'Tis

by Frank McCourt

  On the last night of classes in June there was a final examination. I watched those dark heads bent over papers, the mothers of two hundred and twelve children, and I knew, that no matter what they wrote or didn’t write on those papers, no one would fail.

  They finished. The last paper had been handed in but no one was leaving. I asked if they had another class here. Mrs. Williams stood and coughed. Ah, Mr. McCourt, I must say, I mean we must say, it was a wonderful thing to come to college and learn so much about English and everything and we got you this little something hopin’ you’ll like it an’ all.

  She sat down, sobbing, and I thought, This class begins and ends in tears.

  The gift was passed up, a bottle of shaving lotion in a fancy red and black box. When I sniffed it I was nearly knocked over but I sniffed again with gusto and told the ladies I’d keep the bottle forever in memory of them, this class, their yoots.

  Instead of going home after that class I took the subway to West Ninety-sixth Street in Manhattan and called my mother from a street telephone.

  Would you like to have a snack?

  I don’t know. Where are you?

  I’m a few blocks away.

  Why?

  I just happened to be in the neighborhood.

  Visiting Malachy?

  No. Visiting you.

  Me? Why should you be visiting me?

  For Christ’s sake, you’re my mother and all I wanted to do was invite you out for a snack. What would you like to eat?

  She sounded doubtful. Well, I love them jumbo shrimps they have in the Chinese restaurants.

  All right. We’ll have jumbo shrimps.

  But I don’t know if I’m able for them this minute. I think I’d prefer to go to the Greeks for a salad.

  All right. I’ll see you there.

  She came into the restaurant gasping for breath and when I kissed her cheek I could taste the salt of her sweat. She said she’d have to sit a minute before she could even think of food, that if she hadn’t given up the cigarettes she’d be dead now.

  She ordered the feta salad and when I asked her if she liked it she said she loved it, she could live on it.

  Do you like that cheese?

  What cheese?

  The goat cheese.

  What goat cheese?

  The white stuff. The feta. That’s goat cheese.

  ’Tis not.

  ’Tis.

  Well, if I knew that was goat cheese I’d never touch it because I was attacked by a goat once out the country in Limerick and I’d never eat a thing that attacked me.

  It’s a good thing, I told her, you were never attacked by a jumbo shrimp.

  50

  In 1971 my daughter Maggie was born at Unity Hospital in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn. There would be no problem taking home the right infant since she seemed to be the only white one in the nursery.

  Alberta wanted a natural Lamaze childbirth but the doctors and nurses at Unity Hospital had no patience with middle-class women and their peculiarities. They had no time for this woman and her breathing exercises and jabbed her with an anesthetic to hasten the birth. Instead, that slowed the rhythm so much the impatient doctor clamped forceps on Maggie’s head and yanked her from her mother’s womb and I wanted to punch him for the flatness he left on her temples.

  The nurse took the child to a corner to clean and wash her and when she finished beckoned that I might now see my daughter with her red astonished face and her black feet.

  The soles of her feet were black.

  God, what kind of a birthmark have you inflicted on my child? I couldn’t say anything to the nurse because she was black and might be offended that I didn’t find my daughter’s black feet attractive. I had a vision of my child as a young woman lolling on a beach, lovely in a bathing suit, but forced to wear socks to conceal her disfigurement.

  The nurse asked if the baby was to be breast-fed. No. Alberta had said she wouldn’t have the time when she went back to work and the doctor did something to dry up her milk. They wanted to know the child’s name and even though Alberta had toyed with Michaela she was still under anesthetic and powerless and I told the nurse, Margaret Ann, for my two grandmothers and my sister who had died at twenty-one days in this very borough of Brooklyn.

  Alberta was wheeled back to her room and I called Malachy to tell him the good news, that a child had been born but that she was afflicted with black feet. He laughed in my ear and told me I was an ass, that the nurse probably took footprints instead of fingerprints. He said he’d meet me at the Lion’s Head where everyone bought me a drink and I got stocious drunk, so drunk Malachy had to hoist me home in a taxi which made me so sick I threw up the length of Broadway with the driver yelling that would cost me twenty-five dollars for the cleaning of the cab, an unreasonable demand that deprived him of a tip and had him threatening to call the cops and, What are you going to tell them? said Malachy, are you going to tell them that you’re a zigzag driver going from one side of Broadway to the other and making everyone sick, is that what you’re going to tell them? and the driver was so angry he wanted to step out and confront Malachy but changed his mind when my brother, holding me up, stood large and red-bearded on the sidewalk and asked the driver politely if he had any more comments before he went to meet his Maker. The driver uttered obscenities about us and the Irish in general and drove through a red light, his left arm at the window, his middle finger rigid in the air.

  Malachy brought me aspirins and vitamins and told me I’d be as right as rain in the morning and I wondered what that meant, right as rain, though that question was pushed from my head by the image of Maggie and the forcep flatness of her temples and I was ready to jump from the bed to hunt down that damn doctor who wouldn’t let my daughter be born in her own good time but my legs wouldn’t oblige me and I fell asleep.

