By the Rivers of Brooklyn Read Online Free PDF

because he was so quick he could be even kinder, because he could see into what you were thinking or feeling. She felt a sudden rush of affection for her youngest brother. “Here, let me pour you a cup of tea,” she said.
    â€œYou’re a good woman, Annie,” her brother said.

ETHEL   BROOKLYN, NOVEMBER 1926
    E THEL PUSHED OPEN THE door of the house with her shoulder, her arms being occupied with Ralphie’s carriage and several bags of food. She edged inside the porch to lay down her shopping bags, begrudging even the few seconds she had to leave Ralphie outside in the frigid November air. Then she dragged the huge unwieldy carriage through the door, hoisting it over the doorstep. Once inside, with the shopping bags and the baby carriage, she couldn’t maneuver enough room to close the door. November rushed inside, cold air and grey-brown leaves and dirt from the sidewalk all whirled on the wind. Ralphie was crying. Ethel backed up against the landlady’s door and shifted the pram a few inches farther into the corner, then squeezed around it to shut the door.
    She picked up Ralphie, who was howling, and jostled him around, a tiny squalling mass inside a huge bundle of knitted sweater, cap, booties and blankets. She jiggled and soothed him, partly because she hated to hear him cry but also because Mrs. Delaney, the landlady, had little tolerance for crying infants, as Ethel had good cause to know. When Ralphie was colicky at two and three months, Ethel and Jim would take turns walking the floor with him, trying to quiet him, waiting for the inevitable banging on the door as Mrs. Delaney came up to say that the second-floor tenants were complaining.
    Now Ethel looked up at the stairs, towering above her, disappearing into the gloom of the third floor. She thought of Jim, climbing each day up on the naked skeletons of the skyscrapers that towered over New York. Could that be any harder than climbing two flights of steps with a crying baby and five bags of groceries? It couldn’t be done, not in one trip. She would have to bring Ralphie up, lay him in the crib, and come back down for the food.
    The time it took to settle Ralphie in the crib meant she had left the porch downstairs cluttered with her bags and her carriage. When she came down, Mrs. Delaney was standing in her doorway, shaking her head.
    â€œMrs. Evans, I may have told you,” she began.
    â€œYes, yes, I’m sorry, Mrs. Delaney, you did tell me.”
    â€œIt’s not me, it’s the fire regulations, you know. What would happen if we had a fire and the doorway was obstructed like this?”
    â€œYes, Mrs. Delaney. I just took Ralphie up to lay him down. I’ll put the baby carriage away in the corner right now,” Ethel said, doing it as she said it so Mrs. Delaney would see that she really meant it.
    Mrs. Delaney glanced up the steps to the unseen apartment above, from which banshee wails were issuing. “Is your little boy all right, Mrs. Evans? Is he suffering from gas pains?”
    â€œNo, Mrs. Delaney, I don’t think he’s got gas. I believe he’s hungry. We were out at the shops for a little longer than I thought. I’m just going up, now, to feed him.” Laden with parcels like a pack-horse, Ethel began her long trek up the stairs. Her legs were killing her. The heels of her shoes were slicing into her flesh. She needed new shoes.
    â€œBecause if it’s gas, you’ll want to get the gripe water. As I’ve told you before, Mrs. Evans, I used it with all six of mine and they never–”
    Ethel shut the door of her apartment behind her, very gently and quietly. She wished she could slam it with a huge bang, but she was not that type of woman. Anyway, there was something nice in the idea of Mrs. Delaney in the stairwell, still talking away, not realizing Ethel couldn’t hear her.
    Ethel wanted to sink down into Jim’s chair, the one armchair in their