A tree grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith [57]
On a sunny windy day, it was pretty to see the lines filled, the square white sheets taking the wind like the sails of a storybook boat and the red, green and yellow clothes straining at the wooden pins as though they had life.
The pole stood against a brick wall which was the windowless side of the neighborhood school. Francie found that no two bricks were alike when she looked real close. It was a soothing rhythm the way they were put together with crumbly thin lines of white mortar. They glowed when the sun shone on them. They smelled warm and porous when Francie pressed her cheek against them. They were the first to receive the rain and they gave off a wet clay odor that was like the smell of life itself. In the winter, when the first snow was too delicate to last on the sidewalks, it clung to the rough surface of the brick and was like fairy lace.
Four feet of the school yard faced on Francie’s yard and was segregated from it by an iron mesh fence. The few times Francie got to play in the yard (it was preempted by the boy who lived on the ground floor who would let no one in it while he was there), she managed to be there at recess time. She watched the horde of children playing in the yard. Recess consisted of getting several hundred children herded into this small, stone-paved enclosure and then getting them out again. Once in the yard, there was no room for games. The children milled about angrily and raised their voices in one steady, monotonous shrieking which continued unabated for five minutes. It was cut off, as if with a sharp knife, when the end-of-recess bell clanged. For an instant after the bell there was dead silence and frozen motion. Then the milling changed to pushing. The children seemed as desperately anxious to get in as they had been to get out. The high shrieking changed to subdued wailing as they fought their way back.
Francie was in her yard one mid-afternoon when a little girl came out alone into the school yard and importantly clapped two blackboard erasers together to free them from chalk dust. To Francie, watching, her face close to the iron mesh, this seemed the most fascinating occupation ever devised. Mama had told her that this was a task reserved for teachers’ pets. To Francie, pets meant cats, dogs and birds. She vowed that when she was old enough to go to school, that she would meow, bark and chirp as best she could so that she would be a “pet” and get to clap the erasers together.
On this afternoon, she watched with a heart full of admiration in her eyes. The clapper, aware of Francie’s admiration, showed off. She clapped the erasers on the brick wall, on the stone walk and, as a finale, behind her back. She spoke to Francie.
“Want to see ’em real close?”
Francie nodded shyly. The girl brought an eraser close to the mesh. Francie poked a finger through to touch the vari-colored felt layers blended together by a film of powdered chalk. As she was about to touch this soft beautifulness, the little girl snatched it away and spat full in Francie’s face. Francie closed her eyes tightly to keep the hurt bitter tears from spilling out. The other girl stood there curiously, waiting for the tears. When none came, she taunted:
“Why don’t you bust out crying, you dockle? Want I should spit in your face again?”
Francie turned and went down into the cellar and sat in the dark a long time waiting until the waves of hurt stopped breaking over her. It was the first of many disillusionments that were to come as her capacity to feel things grew. She never liked blackboard erasers after that.
The kitchen was living room, dining room and cooking room. There were two long narrow windows in one wall. An iron coalrange was recessed in another wall. Above the stove