A tree grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith [209]
No, she’d never come back to the old neighborhood.
Besides in years to come, there would be no old neighborhood to come back to. After the war, the city was going to tear down the tenements and the ugly school where a woman principal used to whip little boys, and build a model housing project on the site; a place of living where sunlight and air were to be trapped, measured and weighed, and doled out so much per resident.
Katie banged her broom and pail in the corner with that final bang that meant she was through. Then she picked up the broom and pail again and replaced them gently.
As she dressed to go out—she was going for a last-minute fitting of the jade-green velvet dress she had chosen to be married in—she fretted because the weather was so mild for the end of September. She thought it might be too warm to wear a velvet dress. She was angry that the fall was so late in coming that year. She argued with Francie when Francie insisted that fall was here.
Francie knew that autumn had come. Let the wind blow warm, let the days be heat hazy; nevertheless autumn had come to Brooklyn. Francie knew that this was so because now, as soon as night came and the street lights went on, the hot-chestnut man set up his little stand on the corner. On the rack above the charcoal fire, chestnuts roasted in a covered pan. The man held unroasted ones in his hand and made little crosses on them with a blunt knife before he put them in the pan.
Yes, autumn had surely come when the hot-chestnut man appeared—no matter what the weather said to the contrary.
After Laurie had been tucked into her crib for her afternoon nap, Francie packed a few last things in a wooden Fels-Naptha soap box. From over the mantelpiece, she took down the crucifix and the picture of her and Neeley on Confirmation Day. She wrapped these things in her First Communion veil and placed them in the box. She folded her father’s two waiter’s aprons and put them in. She wrapped the shaving cup with the name “John Nolan” on it in gilt block letters, in a white georgette crepe blouse which Katie had put in the “give-away” basket because its lace jabot had torn badly in the wash. It was the blouse Francie had worn that rainy night when she stood in the doorway with Lee. The doll named Mary and the pretty little box which had once held ten gilded pennies, were stowed away next. Her sparse library went into the box: the Gideon Bible, The Complete Works of Wm. Shakespeare, a tattered volume of Leaves of Grass, the three scrapbooks —The Nolan Volume of Contemporary Poetry, The Nolan Book of Classical Poems, and The Book of Annie Laurie.
She went into the bedroom, turned back her mattress and took from under it a notebook in which she had kept a desultory diary during her thirteenth year, and a square manila envelope. Kneeling before the box, she opened the diary and read a random entry dated September 24th, three years ago.
Tonight when I took a bath, I discovered I was changing into a woman. It’s about time!
She grinned as she packed the diary in the box. She looked at the writing on the envelope.
Contents:
1 sealed envelope to be opened in 1967.
1 diploma.
4 stories.
Four stories, which Miss Garnder had told her to burn. Ah, well. Francie remembered how she had promised God she’d give up writing if He wouldn’t let Mother die. She had kept her promise. But she knew God a little better, now. She was sure that He wouldn’t care at all if she started to write again. Well, maybe she’d try again some day. She added her library card to the contents of the envelope, made an entry for it on the envelope and put that in the box. Her packing was finished. All her possessions, except her clothes, were in that box.
Neeley came running up the stairs whistling “At the Darktown Strutters’ Ball.” He burst into the kitchen peeling off his coat.
“I’m in a hurry, Francie. Have I got a clean shirt?”
“There’s one washed but not ironed. I’ll iron it for you.”
She put the iron on to heat while she sprinkled the shirt and set up