A tree grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith [64]
18
SCHOOL DAYS WERE EAGERLY ANTICIPATED BY FRANCIE. SHE WANTED all of the things that she thought came with school. She was a lonely child and she longed for the companionship of other children. She wanted to drink from the school water fountains in the yard. The faucets were inverted and she thought that soda water came out instead of plain water. She had heard Mama and Papa speak of the school room. She wanted to see the map that pulled down like a shade. Most of all, she wanted “school supplies”: a notebook and tablet and a pencil box with a sliding top filled with new pencils, an eraser, a little tin pencil sharpener made in the shape of a cannon, a pen wiper and a six-inch, soft-wood, yellow ruler.
Before school, there had to be vaccination. That was the law. How it was dreaded! When the health authorities tried to explain to the poor and illiterate that vaccination was a giving of the harmless form of smallpox to work up immunity against the deadly form, the parents didn’t believe it. All they got out of the explanation was that germs would be put into a healthy child’s body. Some foreign-born parents refused to permit their children to be vaccinated. They were not allowed to enter school. Then the law got after them for keeping the children out of school. A free country? they asked. You should live so long. What’s free about it, they reasoned, when the law forces you to educate your children and then endangers their lives to get them into school? Weeping mothers brought bawling children to the health center for inoculation. They carried on as though bringing their innocents to the slaughter. The children screamed hysterically at the first sight of the needle and their mothers, waiting in the anteroom, threw their shawls over their heads and keened loudly as if wailing for the dead.
Francie was seven and Neeley six. Katie had held Francie back wishing both children to enter school together so that they could protect each other against the older children. On a dreadful Saturday in August, she stopped in the bedroom to speak to them before she went off to work. She awakened them and gave instructions.
“Now, when you get up, wash yourselves good and when it gets to be eleven o’clock, go around the corner to the public health place, tell them to vaccinate you because you’re going to school in September.”
Francie began to tremble. Neeley burst into tears.
“You coming with us, Mama?” Francie pleaded.
“I’ve got to go to work. Who’s going to do my work if I don’t?” asked Katie covering up her conscience with indignation.
Francie said nothing more. Katie knew that she was letting them down. But she couldn’t help it, she just couldn’t help it. Yes, she should go with them to lend the comfort and authority of her presence but she knew she couldn’t stand the ordeal. Yet, they had to be vaccinated. Her being with them or somewhere else couldn’t take that fact away. So why shouldn’t one of the three be spared? Besides, she said to her conscience, it’s a hard and bitter world. They’ve got to live in it. Let them get hardened young to take care of themselves.
“Papa’s going with us then,” said Francie hopefully.
“Papa’s at Headquarters waiting for a job. He won’t be home all day. You’re big enough to go alone. Besides, it won’t hurt.”
Neeley wailed on a higher key. Katie could hardly stand that. She loved the boy so much. Part of her reason for not going with them was that she couldn’t bear to see the boy hurt…not even by a pinprick. Almost she decided to go with them. But no. If she went she’d lose half a day’s work and she’d have to make it up on Sunday morning. Besides, she’d be sick afterwards. They’d manage somehow without her. She hurried off to her work.
Francie