A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith
Mary Rommely, his wife and Francie's grandmother, was a saint. She had no education; she could not read or write her own name, but she had in her memory over a thousand stories and legends. Some she had invented to entertain her children; others were old folk tales told to her by her own mother and her grandmother. She knew many old-country songs and understood all the wise sayings.
She was intensely religious and knew the life story of every Catholic saint. She believed in ghosts and fairies and all supernatural folk. She knew all about herbs and could brew you either a medicine or a charm - provided you intended no evil with the charm. Back in the old country she had been honored for her wisdom and much sought out for advice. She was a blameless sinless woman, yet she understood how it was with people who sinned. Inflexibly rigid in her own moral conduct, she condoned weaknesses in others. She revered God and loved Jesus, but she understood why people often turned away from these Two.
She had been a virgin when she married and had humbly submitted to her husband's brutal love. His brutality early killed all of her latent desires. Yet she could understand the fierce love hunger that could make girls - as people put it - go wrong. She understood how a boy who had been driven from the neighborhood for rape could still be a good boy at heart. She understood why people had to lie and steal and harm one another. She knew of all pitiful human weaknesses and many cruel strengths.
Yet she could not read or write.
Her eyes were soft brown, limpid and innocent. She wore her shining brown hair parted in the middle and drawn down over her ears. Her skin was pale and translucent and her mouth was tender. She spoke in a low, soft, warmly melodious voice that soothed those who listened. All of her daughters and granddaughters inherited this quality of voice from her.
Mary was convinced that because of some sin she had unwittingly committed in her life, she was mated with the devil himself. She really believed this because her husband told her so. "I am the devil himself," he told her frequently.
She often looked at him - the way two locks of his hair stood up on either side of his head, the way his cold gray eyes slanted upward at the outer corners, and she sighed and said to herself, "Yes, he is the devil."
He had a way of looking full into her saintly face and in a falsely caressing tone he would accuse Christ of unspeakable things. This always terrified her so much that she'd take her shawl from the nail behind the door, throw it over her head and rush forth into the street where she would walk and walk until concern for her children drove her back into the house.
She went to the public school that the three youngest girls attended and in halting English told the teacher that the children must be encouraged to speak only English; they were not to use a German word or phrase ever. In that way, she protected them against their father. She grieved when her children had to leave school after the sixth grade and go out working. She grieved when they married no-account men. She wept when they gave birth to daughters, knowing that to be born a woman meant a life of humble hardship.
Each time Francie began the prayer, Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, her grandmother's face came before her.