Yet its cost is nothing.”
They learned no compassion from their own anguish. Thus their suffering was wasted.
There had to be the dark and muddy waters so that the sun could have something to background its flashing glory.
From that time on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimate friends. Books became her friends and there was one for every mood.
“I guess me and the Prima Donna will take a little walk later on.” Francie’s heart jumped. He had not forgotten. He had not forgotten.
“There are very few bad people. There are just a lot of people that are unlucky.”
It was a good thing that she got herself into this other school. It showed her that there were other worlds beside the world she had been born into and that these other worlds were not unattainable.
Truth and fancy were so mixed up in her mind—as they are in the mind of every lonely child—that she didn’t know which was which.
