Teacher Man

by Frank McCourt

  After my interview she was already in the hallway, knotting her scarf under her chin, telling me, That was a breeze.

  It was no such thing. They asked me about Santayana.

  Really? Norm adores Santayana.

  Did this woman have any sense at all, ruining my day with Norm and that damn Santayana?

  I don't give a shit about Norm. Santayana, too.

  My, my. Such eloquence. Is the Irishman having a little tantrum?

  I wanted to hold my chest to calm my rage. Instead, I walked away and kept walking even when she called, Frank, Frank, we could be serious.

  I walked across the Brooklyn Bridge, repeating, We could be serious, all the way to McSorley's on East Seventh Street. What did she mean?

  I drank beer after beer, ate liverwurst and onion on crackers, pissed mightily in McSorley's massive urinals, called her from the public phone, hung up when Norm answered, felt sorry for myself, wanted to call Norm again, invite him to a showdown on the sidewalk, picked up the phone, put it down, went home, whimpered into my pillow, despised myself, called myself an ass till I fell into a boozy sleep.

  Next day, hungover and suffering, I traveled to Eastern District High School in Brooklyn for my teaching test, the last hurdle for the license. I was supposed to arrive an hour before the lesson, but took the wrong subway train and arrived half an hour late. The English department chairman said I could come back another time, but I wanted to get it over with, especially since I knew I was on the road to failure anyway.

  The chairman handed me sheets of paper with the subject of my lesson: War Poems. I knew the poems by heart, Siegfried Sassoon's "Does it Matter?" and Wilfred Owen's "Anthem for Doomed Youth."

  When you teach in New York you're required to follow a lesson plan. First, you are to state your aim. Then you are to motivate the class because, as everyone knows, those kids don't want to learn anything.

  I motivate this class by telling them about my aunt's husband, who was gassed in World War I and when he came home the only job he could find was shoveling coal, coke and slack at the Limerick Gas Works. The class laughs and the chairman smiles slightly, a good sign.

  It isn't enough to teach the poem. You are to "elicit and evoke," involve your students in the material. Excite them. That is the word from the Board of Education. You are to ask pivotal questions to encourage participation. A good teacher should launch enough pivotal questions to keep the class hopping for forty-five minutes.

  A few kids talk about war and their family members who survived World War II and Korea. They say it wasn't fair the way some came home with no faces and no legs. Losing an arm wasn't that bad because you always had another. Losing two arms was a real pain because someone had to feed you. Losing a face was something else. You only had one and when that was gone, that was it, baby. One girl with a lovely figure and wearing a lacy pink blouse said her sister was married to a guy who was wounded at Pyongyang and he had no arms at all, not even stubs where you could stick on the false arms. So her sister had to feed him and shave him and do everything and all he ever wanted was sex. Sex, sex, sex, that's all he ever wanted, and her sister was getting all worn out.

  The chairman in the back of the room says, Helen, in a warning voice, and she says to the whole class, Well, it's true. How would you like to have someone you have to give a bath to and feed and then go to bed with three times a day. Some of the boys snicker but stop when Helen says, I'm sorry. I get so sad over my sister and Roger because she said she can't go on. She'd leave him but he'd have to go to the veterans' hospital. He said if that ever happened he'd kill himself. She turns around to speak to the chairman in the back of the room. I'm sorry over what I said about sex but that's what happened and I didn't mean to be disrespectful.

  I admired Helen so much for her maturity and courage and her lovely breasts I could hardly go on with the lesson. I thought I wouldn't mind being an amputee myself if I had her near me all day, swabbing me, drying me, giving me the daily massage. Of course, teachers were not supposed to think like that but what are you to do when you're twenty-seven and someone like Helen is sitting there in front of you bringing up topics like sex and looking the way she did?

  One boy will not let go. He says Helen's sister shouldn't worry about her brother-in-law committing suicide because that would be impossible when you didn't have arms. If you didn't have arms you didn't have a way of dying.

