Emulation of Style
And the child, Francie Nolan, was of all the Rommelys and all the Nolans. She
had the violent weaknesses and passion for beauty of the shanty Nolans. She was
a mosaic of her grandmother Rommely’s mysticism, her tale-telling, her great
belief in everything and her compassion for the weak ones. She had a lot of her
grandfather Rommely’s cruel will. She had some of her Aunt Evy’s talent for
mimicking, some of Ruthie Nolan’s possessiveness. She had Aunt Sissy’s love for
life and her love for children. She had Johnny’s sentimentality without his good
looks. She had all of Katie’s soft ways and only half of the invisible steel of
Katie. She was made up of all these good and these bad things.
She was made up of more, too. She was the books she read in the library.
She was the flower in the brown bowl. Part of her life was made from the tree
growing rankly in the yard. She was the bitter quarrels she had with her brother
whom she loved dearly. She was Katie’s secret, despairing weeping. She was the
shame of her father staggering home drunk.
She was all of these things and of something that had been born into her
and her only – the something different from anyone else in the two families. It
was what God or whatever is His equivalent puts into each soul that is given life –
the one different thing such as that which makes no two fingerprints on the face of
the earth alike.
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Betty Smith