Explore "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" by Betty Smith on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
JOHNNY celebrated his voting birthday by getting drunk for three days. When he was coming out of it, Katie locked him in the bedroom where he couldn't get anything more to drink. Instead of sobering up, he started to get delirium tremens. He wept and begged by turns for a drink. He said he was suffering. She told him it was a good thing, that suffering would harden him, would teach him such a lesson that he'd stop drinking. But poor Johnny just wouldn't harden. He softened into a wailing, screaming banshee.
Neighbors banged on her door and told her to do something for the poor man. Katie's mouth set in a hard cold line and she called out to them to mind their own business. But even as she defied the neighbors, she knew that they would have to move as soon as the month was up. They couldn't live in the neighborhood after the way Johnny was disgracing them.