A tree grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith [66]
A person who pulls himself up from a low environment via the bootstrap route has two choices. Having risen above his environment, he can forget it; or, he can rise above it and never forget it and keep compassion and understanding in his heart for those he has left behind him in the cruel upclimb. The nurse had chosen the forgetting way. Yet, as she stood there, she knew that years later she would be haunted by the sorrow in the face of that starveling child and that she would wish bitterly that she had said a comforting word then and done something towards the saving of her immortal soul. She had the knowledge that she was small but she lacked the courage to be otherwise.
When the needle jabbed, Francie never felt it. The waves of hurt started by the doctor’s words were racking her body and drove out all other feeling. While the nurse was expertly tying a strip of gauze around her arm and the doctor was putting his instrument in the sterilizer and taking out a fresh needle, Francie spoke up.
“My brother is next. His arm is just as dirty as mine so don’t be surprised. And you don’t have to tell him. You told me.” They stared at this bit of humanity who had become so strangely articulate. Francie’s voice went ragged with a sob. “You don’t have to tell him. Besides it won’t do no good. He’s a boy and he don’t care if he is dirty.” She turned, stumbled a little and walked out of the room. As the door closed, she heard the doctor’s surprised voice.
“I had no idea she’d understand what I was saying.” She heard the nurse say, “Oh, well,” on a sighing note.
Katie was home for lunch when the children got back. She looked at their bandaged arms with misery in her eyes. Francie spoke out passionately.
“Why, Mama, why? Why do they have to…to…say things and then stick a needle in your arm?”
“Vaccination,” said Mama firmly, now that it was all over, “is a very good thing. It makes you tell your left hand from your right. You have to write with your right hand when you go to school and that sore will be there to say, uh-uh, not this hand. Use the other hand.”
This explanation satisfied Francie because she had never been able to tell her left hand from her right. She ate, and drew pictures with her left hand. Katie was always correcting her and transferring the chalk or the needle from her left hand to her right. After Mama explained about vaccination, Francie began to think that maybe it was a wonderful thing. It was a small price to pay if it simplified such a great problem and let you know which hand was which. Francie began using her right hand instead of the left after the vaccination and never had trouble afterwards.
Francie worked up a fever that night and the site of the injection itched painfully. She told Mama who became greatly alarmed. She gave intense instructions.
“You’re not to scratch it, no matter how it bites you.”
“Why can’t I scratch it?”
“Because if you do, your whole arm will swell up and turn black and drop right off. So don’t scratch it.”
Katie did not mean to terrify the child. She, herself, was badly frightened. She believed that blood-poisoning would set in if the arm were touched. She wanted to frighten the child into not scratching it.
Francie had to concentrate on not scratching the painfully itching area. The next day, shots of pain were shooting up the arm. While preparing for bed, she peered under the bandage. To her horror, the place where the needle had entered was swollen, dark-green and festering yellowly. And Francie had not scratched it! She knew she had not scratched it. But wait! Maybe she had scratched it in her sleep the night before. Yes, she must have done it then. She was afraid to tell Mama. Mama would say, “I told you and I told you and still you wouldn’t listen. Now look.”
It was Sunday night. Papa was out working. She couldn’t sleep. She got up from her cot and went into the front room and sat at the window. She leaned her head on her arms and waited to die.
At three in the morning she heard a Graham Avenue trolley grind to a stop on