A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

by Betty Smith

An eleven-year-old girl sitting on this fire escape could imagine that she was living in a tree.

Home at last and now it was the time she had been looking forward to all week: fire-escape-sitting time.

She arranged glass, bowl and book on the window sill and climbed out on the fire-escape. Once out there, she was living in a tree.

“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.

She was afraid he’d ask her why she was crying and she wouldn’t be able to tell him. She loved him and she loved the piano. She could find no excuse for her easy tears.

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.

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

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. There was poetry for quiet companionship. There was adventure when she tired of quiet hours. There would be love stories when she came into adolescence and when she wanted to feel a closeness to someone she could read a biography.

It showed her that there were other worlds beside the world she had been born into and that these other worlds were not unattainable.

She sat there and enjoyed the smell and the dark greenness of it.

Francie thought the revolver looked like a grotesque beckoning finger, a finger that beckoned to death and made it come running.

Papa is gone, but he’s still here in many ways. He’s here in Neeley who looks just like him and in Mama who knew him so long. He’s here in his mother who began him and who is still living.

Only time passes so, doesn’t it?” “Yes,” sighed Katie. “That’s one of the few things we can be sure of.”

I’ll do what I think is right for me and it might not be right in your way.”

I can get drunk on things like the tulip—and this night.”

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.”

I can fix every detail of this time in my mind, I can keep this moment always,”

“Dear God,” she prayed, “let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. Let me be gay; let me be sad. Let me be cold; let me be warm. Let me be hungry…have too much to eat. Let me be ragged or well dressed. Let me be sincere—be deceitful. Let me be truthful; let me be a liar. Let me be honorable and let me sin. Only let me be something every blessed minute. And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost.”

But there’s a feeling about it—Oh, I can’t explain it. You’ve got to live in Brooklyn to know.”

“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.”

“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.”