Explore "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" by Betty Smith on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
SISSY expected her baby late in November. Katie and Evy went to a lot of trouble to avoid discussing it with Sissy. They were certain it would be another stillbirth and they reasoned that the less said about it, the less Sissy would have to remember afterward. But Sissy did such a revolutionary thing that they had to talk about it. She announced that she was going to have a doctor when the baby came and that she was going to a hospital.
Her mother and, sisters were stunned. No Rommely women had had a doctor at childbirth, ever. It didn't seem right. You called in a midwife, a neighbor woman, or your mother, and you got through the business secretively and behind closed doors and kept the men out. Babies were women's business. As for hospitals, everyone knew you went there only to die.