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For days after the organ grinder had been around, Francie played organ grinder. She hummed what she recalled of Verdi and bumped her elbow on an old pie tin pretending it was a tambourine. She ended the game by drawing an outline of her hand on paper and filling it in with black crayon.

Sometimes Francie wavered. She didn’t know whether it would be better to be a band when she grew up or an organ grinder lady. It would be nice if she and Neeley could get a little organ and a cute monkey. All day they could have fun with him for nothing and go around playing and watching him tip his hat. And people would give them a lot of pennies and the monkey could eat with them and maybe sleep in her bed at night. This profession seemed so desirable that Francie announced her intentions to Mama but Katie threw cold water on the project telling her not to be silly; that monkeys had fleas and she wouldn’t allow a monkey in one of her clean beds.

Francie toyed with the idea of being a tambourine lady. But then she’d have to be a Sicilian and kidnap little children and she didn’t want to do that, although drawing a black hand was fun.

There was always the music. There were songs and dancing on the Brooklyn streets in those long ago summers and the days should have been joyous. But there was something sad about those summers, something sad about the children, thin in body but with the baby curves still lingering in their faces, singing in sad monotony as they went through the figures of a ring game. It was sad the way they were still babies of four and five years of age but so precocious about taking care of themselves. “The Blue Danube” that the band played was sad as well as bad. The monkey had sad eyes under his bright red cap. The organ grinder’s tune was sad under its lilting shrillness.

Even the minstrels who came in the back yards and sang

If I had my way,

You would never grow old

were sad, too. They were bums and they were hungry and they didn’t have talent for song-making. All they had in the world was the nerve to stand in a back yard with cap in hand and sing loudly. The sad thing was in the knowing that all their nerve would get them nowhere in the world and that they were lost as all people in Brooklyn seem lost when the day is nearly over and even though the sun is still bright, it is thin and doesn’t give you warmth when it shines on you.

14

LIFE WAS PLEASANT IN LORIMER STREET AND THE NOLANS WOULD have kept on living there if it hadn’t been for Aunt Sissy and her big but mistaken heart. It was Sissy’s business with the tricycle and the balloons that ruined and disgraced the Nolans.

One day Sissy was laid off from work and decided to go over and look after Francie and Neeley while Katie was working. A block before she got to their house, her eyes were dazzled by the sun glinting off the brass handlebar of a handsome tricycle. It was a kind of vehicle that you don’t see nowadays. It had a wide leather seat, big enough for two little children, with a back to it and an iron steering bar leading to the small front wheel. There were two larger wheels in the back. There was a handlebar of solid brass on top the steering rod. The pedals were in front of the seat and a child sat in it at ease, pedaled it while leaning back in the seat and steered it with the handlebars which lay across the lap.

Sissy saw that tricycle standing there unattended in front of a stoop. She didn’t hesitate. She took the tricycle, pulled it around to the Nolan house, got the children out and gave them a ride.

Francie thought it was wonderful! She and Neeley sat in the seat and Sissy pulled them around the block. The leather seat was warm from the sun and had a rich and expensive smell. The hot sun danced on the brass handlebar and it looked like living fire. Francie thought that if she touched it, it would burn her hand surely. Then something happened.

A small crowd bore down on them headed by a hysterical woman and a bawling boy. The woman rushed