A tree grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith [170]
She put her hand awkwardly on her mother’s cheek. “It’s all right, Mama. I didn’t mean it. You’re right and I’ll do as you say. Neeley must go to school and you and I will see that he gets through.”
Katie put her hand over Francie’s. “That’s my good girl,” she said.
“Don’t be mad at me, Mama, because I fought you. You, yourself, taught me to fight for what I thought was right and I…I thought I was right.”
“I know. And I’m pleased that you can and will fight for what you should have. And you’ll always come out all right—no matter what. You’re like me that way.”
“And that’s where the whole trouble is,” thought Francie. “We’re too much alike to understand each other because we don’t even understand our own selves. Papa and I were too different persons and we understood each other. Mama understands Neeley because he’s different from her. I wish I was different in the way that Neeley is.”
“Then everything’s all right now between us?” Katie asked with a smile.
“Of course.” Francie smiled back and kissed her mother’s cheek.
But in their secret hearts, each knew that it wasn’t all right and would never be all right between them again.
45
CHRISTMAS AGAIN. BUT THIS YEAR THERE WAS MONEY FOR PRESENTS and lots of food in the icebox and the flat was always warm now. When Francie came in off the cold street she thought that the warmth was like a lover’s arms around her drawing her into the room. She wondered, incidentally, exactly what a lover’s arms felt like.
Francie took comfort out of not returning to school in the realization that the money she earned made life easier for them. Mama had been very fair. When Francie was raised to twenty dollars a week, Mama gave her five dollars a week for herself to pay for her carfare, lunches, and clothes. Also, Katie deposited five dollars each week in Francie’s name in the Williamsburg Savings Bank—for college, she explained. Katie managed well on the remaining ten dollars and a dollar that Neeley contributed. It wasn’t a fortune, but things were cheap in 1916 and the Nolans got along fine.
Neeley had taken to school cheerfully when he found that many of his old gang were entering Eastern District High. He had his old after-school job back at McGarrity’s and Mama gave him one of the two dollars for pocket money. He was somebody in school. He had more spending money than most boys and he knew Julius Caesar backwards, forwards, and upside-down.
When they opened the tin-can bank, there was nearly four dollars in it. Neeley added another dollar, and Francie, five, and they had ten dollars to spend for Christmas presents. The three of them went shopping the afternoon before Christmas, taking Laurie with them.
First they went to buy Mama a new hat. In the hat store they stood behind Mama’s chair while she held the baby in her lap and tried on hats. Francie wanted her to have a jade-green velvet one but there wasn’t a hat of that color to be found in Williamsburg. Mama thought she ought to get a black hat.
“We’re buying the hat, not you,” Francie told her, “and we say, no more mourning hats.”
“Try on this red one, Mama,” suggested Neeley.
“No. I’ll try on that very dark green one in the window.”
“It’s a new shade,” said the woman proprietor, getting it out of the window. “We call it moss green.” She set it straight on Katie’s brow. With an impatient flick of her hand, Katie tilted the hat over one eye.
“That’s it!” declared Neeley.
“Mama, you look beautiful,” was Francie’s verdict.
“I like it,” decided Mama. “How much?” she asked the woman. The woman drew a long breath and the Nolans girded themselves for bargaining.
“It’s like this…” began the woman.
“How much?” repeated Katie inflexibly.
“In New York, ten dollars would you pay for the same merchandise. But….”
“If I wanted to pay ten dollars,