A tree grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith [81]
Soon after noon, the boat docked at a wooded glen upstate and the Democrats got off the boat and took over. The kids ran around spending their tickets. The week before, each child had been given a strip of ten tickets labeled “hot dog,” “soda water,” “merry-go-round” and so on. Francie and Neeley had each been given a strip but Francie had been tempted by some shrewd boys into gambling her tickets in a marble game. They had told her how she might possibly win fifty strips and have a grand day on the excursion. Francie was a poor marble player and quickly lost her tickets. Neeley, on the other hand, had three strips. He had been lucky. Francie asked Mama could she have one of Neeley’s tickets. Mama seized the opportunity to give her a lecture on gambling.
“You had tickets but you thought you could be smart and get something you weren’t entitled to. When people gamble, they think only of winning. They never think of losing. Remember this: Someone has to lose and it’s just as apt to be you as the other fellow. If you learn this lesson by giving up a strip of tickets, you’re paying cheap for the education.”
Mama was right. Francie knew she was right. But it didn’t make her happy at all. She wanted to go on the merry-go-round like the other kids. She wanted a drink of soda. She was standing disconsolately near the hot dog stand watching other children stuff themselves when a man paused to speak to her. He wore a policeman’s uniform only with more gold on it.
“No tickets, little girl?” he asked.
“I forgot them,” lied Francie.
“Sure and I was no good at marbles meself as a boy.” He pulled three strips from his pocket. “We count on makin’ up a certain number of losses each year. But it’s seldom the girls are the losin’ ones. They hang on to what they have be it ever so little.” Francie took the tickets, thanked him and was backing off when he asked, “Would that be your mother sittin’ over there in the green hat?”
“Yes.” She waited. He said nothing. Finally she asked, “Why?”
“Do you be sayin’ your prayers to the Little Flower each night askin’ that you grow up half as pretty as your mother. Do that now.”
“And that’s my papa next to my mama.” Francie waited to hear him say that Papa was good-looking, too. He stared at Johnny and said nothing. Francie ran off.
Francie was instructed to report back to her mother at half hour intervals during the day. At the next interval when Francie came back, Johnny was over at the free-beer keg. Mama teased her.
“You’re like Aunt Sissy—always talking to men in uniform.”
“He gave me extra tickets.”
“I saw.” Katie’s next words were casual enough. “What did he ask you?”
“He asked was you my mama.” Francie did not tell her what he said about Mama being pretty.
“Yes, I thought he was asking that.” Katie stared at her hands. They were rough and red and cut into with cleansing fluids. She took a pair of mended cotton gloves from her purse. Although it was a hot day, she pulled them on. She sighed. “I work so hard, sometimes I forget that I’m a woman.”
Francie was startled. It was the nearest thing to a complaint she had ever heard from Mama. She wondered why Mama was ashamed of her hands all of a sudden. As she skipped away, she heard Mama ask the lady next to her,
“Who’s that man over there—the one in the uniform looking this way?”
“That would be Sergeant Michael McShane. It’s funny you don’t know who he is seein’ that it’s from your own precinct he is.”
The day of joy went on. There was a keg of beer set up at the end of each long table and it was free to all good Democrats.