A tree grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith [120]
The father came home and went into the dark room to give Lucia her daily food pittance. He turned up the gas and found a radiant Lucia and a fat healthy baby sleeping contentedly at her side. He was amazed. All this on bread and water! Then fright grew on him. It was a miracle! Surely the Virgin Mary had intervened for the young mother. She had been known to work such miracles in Italy. Maybe he would be punished for treating his flesh and blood so inhumanly. Contrite, he brought her a plate heaped with spaghetti. Lucia declined it saying she had grown used to bread and water. The mother sided with Lucia and explained that the bread and water had formed the perfect baby. More and more the father believed a miracle had come about. Frantically, he tried to be nice to Lucia, but the family were punishing him. They wouldn’t permit him to show any kindness to his daughter.
Sissy was lying peacefully in bed when her John came home that evening. Jokingly, he asked,
“Did you have that baby today?”
“Yes,” she said in a weak voice.
“Aw, go on!”
“It was born an hour after you left this morning.”
“It was not!”
“I swear!”
He looked around the room. “Where is it, then?”
“In the incubator at Coney Island.”
“In the where?”
“It was a seven months’ baby, you know. Only weighed three pounds. That’s why I didn’t show.”
“You lie, see?”
“As soon as I get my strength back, I’ll take you to Coney Island right to the glass case where it is.”
“What are you trying to do? Drive me crazy?”
“I’m going to bring it home in ten days. Just as soon as it grows fingernails.” She put that in on the spur of the moment.
“What’s gotten into you, Sissy? You know God-damned well you didn’t have a baby this morning.”
“I had a baby. It weighed three pounds. They took it to the incubator so that it wouldn’t die and I’m going to get it back in ten days.”
“I give up! I give up,” he shouted and went out and got drunk.
Sissy brought the baby home ten days later. It was a big baby and weighed almost eleven pounds. Her John asserted himself for the last time.
“It seems mighty big for a ten-day-old baby.”
“You’re a mighty big man yourself, Lover,” she whispered. She saw a pleased look come into his face. She put her arms around him. “I’m all right now,” she said in his ear, “if you want to sleep with me.”
“You know,” he said afterwards, “it does look a little like me.”
“Especially around the ears,” murmured Sissy drowsily.
The Italian family went back to Italy a few months later. They were glad to go because the new world had brought them nothing but sorrow, poverty and shame. Sissy never heard of them again.
Everybody knew that it wasn’t Sissy’s baby—that it couldn’t be her baby. But she stuck to her story and since there was no other explanation, people had to accept it. After all, strange things did happen in the world. She christened the child Sarah, but in time everyone called it Little Sissy.
Katie was the only one to whom Sissy told the truth about the origin of the baby. She confided in her when she asked her to write out the names for the birth certificate. Ah, but Francie knew too. Often in the night she had been wakened by the sound of voices and heard Mama and Aunt Sissy talking in the kitchen about the baby. Francie vowed always to keep Sissy’s secret.
Johnny was the only other person (outside of the Italian family) who knew. Katie told him. Francie heard them talking about it when they thought she was sound asleep. Papa took the part of Sissy’s husband.
“That’s a dirty trick to play on a man, any man. Somebody ought to tell him. I’ll tell him.”
“No!” said Mama sharply. “He’s a happy man. Let him be that way.”
“Happy? With another man’s child palmed off on him? I don’t see it.”
“He’s crazy for Sissy; he’s always afraid she’s going to leave him and he’d die if she left him. And you know Sissy. She went