The Boys in the Trees Read Free

spare.
    •  •  •
    Bessie had a growth that started to eat away at her from the inside, and from such a big woman she turned into the frailest thing. I went to see her when I could but it was difficult, trailing three small children, the long trip across town. After she died her daughters came and took everything, even the silver spoon she meant for me to have. It was like my own mother dying all over again, and this time I was grown and knew it. Sorrow like a weight I felt on my shoulders.
    I am your family
, William said.
We are your family
. Pointing to the room where the children slept.
We are everything you need
.
     … a warm bath, then bleeding, next tartar emetic every 15 minutes until symptoms of collapse are produced, giving brandy if the prostration becomes too great.
    The building where we lived was mostly families, except for a few like Old John, all on his own, who roared and shook his walking stick when anyone stepped in his way. The children played in the courtyard all day and into the evening and thesound of their chanting, their calling, was like the sound of hooves, of cart wheels rumbling by, so constant I only noticed when it stopped. Sadie played there most days, though William didn’t know. He thought she would pick up all kinds of things; said,
We’re not like them
. In some ways it was true, and I thanked God every Saturday night when Harold Ashe came stumbling home, tripping on the steps on the landing, cursing and banging on the door because his fingers had become too thick to fit in his pocket for his key. The thumps and crashes. All the women on their own with sickly children or just too many, hunched over washtubs with cracked red hands.
    But in some ways we were just like them, a family with young children and never enough money. It’s no life for a child, cooped up in three small rooms when the sun is shining and voices float up the stairwell. Willie played in the courtyard too, though mostly he liked to sit in his own corner, building things from the scraps of wood and brick that William sometimes brought home. Once I was carrying Tom to the shop and I stopped to tell Sadie I’d be soon back. The children were all in a line, ten of them or twelve, with their arms down at their sides, jumping straight up in the air and one little girl watching, calling out who jumped highest. And every time it was Willie, my Willie, with his eyes closed and his arms stiff at his sides, jumping higher and higher, jumping straight into the air.
He’s the fastest runner too
, Sadie said.
He can run like the wind, he wins all the races
. How strange it was, that I hadn’t known that about my own child, that I hadn’t known that Willie, with his calm and thoughtful way, could run like the wind. And though I’d been with my children every day of their lives, though I’d loved them more than I could imagine, I suddenly saw them in a new way, saw things I’d been missing because I’d never thought to look forthem, because maybe I’d never really looked, thinking I already knew.
    •  •  •
    Sadie was desperate to go to school and William wanted her to go to Mrs. Cook’s, half a mile away. He said he would get the money, he said she should be patient, wait another year, but Sadie, usually so obedient, didn’t stop asking. Though he never raised his voice, sometimes he got quite cross. I waited until he’d finished his meal, set down his fork, wiped his beard.
It’s so important to her
, I said. And he said what he said to Sadie, that she deserved better than the little school down the road, the children fighting in the street. I reminded him of what he often said, that he’d still be toting bricks if he hadn’t learned to figure so well, and he said he didn’t deny it, but it was surely more important for a boy, who would one day have a family to support.
We can’t know
, I said. And I said that something could happen to us, that Sadie could be left to make her own way in the world,