  Two boys say you shouldn't have to face life without a face or legs when you're only twenty-two. Oh, sure, you could always get false legs, but you could never get a false face and who would ever go out with you? That'd be the end and you'd never have children or anything. Your own mother wouldn't want to look at you and all your food would have to come through a straw. It was very sad knowing you'd never want to look in the bathroom mirror anymore for fear of what you might see or what you might not see, a face gone. Imagine how hard it was for the poor mom when she had to decide to throw out her son's razor and shaving cream knowing he'd never use them again. Never ever again. She could never actually go into his room and say, Son, you're never gonna use these shaving things anymore and a lotta stuff is piling up here so I'm gonna throw them out. Can you imagine how he'd feel, sitting there with no face, and his own mother telling him, in a way, it was all over? You'd only do that to someone you didn't like and it was hard to think a mother wouldn't like her son even if he had no face. No matter what condition you're in your mother is supposed to like you and stand behind you. If she doesn't, where are you and what's the use of living at all?

  Some boys in the class wish they had their own war so they could go over there and get even. One boy says, Oh, bullshit, you can never get even, and they boo him and shout him down. His name is Richard and they say it's well known around the school what a Communist he is. The chairman makes notes, probably on how I've lost control of the class by allowing more than one voice in the room. I feel desperate. I raise my voice, Anyone here ever see a movie about German soldiers called All Quiet on the Western Front? No, they never saw it and why should they pay money to see movies about Germans after what they did to us? Goddam krauts.

  How many of you are Italian? Half the class.

  Does this mean you'd never see an Italian movie after they fought against America in the war?

  No, it has nothing to do with war. They just don't want to watch those movies with all those dumb subtitles that move so fast you can never catch up with the story and when there is snow in the movie and the subtitles are white how the hell are you supposed to read anything? A lot of these Italian movies come with snow and dogs taking a leak against a wall, and they're depressing anyhow with people standing in streets waiting for something to happen.

  The Board of Education ruled that a lesson must have a summary that pulls everything together and leads to a homework assignment or reinforcement or some kind of outcome, but I forget, and when the bell rings there's an argument going on between two boys, one defending John Wayne, the other saying he was a big phony who never went to war. I try to pull everything together in one grand summary but the discussion dribbles away. I tell them, Thank you, but no one is listening and the chairman scratches his forehead and makes notes.

  I walked toward the subway, berating myself. What was the use? Teacher, my arse. I should have stayed in the army with the dogs. I'd be better off on the docks and the warehouses, lifting, hauling, cursing, eating hero sandwiches, drinking beer, chasing waterfront floozies. At least I'd be with my own kind, my own class of people, not getting above meself, acushla. I should have listened to the priests and the respectable people in Ireland who told us beware of vanity, accept our lot, there's a bed in heaven for the meek of heart, the humble of soul.

  Mr. McCourt, Mr. McCourt, wait up.

  That was the chairman calling from a half block away. Wait up. I walked back toward him. He had a kind face. I thought he was there to console me with a Too bad, young man.

  He was out of breath. Look, I'm not supposed to even talk t
o you but I just want to say you'll be getting your exam results in a few weeks. You have the makings of a fine teacher. I mean, for Christ's sakes, you actually knew Sassoon and Owen. I mean, half the people walking in here can't tell the difference between Emerson and Mickey Spillane. So, when you get your results and you're looking for a job, just call me. OK?

  Oh, yes, sure, yes, I will. Thanks.

  I danced along the street, walked on air. Birds chirped on the elevated subway platform. People looked at me with smiles and respect. They could see I was a man with a teaching job. I wasn't such an idiot after all. Oh, Lord. Oh, God. What would my family say? A teacher. The word will go around Limerick. Did you hear about Frankie McCourt? Jaysus, he's a teacher over there in America. What was he when he left? Nothing. That's what he was. Poor miserable bugger that looked like something the cat brought in. I'd call June. Tell her I was offered a teaching job already. In a high school. Not as high up as Norman the professor, but still...I stuck a dime into the phone box. It dropped. I put the phone down again. Calling her meant I needed to call her, and I didn't need to need. I could live without her in the tub and the monkfish and the white wine. The train rumbled in. I wanted to tell people, sitting and standing, I was offered a teaching job. They'd smile up from their newspapers. No, no call to June. Let her stay with Norm, who destroyed monkfish and knew nothing about wine, depraved Norm who couldn't take June as she was. No, I'd make my way downtown to Port Warehouses, ready to work till my teacher's license arrived. My teacher's license. I'd like to wave it from the top of the Empire State Building.

