'Tis a Memoir

by Frank McCourt

  She sits on my bed, puts her glass on the floor, covers her face with her hands. Jesus, Jesus, she says. I can't sleep thinking what they did to him and what did Michael see. What did Michael see? I saw the pictures in the papers. Jesus. And I know them, the Germans. They live here. They have delicatessens and children and I ask them, Did you kill my Eddie? and they look at me.

  She cries, lies back on my bed and falls asleep and I don't know if I should wake her and tell her I'm worn out myself, that I'm paying twelve dollars a week so that she can fall asleep in my bed while I try to sleep on the hard couch in the corner which is waiting for my brother Michael coming here in a few months.

  I tell this to Mary O'Brien and her boarders and they get hysterical laughing. Mary says, Ah, God love her. I know poor Agnes and all belongin' to her. There are days she loses her wits entirely and wanders the neighborhood without her wig asking everyone where's the rabbi so that she can convert for the sake of her son, poor Michael in the bed what's left of him.

  Every fortnight two nuns come to help Mrs. Klein. They wash Michael what's left of him and change his sheets. They clean the apartment and watch over her while she takes a bath. They brush her wig so that it doesn't have that tangled look. She doesn't know it but they weaken her vodka with water and if she gets drunk it's all in her head.

  Sister Mary Thomas is curious about me. Do I practice my religion and what school do I go to because she sees books and notebooks? When I tell her NYU she frowns and wonders if I'm not worried about losing my religion in such a place. I can't tell her I stopped going to Mass years ago, she and Sister Beatrice are so good to Mrs. Klein and Michael in the bed what's left of him.

  Sister Mary Thomas whispers to me something I'm never to tell another soul unless it's a priest, that she took the liberty of baptizing Michael. After all, he's not really Jewish since his mother is Irish Catholic and Sister would hate to think what might happen to Michael if he died without the sacrament. Didn't he suffer enough in Germany, little boy looking at his father being led off or worse? And doesn't he deserve the purification of baptism in case he doesn't wake up some morning in there in the bed?

  She wants to know now what is my situation here? Am I encouraging Agnes to drink or is it vice versa? I tell her I don't have time for anything I'm so busy with school and work and trying to sleep a little. She wants to know if I'd do her a little favor, something to ease her soul. If I have a moment and poor Agnes is sleeping or passed out with the watery vodka would I go down the hall, kneel by Michael's bed and say a few Hail Marys, maybe a decade of the rosary. He might not understand but you never know. With God's help the Hail Marys might sink into his poor troubled brain and help him return to the realm of the living, back to the True Faith which came down to him on his mother's side.

  If I do that she'll pray for me. Above all, she'll pray that I leave NYU which everyone knows is a hotbed of communism where I'm in great danger of losing my immortal soul and what doth it profit a man if he gain the world and lose his immortal soul? God knows there must be a place for me at Fordham or St. John's which are not hotbeds of atheistic communism like NYU. I'd be better off out of NYU before Senator McCarthy goes after it, God bless him and keep him. Isn't that right, Sister Beatrice?

  The other nun nods yes because she's always so busy she rarely speaks. While Sister Mary Thomas tries to save my soul from atheistic communism Sister Beatrice is giving Mrs. Klein a bath or cleaning Michael what's left of him. Sometimes when Sister Beatrice opens Michael's door the smell that drifts up the hall is enough to make you sick but that doesn't stop her from going in. She still washes him and changes his bedclothes and you can hear her humming hymns. If Mrs. Klein has drunk too much and gets cranky over having to take a bath Sister Beatrice holds her, hums her hymns and strokes the little brown tufts on her skull till Mrs. Klein is a child in her arms. That makes Sister Mary Thomas impatient and she tells Mrs. Klein, You have no right to waste our time like this. We have other poor souls to visit, Catholics, Mrs. Klein, Catholics.

  Mrs. Klein whimpers, I'm a Catholic. I'm a Catholic.

  That's debatable, Mrs. Klein.

  And if Mrs. Klein sobs Sister Beatrice holds her harder, presses her whole open hand on her head and hums away with a little smile toward heaven. Sister Mary Thomas waggles her finger at me and tells me, Beware of marrying outside the True Faith. This is what happens.

  27

  There's a letter telling me report to my faculty adviser in the English Department, Mr. Max Bogart. He says my grades are unsatisfactory, B minus in the History of Education in America and C in Introduction to Literature. I'm supposed to maintain a B average on my year's probation if I want to stay in college. After all, he says, the dean did you a favor letting you in without a high school diploma and now you let her down.

  I have to work.

  What do you mean you have to work? Everyone has to work.

  I have to work nights, sometimes days, on piers, in warehouses.

  He says I have to make a decision, work or college. He'll give me a break this time and put me on probation on top of the probation I already have. Next June he wants to see me with a straight B average or better.

  I never thought college would be all numbers and letters and grades and averages and people putting me on probation. I thought this would be a place where kindly learned men and women would teach in a warm way and if I didn't understand they'd pause and explain. I didn't know I'd go from course to course with dozens of students, sometimes over a hundred, with professors lecturing and not even looking at you. Some professors look out the window or up at the ceiling and some stick their noses in notebooks and read from paper that is yellow and crumbling with age. If students ask questions they're waved away. In English novels students at Oxford and Cambridge were always meeting in professors' rooms and sipping sherry while discussing Sophocles. I'd like to discuss Sophocles, too, but I'd have to read him first and there's no time after my nights at Merchants Refrigerating.

  And if I'm to discuss Sophocles and get gloomy over existentialism and the Camus suicide problem I'll have to give up Merchants Refrigerating. If I didn't have the night job I might be able to sit in the cafeteria and talk about Pierre, or the Ambiguities or Crime and Punishment or Shakespeare in general. There are girls in the cafeteria with names like Rachel and Naomi and they're the ones Mrs. Klein told me about, Jewish girls who are very sensual. I wish I had the courage to talk to them because they're probably like Protestant girls, all in a state of despair over the emptiness of it all, no sense of sin and ready for all kinds of sensuality.

  In the spring of 1954 I'm a full-time student at NYU working only part-time on the docks and the warehouses or when the Manpower agency sends me on a temporary job. The first one is at a hat factory on Seventh Avenue where the owner, Mr. Meyer, tells me it's easy work. All I have to do is take these women's hats, neutral colors all of them, dip these feathers into different dye pots, let the feather dry, match the color against the hat, attach feather to hat. Easy, right? Yeah, that's what you'd think, says Mr. Meyer, but when I let some of my Puerto Rican help try this job they came up with color combinations that would blind you. These PRs think life is an Easter Parade and it ain't. You gotta have taste when you match a feather with a hat, taste, my friend. Little Jewish ladies in Brooklyn don't want to be wearing the Easter Parade on their heads on Passover, know't I mean?

  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 ba
tch. 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 makes 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 wi
ll 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?