A tree grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith [155]
“But he can’t be, Aunt Sissy. He sent me flowers.”
“Francie, about a year ago he gave me that card all written out and two dollars. He said, ‘When Francie graduates, send her some flowers for me—in case I forget.’”
Francie started to cry. It wasn’t only because she was sure, now, that nothing was a dream; it was because she was unstrung from working too hard and worrying about Mama; because she didn’t get to write the graduation play; because she got a bad mark in English; because she had been too well prepared not to receive flowers.
Sissy took her to the girls’ washroom and pushed her into a booth. “Cry loud and hard,” she ordered, “and hurry up. Your mother will be wondering what’s keeping us.”
Francie stood in the booth, clutching her roses and sobbing. Each time the washroom door opened and chattering announced incoming girls, she flushed the toilet so that the noise of the water would drown out her sobs. Soon she was over it. When she came out, Sissy had a handkerchief wet with cold water to hand her. As Francie mopped her eyes, Sissy asked whether she felt better. Francie nodded yes, and begged her to wait a moment while she said her good-byes.
She went into the principal’s office and shook hands with him. “Don’t forget the old school, Frances. Come back and see us sometime,” he said.
“I will,” promised Francie. She went back to say good-bye to her classroom teacher.
“We’ll miss you, Frances,” said Teacher.
Francie got her pencil box and autograph book from her desk. She started to say good-bye to the girls. They crowded around her. One put her arm around her waist and two others kissed her cheek. They called out good-bye messages.
“Come to my house to see me, Frances.”
“Write to me, Frances, and let me know how you’re getting along.”
“Frances, we have a telephone now. Ring me up sometime. Ring me up tomorrow.”
“Write something in my autograph book, huh, Frances? So’s I can sell it when you get famous.”
“I’m going to summer camp. I’ll put down my address. Write to me. Hear, Frances?”
“I’m going to Girls High in September. You come to Girls High, too, Frances.”
“No. Come to Eastern District High with me.”
“Girls High!”
“Eastern District!”
“Erasmus Hall High’s the best. You come there, Frances, with me and we’ll be friends all through high school. I’ll never have any other friend but you, if you’ll come.”
“Frances, you never let me write in your autograph book.”
“Me neither.”
“Gimme, gimme.”
They wrote in Francie’s all but empty book. “They’re nice,” Francie thought. “I could have been friends with them all the time. I thought they didn’t want to be friends. It must have been me that was wrong.”
They wrote in the book. Some wrote small and cramped; others, loose and sprawling. But all the writing was the handwriting of children. Francie read as they wrote:
I wish you luck, I wish you joy.
I wish you first, a baby boy.
And when his hair begins to curl,
I wish you then, a baby girl.
Florence Fitzgerald.
When you are married
And your husband gets cross,
Sock him with the poker,
And get a divorce.
Jeannie Leigh.
When night draws back the curtain,
And pins it with a star,
Remember I am still your friend,
Though you may wander far.
Noreen O’Leary.
Beatrice Williams turned to the last page in the book and wrote:
Way back here and out of sight,
I sign my name, just for spite.
She signed it, Your Fellow Writer, Beatrice Williams. “She would say fellow writer,” thought Francie, still jealous about the play.
Francie got away at last. Out in the hall she said to Sissy, “Just one more good-bye.”
“It’s taking you the longest time to graduate,” protested Sissy good-naturedly.
Miss Garnder sat at her desk in her brilliantly lighted room. She was alone. She wasn’t popular and so far no one had been in to say good-bye. She looked up eagerly as Francie entered.
“So you’ve come to say good-bye to your old English teacher,” she said, pleased.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Miss Garnder couldn’t let it go at that. She had to be a teacher. “About your mark: You haven’t turned in work this term.