A tree grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith [172]
“Ach du Liebchen,” crooned Seigler, hands clasped prayerfully, “she should wear it in good health.” This time the wish was not nullified by his spitting after them.
Mama went home with the baby and her new hat while Neeley and Francie continued their Christmas shopping. They bought small gifts for their Flittman cousins and something for Sissy’s baby. Then it was time for their own gifts.
“I’ll tell you what I want and you can buy it for me,” said Neeley.
“All right. What?”
“Spats.”
“Spats?” Francie’s voice scaled up.
“Pearl gray ones,” he said firmly.
“If that’s what you want…” she began, dubiously.
“Medium size.”
“How do you know the size?”
“I went in and tried them on yesterday.”
He gave Francie a dollar and a half and she bought the spats. She had the man wrap them in a gift box. On the street, she presented the package to Neeley while they frowned solemnly at each other.
“From me to you. Merry Christmas,” said Francie.
“Thank you,” he replied formally. “And now, what do you want?”
“A black lace dance set in the window of that store near Union Avenue.”
“Is that ladies’ stuff?” asked Neeley uneasily.
“Uh-huh. Twenty-four waist and 32 bust. Two dollars.”
“You buy it. I don’t like to ask for anything like that.”
She bought the coveted dance set—panties and brassiere made of scraps of black lace held together by narrow black satin ribbon. Neeley disapproved and muttered an ungracious, “You’re welcome,” to her thanks.
They passed the Christmas tree curb market. “Remember the time,” said Neeley, “when we let the man chuck the biggest tree at us?”
“Do I! Every time I get a headache, it’s in the place where the tree hit me.”
“And the way Papa sang when he helped us get the tree up the stairs,” recalled Neeley.
Several times that day, the name or thought of Papa had come up. And each time, Francie had felt a flash of tenderness instead of the old stab of pain. “Am I forgetting him?” she thought. “In time to come, will it be hard to remember anything about him? I guess it’s like Granma Mary Rommely says: ‘With time, passes all.’ The first year was hard because we could say last ’lection he voted. Last Thanksgiving he ate with us. But next year it will be two years ago that he…and as time passes it will be harder and harder to remember and keep track.”
“Look!” Neeley grabbed her arm and pointed to a two-foot fir tree in a wooden tub.
“It’s growing!” she cried out.
“What did you think? They all have to grow in the beginning.”
“I know. Still and all you always see them cut off and get the idea that they grow chopped down. Let’s buy it, Neeley.”
“It’s awful little.”
“But it has roots.”
When they brought it home, Katie examined the tree and the line between her eyes deepened as she figured something out. “Yes,” she said, “after Christmas we’ll put it on the fire escape and see that it gets sun and water and, once a month, horse manure.”
“No, Mama,” protested Francie. “You’re not going to put that horse manure over on us.”
As small children, gathering horse manure had been one of their most dreaded chores. Granma Mary Rommely kept a row of scarlet geraniums on her window sill and they were strong and bright and clear-colored because once a month either Francie or Neeley had to go out on the streets with a cigar box and fill it with two neat rows of manure balls. On delivery, Granma made payment of two cents. Francie had been ashamed to gather horse manure. Once she had protested to Granma who had answered:
“Ai, the blood runs thin in the third generation. Back in Austria, my good brothers loaded large wagons with the manure and they were strong and honorable men.”
“They’d have to be,” Francie had thought, “to work with stuff like that.”
Katie was saying: “Now that we own a tree, we have to take care of it and make it grow. You can get manure in the dark of night if you’re ashamed.”
“There’s so few horses now—mostly automobiles.