'Tis

by Frank McCourt

  She says, They’ll kill you, Pa.

  And if they do, Angela, I won’t give a fiddler’s fart.

  That’s the part of Uncle Pa I always loved, the way he doesn’t give a fiddler’s fart about anything. If I could be like him I’d be free though I wouldn’t want his lungs the way they were destroyed by German gas in the Great War, then years working in the Limerick Gas Works and now fags by the fireplace. I’m sad he’s sitting there killing himself when he’s the only man who ever told the truth. He’s the one that told me don’t get caught taking tests for the post office when I could save my money and go to America. You could never imagine Uncle Pa telling a lie. It would kill him faster than gas or the fags.

  He’s still all black from shoveling coke and coal at the Gas Works and there’s no flesh on his bones. When he looks up from his place by the fire the whites of his eyes are dazzling around the blue. You can see when he looks over at us he has a special fondness for my brother Michael. I wish he had that fondness for me but he doesn’t and it’s enough to know he bought me my first pint long ago and told me the truth. I’d like to tell him the way I feel about him. No, I’m afraid someone would laugh.

  After the tea at Aunt Aggie’s I’m thinking of going back to my room at the National Hotel but I’m afraid my mother will get the hurt look in her eyes again. Now I’ll have to doss in my grandmother’s bed with Michael and Alphie and I know the fleas will drive me mad. Ever since I left Limerick there hasn’t been a flea in my life but now that I’m a GI with a bit of flesh on my bones I’ll be eaten alive.

  Mam says, No. There’s a powder called DDT that kills everything and she has it sprinkled all over the house. I tell her it’s what we were sprayed with from small planes flying over our heads in Fort Dix so that we’d be saved from the torment of mosquitoes.

  Still, it’s crowded in the bed with Michael and Alphie. The Abbot is in his bed across the room grunting and eating from a paper of fish and chips the way he always did. I can’t sleep listening to him and thinking of the days when I licked the grease from the newspaper that held his fish and chips. Here I am in the old bed with my uniform hanging over the back of a chair with nothing changed in Limerick but the DDT that keeps the fleas away. It’s a comfort to think of the children who can sleep now with the DDT and not have the torment of the fleas.

  The next day my mother tries for the last time to get Uncle Pat, her brother, to move up to Janesboro with us. He says, Noah, noah. That’s the way he talks from being dropped on his head. He won’t go. He’ll stay here and when we’re all gone he’ll move into the big bed, his mother’s bed that all of us slept in for years. He always wanted that bed and now he’ll have it and he’ll have his tea from his mother’s mug every morning.

  My mother looks at him and the tears are there again. It makes me impatient and I want her to take her things and go. If the Abbot wants to be that stupid and stubborn let him be. She says, You don’t know what it is to have a brother like this. You’re lucky all your brothers are whole.

  Whole? What is she talking about?

  Lucky you are to have brothers that are sensible and healthy and never dropped on their heads.

  She cries again and asks the Abbot if he’d like a nice cup of tea and he says, Noah.

  Wouldn’t he like to come up to the new house and have a nice warm bath in the new bathtub?

  Noah.

  Oh, Pat, oh, Pat, oh, Pat.

  She’s so helpless with tears she has to sit down and he does nothing but stare at her out of his oozing eyes. He stares at her without a word till he reaches for his mother’s mug and says, I’ll have me mother’s mug and me mother’s bed that ye kept me out of all these years.

  Alphie goes over to Mam and asks her if we can go to our new house. He’s only eleven and he’s excited. Michael is already at the Savoy Restaurant washing dishes and when he’s finished he can come to the new house where he’ll have hot and cold running water and he can take the first bath of his life.

  Mam dries her eyes and stands. Are you sure now, Pat, you won’t come? You can bring the mug if you like but we can’t bring the bed.

  Noah.

