A tree grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith [10]
Suddenly Francie jumped up. Her heart was beating fast. She was frightened. For no reason at all, she thought of an accordion pulled out full for a rich note. Then she had an idea that the accordion was closing…closing…closing…. 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.
At that moment, the double doors behind the counter were banged open as a bread truck backed up. A man came to stand behind the counter. The truck driver started throwing bread to him which he piled up on the counter. The kids in the street who had heard the doors thrown open piled in and milled around Francie who had already reached the counter.
“I want bread!” Francie called out. A big girl gave her a strong shove and wanted to know who she thought she was. “Never mind! Never mind!” Francie told her. “I want six loaves and a pie not too crushed,” she screamed out.
Impressed by her intensity, the counter man shoved six loaves and the least battered of the rejected pies at her and took her two dimes. She pushed her way out of the crowd dropping a loaf which she had trouble picking up as there was no room to stoop over in.
Outside, she sat at the curb fitting the bread and the pie into the paper bag. A woman passed, wheeling a baby in a buggy. The baby was waving his feet in the air. Francie looked and saw, not the baby’s foot, but a grotesque thing in a big, worn-out shoe. The panic came on her again and she ran all the way home.
The flat was empty. Mama had dressed and gone off with Aunt Sissy to see a matinee from a ten-cent gallery seat. Francie put the bread and pie away and folded the bag neatly to be used the next time. She went into the tiny, windowless bedroom that she shared with Neeley and sat on her own cot in the dark waiting for the waves of panic to stop passing over her.
After a while Neeley came in, crawled under his cot and pulled out a ragged catcher’s mitt.
“Where you going?” she asked.
“Play ball in the lots.”
“Can I come along?”
“No.”
She followed him down to the street. Three of his gang were waiting for him. One had a bat, another a baseball and the third had nothing but wore a pair of baseball pants. They started out for an empty lot over towards Greenpoint. Neeley saw Francie following but said nothing. One of the boys nudged him and said,
“Hey! Your sister’s followin’ us.”
“Yeah,” agreed Neeley. The boy turned around and yelled at Francie:
“Go chase yourself!”
“It’s a free country,” Francie stated.
“It’s a free country,” Neeley repeated to the boy. They took no notice of Francie after that. She continued to follow them. She had nothing to do until two o’clock when the neighborhood library opened up again.
It was a slow, horseplaying walk. The boys stopped to look for tin foil in the gutter and to pick up cigarette butts which they would save and smoke in the cellar on the next rainy afternoon. They took time out to bedevil a little Jew boy on his way to the temple. They detained him while they debated what to do with him. The boy waited, smiling humbly. The Christians released him finally with detailed instructions as to his course of conduct for the coming week.
“Don’t show your puss on Devoe Street,” he was ordered.
“I won’t,” he promised. The boys were disappointed. They had expected more fight. One of them took out a bit of chalk from his pocket and drew a wavy line on the sidewalk. He commanded,
“Don’t you even step over that line.”
The little boy, knowing that he had offended them by giving in too easily, decided to play their way.
“Can’t I even put one foot in the gutter, fellers?”
“You can’t even spit in the gutter,” he was told.
“All right.” He sighed in pretended resignation.
One of the bigger boys had an inspiration. “And keep away from Christian girls.