A tree grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith [26]
Other nights in the week she would have to lie on her cot and from the airshaft hear the indistinct voices of the childlike bride who lived in one of the other flats with her apelike truck-driver husband. The bride’s voice would be soft and pleading, his, rough and demanding. Then there would be a short silence. Then he would start snoring and the wife would cry piteously until nearly morning.
Recalling the sobs, Francie trembled and instinctively her hands flew to cover her ears. Then she remembered it was Saturday; she was in the front room where she couldn’t hear sounds from the airshaft. Yes, it was still Saturday and it was wonderful. Monday was a long time away. Peaceful Sunday would come in-between when she would think long thoughts about the nasturtiums in the brown bowl and the way the horse had looked being washed while standing in sunshine and shadow. She was growing drowsy. She listened a moment to Katie and Johnny talking in the kitchen. They were reminiscing.
“I was seventeen when I first met you,” Katie was saying, “and I was working in the Castle Braid Factory.”
“I was nineteen then,” recalled Johnny, “and keeping company with your best friend, Hildy O’Dair.”
“Oh, her,” sniffed Katie.
The sweet-smelling warm wind moved gently in Francie’s hair. She folded her arms on the window sill and laid her cheek on them. She could look up and see the stars high above the tenement roofs. After a while she went to sleep.
Book Two
7
IT WAS IN ANOTHER BROOKLYN SUMMER BUT TWELVE YEARS EARLIER, in nineteen hundred, that Johnny Nolan first met Katie Rommely. He was nineteen and she was seventeen. Katie worked in the Castle Braid Factory. So did Hildy O’Dair, her best friend. They got along well although Hildy was Irish and Katie came from parents who had been born in Austria. Katie was prettier but Hildy was bolder. Hildy had brassy blond hair, wore a garnet-colored chiffon bow around her neck, chewed sen-sen, knew all the latest songs and was a good dancer.
Hildy had a feller, a beau who took her dancing Saturday nights. His name was Johnny Nolan. Sometimes he waited for Hildy outside the factory. He always brought some of the boys along to wait with him. They stood loafing on the corner, telling jokes and laughing.
One day, Hildy asked Johnny to bring someone for Katie, her girl friend, the next time they went dancing. Johnny obliged. The four of them rode out to Canarsie on the trolley. The boys wore straw katies with a cord attached to the brim and the other end to their coat lapel. The stiff ocean breeze blew the hats off and there was much laughter when the boys pulled the skimmers back by the cords.
Johnny danced with his girl, Hildy. Katie refused to dance with the feller provided for her, a vacuous vulgar boy given to remarks like: “I thought you musta fallen in,” when Katie returned from a trip to the ladies’ room. However, she let him buy her a beer, and she sat at the table watching Johnny dancing with Hildy and thinking that in all the world, there was nobody like Johnny.
Johnny’s feet were long and slender and his shoes were shiny. He danced with his toes pointed in and rocked from heel to toe with beautiful rhythm. It was hot, dancing. Johnny hung his coat over the back of his chair. His trousers settled well on his hips and his white shirt bloused over his belt. He wore a high stiff collar and a polka-dotted tie (which matched the band on his straw hat), baby-blue sleeve garters of satin ribbon shirred on to elastic, which Katie jealously suspected Hildy had made for him. So jealous was she that for the rest of her life she hated that color.
Katie couldn’t stop looking at him. He was young, slender and shining with blond curly hair and deep blue eyes. His nose was straight and his shoulders broad and square. She heard the girls at the next table say that he was a nifty dresser. Their escorts said he was a nifty dancer, too. Although he did not belong to her, Katie was proud of him.
Johnny gave her a courtesy dance when the orchestra played “Sweet Rosie O’Grady.” Feeling