A tree grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith [20]
Flossie had six sheaths of various colors and the same number of tarleton underskirts and at least twenty chiffon sleeves of every color that a person could imagine. Each week, Flossie switched the combinations to make a new costume. Next week the cerise underskirt might froth out from beneath a sky-blue sheath with one black chiffon sleeve. And so on. There were two dozen tightly rolled, never-used silk umbrellas in that closet; prizes she had won. Flossie collected them for display the way an athlete collects cups. Francie felt happy looking at all the umbrellas. Poor people have a great passion for huge quantities of things.
While Francie was admiring the costumes, she began to grow uneasy. While looking at the brilliant frothing colors, cerise, orange, bright blue, red and yellow, she had a feeling that something was stealthily concealed behind those costumes. It was something wrapped in a long somber cloak with a grinning skull, and bones for hands. And it was hiding behind these brilliant colors waiting for Henny.
5
MAMA CAME HOME AT SIX WITH AUNT SISSY. FRANCIE WAS VERY GLAD to see Sissy. She was her favorite aunt. Francie loved her and was fascinated by her. So far, Sissy had led a very exciting life. She was thirty-five now, had been married three times, and had given birth to ten children, all of whom had died soon after being born. Sissy often said that Francie was all of her ten children.
Sissy worked in a rubber factory and was very wild as far as men were concerned. She had roving black eyes, black curling hair, and a high clear color. She liked to wear a cherry-colored bow in her hair. Mama was wearing her jade green hat which made her skin look like cream off the top of the bottle. The roughness of her pretty hands was hidden by a pair of white cotton gloves. She and Sissy came in talking excitedly and laughing as they recalled to each other the jokes they had heard at the show.
Sissy brought Francie a present, a corncob pipe that you blew into and a rubber hen popped up and swelled over the pipe bowl. The pipe came from Sissy’s factory. The factory made a few rubber toys as a blind. It made its big profits from other rubber articles which were bought in whispers.
Francie hoped that Sissy would stay for supper. When Sissy was around, everything was gay and glamorous. Francie felt that Sissy understood how it was with little girls. Other people treated children like lovable but necessary evils. Sissy treated them like important human beings. But although Mama urged her, Sissy wouldn’t stay. She had to go home, she said, and see if her husband still loved her. This made Mama laugh. Francie laughed too, although she didn’t understand what Sissy meant. Sissy left after promising that she would come back on the first of the month with the magazines. Sissy’s current husband worked for a pulp magazine house. Each month he received copies of all their publications: love stories, wild west stories, detective stories, supernatural stories and what not. They had shiny colorful covers and he received them from the stock room tied up in a length of new yellow twine. Sissy brought them over to Francie just as they came. Francie read them all avidly, then sold them at half price to the neighborhood stationery store and put the money in Mama’s tin-can bank.
After Sissy left, Francie told Mama about the old man at Losher’s with the obscene feet.
“Nonsense,” said Mama. “Old age isn’t such a tragedy. If he was the only old man in the world—yes. But he has other old men to keep him company. Old people are not unhappy. They don’t long for the things we