'Tis

by Frank McCourt

  He tells me I look intelligent enough, college boy, right? Easy job like this shouldn’t be a problem. If it is I shouldn’t even be in college. He’s going away for a few days so I’ll be on my own except for the Puerto Rican ladies working on the sewing machines and the cutting tables. Yeah, he says, the PR ladies will take care of you, ha ha.

  I want to ask him if there are colors that match and colors that don’t but he’s gone. I dip feathers into pots and when I attach them to the hats the Puerto Rican women and girls start to giggle and laugh. I finish a batch of hats and they take them to shelves along the walls and bring me another batch. All the time they try not to laugh but they can’t help themselves and I can’t stop blushing. I try to vary the color schemes by dipping the feathers into different pots for a rainbow effect. I use a feather as a paintbrush and on the other feathers I try to make dots, stripes, sunsets, moons waxing and waning, wavy rivers with fish waggling along and birds roosting, and the women laugh so hard they can’t operate the sewing machines. I wish I could talk to them and ask them what I’m doing wrong. I wish I could tell them I wasn’t put into this world to stick feathers on hats, that I’m a college student who trained dogs in Germany and worked on the piers.

  In three days Mr. Meyer returns and when he sees the hats he stops inside the door like a man paralyzed. He looks at the women and they shake their heads as if to say there’s madness in the world. He says, What did you do? and I don’t know what to say back. He says, Jesus. I mean are you Puerto Rican or what?

  No, sir.

  Irish, right? Yeah, that’s it. Maybe you’re color blind. I didn’t ask you about that. Did I ask you about your color blindness?

  No, sir.

  If you’re not color blind then I don’t know how you can explain these combinations. You make the Puerto Ricans look dull, y’know that? Dull. I guess it’s the Irish thing, no sense of color, no art, f’ Chrissakes. I mean where are the Irish painters? Name one.

  I can’t.

  You heard of Van Gogh, right? Rembrandt? Picasso?

  I did.

  That’s what I mean. You’re nice people, the Irish, great singers, John McCormack. Great cops, politicians, priests. Lotta Irish priests but no artists. When didja ever see an Irish painting on the wall? A Murphy, a Reilly, a Rooney? Nah, kid. I think it’s because your people know one color, green. Right? So my advice to you is stay away from anything to do with color. Join the cops, run for office, pick up your paycheck and have a nice life, no hard feelings.

  They shake their heads in the Manpower office. They thought this would be the perfect job for me, college boy, right? What’s so hard about sticking feathers on hats? Mr. Meyer called them and said, Don’t send me no more Irish college boys. They’re color blind. Send me someone stoopid that knows colors and won’t mess with my hats.

  They say if I could type they’d send me out on all kinds of jobs. I tell them I can type, that I learned in the army and I’m powerful.

  They send me to offices all over Manhattan. From nine to five I sit at desks and type lists, invoices, addresses on envelopes, bills of lading. Supervisors tell me what to do and talk to me only when I make mistakes. The other office workers ignore me because I’m only temporary, a temp they say, and I might not even be here tomorrow. They don’t even see me. I could die at my desk and they’d talk past me about what they saw on TV last night and how they’re getting outa here fast Friday afternoon and heading for the Jersey shore. They send out for coffee and pastries and don’t ask me if I have a mouth in my head. Whenever anything unusual happens it’s an excuse for a party. There are presents for people being promoted, getting pregnant, people getting engaged or married, and they’ll all stand around the other end of the office drinking wine, eating crackers and cheese for the hour before they go home. Women will bring in their new babies and all the other women will rush over to tickle them and say, Isn’t she just beautiful? Got your eyes, Miranda, definitely got your eyes. Men will say, Hi, Miranda. Looking good. Nice kid. That’s all they can say because men are not supposed to be enthusiastic or excited over babies. I’m not invited to the parties and I feel strange with my typewriter clacking away and everyone having a good time. If a supervisor is giving a small speech and I’m at the typewriter they’ll call across the office, Excuse me, you over there, quit the racket a minute, will ya? Can’t hear ourselves think here.

  I don’t know how they can work in these offices day after day, year in, year out. I can’t stop looking at the clock and there are times I think I’ll just get up and walk away the way I did at the Blue Cross insurance company. The people in their offices don’t seem to mind. They go to the water cooler, they go to the toilet, they walk from desk to desk and chat, they call from desk to desk on the telephone, they admire each other’s clothes, hair, makeup, and anytime someone loses a few pounds on a diet. If a woman is told she lost weight she smiles for an hour and keeps running her hands over her hips. Office people brag about their children, their wives, their husbands and they dream about the two-week vacation.

  I’m sent to an import-export firm on Fourth Avenue. I’m given a pile of papers that have to do with importing Japanese dolls. I’m supposed to copy this paper to that paper. It’s 9:30 A.M. by the office clock. I look out the window. The sun is shining. A man and woman are kissing outside a coffee shop across the avenue. It’s 9:33 A.M. by the office clock. The man and woman separate and walk in opposite directions. They turn. They run toward each other to kiss again. It’s 9:36 A.M. by the office clock. I take my jacket from the back of the chair and slip it on. The office manager stands at his cubicle door and says, Hey, what’s up? I don’t answer. People are waiting for the elevator but I head for the stairs and run as fast as I can down seven flights. The kissing people have disappeared and I’m sorry. I wanted to see them once more. I hope they’re not going to offices where they’ll be typing lists of Japanese dolls or telling everyone they’re engaged so that the officer manager will allow them an hour of wine and cheese and crackers.

