A tree grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith [51]
Walter, Walter Wildflower.
Growing up so high.
As we are all young ladies
And very sure to die.
Excepting Lizzie Wehner
Who is the finest flower.
Hide, hide, hide for shame.
Turn your back and
Tell your beau’s name.
They paused while the chosen girl, after much coaxing, finally whispered a boy’s name. Francie wondered what name she’d give if they ever asked her to play. Would they laugh if she whispered Johnny Nolan?
The little girls whooped when Lizzie whispered a name. Again they joined hands and walked around in a circle genially advertising the boy.
Hermy Bachmeier
Is a fine young man.
He comes to the door
With his hat in his hand.
Down comes she
All dressed in silk.
Tomorrow, tomorrow,
The wedding shall begin.
The girls stopped and clapped their hands joyously. Then without motivation, there was a change in mood. The girls went around the ring slower and with lowered heads.
Mother, Mother, I am sick.
Send for the doctor,
Quick, quick, quick!
Doctor, Doctor, shall I die?
Yes, my darling,
By and by.
How many coaches shall I have?
Enough for you and
Your family, too.
In other neighborhoods there were different words to the song but essentially it was the same game. No one knew where the words had come from. Little girls learned them from other little girls and it was the most frequently played game in Brooklyn.
There were other games. There were jacks that two little girls could play together sitting on the steps of a stoop. Francie played jacks by herself, first being Francie and then her opponent. She’d talk to the imaginary player. “I’m for threesies and you’re for twosies,” she’d say.
Potsy was a game that the boys started and the girls finished. A couple of boys would put a tin can on the car track and sit along the curb and watch with a professional eye as the trolley wheels flattened the can. They’d fold it and put it on the track again. Again it was flattened, folded and flattened again. Soon there was a flat heavy square of metal. Numbered squares were marked off on the sidewalk and the game was turned over to the girls who hopped on one foot pushing the potsy from square to square. Who ever got through the squares with the least number of hops won the game.
Francie made a potsy. She put a can on the tracks. She watched with a professional frown as the car ran over it. She shuddered in delighted horror when she heard the scrunch. Would the motorman be mad, she wondered, if he knew that she was making his trolley car work for her? She made the squares but could only write one and seven. She hopped through a game ardently wishing someone were playing with her as she was sure she won with less hops than any other little girl in the world.
Sometimes there was music in the streets. This was something that Francie could enjoy without companions. A three-piece band came around once a week. They wore ordinary suits but funny hats, like a motorman’s hat only the top was squashed in. When Francie heard the children shouting, “Here comes the Bettelbubbers,” she’d run out on the street, sometimes dragging Neeley with her.
The band consisted of a fiddle, drum and cornet. The men played old Viennese airs and if they didn’t play well, they at least played loud. Little girls waltzed with each other, round and round on the warm summer sidewalks. There were always two boys who did a grotesque dance together, mimicking the girls and bumping into them rudely. When the girls got angry, the boys would bow with great exaggeration (being sure their buttocks would bump another dancing couple), and apologize in flowery language.
Francie wished she could be one of the brave ones who took no part in the dancing but stood close to the horn-blower sucking noisily on big dripping pickles. This made saliva flow into the horn which made the cornet