A tree grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith [6]
Cheap Charlie was not cheap and his name wasn’t Charlie. He had taken that name and it said so on the store awning and Francie believed it. Charlie gave you a pick for your penny. A board with fifty numbered hooks and a prize hanging from each hook, hung behind the counter. There were a few fine prizes; roller skates, a catcher’s mitt, a doll with real hair and so on. The other hooks held blotters, pencils and other penny articles. Francie watched as Neeley bought a pick. He removed the dirty card from the ragged envelope. Twenty-six! Hopefully, Francie looked at the board. He had drawn a penny pen wiper.
“Prize or candy?” Charlie asked him.
“Candy. What do you think?”
It was always the same. Francie had never heard of anyone winning above a penny prize. Indeed the skate wheels were rusted and the doll’s hair was dust filmed as though these things had waited there a long time like Little Boy Blue’s toy dog and tin soldier. Someday, Francie resolved, when she had fifty cents, she would take all the picks and win everything on the board. She figured that would be a good business deal: skates, mitt, doll and all the other things for fifty cents. Why, the skates alone were worth four times that much! Neeley would have to come along that great day because girls seldom patronized Charlie’s. True, there were a few girls there that Saturday…bold, brash ones, too developed for their age; girls who talked loud and horseplayed around with the boys—girls whom the neighbors prophesied would come to no good.
Francie went across the street to Gimpy’s candy store. Gimpy was lame. He was a gentle man, kind to little children…or so everyone thought until that sunny afternoon when he inveigled a little girl into his dismal back room.
Francie debated whether she should sacrifice one of her pennies for a Gimpy Special: the prize bag. Maudie Donavan, her once-in-a-while girl friend, was about to make a purchase. Francie pushed her way in until she was standing behind Maudie. She pretended that she was spending the penny. She held her breath as Maudie, after much speculation, pointed dramatically at a bulging bag in the showcase. Francie would have picked a smaller bag. She looked over her friend’s shoulder; saw her take out a few pieces of stale candy and examine her prize—a coarse cambric handkerchief. Once Francie had gotten a small bottle of strong scent. She debated again whether to spend a penny on a prize bag. It was nice to be surprised even if you couldn’t eat the candy. But she reasoned she had been surprised by being with Maudie when she made her purchase and that was almost as good.
Francie walked up Manhattan Avenue reading aloud the fine-sounding names of the streets she passed: Scholes, Meserole, Montrose and then Johnson Avenue. These last two Avenues were where the Italians had settled. The district called Jew Town started at Seigel Street, took in Moore and McKibben and went past Broadway. Francie headed for Broadway.
And what was on Broadway in Williamsburg, Brooklyn? Nothing—only the finest nickel-and-dime store in all the world! It was big and glittering and had everything in the world in it…or so it seemed to an eleven-year-old girl. Francie had a nickel. Francie had power. She could buy practically anything in that store! It was the only place in the world where that could be.
Arriving at the store, she walked up and down the aisles handling any object her fancy favored. What a wonderful feeling to pick something up, hold it for a moment, feel its contour, run her hand over its surface and then replace it carefully. Her nickel gave her this privilege. If a floor-walker asked whether she intended buying anything, she could say, yes, buy it and show him a thing or two. Money was a wonderful thing, she decided. After an orgy of touching things, she made her planned purchase—five cents’ worth of pink-and-white peppermint wafers.
She walked back home down Graham Avenue, the Ghetto street. She was excited