  And that’s the end of it. She says, This is the house I grew up in. When I went to America I didn’t even look back going up the lane. ’Tis all different now. I’m forty-four years of age and ’tis all different.

  She puts on her coat and stands looking at her brother and I’m so tired of her moaning I want to pull her out of the house. I tell Alphie, Come on, and we move out the door so that she has to follow us. Whenever she’s hurt her face grows whiter and her nose sharper and that’s the way it is now. She won’t talk to me, treats me as if I had done something wrong by sending the allotment so that she could have some kind of a decent life. I don’t want to talk to her either because it’s hard to feel sympathy for someone, even your mother, who wants to stay in a slum with a brother who’s simple from being dropped on his head.

  She’s like that in the bus all the way up to Janesboro. Then, at the door of the new house, she starts foostering in her bag. Oh, God, she says, I must have left the key behind, which shows she didn’t want to leave her old house in the first place. That’s what Corporal Dunphy told me once in Fort Dix. His wife had that habit of forgetting keys and when you have that habit it means you don’t want to go home. It means you have a dread of your own door. Now I have to knock next door to see if they’ll let me go around to the back in case there’s a window open for me to climb in.

  That puts me in such a bad mood I can barely enjoy the new house. It’s different with her. The minute she steps into the hall the paleness goes from her face and the sharpness from her nose. The house is already furnished, at least she did that, and now she says what every mother in Limerick would say, Well, we might as well have a nice cup of tea. She’s like Captain Boyle yelling at Juno in Juno and the Paycock, Tay, tay, tay, if a man was dyin’, you’d be tryin’ to make him swally a cup o’ tay.

  18

  All the years I grew up in Limerick I watched people go to dances at Cruise’s Hotel or the Stella Ballroom. Now I can go myself and I needn’t be a bit shy with the girls with my American uniform and my corporal’s stripes. If they ask me was I ever in Korea and was I wounded I’ll give them a small smile and act as if I don’t want to talk about it. I might limp a little and that might be enough of an excuse for not being able to dance properly which I never could anyway. There might be at least one nice girl who will be sensitive about my wound and take me to a table for a glass of lemonade or stout.

  Bud Clancy is up on the stage with his band and recognizes me the minute I walk in. He signals for me to go up to him. How are you, Frankie? Back from the wars, ha ha ha. Would you like us to play a special request?

  I tell him “American Patrol” and he talks into the microphone. Ladies and gentlemen, here’s one of our own home from the wars, Frankie McCourt. And I’m in heaven with everyone looking at me. They don’t look long because once “American Patrol” starts they’re twirling and swinging away on the floor. I stand by the bandstand wondering how they can go on dancing and ignoring an American corporal in their midst. I never thought I’d be ignored like this and now I have to ask a girl to dance to save face. The girls are ranged in seats along the walls, drinking lemonade, chatting, and when I ask them to dance they shake their heads, No, thanks. Only one says, yes, and when she gets up I notice she has a limp and that puts me in a quandary wondering if I should postpone my own limp for fear she might think I was mocking her. I can’t leave her standing there all night so I lead her out to the dance floor and now I notice everyone looking at me because her limp is so bad she nearly loses her balance every time she steps forward on the right leg that’s shorter than the left. It’s hard to know what to do when you have to dance with someone with such a serious limp. I know now how foolish it would be for me to put on my false war limp. The whole world would be laughing at us, me going one way, she the other way. What’s worse is I don’t know what
to say to her. I know that if you have the right thing to say you can save any situation but I’m afraid to say anything. Should I say, Sorry for your limp, or, How did you get it? She doesn’t give me a chance to say anything. She barks at me, Are you going to stand there gawking all night? and I can’t do anything but lead her to the floor with Bud Clancy’s band playing “Chattanooga choo choo, won’t you hurry me home.” I don’t know why Bud has to play fast tunes when girls with limps like this are barely able to put one foot before the other. Why couldn’t he play “Moonlight Serenade” or “Sentimental Journey” so that I could use the few steps I learned from Emer in New York? Now the girl is asking me if I think this is a funeral and I notice she has the flat accent that shows she’s from a poor part of Limerick. Come on, Yank, start swinging, she says, and steps away and twirls on her one good leg as fast as a top. Another couple bumps against us and they tell her, Powerful, Madeline, powerful. You’re out on your picky tonight, Madeline. Better than Ginger Rogers herself.

