A tree grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith [78]
Mr. Jenson’s handwriting was so wonderful that he wrote out all the diplomas by request.
Mr. Morton and Miss Bernstone came to that school, too. When they were teaching, Mr. Jenson would often come in and squeeze himself into one of the back seats and enjoy the lesson too. On a cold day, he’d have Mr. Morton or Miss Bernstone come down to his furnace room for a hot cup of coffee before they went on to the next school. He had a gas plate and coffee-making equipment on a little table. He served strong, hot black coffee in thick cups and these visiting teachers blessed his good soul.
Francie was happy in this school. She was very careful about being a good girl. Each day, as she passed the house whose number she claimed, she looked at it with gratitude and affection. On windy days, when papers blew before it, she went about picking up the debris and depositing it in the gutter before the house. Mornings after the rubbish man had emptied the burlap bag and had carelessly tossed the empty bag on the walk instead of in the yard, Francie picked it up and hung it on a fence paling. The people who lived in the house came to look on her as a quiet child who had a queer complex about tidiness.
Francie loved that school. It meant that she had to walk forty-eight blocks each day but she loved the walk, too. She had to leave earlier in the morning than Neeley and she got home much later. She didn’t mind except that it was a little hard at lunchtime. There were twelve blocks to come home and twelve to go back—all in the hour. It left little time for eating. Mama wouldn’t let her carry a lunch. Her reason was:
“She’ll be weaned away from her home and family soon enough the way she’s growing up. But while she’s still a child she has to act like a child and come home and eat the way children should. Is it my fault that she has to go so far to school? Didn’t she pick it out herself?”
“But Katie,” argued Papa, “it’s such a good school.”
“Then let her take the bad along with this good.”
The lunch question was settled. Francie had about five minutes for lunch—just time enough to report home for a sandwich which she ate walking back to school. She never considered herself put upon. She was so happy in the new school that she was anxious to pay in some way for this joy.
It was a good thing that she got herself into this other school. It showed her that there were other worlds beside the world she had been born into and that these other worlds were not unattainable.
24
FRANCIE COUNTED THE YEAR’S PASSING NOT BY THE DAYS OR THE months but by the holidays that came along. Her year started with the Fourth of July because it was the first holiday that came along after school closed. A week before the day, she began accumulating firecrackers. Every available penny went for packets of small crackers. She hoarded them in a box under the bed. At least ten times a day, she’d take the box out, re-arrange the fireworks and look long at the pale red tissue and white corded stem and wonder about how they were made. She smelled the thick bit of punk which was given gratis with each purchase and which, when lit, smoldered for hours and was used to set off the firecrackers.
When the great day came, she was reluctant to set them off. It was better to have them than to use them. One year when times were harder than usual and pennies could not be had, Francie and Neeley hoarded paper bags and on the day, filled them with water, twisted the tops shut and dropped them from the roof on to the street below. They made a nice plop which was almost