A tree grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith [24]
There was company in the front room when Francie got home. Aunt Evy was there with her husband, Willie Flittman. Francie liked Aunt Evy. She looked a lot like Mama. She was full of fun and said things to make you laugh like people did in a show and she could mimic anybody in the world.
Uncle Flittman had brought his guitar along. He was playing it and all were singing. Flittman was a thin dark man with smooth black hair and a silky mustache. He played the guitar pretty well considering that the middle finger of his right hand wasn’t there. When he came to where he was supposed to use that finger, he’d give the guitar a thumping whack to do for the time when the note should be played. This gave a queer rhythm to his songs. He had nearly reached the end of his repertoire when Francie came in. She was just in time to hear his last selection.
After the music, he went out and got a pitcher of beer. Aunt Evy treated them to a loaf of pumpernickel bread and a dime’s worth of Limburger cheese and they had sandwiches and beer. Uncle Flittman got confidential after the beer.
“Look on me, Kate,” he said to Mama, “and you look on a man that’s a failure.” Aunt Evy rolled her eyes up and sighed, pulling in her lower lip. “My children don’t respect me,” he said. “My wife has no use for me and Drummer, my milk wagon horse, is got it in for me. Do you know what he did to me just the other day?”
He leaned forward and Francie saw his eyes brighten with unshed tears.
“I was washing him in the stable and I was washing under his belly and he went and wet on me.”
Katie and Evy looked at each other. Their eyes were dancing with hidden laughter. Katie looked suddenly at Francie. The laughter was still in her eyes but her mouth was stern. Francie looked down on the floor and frowned although she was laughing inside.
“That’s what he did. And all the men in the stable laughed at me. Everyone laughs at me.” He drank another glass of beer.
“Don’t talk like that, Will,” said his wife.
“Evy doesn’t love me,” he said to Mama.
“I love you, Will,” Evy assured him in her soft tender voice that was a caress in itself.
“You loved me when you married me but you don’t love me now, do you?” He waited. Evy said nothing. “You see, she don’t love me anymore,” he said to Mama.
“It’s time we went home,” said Evy.
Before they went to bed, Francie and Neeley had to read a page of the Bible and a page from Shakespeare. That was a rule. Mama used to read the two pages to them each night until they were old enough to read for themselves. To save time, Neeley read the Bible page and Francie read from Shakespeare. They had been at this reading for six years and were halfway through the Bible and up to Macbeth in Shakespeare’s Complete Works. They raced through the reading and by eleven, all the Nolans, excepting Johnny, who was working, were in bed.
On Saturday nights Francie was allowed to sleep in the front room. She made a bed by pushing two chairs together in front of the window where she could watch the people on the street. Lying there, she was aware of the nighttime noises in the house. People came in and went to their flats. Some were tired and dragged their feet. Others ran up the stairs lightly. One stumbled, cursing the torn linoleum in the hall. A baby cried half-heartedly and a drunken man in one of the downstairs flats synopsized the wicked life he claimed his wife had led.
At two in the morning, Francie heard Papa singing softly as he came up the stairs.
…sweet Molly Malone.
She drove her wheel barrow,
Through streets wide and narrow,
Crying….
Mama had the door open on “crying.” It was a game Papa had. If they got the door opened before he finished the verse, they won. If he was able to finish it out in the hall, he won.
Francie and Neeley got out of bed and they all sat around the table and ate after Papa had put three dollars down on the table and given the children each a nickel which Mama made them put in the tin-can bank explaining they had already received money that day from the junk. Papa had brought home