A tree grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith [110]
July 29. Papa wasn’t sick today. He’s going to get a job. He said Mama has to stop washing for Mrs. McGarrity and I have to give up my job. He says we’ll be rich and all go to live in the country. I wonder.
Aug. 10. Sissy says she’s going to have a baby soon. I wonder. She’s as flat as a pancake.
Aug. 17. Papa has been working for three weeks now. We have wonderful suppers.
Aug. 18. Papa’s sick.
Aug. 19. Papa’s sick because he lost his job. Mr. Hendler won’t take me back in the restaurant. He says I’m not reliable.
Sept. 1. Aunt Evy, Uncle Willie over tonight. Willie sang Frankie and Johnny and put dirty words in it. Aunt Evy stood on a chair and punched him in the nose. Mama scolded me for laughing.
Sept. 10. I started my last year of school. Miss Garnder said if I keep on getting A’s on my composition, she might let me write a play for graduation. I have a very beautiful idea. There will be a girl in a white dress and her hair hanging down her back and she will be Fate. Other girls will come out on the stage and tell what they want from Life and Fate will tell them what they’ll get. At the end a girl in a blue dress will spread out her arms and say, “Is life worth living then?” And there will be a chorus that says “yes.” Only it will all be in rhyme. I told Papa about it but he was too sick to understand. Poor Papa.
Sept. 18. I asked Mama could I get a Castle Clip and she said no that hair was a woman’s crowning beauty. Does that mean she expects me to be a woman soon? I hope so because I want to be my own boss and get my hair cut off if I feel like it.
Sept. 24. Tonight when I took a bath, I discovered that I was changing into a woman. It’s about time.
Oct. 25. I will be glad when this book is filled up as I am getting tired of keeping a diary. Nothing important ever happens.
Francie came to the last entry. Only one more blank page left. Well, the sooner she got it filled, the sooner the diary-keeping would be over and she wouldn’t have to bother with it anymore. She wet her pencil.
Nov. 2. Sex is something that invariably comes into everyone’s life. People write pieces against it. The priests preach against it. They even make laws against it. But it keeps going on just the same. All the girls in school have but the one topic of conversation: sex and boys. They are very curious about it. Am I curious about sex?
She studied the last sentence. The line on the inner edge of her right eyebrow deepened. She crossed out the sentence and rewrote it to read: “I am curious about sex.”
33
YES, THERE WAS A GREAT CURIOSITY ABOUT SEX AMONG THE adolescent children of Williamsburg. There was a lot of talk about it. Among the younger children there was some exhibitionism (you show me and I’ll show you). A few hypocrites devised such evasive games as “playing house” or “doctor.” A few uninhibited ones did what they called “play dirty.”
There was a great hush-hush about sex in that neighborhood. When children asked questions, the parents didn’t know how to answer them for the reason that these people did not know the correct words to use. Each married couple had its own secret words for things which were whispered in bed in the quiet of night. But there were few mothers brave enough to bring these words out into the daylight and present them to the child. When the children grew up, they in turn invented words which they couldn’t tell their children.
Katie Nolan was neither a mental nor a physical coward. She tackled every problem masterfully. She didn’t volunteer sex information but when Francie asked questions she answered as best she knew how. Once when Francie and Neeley were young children, they had agreed to ask their mother certain questions. They stood before her one day. Francie was the spokesman.
“Mama, where did we come from?”
“God gave you to me.”
The Catholic children were willing to accept that but the next question was a sticker. “How did God get us to you?”
“I can’t explain that because I’d have to use a lot of big words that you wouldn’t