A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

by Betty Smith

This is one of those children who understands almost everything around her.

think it’s good that people like us can waste something once in a while and get the feeling of how it would be to have lots of money and not have to worry about scrounging.”

The waiting gave them a purpose in life for a little while and, almost, they felt necessary again.

Francie stared at the oldest man. She played her favorite game, figuring out about people.

A terrible panic that had no name came over her as she realized that many of the sweet babies in the world were born to come to something like this old man some day. She had to get out of that place or it would happen to her. Suddenly she would be an old woman with toothless gums and feet that disgusted people.

To her, the stupendous stench suggested far-sailing ships and adventure and she was pleased with the smell.

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.

She wanted to own a book so badly and she had thought the copying would do it. But the penciled sheets did not seem like nor smell like the library book so she had given it up, consoling herself with the vow that when she grew up, she would work hard, save money and buy every single book that she liked.

Francie liked to play a game in which she imagined that people looked like their pets and vice versa.

Francie’s Aunt Sissy ran after men, too. But somehow they ran to meet her halfway.

The difference was that Flossie Gaddis was starved about men and Sissy was healthily hungry about them. And what a difference that made.

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.

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.

But they were so hungry that they ate everything on the table and digested it too, during the night. They could have digested nails had they been able to chew them.

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.

What Katie and Johnny said to each other on that special day, they never remembered. Somehow during their aimless but oh-so-significant conversation with its delicious pauses and thrilling undercurrents of emotion, they came to know that they loved each other passionately.

They were all slender, frail creatures with wondering eyes and soft fluttery voices. But they were made out of thin invisible steel.

coming. It was Francie’s first experience with infinity.

SINCE VACCINATION taught her instantly the difference between left and right,

The cruelest teachers were those who had come from homes similar to those of the poor children.

It seemed that in their bitterness towards those unfortunate little ones, they were somehow exorcizing their own fearful background.

They learned no compassion from their own anguish. Thus their suffering was wasted.

And when the picture was finished, you didn’t see the dirt or the meanness; you saw the glory of innocence and the poignancy of a baby growing up too soon. Oh, Miss Bernstone was grand.

Books became her friends and there was one for every mood.

Money! Would that make it better for them? Yes, it would make it easy. But no, the money wouldn’t be enough.

Education! That was it! It was education that made the difference! Education would pull them out of the grime and dirt.

That afternoon she wrote a story about a little girl who wanted a doll so much that she was willing to give over her immortal soul to Purgatory for eternity if she could have the doll. It was a strong story but when Francie read it over, she thought, “That’s all right for the girl in the story but it doesn’t make me feel any better.”

If you ever find a man you love, don’t waste time hanging your head and simpering. Go right up to him and say, ‘I love you. How about getting married?’ That is,” she added hastily with an apprehensive look at her daughter, “when you’re old enough to know your own mind.”

“People always think that happiness is a faraway thing,” thought Francie, “something complicated and hard to get. Yet, what little things can make it up; a place of shelter when it rains—a cup of strong hot coffee when you’re blue; for a man, a cigarette for contentment; a book to read when you’re alone—just to be with someone you love. Those things make happiness.”

“No! I don’t want to need anybody. I want someone to need me…I want someone to need me.”

“To look at everything always as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time: Thus is your time on earth filled with glory.”

For a long time that had been a dream but now Papa was like someone who had never been. The way Laurie seemed to come out of a dream—born the living child of a father five months dead. Brooklyn was a dream. All the things that happened there just couldn’t happen. It was all dream stuff. Or was it all real and true and was it that she, Francie, was the dreamer?

Neeley said it would be a good thing for her to go far off to college—she might get rid of her Brooklyn accent that way. But Francie didn’t want to get rid of it any more than she wanted to get rid of her name. It meant that she belonged some place. She was a Brooklyn girl with a Brooklyn name and a Brooklyn accent. She didn’t want to change into a bit of this and a bit of that.

In the two years since she had last looked on the school, Francie had changed from a child to a woman.

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.