A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

by Betty Smith

No matter where its seed fell, it made a tree which struggled to reach the sky. It grew in boarded-up lots and out of neglected rubbish heaps and it was the only tree that grew out of cement. It grew lushly, but only in the tenements districts.

Mama explained: “Francie is entitled to one cup each meal like the rest. If it makes her feel better to throw it away rather than to drink it, all right. I 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.”

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.

She had once started copying the book in a two-cent notebook. She wanted to own a book so badly and she had thought

consoling herself with the vow that when she grew up, she would work hard, save money and buy every single book that she liked.

“Aw, go to hell!” She slammed the window down and Frank breathed a sigh of relief. That was over.

Flossie was always running after men and they were always running away from her. 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.

Francie knew that Mama was a good woman. She knew. And Papa said so. Then why did she like her father better than her mother? Why did she? Papa was no good. He said so himself. But she liked Papa better.

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.

“I guess this is a free country,” said Katie, tossing her head. “Not free for robbers,” yelled Hildy as she lunged at Katie with her hatpin.

Although he hated the old country, he stubbornly refused to like the new country. He understood and could speak English if he wanted to. But he refused to answer

She was intensely religious and knew the life story of every Catholic saint. She believed in ghosts and fairies and all supernatural folk. She knew all about herbs and could brew you either a medicine or a charm—provided you intended no evil with the charm. Back in the old country she

husband’s brutal love. His brutality early killed all of her latent desires. Yet she could understand the fierce love hunger that made girls—as people put it—go wrong. She understood how a boy who had been driven from the neighborhood for rape could still be a good boy at heart. She understood why people had to lie and steal and harm one another. She knew of all pitiful human weaknesses and of many cruel strengths. Yet she could not read

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.

She had so much of tenderness in her, so much of wanting to give of herself to whoever needed what she had, whether it was her money, her time, the clothes off her back, her pity, her understanding, her friendship or her companionship and love.

only eight o’clock but they were tired out from moving. The Nolans slept in their new home on Lorimer Street which was still in Williamsburg but almost near where Greenpoint began.

“She gits or she don’t git. You know what?” “What.” “You talk just like a Wop.” “I do not talk like no Wop,” cried Francie. “I talk like…like…God talks.” “You’ll be struck down dead saying a thing like that.” “I won’t neither.”

The sad thing was in the knowing that all their nerve would get them nowhere in the world and that they were lost as all people in Brooklyn seem lost when the day is nearly over and even though the sun is still bright, it is thin and doesn’t give you warmth when it shines on you.

“Married seven years and we’ve had three homes. This will be my last home.” Francie didn’t notice that he said my last home instead of our last home.

“Can you play it?” Katie asked her. “No,” said the woman sorrowfully. “No one in the family can play. I wish I could.” “Why did you ever buy it?” “It was in a rich house. The people were selling it cheap. I wanted it so much. No, I couldn’t play it. But it was so beautiful…It dresses up the whole room.” Katie promised to take good care of it until the woman could afford to send for it but as things turned out, the woman never did send for it and the Nolans had this beautiful thing for always.

“Sometimes I see you sitting on the gutter curb for hours. What do you think of then?” “Nothing. I just tell myself stories.” Miss Tynmore pointed at her sternly. “Little girl, you’ll be a story writer when you grow up.” It was a command rather than a statement.

Miss Tynmore came to look forward to the hour at the Nolans. The coffee was heartening and there was always a bun or a bologna sandwich to sustain her.

After each lesson, Katie taught the children what she had been taught. She made them practice half an hour each day. In time, all three of them learned to play the piano.

The nurse had chosen the forgetting way. Yet, as she stood there, she knew that years later she would be haunted by the sorrow in the face of that starveling child and that she would wish bitterly that she had said a comforting word then and done something towards the saving of her immortal soul. She had the knowledge that she was small but she lacked the courage to be otherwise.

“My brother is next. His arm is just as dirty as mine so don’t be surprised. And you don’t have to tell him. You told me.” They stared at this bit of humanity who had become so strangely articulate. Francie’s voice went ragged with a sob. “You don’t have to tell him. Besides it won’t do no good. He’s a boy and he don’t care if he is dirty.” She turned, stumbled a little and walked out of the room. As the door closed, she heard the doctor’s surprised voice. “I had no idea she’d understand what I was saying.” She heard the nurse say, “Oh, well,” on a sighing note.

This explanation satisfied Francie because she had never been able to tell her left hand from her right. She ate, and drew pictures with her left hand.

Then he undressed slowly and got into Katie’s bed. She was sleepily aware of his presence and in one of her rare impulses of affection, she threw her arm across his chest. He removed it gently and edged as far away from her as he could. He lay close to the wall. He folded his hands under his head and lay staring into the darkness all the rest of that night.

