Teacher Man

by Frank McCourt

  Others come in with stories of how they ask the elders one question about the past and the dam bursts and the old people won't stop talking, going on till bedtime and beyond, expressing heartache and tears, yearnings for the Old Country, declaring love for America. Family relationships are rearranged. Grandpa isn't taken for granted by sixteen-year-old Milton anymore.

  In World War II Grandpa had adventures you wouldn't believe. Like he fell in love with the daughter of an SS officer and nearly got killed for it. Grandpa escaped and had to hide in the whaddya-call-it of a cow in a garbage dump.

  The hide?

  Yeah. The only reason the hide was there was it was already half eaten by rats and he had to fight them off. Three days in the hide fighting off the rats till a Catholic priest saw him and hid him under his church till the Americans came a year later. All these years Grandpa sits in the corner and I never talked to him and he never talked to me. His English still isn't good but that's no excuse. Now I have him on my tape recorder and my parents, my parents for Christ's sakes, are saying, Why bother?

  Clarence was black, bright and diffident. He sat in the back of the room with three other black kids and never contributed to a class discussion. He and his friends had secret jokes and that annoyed me, that black cabal. At the same time I thought if I were black that is just where I'd be, in the back in a little ghetto of my own, mocking white teacher behind my hand.

  David was black, bright and not a bit diffident. He sat over by the great windows with his white friends who followed him in and out of the classroom. When I asked the class a question his hand would go up and if he gave the wrong answer he'd shake his head in exasperation and say, Oh, spit. They tried to imitate him but no one could say, Oh, spit, like David. No one could create merriment like David. Students changed their programs just to be in a class with him. When he read his stories and essays on Fridays, they howled. Last Monday morning I got out of bed. Or didn't get out of bed. I only dreamed I was getting out of bed and I couldn't swear to you now that I was in or out of bed or dreaming about it or could I be dreaming about dreaming about it. This is all Mr. Lipper's fault because he was going on in the philosophy class about the Chinese thing where a man dreams about being a butterfly or was it a butterfly dreaming about being a man. Or a butterfly. Oh, spit.

  Everyone laughed, but not Clarence. His three friends laughed, though they looked a bit sheepish. I asked him if he'd like to read today. He shook his head. I told him this was a writing class where everyone was expected to contribute and if he was reluctant to read himself maybe someone else would read what he had written. His indifference irritated me. I wanted one big happy class of Davids saying, Oh, spit.

  That day I had cafeteria patrol. Clarence sat against a wall with a group of black kids. They were laughing at his impersonation of Hitler: a hot dog clasped between lip and nose as a mustache; a bowl on his head; a salute and a Seig Heil with raised arm. The cafeteria Clarence was not the classroom Clarence.

  David watched from another table, quiet, unsmiling.

  After lunch I asked Clarence if he'd read someday. No, he had nothing to say.

  Nothing?

  Well, I could never be like David.

  You don't have to be like David.

  You wouldn't like it. The only stories I know are street stories. Things happen on my street.

  So, write something about your street.

  Can't. Bad language and all that.

  Clarence, tell me one word you know that I haven't heard. One word, Clarence.

  But I thought we were to use proper English.

  Use any English you like as long as you get it on paper.

  The following Friday he was ready. Other readers stood when they read, but he wanted to sit. He reminded me there would be street language and did I mind?

  I said, Nothing human is alien to me, and then told him I couldn't remember what Russian writer I was quoting.

  He said, Oh, and started his account of how the mothers on his street dealt with a drug dealer. They warned him to get off the street but he told them he had to make a living and they should go to hell. Six mothers grabbed him one night and took him to a vacant lot. What they did to him there Clarence couldn't say but there were rumors. He couldn't repeat the rumors even if he was allowed and the language would be too raw for Stuyvesant students. All he could say was that one of the mothers called the ambulance so the guy wouldn't die in the vacant lot. The cops came around, of course, but nobody knew anything and the cops understood. That's the way it was on Clarence's street.

