A tree grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith [123]
“Aren’t you going to eat, Mama?” asked Neeley.
“I’ll eat after. I’m not hungry now.” Katie sighed.
Francie said, “Mama, if you don’t feel like eating, why don’t you play the piano so it’s like a restaurant while we’re eating.”
“It’s cold in the front room.”
“Light the oil stove,” chorused the children.
“All right.” Katie took a portable oil stove from the cupboard. “Only you know I don’t play so good.”
“You play grand, Mama,” said Francie sincerely.
Katie was pleased. She knelt to light the oil stove. “What do you want me to play?”
“‘Come, Little Leaves,’” called Francie.
“‘Welcome, Sweet Springtime,’” shouted Neeley.
“I’ll play ‘Little Leaves’ first,” decided Mama, “because I didn’t give Francie a birthday present.” She went into the cold front room.
“I think I’ll slice my banana on top of my oatmeal. I’ll slice it very thin so that there’s a whole lot of it,” said Francie.
“I’m going to eat mine whole,” decided Neeley, “and slow, so that it lasts a long time.”
Mama was playing Francie’s song, now. It was one that Mr. Morton had taught the children. She sang to the music:
Come, little leaves, said the wind one day.
Come o’er the meadows with me and play.
Put on your dresses of red and gold…
“Aw, that’s a baby song,” interrupted Neeley. Francie stopped singing. When Katie finished Francie’s song, she started to play Rubin-stein’s “Melody in F.” Mr. Morton had taught them that song, too, calling it “Welcome, Sweet Springtime.” Neeley started to sing:
Welcome, sweet springtime, we greet thee in song.
His voice changed suddenly from tenor to bass on the high note in “song.” Francie giggled and soon Neeley was giggling so much that he couldn’t sing.
“You know what Mama would say if she was sitting here now?” asked Francie.
“What?”
“She’d say, ‘spring will be here before you know it.’” They laughed.
“Christmas is coming soon,” commented Neeley.
“Remember when we were children,” said Francie, who had just finished being thirteen, “how we used to smell if Christmas was coming?”
“Let’s see if we can still smell it,” Neeley said impulsively. He opened the window a crack and put his nose to it. “Yup.”
“What does it smell like?”
“I smell snow. Remember how, when we were kids we used to look up at the sky and holler, ‘Feather boy, feather boy, shake down some feathers from the sky.’”
“And when it snowed, we thought there was a feather boy up there. Let me smell,” she asked suddenly. She put her nose to the crack. “Yes, I can smell it. It smells like orange peels and Christmas trees put together.” They closed the window.
“I never snitched on you that time you got the doll when you said your name was Mary.”
“No,” said Francie gratefully. “And I didn’t tell on you either, the time you made a cigarette out of coffee grounds and when you smoked it, the paper caught fire and fell on your blouse and burned a big hole in it. I helped you hide it.”
“You know,” mused Neeley, “Mama found that blouse and sewed a patch over the hole and she never asked me about it.”
“Mama is funny,” said Francie. They pondered a while over their mother’s inscrutable ways. The fire was dying down now but the kitchen was still warm. Neeley sat on top of the far end of the stove where it wasn’t so hot. Mama had warned him that he’d get piles from sitting on a hot stove. But Neeley didn’t care. He liked his backside to be warm.
The children were almost happy. The kitchen was warm and they were fed and Mama’s playing made them seem safe and comfortable. They reminisced about past Christmases, or, as Francie put it, they talked about olden times.
While they were talking, someone pounded on the door. “It’s Papa,” said Francie.
“No. Papa always sings coming up the stairs so we know it’s him.”
“Neeley, Papa hasn’t sung coming home since that night….”
“Let me in!” shouted Johnny’s voice and he beat on the door as though he would break it down. Mama came running out from the front room. Her eyes looked very dark in her white face. She opened the door. Johnny lunged in. They stared at him. They had never