“Forgiveness,” said Mary Rommely, “is a gift of high value. Yet its cost is nothing.” “I have my own ways,” said Katie.

“Lousy, ye’r lousy! Teacher said ye’r lousy. Hadda go home, hadda go home, hadda go home because ye’r lousy.” It might be that the infected child would be given a clean bill next examination. In that case, she, in turn, would torment those found guilty, forgetting her own hurt at being tormented. They learned no compassion from their own anguish. Thus their suffering was wasted.

Francie, of course, became an outsider shunned by all because of her stench. But she had become accustomed to being lonely. She was used to walking alone and to being considered “different.” She did not suffer too much.

For quite a while, Francie had been spelling out letters, sounding them and then putting the sounds together to mean a word. But one day, she looked at a page and the word “mouse” had instantaneous meaning.

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.

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.

“Yes, I thought he was asking that.” Katie stared at her hands. They were rough and red and cut into with cleansing fluids. She took a pair of mended cotton gloves from her purse. Although it was a hot day, she pulled them on. She sighed. “I work so hard, sometimes I forget that I’m a woman.”

“Because that would be Socialism,” concluded Johnny triumphantly, “and we don’t want that over here.” “Why?” “Because we got Democracy and that’s the best thing there is,” clinched Johnny.

Francie’s eyes smarted with hot tears. “Why can’t they,” she thought bitterly, “just give the doll away without saying I am poor and she is rich? Why couldn’t they just give it away without all the talking about it?” That was not all of Francie’s shame. As she walked down the aisle, the girls leaned towards her and whispered hissingly, “Beggar, beggar, beggar.” It was beggar, beggar, beggar, all the way down the aisle. Those girls felt richer than Francie. They were as poor as she but they had something

Francie now owned the doll but had yet another lie on her soul.

know.” “But you were also named Mary after my mother. Your real name is Mary Frances Nolan.”

thought Francie grimly. It takes a lot of doing to die. Francie couldn’t understand why the heroine didn’t marry the villain. It would solve the rent problem and surely a man who loved her so much that he was willing to go through all kinds of fuss because she wouldn’t have him wasn’t a man to ignore. At least, he was around while the hero was off on a wild-goose chase.

Many of these good women had children which they brought up by scream and cuff. Many of them hated the husbands who lay by their sides at night. There was no longer high joy for them in the act of love. They endured the love-making rigidly, praying all the while that another child would not result. This bitter submissiveness made the man ugly and brutal. To most of them the love act had become a brutality on both sides; the sooner over with, the better. They resented this girl because they felt this had not been so with her and the father of her child.

ever I have children I will not read their diaries as I believe that even a child is entitled to some privacy. If Mama finds this again and reads it, I hope she will take the hint.

Oct. 25. I will be glad when this book is filled up as I am getting tired of keeping a diary. Nothing important ever happens.

Nov. 2. Sex is something that invariably comes into everyone’s life. People write pieces against it. The priests preach against it. They even make laws against it. But it keeps going on just the same. All the girls in school have but the one topic of conversation: sex and boys. They are very curious about it. Am I curious about sex? She studied the last sentence. The line on the inner edge of her right eyebrow deepened. She crossed out the sentence and rewrote it to read: “I am curious about sex.”

“Hospital?” Katie asked. “Then I didn’t kill him.” “Not quite,” said the intern. “We’ll get him on his feet so’s he can walk to the electric chair by himself.” “I’m sorry,” said Katie. “I meant to kill him.”

He thanked her again and said good-bye formally. As he held her hand in the handclasp, he thought, “She’ll be my wife, someday, God and she willin’.” Katie could not know what he was thinking. (Or could she?) Maybe. Because something prompted her to call after him. “I hope that someday you’ll be as happy as you deserve to be, Sergeant McShane.”

After her John left for work in the morning, Sissy cleaned up her flat, cooked a potful of food for Lucia and took it over to the Italian home. She fed Lucia well on a combination Irish-German diet. She had a theory that if the child absorbed such food before birth, it wouldn’t be so much of an

He was breathing harshly and there were dried tears on his face. Katie stayed there until he died. He had never opened his eyes. He had not spoken a word to his wife.

“You just can’t do it, Sissy. There’s no way,” said Katie. “There’s only one thing to do,” said Evy. “Take Francie out of school and let her get working papers.” “But I want her to graduate. My children will be the first ones in the Nolan family to get diplomas.” “You can’t eat a diploma,” said Evy.

“It must be,” she thought, “that this using strong perfume is tied up somehow with a woman wanting a baby and wanting to find a man who can give her a baby and look after it and her too.” She put that nugget of knowledge away with all the others that she was continually collecting.

Maybe it was because it was the time in the month when she could look for a headache anyhow.