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By Root 1322 0

she went over to register. She was told that she couldn’t matriculate lacking a high school education. She explained how she had been permitted to go to summer school. Ah! That was different. There courses were given for credit only. No degree was offered in summer courses. She asked couldn’t she take courses now without expecting a degree. No. If she were past twenty-five, she might be permitted to enter as a special student and take courses without being a candidate for a degree. Francie regretfully acknowledged that she was not yet past twenty-five. There was an alternative, however. If she was able to pass the entrance or regents’ examination, she would be permitted to enroll regardless of high school credits.

Francie took the examinations and flunked everything but chemistry.

“Oh, well! I should have known,” she told her mother. “If people could get into college that easy, no one would ever bother with high school. But don’t you worry, Mama. I know what the entrance examinations are now, and I’ll get the books and study and take those examinations next year. And I’ll pass next year. It can be done and I’ll do it. You’ll see.”

* * *

Even if she had been able to enter college, it wouldn’t have worked out because she was put on the day shift after all. She was now a fast and expert operator and they needed her in the day when the traffic was heaviest. They assured her that she could go back on night work in the summer if she wished. She got her next raise. She was now earning seventeen-fifty a week.

Again the lonely evenings. Francie roamed the Brooklyn streets in the lovely nights of fall and thought of Ben.

(“If you ever need me, write and I’ll manage to see you.”)

Yes, she needed him but she was sure he’d never come if she wrote: “I’m lonely. Please come and walk with me and talk to me.” In his firm schedule of life, there was no heading labeled “Loneliness.”

The neighborhood seemed the same, yet it was different. Gold stars had appeared in some of the tenement windows. The boys still got together on the corner or in front of a penny candy store of an evening. But now, often as not, one of the boys would be in khaki.

The boys stood around harmonizing. They sang “A Shanty in Old Shantytown” and “When You Wore a Tulip,” “Dear Old Girl,” “I’m Sorry I Made You Cry,” and other songs.

Sometimes the soldier boy led them in war songs: “Over There,” “K-K-K-Katy” and “The Rose of No Man’s Land.”

But no matter what they sang, always they finished off with one of Brooklyn’s own folk songs: “Mother Machree,” “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling,” “Let Me Call You Sweetheart,” or “The Band Played On.”

And Francie walked past them in the evenings and wondered why all the songs sounded so sad.

50

SISSY EXPECTED HER BABY LATE IN NOVEMBER. KATIE AND EVY went to a lot of trouble to avoid discussing it with Sissy. They were certain it would be another stillbirth and they reasoned that the less said about it, the less Sissy would have to remember afterward. But Sissy did such a revolutionary thing that they had to talk about it. She announced that she was going to have a doctor when the baby came and that she was going to a hospital.

Her mother and sisters were stunned. No Rommely women had had a doctor at childbirth, ever. It didn’t seem right. You called in a midwife, a neighbor woman, or your mother, and you got through the business secretively and behind closed doors and kept the men out. Babies were women’s business. As for hospitals, everyone knew you went there only to die.

Sissy told them they were way behind the times; that midwives were things of the past. Besides, she informed them proudly, she had no say in the matter. Her Steve insisted on the doctor and the hospital. And that wasn’t all.

Sissy was going to have a Jewish doctor!

“Why, Sissy? Why?” asked her shocked sisters.

“Because Jewish doctors are more sympathetic than Christian ones at a time like that.”

“I’ve nothing against the Jews,” began Katie, “but…”

“Look! Just because Dr. Aaronstein’s people look at a star when they pray and our people look