  * * *

  With my brother Malachy in the air force sending a monthly allotment my mother is comfortable in Limerick. She has the house with gardens front and back where she can grow flowers and onions if she likes. She has enough money for clothes and bingo and excursions to the seaside at Kilkee. Alphie is in school at the Christian Brothers where he’ll get a secondary school education and all kinds of opportunities. With the comfort of the new house, beds, sheets, blankets, pillows, he doesn’t have to worry about battling fleas all night, there’s DDT, and he doesn’t have to struggle to light a fire in the grate every morning, there’s the gas stove. He can have an egg every day if he likes and not even think about it the way we did. He has decent clothes and shoes and he’s warm no matter how bad it is outside.

  It’s time for me to send for Michael so that he can come to New York and get on in the world. When he arrives he’s so thin I want to take him out and fill him with hamburgers and apple pie. He stays with me awhile at Mrs. Klein’s and works at different jobs but there’s the threat of being drafted into the army and he thinks it’s better to join the air force because the uniform is a nice shade of blue, more glamorous than the shitty brown of the army uniform and more likely to attract girls. Once Malachy is out of the air force Michael can continue the monthly allotment that will keep my mother going for another three years and I will have only myself to worry about till I finish at NYU.

  28

  When she saunters into the psychology class the professor himself lets his jaw drop and he grips a piece of chalk so hard it cracks and breaks. He says, Excuse me, miss, and she gives him such a smile all he can do is smile back. Excuse me, miss, he says, but we’re seated alphabetically and I’d need to know your name.

  Alberta Small, she says, and he points to a row behind me and we don’t mind one bit if she takes all day getting to her seat because we’re feasting on her blonde hair, blue eyes, luscious lips, a bosom that is an occasion of sin, a figure that make
s you throb in the middle of your body. A few rows back she whispers, Excuse me, and there’s a shuffle and a flutter where students have to stand to let her get to her seat.

  I’d like to be one of the students standing to let her by, to have her brush against me and touch me.

  When the class ends I want to make sure I let her pass up the aisle so that I can watch her coming and see her going with that figure you see only in films. She passes and gives me a little smile and I wonder why God is so kind to me that He lets me have a smile from the loveliest girl in all of NYU, so blonde and blue-eyed she must hail from a tribe of Scandinavian beauties. I wish I could say to her, Hi, would you like to go for a cup of coffee and a grilled cheese sandwich and discuss existentialism? but I know that will never happen especially when I see who’s meeting her in the hallway, a student the size of a mountain wearing a jacket that says New York University Football.

  At the next meeting of the psychology class the professor asks me a question about Jung and the collective unconscious and the moment I open my mouth I know everyone is staring at me as if to say, Who’s the one with the Irish brogue? The professor himself says, Oh, do I detect an Irish accent? and I have to admit he does. He tells the class that, of course, the Catholic Church has been traditionally hostile to psychoanalysis. Isn’t that right, Mr. McCourt? and I feel he’s accusing me. Why is he talking about the Catholic Church just because I tried to answer his question on the collective unconscious and am I supposed to defend the Church?

  I don’t know, Professor.

  There’s no use telling him that one Redemptorist priest in Limerick ranted from the pulpit on Sunday mornings denouncing Freud and Jung and promising they’d wind up in the deepest hole in hell, the two of them. If I talk in class I know no one is listening to what I’m saying. They’re listening only to my accent and there are times when I wish I could reach into my mouth and tear my accent out by the roots. Even when I try to sound American people look puzzled and say, Do I detect an Irish brogue?

  At the end of the class I wait for the blonde to pass by but she stops, the blue eyes smile at me, and she says, Hi, and my heart bangs in my chest. She says, My name is Mike.

  Mike?

  Well, actually, my name is Alberta but they call me Mike.

  There is no football player outside and she says she has two hours till her next class and would I like to have a drink at Rocky’s?

  I have a class in ten minutes but I’m not going to miss this chance to be with this girl everyone is staring at, this girl who picked me out of all the people in the world to say hello to. We have to walk quickly to Rocky’s so that we won’t run into Bob the football player. He might be upset if he knew she was having a drink with another boy.

  I wonder why she calls all males boy. I’m twenty-three.

  She says she’s kinda engaged to Bob, that they’re pinned, and I don’t know what she’s talking about. She says a girl who’s pinned is engaged to be engaged and you can tell if a girl is pinned when she wears her boyfriend’s high school graduation ring on a necklace. It makes me wonder why she’s not wearing Bob’s ring. She says he gave her a gold bracelet with her name on it to wear around her ankle that would show she’s taken but she doesn’t wear it because it’s what Puerto Rican girls do and they’re too flashy. The bracelet is what you get just before the engagement ring and she’ll wait for that, thank you very much.