  When I called about the teaching job the school said sorry, the kindly chairman had passed away and, sorry, no positions were available and good luck in my search. Everyone said as long as I had the license I'd have no trouble finding a job. Who the hell would want a lousy job like that? Long hours, low pay and what gratitude do you get for dealing with the brats of America? Which is why the country was crying out for teachers.

  School after school told me, Sorry, your accent's gonna be a problem. Kids, you know, like to mimic, and we'd have Irish brogues all over the school. What would parents say when their kids come home sounding like, you know, like Barry Fitzgerald? You unnerstand our position? Assistant principals wondered how I managed to get a license with that brogue. Didn't the Board of Education have any standards anymore?

  I was disheartened. No room for me in the great American Dream. I returned to the waterfront, where I felt more comfortable.

  4

  Hey, Mr. McCourt, did you ever do real work, not teaching, but, you know, real work?

  Are you joking? What do you call teaching? Look around this room and ask yourself if you'd like to get up here and face you every day. You. Teaching is harder than working on docks and warehouses. How many of you have relatives working along the waterfront?

  Half the class, mostly Italian, a few Irish.

  Before I came to this school I worked on Manhattan, Hoboken and Brooklyn piers, I said. One boy said his father knew me from Hoboken.

  I told them, After college I passed the exams for the teacher's license but I didn't think I was cut out for the life of a teacher. I knew nothing about American teenagers. Wouldn't know what to say to you. Dockside work was easier. Trucks backed in. We swung our hooks. Haul, hoist, pull, push. Stack on pallets. Forklift slides in, lifts the load, reverses, stacks the load in the warehouse, and back to the platform. You worked with your body and your brain had a day off. You worked eight to noon, had a foot-long sandwich and a quart of beer for lunch, sweated it off from one to five, headed home, hungry for dinner, ready for a movie and a few beers in a Third Avenue bar.

  Once you got the hang of it you moved like a robot. You kept up with the strongest man on the platform and size didn't matter. You used your knees to save your back. If you forgot, platform men would bark, Chrissakes, you got a rubber spine or sumpin'? You learned to use the hook different ways with different loads: boxes, sacks, crates, furniture, great chunks of greasy machinery. A sack of beans or peppers has a mind of its own. It can change shape one way or another and you have to go with it. You looked at the size, shape and weight of an item and you knew in a second how to lift and swing it. You learned the ways of truckers and their helpers. Independent truckers were easy. They worked for themselves, set their own pace. Corporation truckers prodded you to hurry up, man, lift the damn load, let's go, I wanna get outa heah. Truckers' helpers were surly no matter who they worked for. They played little games to test you and throw you off, especially if they thought you were just off the boat. If you worked close to the edge of pier or platform they'd suddenly drop their side of the sack or crate hard enough to pull an arm from its socket and you learned to stay away from the edge of anything. Then they'd laugh and say, Faith an' begorrah, Paddy, or Top o' the mornin' with a fake Irish accent. You'd never complain to a boss about any of this. He'd say, Whassa matter, kid? Can't you take a little joke? Complaining only made matters worse. The word might get to a trucker or a helper and he might accidentally bump you off the platform or even the pier. A big new man from Mayo took offense when someone put a rat's tail in his sandwich and when he threatened to kill whoever did it he was accidentally toppled into the Hudson and everyone laughed before they threw him a line and hauled him out dripping with river scum. He learned to laugh and they stopped bothering him. You can't work the piers with a long face. After a while they stop picking on you and the word goes around that you know how to take your lumps. Eddie Lynch, the platform boss, told me I was a tough little mick and that meant more to me than the day I was promoted to corporal in the United States Army because I knew I wasn't that tough, just desperate.