  Silence. Wow, wild cheers, applause. Clarence sat back in the chair and looked at David, whose clapping was the most enthusiastic of all. David didn't say, Oh, spit. He knew this was Clarence's moment.

  They wanted to know who was that weird guy at the classroom door. He was chalk white, cadaverous and stoned. He could have called me Frank but Good afternoon, Mr. McCourt, showed respect for the teacher.

  I stepped into the hallway for one of our brief occasional conferences where he explained he happened to be in this neighborhood and was thinking about me and wondering how I was doing. Also, he happened to be caught short for the necessities and wondered if I might have any spare change about me. He appreciated past kindnesses and even though he saw little possibility of repayment he would always remember me warmly. It was such a pleasure to visit me here and to see the youth of America, these beautiful children, in such capable and generous hands. He said thanks and he might see me soon at Montero's Bar in Brooklyn, a few blocks from his apartment. In a few minutes the ten dollars I slipped him would be passed to a Stuyvesant Square drug dealer.

  That's Huncke, I told them. Pick up any history of recent American writing or the Beat Generation and in the index you'll find Huncke, Herbert.

  Alcohol is not his habit but he'll kindly allow you to buy him a drink at Montero's. His voice is deep, gentle and musical. He never forgets his manners and you'd rarely think of him as Huncke the Junkie. He respects law and obeys none of it.

  He's done jail time for pickpocketing, robbery, possession of drugs, selling drugs. He's a hustler, a con man, a male prostitute, a charmer, a writer. He is given credit for coining the term Beat Generation. He uses people till he exhausts their patience and money and they tell him, Enough, Huncke. Out, out already. He understands and never carries grudges. It's all the same to him. I know he's using me, but he knew everyone in the Beat movement and I like listening to him talk about Burroughs, Corso, Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg. R'lene Dahlberg told me that Ginsberg once compared Huncke to St. Francis of Assisi. Yes, he's a criminal, an outlaw, but he steals only to sustain his drug habit and makes no profit out of his activities. Also, he's sensitive about what he takes. He will never take a piece of jewelry that looks like an heirloom. He knows if he leaves one thing a victim cherishes it will generate all kinds of good will and ease the pain of losing the other stuff. That will also bring him good luck. He confesses to every crime but murder, even tried suicide in R'lene's house in Majorca. Giving him the occasional ten dollars brings a kind of guarantee he won't break into my apartment though he tells me he's a bit over the hill for second-story work these days and usually has to hire a helper if he hears of good pickings. There's no shortage of willing boys on the Lower East Side. No more climbing fire escapes and rain pipes for Herbert Huncke. There are other ways of penetrating the fastnesses of the affluent, he says.

  Such as?

  You won't believe how many queer doormen and maintenance workers there are on Park and Fifth. If I made the right deals, arrangements for this body to meet that body, they'd wave me in and I could practically take a nap in some of those apartments. In the old days, when I was young, I'd peddle myself and I did very nicely, thank you. I was surprised once by this big insurance executive and ready to face a year in jail but he called down the hall to his wife, who brought martinis, and we all wound up in the bed in a beautiful menage. Oh, those were the days. We weren't gay then, just queer.

  N
ext day there is a protest note on my desk signed, "A Mother." She doesn't want to give her name lest I hold this against her daughter, who came home and told the family about this despicable character, Honky, who is, from what her daughter told her, hardly a figure to inspire the youth of America. She realizes, does the mother, that this person exists on the fringes of American society, and couldn't I find more worthwhile figures to hold up as examples of "the good and the true"? People like Elinor Glynn or John P. Marquand.

  I can't respond to this note, can't even mention it in class for fear of embarrassing the daughter. I understand the mother's fears but, if this is a class in writing with a nod to literature, what are the limits for the teacher? If a boy or girl writes a story about sex should I allow it to be read in class? After years with thousands of teenagers, listening to them and reading their work, I know their parents have an exaggerated idea of their innocence. The thousands have been my tutors.

