A tree grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith [171]
“Is that a way to talk? Exact copy, same hat in Wanamaker’s is seven-fifty.” Pregnant pause. “I’m going to give you identical hat for five dollars.”
“I have exactly two dollars to spend on a hat.”
“Get out from my store!” shouted the woman dramatically.
“All right.” Katie gathered up the baby and got to her feet.
“You must be so hasty?” The woman pushed her back into the chair. She thrust the hat into a paper bag. “I’m letting you take it home for four-fifty. Believe me, my own mother-in-law shouldn’t have it for that price!”
“I believe you,” thought Katie, “especially if she’s like my mother-in-law.” Aloud she said: “The hat’s nice but I can only afford two dollars. There are lots of other hat stores and I ought to get one for that—not as good as this one but good enough to keep the wind off my head.”
“I want you should listen.” The woman made her voice deep and sincere. “They say that by the Jews, money is everything. By me is different. When I got a pretty hat and it goes with a pretty customer, something happens to me here.” She put her hand on her heart. “I get so…profits is nothing. I give free.” She pushed the bag into Katie’s hand. “Take the hat for four dollars. That’s what it cost me wholesale.” She sighed. “Believe me, a business woman I shouldn’t be. Better I should be a picture painter.”
And the bargaining went on. Katie knew when the price finally reached two-fifty the woman wouldn’t go lower. She tested her by pretending she was leaving. But this time the woman made no attempt to stop her. Francie nodded to Neeley. He gave the woman two dollars and fifty cents.
“You shouldn’t tell nobody how cheap you got it,” warned the woman.
“We won’t,” promised Francie. “Put the hat in a box.”
“Ten cents extra is a box—what it costs me wholesale.”
“A bag’s good enough,” protested Katie.
“This is your Christmas present,” said Francie, “and it goes in a box.”
Neeley got out another dime. The hat was wrapped in tissue and put in a box. “I give it to you so cheap, you should come back next time you buy a hat. But don’t expect such bargains next time.” Katie laughed. As they left, the woman said, “Wear it in good health.”
“Thank you.”
As the door closed on them, the woman whispered bitterly, “Goyem!” and spat after them.
On the street Neeley said, “No wonder Mama waits five years to buy a new hat if it’s all that trouble.”
“Trouble?” said Francie. “Why, that’s fun!”
Next they went to Seigler’s to buy a sweater suit for Laurie’s Christmas. When Seigler saw Francie, he let loose a flood of abuse.
“So! At last you come in mine store! Is something maybe, other dry-goods stores ain’t got and you come by me? Maybe by other store is dicky penny cheaper but damaged stock, no?” He turned to Katie and explained: “So many years comes this girl by me to buy dickies and paper collars for the papa. Now for a whole year already, she don’t come.”
“Her father died a year ago,” explained Katie.
Mr. Seigler gave his forehead a mighty blow with the flat of his hand. “Oi! By me is so big the mouth, so my foot always goes in,” he apologized.
“That’s all right,” said Katie soothingly.
“It’s this way by me: Nobody tells me nothing and I don’t know till now.”
“That’s the way it always is,” said Katie.
“And now,” he asked briskly, getting down to business, “what can I show you?”
“A sweater suit for a seven months’ old baby.”
“I got here exzactle size.”
He took a blue wool outfit from a box. But when they held it up to Laurie, the sweater reached only to her navel and the leggings went to just below her knees. They measured other sizes and found a two-year-old size that was just right. Mr. Seigler went into ecstasies.
“I’m in dry-goods business twenty years—fifteen on Grand Stritt and five on Graham Am-yer and never ins leben do I see a seven months so big.” And the Nolans glowed with pride.
There was no bargaining because Seigler’s was a one-price store. Neeley counted out three dollars. They put the suit on the baby then and there. She looked cute with the zitful cap pulled down over her