A tree grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith [149]
“Oh, Mama, Mama!” She shook her mother’s hand and held it to her own cheek.
“Wring a cloth out of cold water and wipe my face,” Mama whispered. After Francie had done so, Katie went back to what was incompleted in her mind. “Of course, you’re a comfort to me.” Her mind veered off to something that seemed irrelevant but wasn’t. “I’ve always been meaning to read your A compositions but I never had the time. I’ve a little time now. Would you like to read one to me?”
“I can’t. I burned them all up.”
“You thought about them, and wrote them, and handed them in, and got marks on them, and thought about them some more, and then you burned them up. And all through that, I never read one of them.”
“That’s all right, Mama. They weren’t much good.”
“It’s on my conscience.”
“They weren’t much good, Mama, and I know you never had the time.”
Katie thought, “But I always had time for anything the boy did. I made time for him.” She continued her thought aloud. “But then, Neeley needs more encouragement. You can go on with what you have inside you, like I can. But he needs so much from outside.”
“That’s all right, Mama,” Francie repeated.
“I couldn’t do any different than I did,” said Katie. “But it will always be on my conscience just the same. What time is it?”
“Nearly seven-thirty.”
“The towel again, Francie.” Katie’s mind seemed to be trying to clutch at something. “And isn’t there one left you can read?”
Francie thought of the four about her father, what Miss Garnder had said about them, and answered, “No.”
“Then read something from the Shakespeare book.” Francie got the book. “Read about ‘ ’twas on a night like this,’ I’d like to have something pretty in my mind just before the baby comes.”
The print was so small that Francie had to light the gas to read. As the light flared up, she had a good look at her mother’s face. It was gray and contorted. Mama didn’t look like Mama. She looked like Granma Mary Rommely in pain. Katie winced away from the light and Francie shut it off quickly.
“Mama, we’ve read these plays so many times over, that I almost know them by heart. I don’t need a light or the book, Mama. Listen!” She recited:
The moon shines bright!—In such a night as this
When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees
And they did make no noise; in such a night
Troilus…
“What time is it?”
“Seven-forty.”
…methinks mounted the Trojan walls,
And sighed his soul toward the Grecian tents
Where Cressida lay the night.
“And did you ever find out who Troilus was, Francie? And Cressida?”
“Yes, Mama.”
“Someday you must tell me. When I have time to listen.”
“I will, Mama.”
Katie moaned. Francie wiped the sweat away again. Katie held out her two hands as she had done that day in the hall. Francie took the hands and braced her feet. Katie pulled and Francie thought her arms would come out of their sockets. Then Mama relaxed and let go.
So the next hour passed. Francie recited passages she knew by heart—Portia’s speech, Marc Antony’s funeral oration, “Tomorrow and tomorrow”—the obvious things that are remembered from Shakespeare. Sometimes Katie asked a question. Sometimes she put her hands over her face and moaned. Without knowing she did so, and taking no note of the answer, she kept asking the time. Francie wiped off her face at intervals, and three or four times in that hour, Katie held out her two hands to Francie.
When Evy arrived at half past eight, Francie all but died of pure relief. “Aunt Sissy will be along in half an hour,” announced Evy as she rushed into the bedroom. After a look at Katie, Evy pulled the sheet from Francie’s cot, knotted one end to Katie’s bedpost and put the other end in Katie’s hand. “Try pulling on that for a change,” she suggested.
“What time is it?” whispered Katie after she had taken a tremendous tug on the sheet; a tug that made the sweat stand out on her face again.
“What do you care,” answered Evy, cheerfully. “You’re not going any place.” Katie started a smile but a pain spasm wiped it off her face. “We can do with