A tree grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith [132]
No, Katie never fumbled. When she used her beautifully shaped but worn-looking hands, she used them with surety, whether it was to put a broken flower into a tumbler of water with one true gesture, or to wring out a scrub cloth with one decisive motion—the right hand turning in, and the left out, simultaneously. When she spoke, she spoke truly with the plain right words. And her thoughts walked in a clear uncompromising line.
Mama was saying: “Neeley’s getting too big to sleep in the same room with his sister. So I fixed the room your…” she barely hesitated over the next word, “…father and I used to have. That’s Neeley’s bedroom now.”
Neeley’s eyes jumped to his mother’s. A room of his own! A dream come true; two dreams come true, long pants and a room…His eyes saddened then, as he thought of how these good things had come to him.
“And I’ll share your room, Francie.” Instinctive tact made Katie put it that way instead of saying, “You’ll share my room.”
“I wish I had my own room,” thought Francie with a flare of jealousy. “But it’s right, I guess, that Neeley have it. There are only two bedrooms and he couldn’t sleep with Mama.”
Knowing Francie’s thought, Katie said, “And when it gets warm again, Francie can have the front room. We’ll put her cot in there and put a nice cover on it in the daytime and it will be like a private sitting room. All right, Francie?”
“All right, Mama.”
After a while, Mama said: “We forgot the reading the last few nights but now we’ll start again.”
“So things will go on just the same,” thought Francie, a little surprised, as she took the Bible from the mantelpiece.
“Being,” said Mama, “that we lost Christmas this year, let’s skip the part we’re supposed to read and go to the birth of the Baby Jesus. We’ll take turns reading. You start, Francie.”
Francie read.
…and so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her first-born son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in the manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.
Katie sighed sharply. Francie stopped reading and looked up inquiringly. “It’s nothing,” said Mama. “Go on reading.”
“No, it’s nothing,” Katie thought. “It’s the time when I should feel life.” Again the unborn child trembled faintly within her. “Was it because he knew of this coming child,” she wondered silently, “that he stopped drinking at the last?” She had whispered to him that they were to have another child. Had he tried to be different when he knew? And knowing, did he die in the trying to be a better man? “Johnny…Johnny…” She sighed again.
And they read, each in turn, of the birth of Jesus, and reading, they thought of Johnny dying. But each kept his thoughts.
When the children were ready to go to bed, Katie did something very unusual. It was unusual because she was not a demonstrative woman. She held the children close to her and kissed them good night.
“From now on,” she said, “I am your mother and your father.”
38
JUST BEFORE CHRISTMAS VACATION ENDED, FRANCIE TOLD MAMA THAT she wasn’t going back to school.
“Don’t you like school?” Mama asked.
“Yes, I do. But I’m fourteen now and I can get my working papers easy.”
“Why do you want to go to work?”
“To help out.”
“No, Francie. I want you to go back to school and graduate. It’s only a few more months. June will be here before you know it. You can get your working papers for this summer. Maybe Neeley, too. But you’re both going to high school in the fall. So forget working papers and go back to school.”
“But, Mama, how’ll we get along till summer?”
“We’ll manage.”
Katie was not as confident as she sounded. She missed Johnny in more ways than one. Johnny had never worked steadily but there had been the unexpected Saturday or Sunday night job with