A tree grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith [40]
“What more must I teach the child?”
“The child must be made to believe in heaven. A heaven, not filled with flying angels with God on a throne”—Mary articulated her thoughts painfully, half in German and half in English—“but a heaven which means a wondrous place that people may dream of—as of a place where desires come true. This is probably a different kind of a religion. I do not know.”
“And then, what else?”
“Before you die, you must own a bit of land—maybe with a house on it that your child or your children may inherit.”
Katie laughed. “Me own land? A house? We’re lucky if we can pay our rent.”
“Even so.” Mary spoke firmly. “Yet you must do that. For thousands of years, our people have been peasants working the land of others. This was in the old country. Here we do better working with our hands in the factory. There is a part of each day that does not belong to the master but which the worker owns himself. That is good. But to own a bit of land is better; a bit of land that we may hand down to our children…that will raise us up on the face of the earth.”
“How can we ever get to own land? Johnny and I work and we earn so little. Sometimes after the rent is paid and the insurance there is hardly enough left for food. How could we save for land?”
“You must take an empty condensed-milk can and wash it well.”
“A can…?”
“Cut off the top neatly. Cut strips down into the can the length of your finger. Let each strip be so wide.” She measured two inches with her fingers. “Bend the strips backward. The can will look like a clumsy star. Make a slit in the top. Then nail the can, a nail in each strip, in the darkest corner of your closet. Each day put five cents in it. In three years there will be a small fortune, fifty dollars. Take the money and buy a lot in the country. Get the papers that say it is yours. Thus you become a landowner. Once one has owned land, there is no going back to being a serf.”
“Five cents a day. It seems a little. But where is it to come from? We haven’t enough now and with another mouth to feed….”
“You must do it thus: You go to the green grocer’s and ask how much are carrots the bunch. The man will say three cents. Then look about until you see another bunch, not so fresh, not so large. You will say: May I have this damaged bunch for two cents? Speak strongly and it shall be yours for two cents. That is a saved penny that you put in the star bank. It is winter, say. You bought a bushel of coal for twenty-five cents. It is cold. You would start a fire in the stove. But wait! Wait one hour more. Suffer the cold for an hour. Put a shawl around you. Say, I am cold because I am saving to buy land. That hour will save you three cents’ worth of coal. That is three cents for the bank. When you are alone at night, do not light the lamp. Sit in the darkness and dream a while. Reckon out how much oil you saved and put its value in pennies in the bank. The money will grow. Someday there will be fifty dollars and somewhere on this long island is a piece of land that you may buy for that money.”
“Will it work, this saving?”
“I swear by the Holy Mother it will.”
“Then why haven’t you ever saved enough money to buy land?”
“I did. When we first landed, I had a star bank. It took me ten years to save that first fifty dollars. I took the money in my hand and went to a man in the neighborhood of whom it was said that he dealt fairly with people who bought land. He showed me a beautiful piece of earth and told me in my own language, ‘This is thine.’ He took my money and gave me a paper. I could not read. Later, I saw men building the house of another on my land. I showed them my paper. They laughed at me with pity in their eyes. It was that the land had not been the man’s to sell. It was…how do you say it in the English…a schwindle.”
“Swindle.”
“Ai. People like us, known as greenhorns from the old country, were often robbed by men such as he because we could not read. But you have education. First you will