A tree grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith [157]
They ordered. Francie had a mental list of all the soda flavors. She was going down the list so that she could say she had tasted all the kinds of sodas in the world. Pineapple was next and she ordered that. Neeley ordered the old standby, chocolate soda, and Katie and Evy chose plain vanilla ice cream.
Evy made up little stories about the people in the place and kept Francie and Neeley laughing. Francie studied her mother from time to time. Mama wasn’t smiling at Evy’s jokes. She ate her ice cream slowly and the line between her eyes deepened and Francie knew that she was figuring something out.
“My children,” thought Katie, “have more education at thirteen and fourteen than I have at thirty-two. And still it isn’t enough. When I think of how ignorant I was at their age. Yes, and even when I was married and had a baby. Imagine. I believed in witch’s charms, then—what the midwife told me about the woman in the fish market. They started in way ahead of me. They were never that ignorant.
“I got them graduated from grade school. I can’t do more for them. All my plans…Neeley, a doctor, Francie in college…can’t work them out now. The baby…. Have they enough in them to get somewhere alone? I don’t know. The Shakespeare…the Bible…. They know how to play piano but they’ve stopped practicing now. I taught them to be clean and truthful and not to take charity. Is that enough, though?
“They’ll have a boss to please, soon, and new people to get along with. They’ll get into other ways. Good? Bad? They won’t sit home with me nights if they work all day. Neeley will be off with his friends. And Francie? Reading…. Away to the library…a show…a free lecture or band concert. Of course, I’ll have the baby. The baby. She’ll get a better start. When she graduates, the other two might see her through high school. I must do better for Laurie than I did for them. They never had enough to eat, never had right clothes. The best I could do wasn’t enough. And now they have to go out to work and they’re still little children. Oh, if I could only get them into high school this fall! Please God! I’ll give twenty years off my life. I’ll work night and day. But I can’t, of course. No one to stay with the baby.”
Her thoughts were broken into by a wave of singing that rolled over the room. Someone started a popular anti-war song and the rest took it up.
I didn’t raise my boy to be a soldier.*
I brought him up to be my pride and joy…
Katie resumed her thoughts. “There is no one to help us. No one.” She thought briefly of Sergeant McShane. He had sent a big basket of fruit when Laurie was born. She knew he was retiring from the police force in September. He was going to run for Assemblyman from Queens, his home borough, next Election. Everyone said he’d be sure to get in. She had heard that his wife was very sick, might not live to see her husband elected.
“He’ll marry again,” thought Katie. “Of course. Some woman who knows all about social life…help him…the way a politician’s wife must.” She stared at her workworn hands for a long time, then put them under the table as though she were ashamed of them.
Francie noticed. “She’s thinking of Sergeant McShane,” she guessed, remembering how Mama had put on her cotton gloves that time long ago at the outing when McShane had looked at her. “He likes her,” thought Francie. “I wonder does she know it? She must. She seems to know everything. I bet she could marry him if she wanted to. But he needn’t think I’d ever call him father. My father is dead and no matter who Mama marries, he will only be Mr. So-and-So to me.”
They were finishing the song.
There’d be no wars today,
If mothers all would say,
I didn’t raise my boy to be a soldier.
“…Neeley,” thought Katie. “Thirteen. If war does come here, it will be over before he gets old enough to go, thank God.”
Now Aunt Evy was singing softly to them, making up a parody on the song.
Who dares to place a mustache on his shoulder.
“Aunt Evy, you’re terrible,” said Francie as she and Neeley screamed with