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

"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 . . .

"Why, Katie? Why?" demanded Evy patiently.
"A song that Johnny sang once," explained Katie.
As Francie wrote the name, she heard the chords; she heard her father singing, "And "twas there that Annie Laurie."... a song, he said, that belonged to a better world," Katie went on.
"He would have liked the child named after one of his songs."
"Laurie is a pretty name," said Francie.
And Laurie became the baby's name.

"You said we could choose our own subjects."
"But poverty, starvation and drunkenness are ugly subjects to choose. We all admit these things exist. But one doesn't write about them."
"What does one write about?" Unconsciously, Francie picked up the teacher's phraseology.
"One delves into the imagination and finds beauty there. The writer, like the artist, must strive for beauty always."
"What is beauty?"

"Well," Francie decided, "I guess the thing that is giving me this headache is life and nothing else but."
"Don't be silly," said Mama quietly, still leaning back with her eyes closed. "Aunt Sissy's kitchen was too hot. I have a headache, myself." Francie jumped. Was it getting so that Mama could look right into her mind even with her eyes closed?

"You just can't do it, Sissy. There's no way," said Katie.
"There's only one thing to do," said Evy. "Take Francie out of school and let her get working papers."
"But I want her to graduate. My children will be the first ones in the Nolan family to get diplomas."
"You can't eat a diploma," said Evy.

"I'm going to bring it home in ten days. Just as soon as it grows fingernails." She put that in on the spur of the moment.
"What's gotten into you, Sissy? You know God-damned well you didn't have a baby this morning."
"I had a baby. It weighed three pounds. They took it to the incubator so that it wouldn't die and I'm going to get it back in ten days."
"I give up! I give up," he shouted and went out and got drunk.

June 22. Mama turned my mattress today and found my diary and read it. Everywhere I had the word drunk, she made me cross it out and write sick. It's lucky I didn't have anything against Mama written down. If ever I have children I will not read their diaries as I believe that even a child is entitled to some privacy. If Mama finds this again and reads it, I hope she will take the hint.

And Francie had seen it all; had seen it all. She had heard every word.
She remembered how Joanna had smiled at her and how she had turned her head away without smiling back. Why hadn't she smiled back? Why hadn't she smiled back? Now she would suffer she would suffer all the rest of her life every time that she remembered that she had not smiled back.

The children should have returned exhilarated and with a deep and abiding love for the sea and he should have returned with a fine mess of fish. Why, oh why hadn't it turned out the way it did in a song? Why did there have to be his blistered hands and his spoiled suit and sunburn and rotting fish and nausea? Why didn't Little Tilly's mother understand the intention and overlook the result?