A tree grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith [103]
Joanna worked in a factory while her mother took care of the baby. The mother was too ashamed to take it out so the baby got an airing only on weekends when Joanna wasn’t working.
Yes, Francie decided, it was a beautiful baby. It looked just like Joanna. Francie remembered how Papa had described her that day he and Mama were talking about her.
“She has skin like a magnolia petal.” (Johnny had never seen a magnolia.) “Her hair is as black as a raven’s wing.” (He had never seen such a bird.) “And her eyes are deep and dark like forest pools.” (He had never been in a forest and the only pool he knew was where each man put in a dime and guessed what the Dodgers score would be and whoever guessed right got all the dimes.) But he had described Joanna accurately. She was a beautiful girl.
“That may be,” answered Katie. “But what good is her looks? They’re a curse to the girl. I heard that her mother was never married but had two children just the same. And now the mother’s son is in Sing Sing and her daughter has this baby. There must be bad blood all along the line and no use getting sentimental about it. Of course,” she added with a detachment of which she was astonishingly capable at times, “it’s none of my business. I don’t need to do anything about it one way or the other. I don’t need to go out and spit on the girl because she did wrong. Neither do I have to take her in my house and adopt her because she did wrong. She suffered as much pain bringing that child into the world as though she was married. If she’s a good girl at heart, she’ll learn from the pain and the shame and she won’t do it again. If she’s naturally bad, it won’t bother her the way people treat her. So, if I was you, Johnny, I wouldn’t feel too sorry for her.” Suddenly she turned to Francie and said, “Let Joanna be a lesson to you.”
On this Saturday afternoon, Francie watched Joanna walk up and down and wondered in what way she was a lesson. Joanna acted proud about her baby. Was the lesson there? Joanna was only seventeen and friendly and she wanted everybody to be friendly with her. She smiled at the grim good women but the smile went away when she saw that they answered her with frowns. She smiled at the little children playing on the street. Some smiled back. She smiled at Francie. Francie wanted to smile back but didn’t. Was the lesson that she mustn’t be friendly with girls like Joanna?
The good housewives, their arms filled with bags of vegetables and brown paper parcels of meat, seemed to have little to do that afternoon. They kept gathering into little knots and whispered to each other. The whispering stopped when Joanna came by and started up when she had passed.
Each time Joanna passed, her cheeks got pinker, her head went higher and her skirt flipped behind her more defiantly. She seemed to grow prettier and prouder as she walked. She stopped oftener than needed to adjust the baby’s coverlet. She maddened the women by touching the baby’s cheek and smiling tenderly at it. How dare she! How dare she, they thought, act as though she had a right to all that?
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.
Joanna recognized their hate but wouldn’t cringe before it. She would not give in and take the baby indoors. Something had to give. The women broke first. They couldn’t endure it any longer. They had to do