Cecilia’s Reviews > A Tree Grows in Brooklyn > Status Update

But this tree in the yard— this tree that men chopped down... this tree that they built a bonfire around, trying to burn up its stump—this tree lived!
It lived! And nothing could destroy it.
Once more she looked at Florry Wendy reading on the fire escape.
"Good-bye, Francie," she whispered.
She closed the window.

"let somebody win something just once!"
"All right! All right! Don't get excited, now."
"I just want one little kid to get something for nothing."
"I'll put it up and I won't take the number out of the box, either, after you go. Satisfied?"
"Thanks, Charlie."
"And I'll tell the winner the doll's name's Francie, see?"
"Oh no, you don't! Not with the face that doll's got."

This that I see now, she thought, to see no more this way. Oh, the last time how clearly you see everything; as though a magnifying light had been turned on it. And you grieve because you hadn't held it tighter when you had it every day.
What had Granma Mary Rommely said? "To look at everything always as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time: Thus is your time on earth filled with glory."

"It's sure a good break for Mama. Of course he isn't Papa...
"No. No one will ever be ... Papa. But aside from that, he's a nice man, though."
"Laurie's going to have a mighty easy life all right."
"Annie Laurie McShane! She'll never have the hard times we had, will she?"
"No. And she'll never have the fun we had, either."
"Gosh! We did have fun, didn't we, Neeley?"
"Yeah!"
"Poor Laurie," said Francie pityingly.

"God rest her soul," echoed the Nolans.
"I have been waitin' many years and now the time has come when 'tis no longer disrespect to the dead to speak out.
"Katherine Nolan, I'm askin' to keep company with you. Object, a weddin' in the fall."
Katie looked quickly at Francie and frowned. What was the matter with Mother anyhow? Francie wasn't even thinking of laughing.

Katie held the coffeepot in one hand and the saucepan of hot milk in the other and poured both into the cups simultaneously. "I remember," she said, "when there was no milk in the house. Your father would put a lump of butter in his coffee—if we had butter. He said that butter was cream in the first place and just as good in coffee."
Papa...!

Then a thunderous thought came to her.
"My grandparents never knew how to read or write. Those who came before them couldn't read or write. My mother's sister can't read or write. My parents never even graduated from grade school. I never went to high school. But I, M. Frances K. Nolan, am now in college. Do you hear that, Francie? You're in college!
"Oh gosh, I feel sick."

"Don't say that!" said Sissy sharply. "We're not living in adultery. We're living in bigamy."
"And it's got to stop right now, see? You're widowed from the first one and you're going to get a divorce from the second, and then you're going to marry me again, see?"
"Yes, John," she said meekly.
"And my name ain't John!" he roared. "It's Steve! Steve! Steve!”

"Jesus Christ died on the cross for people like you," he announced passionately, "and now you won't show a new girl where the terlet is." Francie stared at him, astonished. Then she couldn't help it—it had sounded so funny—she burst out laughing. Everything changed then. A murmur ran round the table.
"She laughed!"
"Hey! The new girl laughed!"

She picked up the flowers-two dozen dark red roses on a sheaf of ferns. She cradled them in her arm, the way the other girls did, and pretended for a moment that they were hers. She looked for the owner's name on the card. But her own name was on the card! Her name! The card said: For Francie on graduation day. Love from Papa. Papa!
The writing was in his fine careful hand . . .