'Tis a Memoir

by Frank McCourt

  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 smile
s 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.

  My grandmother says, Och, don't you look grand in your uniform, and Aunt Emily says, Och, you're a man now.

  My father says, Och, you're here. How's your mother?

  She's grand.

  And your brother Malachy and your brother Michael and your wee brother what's his name?

  Alphie.

  Och, aye, Alphie. How's your wee brother Alphie?

  They're all grand.

  He lets out a small Och and sighs, That's grand.

  Then he wants to know if I take a drink and my grandmother says, Now, Malachy, enough of that talk.

  Och, I only wanted to warn him of the bad company to be found in pubs.

  This is my father who left us when I was ten to spend every penny he earned in the pubs of Coventry with German bombs dropping all around him, his family next to starvation in Limerick and here he is putting on the air of one in the grip of sanctifying grace and all I can think of is there must be some truth to the story he was dropped on his head or the other story that he had a disease like meningitis.

  That might be an excuse for the drinking, the dropping on the head or the meningitis. German bombs couldn't be an excuse because there were other Limerickmen sending money home from Coventry, bombs or no bombs. There were even men who fell in with Englishwomen and still sent money home though that money would slow down to nothing because Englishwomen are notorious for not wanting their Irishmen to support their families at home when they have three or four snotty-nosed English brats of their own running around demanding bangers and mash. Many an Irishman at the end of the war was so desperate trapped between his Irish and English families there was nothing for him to do but jump on a ship to Canada or Australia never to be heard from again.

  That wouldn't be my father. If he had seven children with my mother it was only because she was there in the bed doing her wifely duty. Englishwomen are never that easy. They'd never suffer an Irishman who would leap on them in the bravery of a few pints and that means there are no little McCourt bastards running the streets of Coventry.

  I don't know what to say to him with his little smile and his Och aye because I don't know if I'm talking to a man in his right mind or the man dropped on his head or the one with meningitis. How can I talk to him when he gets up, sticks his hands deep into his trouser pockets and marches around the house whistling "Lily Marlene"? Aunt Emily whispers he hasn't had a drink in ages and it's a great struggle for him. I want to tell her it was a greater struggle for my mother to keep us all alive but I know he has the sympathy of his whole family and anyway what use is there going over the past. Then she tells me how he suffered over my mother's disgraceful doings with her cousin, how the story drifted back to the North that they were living as man and wife, that when my father heard about it in Coventry, with the bombs dropping all around him, it drove him so mad he was in the pubs day, night and in between. Men home from Coventry would tell how my father would run into the streets during the air raids lifting his arms to the Luftwaffe and begging them to drop one on his poor tormented head.

  My grandmother nods her head, agreeing with Aunt Emily, Och, aye. I want to remind them my father drank long before the bad days in Limerick, that we had to hunt him in pubs all over Brooklyn. I want to tell them that if he'd only sent money we could have stayed in our own house instead of being evicted and having to move in with Mam's cousin.

  But my grandmother is frail and I have to control myself. My face feels tight and there are dark clouds in my head and all I can do is stand and tell them my father drank all through the years, drank when babies were born and babies died and drank because he drank.

  She says, Och, Francis, and shakes her head as if to disagree with me, as if to defend my father, and that causes such a rage in me I hardly know what to do till I'm pulling my duffel bag down the stairs and out on the road to Toome, Aunt Emily at the hedge calling, Francis, oh, Francis, come back, your grandmother wants to talk to you, but I keep walking though I'm aching to go back, that bad as my father is I'd at least like to know him, that my grandmother was doing only what any mother would do, defending her son who was dropped on his head or had meningitis, and I might go back except that a car stops and a man offers me a lift to the bus station in Toome and once I'm in the car there's no going back.

  I'm not in the mood for talk but I have to be polite to the man even when he says the McCourts of Moneyglass are a fine family even if they're Catholics.

  Even if they're Catholics.

  I'd like to tell the man stop the car and let me out with my duffel bag but if I do I'll be only halfway to Toome and I'd be tempted to walk back to my grandmother's house.

  I can't go back. The past won't go away in this family and there would surely be talk again of my mother and her great sin and then we'd have an explosion and I'd be dragging my duffel bag along the Toome road again.

  The man lets me out and when I say thanks I wonder to myself if he marches around on the twelfth of July beating a drum with the other Protestants but he has a kind face and I can't imagine him beating a drum for anything.

  All the way on the bus to Belfast and the train from Belfast to Dublin I have the ache to go back to the grandmother I might never see again and to see if I could get past my father's little smiles and the Och ayes but once I'm on the train to Limerick there's no goin
g back. My head is cluttered with images of my father, my Aunt Emily, my grandmother, and the sadness of their lives in the farmhouse with seven useless acres. Then there's my mother in Limerick, forty-four years of age with seven children, three dead, and all she wants, as she says, is a little peace, ease and comfort. There's the sadness of Corporal Dunphy's life in Fort Dix and Buck in Lenggries, the two of them who found a home in the army because they wouldn't know what to do with the outside world, and I'm afraid if I don't stop thinking this way the tears will come and I'll disgrace myself in this carriage with five people gawking at me in my uniform saying, Jaysus, who's the Yank weeping in the corner? My mother would say, Your bladder is near your eye, but the people in the carriage might say, Is this a specimen of what's fighting the Chinese hand to hand over there in Korea?

  Even if there weren't another soul in the carriage I'd have to control myself because the slightest hint of a tear and the salt in it makes my eyes redder than they are and I don't want to get off the train and walk the streets of Limerick with eyes like two piss holes in the snow.