A tree grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith [34]
She was made up of more, too. She was the books she read in the library. She was the flower in the brown bowl. Part of her life was made from the tree growing rankly in the yard. She was the bitter quarrels she had with her brother whom she loved dearly. She was Katie’s secret, despairing weeping. She was the shame of her father staggering home drunk.
She was all of these things and of something more that did not come from the Rommelys nor the Nolans, the reading, the observing, the living from day to day. It was something that had been born into her and her only—the something different from anyone else in the two families. It was what God or whatever is His equivalent puts into each soul that is given life—the one different thing such as that which makes no two fingerprints on the face of the earth alike.
9
JOHNNY AND KATIE WERE MARRIED AND WENT TO LIVE ON A QUIET side street in Williamsburg called Bogart Street. Johnny chose the street because its name had a thrilling dark sound. They were very happy there the first year of their marriage.
Katie had married Johnny because she liked the way he sang and danced and dressed. Womanlike, she set about changing all those things in him after marriage. She persuaded him to give up the singing-waiter business. He did so, since he was in love and anxious to please her. They got a job together taking care of a public school and they loved it. Their day started when the rest of the world went to bed. After supper, Katie put on her black coat with the big leg-o’-mutton sleeves, lavishly trimmed with braid—her last loot from the factory—and threw a cherry wool fascinator over her head (a “noobie” she called it), and she and Johnny set off for work.
The school was old and small and warm. They looked forward to spending the night there. They walked arm-in-arm; he in his patent leather dancing shoes and she in her high laced kid boots. Sometimes when the night was frosty and full of stars, they ran a little, skipped a little and laughed a lot. They felt very important using their private key to get into the school. The school was their world for a night.
They played games while they worked. Johnny sat at one of the desks and Katie pretended she was a teacher. They wrote messages to each other on the blackboards. They pulled down the maps which rolled up like shades and pointed out foreign countries with the rubber-tipped pointer. They were filled with wonder at the thought of strange lands and unknown languages. (He was nineteen and she was seventeen.)
They liked best to clean the assembly room. Johnny dusted the piano and, while doing so, ran his fingers over the keys. He picked out some chords. Katie sat in the front row and asked him to sing. He sang to her; sentimental songs of the time: “She May Have Seen Better Days,” or “I’m Wearin’ My Heart Away For You.” People living nearby would be coaxed out of their midnight sleep by the singing. They’d lie in their warm beds, listening drowsily and murmur to each other,
“That feller, whoever he is, is losing time. He’s losing time. He ought to be in a show.”
Sometimes Johnny went into one of his dances on the little platform that he pretended was a stage. He was so graceful and handsome, so loving, so full of the grandness of just living, that Katie, watching him, thought she would die of being happy.
At two, they went into the teachers’ lunch room where there was a