  Malachy was right. There was no hangover, only delight that a little child in Brooklyn had my name and I’d have a lifetime watching her grow and when I called Alberta I could hardly talk with the tears in my throat and she laughed and quoted my mother, Your bladder is near your eye.

  That same year Alberta and I bought the brownstone house where we’d been tenants on the parlor floor. We were able to buy it only because our friends Bobby and Mary Ann Baron lent us money and because Virgil Frank died and left us eight thousand dollars.

  When we lived at 30 Clinton Street in Brooklyn Heights Virgil was two floors below us. He was over seventy, had a full head of combed-back white hair, a strong nose, his own teeth and hardly a scrap of flesh on his bones. I visited him regularly because an hour with him was better than movies, television and most books.

  His apartment was one room with a kitchenette and a bathroom. His bed was a cot against the wall and beyond that a desk and a window with an air conditioner. Opposite the bed was a bookcase filled with volumes on flowers, trees and birds which, he said, he’d get around to some day as soon as he bought a pair of binoculars. You have to be careful about buying binoculars because you go into a store and how are you gonna test them? Salesmen in the store say, Oh, they’re okay, they’re strong, and how can you tell? They won’t let you take them outside to look up and down Fulton Street in case you make a run for it with the binoculars and that’s dumb. How the hell you gonna make a run for it when you’re seventy? In the meantime he’d like to be able to see birds out his window but all you can see from this apartment is pigeons fornicating on top of his air conditioner and that pisses him off.

  He watches them, oh yeah, he watches them, bangs on the window with a fly swatter, tells them, Get outa here, goddam pigeons. Go fornicate on someone else’s air conditioner. He tells me they’re just rats with wings, all they do is eat and fornicate and when they’re finished with fornicating they drop a load on the air conditioner, one load after another, like that crap the boids, I mean the birds, damn, I’m talkin’ Brooklyn again and that ain’t good when you’re selling watercoolers, like that bird crap in South America where th
e mountains are covered with it, what is it? guano, yeah, which is good for growing things but not for air conditioners.

  Besides the books on outdoor life he had a three-volume set of The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas and when I opened a volume he said, I didn’t know you liked that stuff. Wouldn’t you prefer the birds? I told him you can always get bird books but his Summa was rare and he said I could have it except I’d have to wait till he died. But don’t worry, Frank, I’ll put it in my will.

  He also promised to leave me his collection of ties which dazzled me whenever he opened his closet door, the loudest, most colorful ties I had ever seen.

  You like ’em, eh? Some of these ties go all the way back to the twenties and on down to the thirties and forties. Men knew how to dress then. They didn’t go around tippy-toe like the man in the gray flannel suit afraid of a little color. I always said never stint on the tie and the hat because you have to look good when you’re selling watercoolers which I did for forty-five years. I’d go into an office and I’d say, What? What? You telling me you still drinking tap water from these old cups and glasses. Do you know the danger to your health?

  And Virgil would stand between bed and bookcase rocking like a preacher and delivering his sales spiel on watercoolers.

  Yes, sir, I sell watercoolers and I wanna tell you there’s five things you can do with water. You can clean it, you can pollute it, you can heat it, you can cool it and, ha ha, you can sell it. You know and I don’t have to tell you, Mr. Office Manager, you can drink it and you can swim in it though there isn’t much call for swimming water in the average American office. I wanna tell you my company has made a study of offices that drink our water and offices that don’t drink our water and, you’re right, you’re right, Mr. Office Manager, the people who drink our water are healthier and more productive. Our water drives away the flu and improves digestion. We’re not saying, no we’re not saying, Mr. Office Manager, that our water is solely responsible for great productivity and the prosperity of America but we are saying that our studies show offices without our water are barely hanging on, desperate and wondering why. A copy of our study is available when you sign our yearly contract. At no extra charge we’ll survey your staff and give you an estimate of water consumption. I am happy to observe you don’t have air-conditioning because that means you’ll need extra water for your fine staff. And we know, Mr. Office Manager, that our watercoolers bring people together. Problems are settled over a paper cup of water. Eyes meet. Romances flourish. Everybody happy, everybody eager to come to work every day. Increased productivity. We get no complaints. Sign right here. A copy for you, a copy for me and we’re in business.

  A knock on the door interrupted him.

  Who is it?

  A faint old voice. Virgil, it’s Harry.

  Can’t talk to you now, Harry. I got the doctor here and I’m naked getting examined.

  All right, Virgil. I’ll come back later.

  Tomorrow, Harry, tomorrow.

  Okay, Virgil.