  Without mentioning Huncke I circle the subject. Look at the lives of Marlowe, Nash, Swift, Villon, Beaudelaire, Rimbaud, not to mention those disgraceful characters Byron and Shelley, down to Hemingway's loose ways with women and wine and Faulkner drinking himself to death down there in Oxford, Mississippi. You might think about Anne Sexton killing herself, Sylvia Plath likewise, and John Berryman jumping off a bridge.

  Oh, aren't I the connoisseur of the dark.

  For Christ's sake, McCourt, stop bothering the kids. Back off. Leave them alone and they will come home, and if their tails are not wagging it's due to the numbing effect of an English teacher's blather.

  Serious students raise their hands and ask how I will evaluate them for their report cards. After all, I don't give them the usual tests: no multiple choice; no matching columns; no fill-in-the-blank spaces; no true or false. Concerned parents are asking questions.

  I tell the serious students, Evaluate yourselves.

  What? How can we evaluate ourselves?

  You do it all the time. We all do it. Constant process of self-evaluation. Examination of conscience, boys and girls. You say to yourself, honestly, Did I learn anything from reading recipes as poetry, discussing Little Bo Peep as if it were a verse from T. S. Eliot, getting inside "My Papa's Waltz," listening to James and Daniel telling the inside story of their dinner, feasting in Stuyvesant Square, reading Mimi Sheraton. I say to you if you learned nothing from the above it means you were asleep during the tremendous violin playing of Michael and Pam's epic ode to duck or, and this is possible, friends, I am a lousy teacher.

  They cheer. Yeah, that's it. You are a lousy teacher, and we all laugh because it is partly true and because they are free to say it and because I can take the joke.

  Serious students are not satisfied. They argue that in other classes the teacher tells you what you are supposed to know. The teacher teaches it and you are supposed to learn it. Then the teacher gives you an examination and you get the grade you deserve.

  Serious students say it is satisfying when you know in advance what you are supposed to know so that you can set about knowing it. They say, In this class you never know what you're supposed to know, so how can you study and how can you possibly evaluate yourself? In this class you never know what's going to pop up from day to day. The big puzzle at the end of the term is how does the teacher arrive at a grade?

  I'll tell you how I arrive at a grade. First, how was your attendance? Even if you sat quietly in the back and thought about the discussions and the readings, you surely learned something. Second, did you participate? Did you get up there and read on Fridays? Anything. Stories, essays, poetry, plays. Third, did you comment on the work of your classmates? Fourth, and this is up to you, can you reflect on this experience and ask yourself what you learned? Fifth, did you just sit there and dream? If you did, give yourself credit.

  This is where teacher turns serious and asks the Big Question: What is education, anyway? What are we doing in this school? You can say you're trying to graduate so that you can go to college and prepare for a career. But, fellow students, it's more than that. I've had to ask myself what the hell I'm doing in the classroom. I've worked out an equation for myself. On the left side of the blackboard I print a capital F, on the right side another capital F. I draw an arrow from left to right, from FEAR to FREEDOM.

  I don't think anyone achieves complete freedom, but what I am trying to do with you is drive fear into a corner.

  17

  Time's winged chariot is hurrying near followed closely by the Hound of Heaven. You're getting older, and aren't you a two-faced blathering mick, prodding and encouraging kids to write when you know your own writer dream is dying. Console yourself with this: One day one of your gifted students will win a National Book Award or a Pulitzer and invite you to the event, and in a brilliant acceptance speech, allow as how he or she owes it all to you. You'll be asked to stand. You'll acknowledge the cheers of the multitudes. This will be your moment in the sun, your reward for thousands of lessons taught, millions of words read. Your prizewinner embraces you, and you fade into the streets of New York, little old Mr. Chips, toiling the stairs of his tenement, a crust in the cupboard, a jorum of water in the icebox, a bulb of modest wattage dangling over the celibate cot.

  The great American drama is the clash of adolescence with middle age. My hormones beg for a quiet clearing in the woods, theirs are brassy, throbbing, demanding.

