A tree grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith [104]
“Ain’t you ashamed of yourself?”
“What for?” Joanna wanted to know.
This infuriated the woman. “What for, she asks,” she reported to the other women. “I’ll tell you what for. Because you’re a disgrace and a bum. You got no right to parade the streets with your bastard where innocent children can see you.”
“I guess this is a free country,” said Joanna.
“Not free for the likes of you. Get off the street, get off the street.”
“Try and make me!”
“Get off the street, you whore,” ordered the stringy woman.
The girl’s voice trembled when she answered. “Be careful what you’re saying.”
“We don’t have to be careful what we say to no street walker,” chipped in another woman.
A man passing by stopped a moment to take it in. He touched Joanna’s arm. “Look, Sister, why don’t you go home till these battle-axes cool off? You can’t win with them.”
Joanna jerked her arm away. “You mind your own business!”
“I meant it in the right way, Sister. Sorry.” He walked on.
“Why don’t you go with him,” taunted the stringy woman. “He might be good for a quarter.” The others laughed.
“You’re all jealous,” said Joanna evenly.
“She says we’re jealous,” reported the interlocutor. “Jealous of what, you?” (She said “you” as though it were the girl’s name.)
“Jealous that men like me. That’s what. Lucky you’re married already,” she told the stringy one. “You’d never get a man otherwise. I bet your husband spits on you—afterwards. I bet that’s just what he does.”
“Bitch! You bitch!” screamed the stringy one hysterically. Then, acting on an instinct which was strong even in Christ’s day, she picked a stone out of the gutter and threw it at Joanna.
It was the signal for the other women to start throwing stones. One, droller than the rest, threw a ball of horse manure. Some of the stones hit Joanna but a sharp pointed one missed and struck the baby’s forehead. Immediately, a thin clear trickle of blood ran down the baby’s face and spotted its clean bib. The baby whimpered and held out its arms for its mother to pick it up.
A few women, poised to throw the next stones, dropped them quietly back into the gutter. The baiting was all over. Suddenly the women were ashamed. They had not wanted to hurt the baby. They only wanted to drive Joanna off the street. They dispersed and went home quietly. Some children who had been standing around listening, resumed their play.
Joanna, crying now, lifted the baby from the carriage. The baby continued to whimper quietly as though it had no right to cry out loud. Joanna pressed her cheek to her baby’s face and her tears mixed with its blood. The women won. Joanna carried her baby into the house not caring that the carriage stood in the middle of the sidewalk.
And Francie had seen it all; had seen it all. She had heard every word. She remembered how Joanna had smiled at her and how she had turned her head away without smiling back. Why hadn’t she smiled back? Why hadn’t she smiled back? Now she would suffer—she would suffer all the rest of her life every time that she remembered that she had not smiled back.
Some small boys started to play tag around the empty carriage, holding on to its sides and pulling it way over while being chased. Francie scattered them and wheeled the carriage over to Joanna’s door and put the brake on. There was an unwritten law that nothing was to be molested that stood outside the door where it belonged.
She was still holding the magazine with her story in it. She stood next to the braked carriage and looked at her name once more. “Winter Time, by Frances Nolan.” She wanted to do something, sacrifice something to pay for not having smiled at Joanna. She thought of her story, she was so proud of it; so eager to show Papa and Aunt Evy and Sissy. She wanted to keep it always to look at and to get that nice warm feeling when she looked at it. If she gave it away, there was no means by which she could get another copy. She slipped the magazine under the baby’s pillow. She left it open at the page of her story.