  I told my classes I was so uncertain about teaching I thought of simply spending my life at Port Warehouses, big fish, small pond. My bosses would be so impressed with my college degree they'd hire me as checker and promote me to an office job where I'd surely rise in the world. I might become boss of all checkers. I knew how it was with warehouse office workers or office workers anywhere. They pushed papers around, yawned, looked out the window at us slaving away on the platform.

  I did not tell my classes about Helena, the telephone woman who offered more than doughnuts in the back of the warehouse. I was tempted till Eddie said if you even brushed against her you'd wind up in St. Vincent's Hospital with a dripping dick.

  What I missed about the piers was the way people spoke their minds and didn't give a shit. Not like the college professors who would tell you, On the one hand, yes, on the other hand, no, and you didn't know what to think. It was important to know what professors thought so you could give it back to them at exam time. In the warehouses everyone insulted everyone else in a joking way till someone stepped over the line and the hooks came out. It was remarkable when that happened. You could see from the way the laughs faded and the smiles got tighter that some bigmouth was getting too close to the bone and you knew the next thing was the hook or the fist.

  Work stopped when fights broke out on piers and loading docks. Eddie told me men got tired of lifting and hauling and stacking, same damn thing year in year out, and that's why they insulted and pushed one another to the edge of a real fight. They had to do something to break the routine and the long silent hours. I told him I didn't mind working all day and not saying a word and he said, Yeah, but you're peculiar. You're only here a year an' a half. If you did this fifteen years your mouth would be goin' too. Some of these guys fought in Normandy and the Pacific and what are they now? Donkeys. Donkeys with purple hearts already. Pathetic donkeys in a dead end. They get drunk over on Hudson Street and brag about their medals as if the world gives a shit. They'll tell you they're working for the kids, the kids, the kids. A better life for the kids. Jesus! I'm glad I never got married.

  If Eddie hadn't been there the fights would have been worse. He was the man with eye and ear on everything and he could sniff trouble in the wind. If two men started to go at it Eddie would stick his great belly between them and te
ll them get the hell off his platform and finish their fight in the street. Which they never did because they were really grateful for the excuse to avoid the fist and especially the hook. You can handle a fist but you never know where a hook is coming from. Still, they'd keep on muttering and giving each other the finger, but it was all gas now because the moment had passed, the challenge was over, the rest of us were back at work and what's the use of a fight if there's no one to see what a killer you are?

  Helena came from the office to watch the fights and when they were over she'd whisper to the winners and invite them to a dark place in the warehouse for a nice time.

  Eddie said some of those rotten bastards pretended to fight so Helena would be nice to them, and if he ever saw me in the back with her after a fight he'd throw my ass in the river. He said that because of the time I had a fight or nearly had a fight with the driver Fat Dominic, who was dangerous because of rumors he was connected to the mob. Eddie said that was bullshit. If you were really connected you weren't driving and breaking your ass unloading rigs. The rest of us believed Dominic probably knew people who were connected, or even made, so it was a good idea to cooperate with him. But how could you cooperate when he sneered, Whassa madda, Paddy? Can't talk? Maybe a dummy humped your momma, huh?

  Everyone knows that on the docks or the platforms, or anywhere, you are never to let anyone insult your mother. Kids know it from the time they're able to talk. You might not even like your mother, but that doesn't matter. They can say anything they like about you, but insulting your mother is pushing it and if you let it go you lose all respect. If you need someone to help with a load on the platform or the pier they'll turn their backs. You don't exist. They won't even share a liverwurst sandwich with you at lunchtime. If you wander round the docks and the warehouses and you see men eating alone, you'll know they're in deep shit, men who tolerated insults to their mothers or once scabbed across a picket line. A scab can be forgiven in a year but never a man who allowed an insult to his mother.