  He told me that was Harry Ball, eighty-five years old, so old you can’t hear his voice over a clothesline, who drives Virgil crazy with his parking problems. He’s got this big car, a Hudson that they don’t make no more, is that right, no more or anymore? You’re an English teacher. I dunno. Never went beyond the seventh grade. Ran away from the Sisters of St. Joseph Orphanage even if I’m leaving them money in my will. Anyway, Harry’s got this car and he goes nowhere with it. Says some day he’s gonna drive it to Florida to see his sister but he’s going nowhere because that car is so old it wouldn’t make it across the Brooklyn Bridge and that goddam Hudson is his life. He moves it from one side of the street to the other, back and forth, back and forth. Sometimes he brings the little aluminum beach chair and sits near his car looking for a parking spot to open for next day. Or he walks around the neighborhood looking for a spot and if he finds one he gets excited and gives himself a heart attack rushing to his car to drive it to the new spot which is now gone and so is the one he was in and there he is driving around with no spot, cursing the government. I was with him once and he nearly ran down a rabbi and two old women and I said, Christ, Harry, lemme out, and he wouldn’t, but I jumped out at the first red light and he yelled after me I was the type that flashed lights so the Japs could find Pearl Harbor till I told him he was a dumb bastard that didn’t know Pearl Harbor was bombed in broad daylight and he sat there contradicting me with the light turning green and people honking and yelling who gives a shit about Pearl Harbor, buddy, move your goddam Hudson. He could park that car in a garage for eighty-five bucks a month but that’s more than he pays for rent and that’ll be the day Harry Ball ever wastes a penny. I’m frugal myself, I admit that, but he could make Scrooge look like a spendthrift. Is that the right word, spendthrift? I ran away from the orphanage in seventh grade.

  He asked me to go with him to a hardware store on Court Street so that he could get an egg timer for the telephone just installed.

  An egg timer?

  Yeah, this is a kind of hourglass with sand that runs for three minutes and that’s the way I like my egg and when I use the telephone I’ll know when the three minutes is up because that’s how they charge you at the phone company, the bastards. I’ll have the egg timer on my desk and I’ll hang up at the last grain of sand.

  On Court Street I asked him if he’d like a beer and a sandwich at the Blarney Rose. He never went to bars and was shocked at the prices of beer and whiskey. Ninety cents for a little shot of whiskey. Never.

  I went with him to a liquor store where he ordered cases of Irish whiskey and told the salesman his friend Frank liked it, and cases of wine, vodka and bourbon because he liked it himself. He told the man he wouldn’t pay the lousy taxes on his purchase. I’m giving you a big order here and you want me to support the goddam government on top of it. No, sir. Pay it yourself.

  The man agreed and said he’d deliver the twenty-five cases.

  Virgil called me next day. Even though his voice was weak he told me, I got the egg timer goin’ here, so I have to talk fast. Can you come down? I need a little help. The door is open.

  He was sitting in his armchair in his bathrobe. I didn’t get a wink of sleep last night. Couldn’t get into the bed.

  He couldn’t get into the bed because the liquor store man had piled up the twenty-five cases around his bed so high that Virgil couldn’t climb over. He said he had to try some of the Irish whiskey and the wine and that didn’t help much when it was time to climb. He said he needed soup, something in his stomach to keep him from being sick. When I opened a can of soup and poured it into a pot with an equal amount of water he asked me if I’d read the instructions on the can.

  No.

  Well, how do you know what to do?

  It’s common sense, Virgil.

  Common sense, my ass.

  He was hangover cranky. Listen to me, Frank McCourt. You know why you’ll never be a success?

  Why?

  You never follow the instructions on the package. That’s why I have money in the bank and you don’t have a pot to piss in. I always followed the instructions on the package.

  Another knock on the door. What? What? said Virgil.

  Voigel, it’s me. Pete.

  Pete who? Pete who? I can’t see through the door.

  Pete Buglioso. I got something for you, Voigel.

  Don’t talk Brooklyn to me, Pete. My name is Virgil, not Voigel. He was a poet, Pete. You should know, you’re Italian.

  I don’t know nothin’ about that, Voigel. I got somethin’ for you, Voigel.

  I don’t want nothin’, Pete. Call back next year.

  But, Voigel, you’ll like what I have. Cost you a coupla bucks.

  What is it?

  Can’t tell you through the door, Voigel.

  Virgil heaved himself from the armchair and stumbled to the egg timer on his desk. All right, Pete, all right. You can come in for three minutes. I’m setting my egg timer.

&
nbsp; He tells me open the door and tells Pete the egg timer is working and even though grains of sand have already dropped Pete still has three minutes, so start talking, Pete, start talking and make it snappy.

  All right, Voigel, all right, but how the hell can I talk when you’re talking. You talk more than anyone.

  You’re wasting your time, Pete. You’re hanging yourself. Look at the egg timer. Look at that sand. Sands of time, Pete, sands of time.

  Whadda you doin’ with all them boxes, Voigel. Rob a truck or somethin’?

  The egg timer, Pete, the egg timer.

  All right, Voigel, what I got here is, will you stop lookin’ at the goddam egg timer, Voigel, an’ lissena me. What I got here is prescription pads from a doctor’s office on Clinton Street.