A tree grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith [43]
FRANCIE WASN’T MUCH OF A BABY. SHE WAS SKINNY AND HAD A BLUE look and didn’t thrive. Katie nursed her doggedly although the neighbor women told her that her milk was bad for the child.
Francie was put on the bottle soon enough because Katie’s milk stopped suddenly when the child was three months old. Katie worried. She consulted her mother. Mary Rommely looked at her, sighed but said nothing. Katie went to the midwife for advice. The woman asked her a foolish question.
“Where do you buy your fish of a Friday?”
“Paddy’s market. Why?”
“You wouldn’t be after seeing an old woman in there buying a codfish head for her cat, would you now?”
“Yes. I see her every week.”
“She did it! She dried up your milk on you.”
“Oh, no!”
“She put the eye on you.”
“But why?”
“Jealous she is because you’re too happy with that pretty Irish lad of yours.”
“Jealous? An old woman like that?”
“A witch she is. I knew her back in the old country. Sure and didn’t she come over on the same boat as meself. When she was young she was in love with a wild County Kerry boy. And didn’t he go and get her that way and he wouldn’t go to the priest with her when her old father went after him. He slipped away on a boat for America in the dead of the night. Her baby died when it was born. Then she sold her soul to the devil and he did give her the power of drying up the milk of cows and nanny goats and of girls married to young boys.”
“I remember she looked at me in a funny way.”
“ ’Twas then she put the eye on you.”
“How can I get my milk back?”
“I’ll tell you what you must do. Wait until the moon is full. Then make a little image out of a lock of your curling hair, a cutting from your fingernail and a bit of rag sprinkled with holy water. Christen it Nelly Grogan, and that’s the witch’s name, and stick three rusty pins in it. That will spoil her power over you and sure your milk will be flowing again like the River Shannon. That will be a quarter.”
Katie paid her. When the moon was full, she made the little doll and stabbed it and stabbed it. She remained dry. Francie sickened on the bottle. In desperation, Katie called Sissy in for advice. Sissy listened to the witch story.
“A witch my foot,” she said scornfully. “It was Johnny who did it and it wasn’t with an eye.”
In that way Katie knew that she was pregnant again. She told Johnny and he started to worry. He had been fairly happy back in the singing-waiter business and he worked pretty often, was steady, didn’t drink too much and brought home most of his money. The news that a second child was on the way made him feel trapped. He was only twenty and Katie was eighteen. He felt that they were both so young and so defeated already. He went out and got drunk after he heard the news.
The midwife came around later to see how the charm had worked. Katie told her that the charm had failed since she was pregnant and the witch was not to blame. The midwife lifted her skirt and dug down into a capacious pocket made in her petticoat. She brought up a bottle of evil-looking dark brown stuff.
“Sure and there is nothing to worry about,” she said. “A good dose of this night and morning for three days and you’ll come around again.” Katie shook her head negatively. “You’re not afraid of what the priest would be saying to you if you did it?”
“No. It’s just that I couldn’t kill anything.”
“It wouldn’t be killing. It don’t count until you’ve felt life. You’re not after feeling it move, are you?”
“No.”
“There!” she slammed her fist on the table triumphantly. “I’ll only be charging you a dollar for the bottle.”
“Thank you, I don’t want it.”
“Don’t be foolish. You’re just a bit of a girl and have trouble enough with the one you do be having already. And your man is pretty but not the steadiest boy in the world.”
“The way my man is, is my own business and my baby is no trouble.”
“I’m only after trying to help you out.”
“Thank you and good-bye.”
The midwife returned the bottle to her petticoat pocket and got up to go. “When your time comes, you know where I live.” At the door, she gave a last bit of optimistic