A tree grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith [96]
“No.”
Francie’s heart sunk. “Why?”
“Because when you were christened, you were named Francie after Andy’s girl.”
“I know.”
“But you were also named Mary after my mother. Your real name is Mary Frances Nolan.”
Francie took the doll to bed with her. She lay very still so as not to disturb it. She woke up from time to time in the night and whispered “Mary” and touched the doll’s infinitesimal slipper with a light finger. She trembled at feeling the thin soft bit of smooth leather.
It was to be her first and her last doll.
28
THE FUTURE WAS A NEAR THING TO KATIE. SHE HAD A WAY OF SAYING, “Christmas will be here before you know it.” Or, at the beginning of vacation, “School will be starting up before you know it.” In the spring when Francie discarded her long drawers and joyously flung them away, Mama made her pick them up again saying, “You’ll need them soon enough again. Winter will be here before you know it.” What was Mama talking about? Spring had just started. The winter would never come again.
A small child has little idea of the future. Next week is as far ahead as his future stretches and the year between Christmas and Christmas again is an eternity. So time was with Francie up until her eleventh year.
Between her eleventh and twelfth birthday, things changed. The future came along quicker; the days seemed shorter and the weeks seemed to have less days in them. Henny Gaddis died and this had something to do with it. She had always heard that Henny was going to die. She heard about it so much that she finally got to believe he would die. But that would be a long, long time away. Now the long time had come. The something which had been a future was now a present and would become a past. Francie wondered whether someone had to die to make that clear to a child. But no, Grandfather Rommely had died when she was nine, a week after she made her first Communion and, as she remembered, Christmas still had seemed far away at that time.
Things were changing so fast for Francie now, that she got mixed up. Neeley, who was a year younger than she, grew suddenly and got to be a head taller. Maudie Donavan moved away. When she returned on a visit three months later, Francie found her different. Maudie had developed in a womanly way during those three months.
Francie, who knew Mama was always right, found out that she was wrong once in a while. She discovered that some of the things she loved so much in her father were considered very comical to other people. The scales at the tea store did not shine so brightly any more and she found the bins were chipped and shabby-looking.
She stopped watching for Mr. Tomony to come home on Saturday nights from his New York jaunts. All of a sudden she thought it was silly that he lived so and went to New York and came home longing for where he had been. He had money. Why didn’t he just go over to New York and live there if he liked it so much?
Everything was changing. Francie was in a panic. Her world was slipping away from her and what would take its place? Still, what was different anyhow? She read a page from the Bible and Shakespeare every night the same as always. She practiced the piano every day for an hour. She put pennies in the tin-can bank. The junk shop was still there; the stores were all the same. Nothing was changing. She was the one who was changing.
She told Papa about it. He made her stick out her tongue and he felt her wrist. He shook his head sadly and said,
“You have a bad case, a very bad case.”
“Of what?”
“Growing up.”
Growing up spoiled a lot of things. It spoiled the nice game they had when there was nothing to eat in the house. When money gave out and food ran low, Katie and the children pretended they were explorers discovering the North Pole and had been trapped by a blizzard in a cave with just a little food. They had to make it last till help came. Mama divided up what food there was in the cupboard and called it rations and when the children were still hungry after a meal, she’d say, “Courage, my men, help will come soon.”