A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

by Betty Smith

A great tenderness for her mother came into Francie’s heart. “I won’t ever go away from you, Mama,” she said. “That’s my good girl.” Katie pressed her shoulder. “Maybe,” thought Francie, “she doesn’t love me as much as she loves Neeley. But she needs me more than she needs him and I guess being needed is almost as good as being loved. Maybe better.”

But she knew the gain wouldn’t last. She had seen too many working couples who, after the children came and the bills piled up, rarely communicated with each other except in bitter snarls. “These people are caught,” she thought. “And why? Because” (remembering her grandmother’s repeated convictions), “they haven’t

was. Katie found an ad in The World that said a file clerk was wanted; beginner considered, age sixteen, state religion. Francie

“Beautiful legs, then, is the secret of being a mistress,” concluded Francie. She looked down at her own long thin legs. “I’ll never make it, I guess.” Sighing, she resigned herself to a sinless life.

“So a man pinched you on the El,” she said. “I wouldn’t let that bother me. It means you’re getting a good shape and there are some men who can’t resist a woman’s shape. Say! I must be getting old! It’s been years since anybody pinched me on the El. There was a time when I couldn’t ride in a crowd without coming home black and blue,” she said proudly. “Is that anything to brag about?” asked Katie. Sissy ignored that remark. “The day will come, Francie,” she said, “when you’re forty-five and have a shape like a bag of horses’ oats tied in the middle. Then you’ll look back and long for the old days when men wanted to pinch you.”

course.” Francie smiled back and kissed her mother’s cheek. But in their secret hearts, each knew that it wasn’t all right and would never be all right between them again.

Everyone in the world but Francie had a sweetheart or a friend. She seemed to be the only lonely one in Brooklyn.

“She got those dark eyes from Lucia and a million people in the world have round chins and small ears. But if it makes Steve happy to think the baby looks like him, that’s fine.” There was a long silence before Katie spoke again. “Sissy, did you ever get any idea from that Italian family as to who the father was?” “No.” Sissy, too, waited a long time before she continued. “You know who told me about the girl being in trouble and where she lived and all?” “Who?” “Steve.” “Oh, my!” Both were quiet for a long time. Then Katie said, “Of course, that was accidental.”

“I know,” answered Sissy. “Sometimes I’m doing something that I never did before in my life and all of a sudden I have the feeling that I did that same thing before—maybe in another life….” Her voice died away. After a while she said, “Steve always said he’d never take another man’s child.”

Then his eyes met hers and he smiled a slow shy smile and somehow, while he wasn’t good-looking, he was nicer than good-looking. The shy smile decided Francie.

“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.”