A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Twelve years before Francie falls asleep in that front room in Brooklyn, Katie is introduced to her best friend’s boyfriend, Johnny Nolan. Initially invited as a date for one of Johnny’s friends, Katie quickly finds herself falling for Johnny instead. After one dance with him, she “set out to get him” (58). Every day she sneaks out of work early to talk to Johnny before her best friend, Hildy O’Dair, has time to get to him. Eventually, Hildy finds them talking to each other and starts to attack Katie. Since this causes a scene, Johnny cordons the girls off into a private location and then confesses his love for Katie. While this upsets Hildy, as she is losing both her best friend and her boyfriend, she eventually wanders off and leaves them alone. Four months later they get married.

Katie’s father, Thomas Rommely, sees her marriage to Johnny as an insult to the family, but in general he “hated everybody and everything,” so Katie does not put much stock in his anger (61). Her mother, Mary Rommely, is a deeply religious, uneducated, big-hearted woman who has gone out of her way to be sure her daughters never learn German, the language their father uses to abuse them.

Mary gave birth to Katie’s older sister, Sissy, shortly after she married Thomas and arrived in America. Unaware of the laws or opportunities in America, she did not send Sissy to school because she did not know she should or could. At 14, Sissy married a fireman. At 15, Sissy became pregnant and also became a bereaved mother, her first child being stillborn. Over the next five years, Sissy gave birth to three more stillborn children. She had at first blamed her youthful activities on the babies’ mortality, but eventually she blamed her husband. She insisted he desert her, so he did. Sissy then married again, illegally this time, and repeated the same scenario as before, giving birth to four dead babies. Sissy simply walked away from this second husband, returning home and getting a job at the rubber factory. Sissy then married a magazine worker, who is her most recent husband. After Mary had Sissy, she gave birth to Eliza, who was “unattractive” and “dull” (66). Eliza became a nun and for a while was a source of fascination for Francie. When Francie was nine, she finally met Eliza, but Eliza did not live up to Francie’s expectations, and thus Francie’s fondness for this sister died quickly.

Mary then gave birth to Evy, who quickly married “weak” Willie Flittman (67). Despite her husband’s flaws, Evy is ever determined to be “refined” and spends all her time trying to better her circumstances. Part of this quest has included many attempts to get her children involved in music. She once paid for lessons, only to find out that her daughter’s teacher was spending the lessons fetishizing her daughter’s feet instead of teaching her the fiddle. Her older son did learn to play the fiddle eventually, but all in all the musical family she had hoped for turned out to be a lost cause. Evy knows her husband is often foolish, but she loves him deeply. She makes fun of him in his absence, and this seems to keep all involved happy. As of 1912, the four Rommely daughters have quite different compositions, but they are all united in that they are “made out of thin invisible steel” (69).

Johnny came from a long line of “weak” and “handsome” men who often shirked their romantic obligations and duties. His father died while he was young, leaving his Irish immigrant mother, Ruthie, to raise four boys by herself. All of the boys died before the age of 35 except for Johnny. Johnny’s mother can’t stand Katie because she feels Katie stole Johnny the way death stole her other sons. Francie is a composite of all her older relatives, her reading, her experiences, and “something that had been born into her and her only” (73).

Once Johnny and Katie are wed, Katie convinces Johnny to leave the singing-waiter business and get a job with her cleaning a schoolhouse at night. They love this job, and it brings them closer together. Katie quickly ends up pregnant. When Katie reveals her condition, Johnny is “bewildered.” Katie continues to clean the schoolhouse with him until she can’t bend down anymore. Even then, she goes along with him to keep him company while he worked. Katie has a long, hard labor, during which Johnny runs to his mother for comfort. His mother sees the pregnancy as a malignant move by Katie, and thus she turns out not to be so comforting at all. Finding no respite in his mother, Johnny seeks out his brother, who takes him out for a night of barhopping. After a night of rabble-rousing and rough sleep, Johnny returns to find Katie in bed with “fragile” Francie beside her (78). After he tends to her, he receives a note from the schoolhouse saying he has been fired for not showing up and that he will not be able to get a good recommendation either. Johnny destroys the note and heads out to try to reason with his employer.

Johnny pleads with the principal of the school to no avail. Johnny leaves the schoolhouse with his remaining wages, and then seeks out Katie’s mother and sister to let them know that Francie was born. Katie’s mother comes to visit Katie and Francie as soon as Johnny breaks the news. Johnny takes advantage of her arrival and goes out to search for work. Once Johnny is gone, Katie expresses her fears about Francie’s upbringing to her mother. She is upset because she knows Francie will grow up poor, and she is sure she herself will have to spend her whole life working since Johnny “can’t look after himself” (82). Katie’s mother doesn’t believe Francie will grow up poor since Francie will grow up with a better education than she or Katie had. She tells Katie she must read to Francie, tell Francie fairytales and other stories that spark her “imagination,” and save up to buy land (84). Katie asks why her mother never saved up to buy land, and her mother reveals that she saved many times, only to have been robbed each time. Her mother then excuses herself and Sissy arrives.

Sissy makes a fuss over Francie, bathing her and bringing food for Katie and Johnny. Johnny then heads out, pretending to go to work at the schoolhouse but really meeting up with his brother. His brother helps him get a singing-waiter job again. Sissy and Katie spend the night with Francie in bed between them, talking and laughing the night away. Sissy makes a bank for her by nailing down a milk can, following their mother’s advice to save money, and she helps get Francie the books her mother suggested: something by Shakespeare and a Protestant Bible. Sissy buys a Shakespeare anthology from the library and steals the Bible from a hotel. Even now that Francie is 11, these two books remain her whole “library.”

Francie was “skinny” and “blue” as a baby despite Katie’s constant breastfeeding. After only three months, Katie’s milk supply disappears, leaving a cranky Francie to contend with a bottle she doesn’t want. Katie asks for help from the midwife, who suggests Katie is the victim of witchcraft. She gives Katie directions for making a voodoo doll, but the doll does nothing for Katie’s milk. Then Katie asks Sissy for help. Sissy blames Johnny, insinuating that Katie is pregnant again, which she is. When Johnny gets wind of the second child, he feels “trapped” and immediately starts drinking. The midwife then visits Katie to see if her milk had returned, and Katie reveals that she is pregnant again. Assuming that Katie wants to abort given both Katie and Francie’s frail states, the midwife offers her a potion, which Katie vehemently refuses. Everyone in the community thinks Francie is going to die and pities the coming of the second child. Katie stands her ground, however, insisting that Francie and her future child will not only live but thrive.

When Cornelius, better known as Neeley, is finally born, Katie immediately knows that she loves him more than Francie or Johnny. She then makes a conscious decision to devote herself entirely to him, a decision both Johnny and Francie pick up on in different ways. After Neeley’s birth, Johnny and Katie set out on separate paths, with Johnny given completely to drinking and Katie growing increasingly independent.