  Girls along the wall are laughing. My face is on fire and I wish to God Bud Clancy would play “Three O’Clock in the Morning” so that I could lead Madeline back to her seat and give up dancing forever but, no, Bud starts a slow one, “The Sunny Side of the Street,” and Madeline presses herself up against me with her nose in my chest and pushes me around the floor, clumping and limping, till she steps back from me and tells me if this is the way Yanks dance then she’ll dance from this day out with the men of Limerick who know how, thank you very much, indeed.

  The girls along the wall laugh even harder. Even the men who can’t get anyone to dance with them and spend their time drinking pints are laughing and I know I might as well leave because no one will dance with me after the spectacle I made of myself. I have such a desperate feeling and I’m so ashamed of myself that I want them to feel ashamed and the only way to do that is to put on the limp and hope they’ll think it’s a war wound but when I hobble toward the door the girls shriek and turn so hysterical with laughter I run down the stairs and into the street so ashamed I want to throw myself into the River Shannon.

  The next day Mam tells me she heard I went to a dance last night, that I danced with Madeline Burke from Mungret Street and everyone is saying, Wasn’t that very good of Frankie McCourt to dance with Madeline the way she is, God help us, an’ him in his uniform an’ all.

  It doesn’t matter. I won’t go out in my uniform anymore. I’ll wear civilian clothes and no one will be looking to see if I have a fat arse. If I go to a dance I’ll stand by the bar and drink pints with the men who pretend they don’t care when the girls say no.

  I have ten days left on my furlough and I wish it was ten minutes so that I could go back to Lenggries and get whatever I want for a pound of coffee and a carton of cigarettes. Mam says I’m acting very dour but I can’t explain the strange feelings I have for Limerick after all the bad times of my childhood and now the way I disgraced myself at the dance. I don’t care if I was good to Madeline Burke and her limp. That’s not what I came back to Limerick for. I’ll never try to dance with anyone again without looking to see if they have legs the same length. It should be easy if I watch them going to the lavatory. In the long run it’s easier to be with Buck and Rappaport, even Weber, taking the laundry to Dachau.

  But I can’t tell my mother any of this. It’s hard to tell anyone anything especially if it’s about coming and going. You have to get used to a big powerful place like New York where you could be dead in your bed for days with a strange odor coming from your room before anyone would notice. Then you’re put into the army and you have to get used to men from all over America, all colors and shapes. When you go to Germany you look at people on the streets and in the beer places. You have to get used to them, too. They seem ordinary though you’d like to lean across to the group at the next table and say, Did anyone here kill Jews? Of course we were told in army orientation sessions to keep our mouths shut and treat Germans as allies in the war against godless communism but you’d still like to ask out of pure curiosity or to see the looks on their faces.

  The hardest part of all the coming and going is Limerick. I’d like to walk around and be admired for my uniform and corporal’s stripes and I suppose I would if I hadn’t grown up here but I’m known to too many people because of the time I spent delivering telegrams and working for Easons and now all I get is, Ah, Jaysus, Frankie McCourt, is that yourself? Aren’t you lookin’ grand entirely. How’re your poor eyes and how’s your poor mother? You never looked better, Frankie.

  I could be wearing the uniform of a general but all I am to them is Frankie McCourt the scabby-eyed telegram boy with the poor suffering mother.

  The best part of being in Limerick is walking around with Alphie and Michael though Michael is usually busy with a girl who’s mad about him. All the girls are mad about him with his black hair and blue eyes and shy smile.

