A tree grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith [70]
“Oh, well. Don’t worry about it. It could happen to anyone. It happened to the Queen of England when she was a little girl.”
But had the Queen been so shamed and sensitive about it? Francie wept quietly and rackingly, tears of shame and fear. She was afraid to go home, afraid that Mama would make scornful shame of her.
“Your mama won’t scold you…such an accident could happen to any little girl. Don’t say I told you but your mama wet her pants when she was little and your grandma did too. It’s nothing new in the world and you’re not the first one it happened to.”
“But I’m too big. Only babies do that. Mama’ll make shame on me in front of Neeley.”
“Tell her right out before she finds out for herself and promise never to do it again. She won’t shame you then.”
“I can’t promise because it might happen again because teacher don’t let us go.”
“From now on, your teacher will let you leave the room any time you have to. You believe Aunt Sissy, don’t you?”
“Y-e-e-es. But how do you know?”
“I’ll burn a candle in church about it.”
Francie was consoled with the promise. When Francie went home, Katie did a little routine scolding but Francie was armored against it in the light of what Sissy had told her about the cycle of wetting.
The next morning, ten minutes before school started, Sissy was in that classroom confronting the teacher.
“There’s a little girl named Francie Nolan in your room,” she started out.
“Frances Nolan,” corrected Miss Briggs.
“Is she smart?”
“Y-e-e-es.”
“Is she good?”
“She had better be.”
Sissy brought her face closer to Miss Briggs. Her voice went a tone lower and was gentler than before, but for some reason Miss Briggs backed away. “I just asked you is she a good girl?”
“Yes, she is,” said Teacher hurriedly.
“I happen to be her mother,” lied Sissy.
“No!”
“Yes!”
“Anything you want to know about the child’s work, Mrs. Nolan…”
“Did it ever occur to you,” lied Sissy, “that Francie’s got kidney trouble?”
“Kidney what?”
“The doctor said that if she wants to go and some people don’t let her go, she’s liable to drop right down dead from overloaded kidneys.”
“Surely you’re exaggerating.”
“How would you like her to drop dead in this room?”
“Naturally, I wouldn’t, but…”
“And how would you like to get a ride to the station house in the pie wagon and stand up in front of this here doctor and the judge and say you wouldn’t let her leave the room?”
Was Sissy lying? Miss Briggs couldn’t tell. It was the most fantastic thing. Yet, the woman spoke these sensational things in the calmest, softest voice she had ever heard. At this moment, Sissy happened to look out of the window and saw a burly cop sauntering by. She pointed.
“See that cop?” Miss Briggs nodded. “That’s my husband.”
“Frances’s father?”
“Who else?” Sissy threw open the window and yelled, “Yoo, hoo, Johnny.”
The astonished cop looked up. She blew him a great kiss. For a split second, he thought it was some love-starved old-maid teacher gone crazy. Then his native masculine conceit assured him that it was one of the younger teachers who had long had a crush on him and had finally screwed up enough courage to make a passionate overture. He responded to the occasion, blew her a return kiss with a ham-y fist, tipped his hat gallantly and sauntered off down his beat whistling “At the Devil’s Ball.” “Sure I’m a divil amongst the ladies,” he thought. “I am that. And me with six kids at home.”
Miss Briggs’s eyes bugged out in astonishment. He had been a handsome cop and strong. Just then, one of the little golden girls came in with a beribboned box of candy for Teacher. Miss Briggs gurgled with pleasure and kissed the child’s satin pink cheek. Sissy had a mind like a freshly honed razor. In a flash, she saw which way the wind blew; she saw it blew against children like Francie.
“Look,” she said. “I guess you don’t think we got lots of money.”
“I’m sure I never…”
“We’re not people that put on. Now Christmas is coming,” she bribed.
“Maybe,” conceded Miss Briggs, “I haven’t always seen Frances when she raised her