A tree grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith [93]
Granma Mary Rommely brought over something very nice that she had made herself. She brought each a scapular. To make it, she cut out two small ovals of bright red wool. On one, she embroidered a cross of bright blue yarn and on the other, a golden heart crowned with brown thorns. A black dagger went through the heart and two drops of deep red blood dripped from the dagger point. The cross and heart were very tiny and made with microscopic stitches. The two ovals were stitched together and attached to a piece of corset string. Mary Rommely had taken the scapulars to be blessed by the priest before she brought them over. As she slipped the scapular over Francie’s head, she said “Heiliges Weihnachten.” Then she added, “May you walk with the angels always.”
Aunt Sissy gave Francie a tiny package. She opened it and found a tiny matchbox. It was very fragile and covered with crinkly paper with a miniature spray of purple wisteria painted on the top. Francie pushed the box open. It held ten discs individually wrapped in pink tissue. The discs turned out to be bright golden pennies. Sissy explained that she had bought a bit of gold paint powder, mixed it with a few drops of banana oil and had gilded each penny. Francie loved Sissy’s present the best of all. A dozen times within the hour of receiving it, she slid open the box slowly, gaining great pleasure from holding the box and looking at it and watching the cobalt blue paper and the clean wafer-thin wood of the inside of the box appear. The golden pennies wrapped in the dreamlike tissue were a never-tiring miracle. Everyone agreed that the pennies were too beautiful to be spent. During the day, Francie lost two of her pennies somewhere. Mama suggested they’d be safest in the tin-can bank. She promised that Francie could have them back when the bank was opened. Francie was sure that Mama was right about the pennies being safest in the bank, yet it was a wrench to let those golden pennies drop down into the darkness.
Papa had a special present for Francie. It was a postcard with a church on it. Powdered isinglass was pasted on the roof and it glistened more brightly than real snow. The church window panes were made of tiny squares of shiny orange paper. The magic in this card was that when Francie held it up, light streamed through the paper panes and threw golden shadows on the glistening snow. It was a beautiful thing. Mama said that since it wasn’t written on, Francie could save it for next year and mail it to someone.
“Oh no,” said Francie. She put both hands over the card and held it to her chest.
Mama laughed. “You must learn to take a joke, Francie, otherwise life will be pretty hard on you.”
“Christmas is no day for lessons,” said Papa.
“But it is a day for getting drunk, isn’t it,” she flared up.
“Two drinks is all I had, Katie,” Johnny pleaded. “I was treated for Christmas.”
Francie went into the bedroom and shut the door. She couldn’t bear to hear Mama scolding Papa.
Just before supper, Francie distributed the gifts she had for them. She had a hatpin holder for Mama. She had made it with a penny test tube bought at Knipe’s Drug Store. She had covered it with a sheath of blue satin ribbon ruffled at the sides. A length of baby ribbon was sewn to the top. It was meant to hang on the side of the dresser and hold hatpins.
She had a watch fob for Papa. She had made it on a spool which had four nails driven into the top. It took two shoe laces. These were worked over and around the nails and a thick braided fob kept growing out of the bottom of the spool as she worked it. Johnny had no watch but he took an iron faucet washer, attached the fob to it and wore it in his vest pocket all day pretending it was a watch. Francie had a very fine present for Neeley: a five-cent shooter which looked like an oversize opal rather than a marble. Neeley had a boxful of “miggies,” small brown and blue speckled marbles