  Oh, Mikey John, they say, isn’t he gorgeous.

  If they say it to his face he blushes and that makes them love him even more. My mother says he’s a grand dancer, that’s what she heard, and no one is better singing “When April showers, they come your way.” He was having his dinner one day and the news came on the radio that Al Jolson had died and he got up, crying, and walked away from his dinner. It’s a very serious thing when a boy walks away from his dinner and it proved how much Michael loved Al Jolson.

  With all his talent I know Michael should be in America and he will because I’ll make sure of it.

  There are days I walk the streets in civilian clothes by myself. I have a notion that when I visit all the places we lived in I’m in a tunnel through the past where I know I’ll be happy to come out at the other end. I stand outside Leamy’s School where I got whatever education I have, good or bad. Next door is the St. Vincent de Paul Society where my mother went to keep us from starving. I wander the streets from church to church, memories everywhere. There are voices, choirs, hymns, priests preaching or murmuring during confession. I can look at the doors on every street in Limerick and know I delivered telegrams at every one.

  I meet schoolmasters from Leamy’s National School and they tell me I was a fine boy even if they forget how they whacked me with stick and cane when I couldn’t remember the proper answers for the catechism or the dates and names in Ireland’s long sad history. Mr. Scanlon tells me there’s no use in being in America unless I make a fortune for myself and Mr. O’Halloran, the headmaster, stops his car to ask me about my life in America and to remind me of what the Greeks said, that there is no royal road to knowledge. He’ll be very surprised, he says, if I turn my back on books to join the shopkeepers of the world, to fumble in the greasy till. He smiles with his President Roosevelt smile and drives away.

  I meet priests from our own church, St. Joseph’s, and other churches where I might have gone to confession or delivered telegrams but they pass me. You have to be rich to get a nod from a priest, unless he’s a Franciscan.

  Still I sit in silent churches to look at altars, pulpits, confessionals. I’d like to know how many Masses I attended, how many sermons frightened the life out of me, how many priests were shocked by my sins before I gave up going to confession altogether. I know I’m doomed the way I am though I’d confess to a kindly priest if I could find one. Sometimes I wish I could be a Protestant or a Jew because they don’t know any better. When you belong to the True Faith there are no excuses and you’re trapped.

  There’s a letter from my father’s sister, Aunt Emily, to say my grandmother is hoping I’ll be able to travel to the North to see them before I leave for Germany. My father is living with them, working as a farm laborer all around Toome, and he’d like to see me too after all these years.

  I don’t mind traveling to the North to see my grandmother but I don’t know what I’ll say to my father. Now that I’m twenty-two I know from walking around Munich and Limerick and looking at children in the streets I could never be the father that walked away from them. He left us when I was
ten to work in England and send us money but, as my mother said, he chose the bottle over the babies. Mam says I should go to the North because my grandmother is frail and might not last till the next time I come home. She says there are some things you can do only once and you might as well do them that once.

  It’s surprising she should talk about my grandmother like this after the cold reception she got when she landed from America with my father and four small children but there are two things she hates in the world, holding grudges and owing money.

  If I go to the North in a train I should wear my uniform for the admiration I’m sure to get though I know if I open my gob with my Limerick accent people will turn away or stick their heads in books and newspapers. I could put on an American accent but I already tried that with my mother and she went into hysterics, laughing. She said I sounded like Edward G. Robinson under water.

  If anyone talks to me the only thing I can do is nod my head or shake it or put on the look of a secret sadness caused by a severe war wound.

  It’s all for nothing. The Irish are so used to American soldiers coming and going since the end of the war I might as well be invisible in my corner of the carriage on the train to Dublin and then Belfast. There’s no curiosity, no one saying, Are you back from Korea? Aren’t those Chinamen terrible? and I don’t even want to put on the limp anymore. A limp is like a lie, you have to remember to keep it going.