A tree grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith [161]
It was a few minutes past noon on Saturday. Francie stood at the foot of the Flushing Avenue station of the Broadway El waiting for Neeley. She held an envelope containing five dollars—her first week’s pay. Neeley was bringing home five dollars too. They had agreed to arrive home together and make a little ceremony out of giving the money to Mama.
Neeley worked as errand boy in a downtown New York brokerage house. Sissy’s John had gotten him the job through a friend already working there. Francie envied Neeley. Each day he crossed the great Williamsburg Bridge and went into the strange big city while Francie walked to her work on the north side of Brooklyn. And Neeley ate in a restaurant. Like Francie, he had brought his lunch the first day but the boys made fun of him, calling him the country boy from Brooklyn. After that, Mama gave him fifteen cents a day for lunch. He told Francie how he ate in a place called the Automat where you put a nickel in a slot and coffee and cream came out together—not too little, not too much, just a cupful. Francie wished she could ride across the bridge to work and eat in the Automat instead of carrying sandwiches from home.
Neeley ran down the El steps. He carried a flat package under his arm. Francie noticed how he put his feet down at an angle so that the whole foot was on the step instead of just the heel part. This gave him sure footing. Papa had always come down stairs that way. Neeley wouldn’t tell Francie what was in the package, saying that would spoil the surprise. They stopped in a neighborhood bank which was just about to close for the day and asked a teller to give them new one-dollar bills in exchange for their old money.
“What do you want new bills for?” asked the teller.
“It’s our first pay and we’d like to bring it home in new money,” explained Francie.
“First pay, eh?” said the teller. “That takes me back. It certainly takes me back. I remember when I took home my first pay. I was a boy at the time…working on a farm in Manhasset, Long Island. Well, sir….” He went off into a biographical sketch while people in line shuffled impatiently. He ended, “…and when I turned my first pay over to my mother, the tears stood in her eyes. Yes, sir, the tears stood in her eyes.”
He tore the wrapper from a bundle of new bills and exchanged their old money. Then he said, “And here’s a present for you.” He gave each a fresh-minted gold-looking penny which he took from the cash drawer. “New 1916 pennies,” he explained. “The first in the neighborhood. Don’t spend them, now. Save them.” He took two old coppers from his pocket and put them in the drawer to make up the deficiency. Francie thanked him. As they moved away, she heard the man next in line say as he leaned his elbow on the ledge,
“I remember when I brought my first pay home to my old lady.”
As they went out, Francie wondered whether everyone in line would tell about his first pay. “Everyone who works,” said Francie, “has this one thing together: They remember about bringing home their first pay.”
“Yeah,” agreed Neeley.
As they turned a corner, Francie mused, “‘And the tears stood in her eyes.’” She had never heard that expression before and it caught her fancy.
“How could that be?” Neeley wanted to know. “Tears have no legs. They can’t stand.”
“He didn’t mean that. He meant it like when people say, ‘I stood in bed all day.’”
“But ‘stood’ is no word that way.”
“It is so,” countered Francie. “Here in Brooklyn ‘stood’ is like the past tense of ‘stay.’”
“I guess so,” agreed Neeley. “Let’s walk down Manhattan Avenue instead of Graham.”
“Neeley, I have an idea. Let’s make a tin-can bank without telling Mama and nail it in your closet. We’ll start it off with these new pennies and if Mama gives us any spending money, we’ll each put ten cents in every week. We’ll open it Christmas and buy presents for Mama and Laurie.”
“And for us, too,” stipulated Neeley.
“Yeah. I’ll buy one for