  Today they do not want to be bothered by teachers or parents.

  Nor do I want to be bothered by them. I don't want to see or hear them. I have squandered my best years in the company of squawking adolescents. In the time I've spent in classrooms I could have read thousands of books. I could have roamed the Forty-second Street Library, up one side and down the other. I wish the kids would disappear. I'm not in the mood.

  Other days I'm desperate to get into the classroom. I wait, impatient, in the hallway. I paw the ground. Come on, Mr. Ritterman. Hurry up. Finish your damn math lesson. There are things I want to say to this class.

  A young substitute teacher sat beside me in the teachers' cafeteria. She was to start her regular teaching career in September and could I offer her any advice?

  Find what you love and do it. That's what it boils down to. I admit I didn't always love teaching. I was out of my depth. You're on your own in the classroom, one man or woman facing five classes every day, five classes of teenagers. One unit of energy against one hundred and seventy-five units of energy, one hundred and seventy-five ticking bombs, and you have to find ways of saving your own life. They may like you, they may even love you, but they are young and it is the business of the young to push the old off the planet. I know I'm exaggerating but it's like a boxer going into the ring or a bullfighter into the arena. You can be knocked out or gored and that's the end of your teaching career. But if you hang on you learn the tricks. It's hard but you have to make yourself comfortable in the classroom. You have to be selfish. The airlines tell you if oxygen fails you are to put on your mask first, even if your instinct is to save the child.

  The classroom is a place of high drama. You'll never know what you've done to, or for, the hundreds coming and going. You see them leaving the classroom: dreamy, flat, sneering, admiring, smiling, puzzled. After a few years you develop antennae. You can tell when you've reached them or alienated them. It's chemistry. It's psychology. It's animal instinct. You are with the kids and, as long as you want to be a teacher, there's no escape. Don't expect help from the people who've escaped the classroom, the higher-ups. They're busy going to lunch and thinking higher thoughts. It's you and the kids. So, there's the bell. See you later. Find what you love and do it.

  It was April and sunny outside and I wondered how many Aprils I had left, how many sunny days. I was beginning to feel I had nothing left to say to the high school students of New York about writing or anything else. My voice began to trail away. I thought I wanted to be out in the world before I was out of the world. Who was I to talk about writing when I had never written a book never mi
nd published one? All my talk, all my scribbling in notebooks amounted to nothing. And didn't they wonder about that? Didn't they say, How come he talks so much about writing when he never did it?

  It was time to retire, live on the teacher's pension that was less than princely. I'll catch up on the books I missed in the last thirty years. I'll spend hours at the Forty-second Street Library, the place I love most in New York, walk the streets, have a beer at the Lion's Head, talk to Deacy, Duggan, Hamill, learn the guitar and a hundred songs to go with it, take my daughter, Maggie, for dinner in the Village, scribble in my notebooks. Something might come.

  I'll get by.

  When Guy Lind was a sophomore he brought an umbrella to school on a snowy slushy day. He met a friend on the second floor who also had an umbrella. They began to fence with their umbrellas till the friend slipped and the tip of his umbrella pierced through Guy's eye and left him paralyzed on one side.

  They took him to Beth Israel Hospital across the street and that started a long journey from city to city and country to country. They even took him to Israel, where the fighting keeps them up to date on trauma and treatment.

  Guy returned to school in a wheelchair and wearing a black eye patch. After a while he made his way through the corridors with the help of a walking stick. Eventually he discarded the stick and you wouldn't know of his accident except for the black eye patch and an arm that lay useless on the desk.

  Here was Guy in my last class listening to Rachel Blaustein on the other side of the room. She was talking about a poetry class she took with Mrs. Kocela. She enjoyed the class and the way Mrs. Kocela taught poetry but it was really a waste of time for her. What was there to write about when everything in her life was perfect: her parents happy and successful; Rachel the only child and headed for Harvard; Rachel with perfect health?

  I told her she could add beauty to her catalogue of perfection.

  She smiled, but the question remained, What was there to write about?