A tree grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith [91]
Flossie was in costume waiting for an escort to take her to a masquerade ball which started soon after midnight. She stood there in her Klondike-dance-hall-girl costume with sheer black silk stockings, spool-heeled slippers, one red garter fastened under a knee and swinging a black mask in her hand. She smiled into Johnny’s eyes. She put her hand on her hip and leaned seductively—or so she thought—against the door jamb. More to make Henny smile than anything else, Johnny said,
“Floss, we got no angel for the top of this Christmas tree. How about you obliging?”
Floss was all ready to make a dirty reply about the wind blowing her drawers off if she was up that high. But she changed her mind. There was something about the big proud tree, now so humble in its being dragged; something about the beaming children; something about the rare good will of the neighbors and the way the lights looked turned low in the halls, that made her ashamed of her unspoken reply. All she said was:
“Gee, ain’t you the kidder, Johnny Nolan.”
Katie stood alone on the top of the last flight of steps with her hands clasped before her. She listened to the singing. She looked down and watched their slow progress up the stairs. She was thinking deeply.
“They think this is so good,” she thought. “They think it’s good—the tree they got for nothing and their father playing up to them and the singing and the way the neighbors are happy. They think they’re mighty lucky that they’re living and that it’s Christmas again. They can’t see that we live on a dirty street in a dirty house among people who aren’t much good. Johnny and the children can’t see how pitiful it is that our neighbors have to make happiness out of this filth and dirt. My children must get out of this. They must come to more than Johnny or me or all these people around us. But how is this to come about? Reading a page from those books every day and saving pennies in the tin-can bank isn’t enough. Money! Would that make it better for them? Yes, it would make it easy. But no, the money wouldn’t be enough. McGarrity owns the saloon standing on the corner and he has a lot of money. His wife wears diamond earrings. But her children are not as good and smart as my children. They are mean and greedy towards others because they have the things to taunt poor children with. I have seen the McGarrity girl eating from a bag of candy on the street while a ring of hungry children watched her. I saw those children looking at her and crying in their hearts. And when she couldn’t eat any more, she threw the rest down the sewer rather than give it to them. Ah, no, it isn’t the money alone. The McGarrity girl wears a different hair bow each day and they cost fifty cents apiece and that would feed the four of us here for one day. But her hair is thin and pale red. My Neeley has a big hole in his zitful cap and it’s stretched out of shape but he has thick, deep golden hair that curls. My Francie wears no hair bow but her hair is long and shining. Can money buy things like that? No. That means there must be something bigger than money. Miss Jackson teaches at the Settlement House and she has no money. She works for charity. She lives in a little room there on the top floor. She only has the one dress but she keeps it clean and pressed. Her eyes look straight into yours when you talk with her. When you listen to her, it’s like you used to be sick but hearing her voice, it’s making you well again. She knows about things—Miss Jackson. She understands about things. She can live in the middle of a dirty neighborhood and be fine and clean and like an actress in a play; someone you can look at but who is too fine to touch. There is that difference between her