  She tells me she’s from Rhode Island. She was reared there from the age of seven by her father’s mother. Her own mother was only sixteen when she was born and her father twenty so you can guess what happened there. Shotgun. When the war came and he was drafted and sent to Seattle it was the end of the marriage. Even though Mike was a Protestant she graduated from a Catholic convent school in Fall River, Massachusetts, and she smiles at the memory of that graduation summer when she had a different date nearly every night. She might be smiling but I feel a great surge of rage and envy and I’d like to kill the boys who ate popcorn with her and probably kissed her in drive-in movies. Now she’s living with her father and stepmother up on Riverside Drive and her grandmother is here for a while till she settles in and gets used to the city. She’s not a bit shy about telling me she likes my Irish accent and she even liked looking at the back of my head in class the way my hair is black and wavy. This makes me blush and even though it’s dark in Rocky’s she can see the blush and she thinks it’s cute.

  I have to get used to the way they say cute in New York. If you say someone is cute in Ireland you’re saying he’s cunning and sneaky.

  I’m in Rocky’s and I’m in heaven drinking beer with this girl who could have stepped down from a movie screen, another Virginia Mayo. I know I’m the envy of every man and boy in Rocky’s, that it’ll be the same on the streets, heads turning and wondering who I am that I’m with the loveliest girl in NYU and Manhattan itself.

  After two hours she has to go to her next class. I’m ready to carry her books the way they do in the movies but she says, No, better that I stay here awhile in case we run into Bob who wouldn’t be a bit pleased to see her with the likes of me. She laughs and reminds me he’s big, thanks for the beer, see you next week in class, and she’s gone.

  Her glass is still on the table and it’s marked with pink lipstick. I put it to my lips for the taste of her and dream that some day I’ll kiss the lips themselves. I press her glass against my cheek and think of her kissing the football player and there are dark clouds in my head. Why would she sit with me in Rocky’s if she’s kinda engaged to him? Is that the way it is in America? If you love a woman you’re supposed to be loyal to her at all times. If you don’t love her then it’s all right to drink beer in Rocky’s with someone else. If she goes to Rocky’s with me then she doesn’t love him and that makes me feel better.

  Is it that she feels sorry for me with my Irish accent and my red eyes? Is she able to guess that it’s hard for me to talk to girls unless they talk to me first?

  All over America there are men who walk up to girls and say, Hi. I could never do that. I’d feel foolish saying Hi in the first place because I didn’t grow up with it. I’d have to say Hello or something grown-up. Even when they talk to me I never know what to say. I don’t want them to know I never went to high school and I don’t want them to know I grew up in an Irish slum. I’m so ashamed of the past that all I can do is lie about it.

  The lecturer in English Composition, Mr. Calitri, would like us to write an essay on a single object from our childhood, an object that had significance for us, something domestic, if possible.

  There isn’t an object in my childhood I’d want anyone to know about. I wouldn’t want Mr. Calitri or anyone in the class to know about the slum lavatory we shared with all those families in Roden Lane. I could make up something but I can’t think of anything like the things other students talk about, the family car, Dad’s old baseball mitt, the sled they had so much fun with, the old icebox, the kitchen table where they did their homework. All I can think of is the bed I shared with my three brothers and even though I’m ashamed of it I have to write about it. If I make up something that’s nice and respectable and don’t write about the bed I’ll be tormented. Besides, Mr. Calitri will be the only one reading it and I’ll be safe.

  THE BED

  When I was growing up in Limerick my mother had to go to the St. Vincent de Paul Society to see if she could get a bed for me and my brothers, Malachy, Michael, and Alphie who was barely walking. The man at the St. Vincent de Paul said he could give her a docket to go down to the Irishtown to a place that sold secondhand beds. My mother asked him couldn’t we get a new bed because you never know what you’re getting with an old one. There could be all kinds of diseases.

  The man said beggars can’t be choosers and my mother shouldn’t be so particular.

  But she wouldn’t give up. She asked if it was possible at least to find out if anyone had died in the bed. Surely that wasn’t asking too much. She wouldn’t want to be lying in her own bed
at night thinking about her four small sons sleeping on a mattress that someone had died on, maybe someone that had a fever or consumption.

  The St. Vincent de Paul man said, Missus, if you don’t want this bed give me back the docket and I’ll give it to someone that’s not so particular.

  Mam said, Ah, no, and she came home to get Alphie’s pram so that we could carry the mattress, the spring and the bedstead. The man in the shop in the Irishtown wanted her to take a mattress with hair sticking out and spots and stains all over but my mother said she wouldn’t let a cow sleep on a bed like that, didn’t the man have another mattress over there in the corner? The man grumbled and said, All right, all right. Bejesus, the charity cases is gettin’ very particular these days, and he stayed behind his counter watching us drag the mattress outside.

  We had to push the pram up and down the streets of Limerick three times for the mattress and the different parts of the iron bedstead, the head, the end, the supports and the spring. My mother said she was ashamed of her life and wished she could do this at night. The man said he was sorry for her troubles but he closed at six sharp and wouldn’t stay open if the Holy Family came for a bed.