A tree grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith [101]
When Johnny felt that she was comforted, he set her down and went into the shack where he had either an eye opener or a night cap. He bought three flounders from the man for a quarter. He came out with the wet fish wrapped in a newspaper. He told his children that he had promised to bring home some fresh-caught fish to Mama.
“The principal thing,” said Papa, “is that I am bringing home fish that were caught at Canarsie. It makes no difference who caught them. The point is that we went fishing and we’re bringing home fish.”
His children knew that he wanted Mama to think he caught the fish. Papa didn’t ask them to lie. He just asked them not to be too fussy about the truth. The children understood.
They boarded one of those trolley cars that had two long benches facing each other. They made a queer row. First there was Johnny in green wrinkled salt-stiff pants, an undershirt full of big holes, a derby hat and a disorderly mustache. Next came Little Tilly swallowed up in his coat with salt water dripping from under it and forming a brackish pool on the floor. Francie and Neeley came next. Their faces were brick red and they sat very rigid trying not to be sick.
People got on the car, sat across from them and stared curiously. Johnny sat upright, the fish in his lap, trying not to think of the holes in his exposed undershirt. He looked over the heads of the passengers pretending to study an Ex-Lax advertisement.
More people got on, the car got crowded but no one would sit next to them. Finally one of the fish worked its way out of the sodden newspaper and fell on the floor where it lay slimily in the dust. It was too much for Little Tilly. She looked into the fish’s glazed eye, said nothing but vomited silently and thoroughly all over Johnny’s tuxedo jacket. Francie and Neeley, as if waiting for that cue, also threw up. Johnny sat there with two exposed fish in his lap, one at his feet and kept staring at the ad. He didn’t know what else to do.
When the grisly trip was ended, Johnny took Tilly home, feeling that his was the responsibility of explaining. The mother never gave him a chance to explain. She screamed when she saw her dripping befouled child. She snatched the coat off, threw it into Johnny’s face and called him a Jack-the-Ripper. Johnny tried and tried to explain but she wouldn’t listen. Little Tilly said nothing. Finally Johnny got a word in edgewise.
“Lady, I think your little girl has lost her speech.”
Whereupon the mother went into hysterics. “You did it, you did it,” she screamed at Johnny.
“Can’t you make her say something?”
The mother grabbed the child and shook her and shook her. “Speak!” she screamed. “Say something.” Finally Little Tilly opened her mouth, smiled happily and said,
“T’anks.”
Katie gave Johnny a tongue lashing and said that he wasn’t fit to have children. The children in question were alternating between the chills and hot flashes of a bad case of sunburn. Katie nearly cried when she saw the ruin of Johnny’s only suit. It would cost a dollar to get it cleaned, steamed and pressed and she knew it would never be the same again. As for the fish, they were found to be in an advanced state of decay and had to be thrown into the garbage can.
The children went to bed. Between chills and fever and bouts of nausea, they buried their heads under the covers and laughed silently and bed-shakingly at the remembrance of Papa standing