'Tis a Memoir

by Frank McCourt

  I don't know, Professor.

  There's no use telling him that one Redemptorist priest in Limerick ranted from the pulpit on Sunday mornings denouncing Freud and Jung and promising they'd wind up in the deepest hole in hell, the two of them. If I talk in class I know no one is listening to what I'm saying. They're listening only to my accent and there are times when I wish I could reach into my mouth and tear my accent out by the roots. Even when I try to sound American people look puzzled and say, Do I detect an Irish brogue?

  At the end of the class I wait for the blonde to pass by but she stops, the blue eyes smile at me, and she says, Hi, and my heart bangs in my chest. She says, My name is Mike.

  Mike?

  Well, actually, my name is Alberta but they call me Mike.

  There is no football player outside and she says she has two hours till her next class and would I like to have a drink at Rocky's?

  I have a class in ten minutes but I'm not going to miss this chance to be with this girl everyone is staring at, this girl who picked me out of all the people in the world to say hello to. We have to walk quickly to Rocky's so that we won't run into Bob the football player. He might be upset if he knew she was having a drink with another boy.

  I wonder why she calls all males boy. I'm twenty-three.

  She says she's kinda engaged to Bob, that they're pinned, and I don't know what she's talking about. She says a girl who's pinned is engaged to be engaged and you can tell if a girl is pinned when she wears her boyfriend's high school graduation ring on a necklace. It makes me wonder why she's not wearing Bob's ring. She says he gave her a gold bracelet with her name on it to wear around her ankle that would show she's taken but she doesn't wear it because it's what Puerto Rican girls do and they're too flashy. The bracelet is what you get just before the engagement ring and she'll wait for that, thank you very much.

  She tells me she's from Rhode Island. She was reared there from the age of seven by her father's mother. Her own mother was only sixteen when she was born and her father twenty so you can guess what happened there. Shotgun. When the war came and he was drafted and sent to Seattle it was the end of the marriage. Even though Mike was a Protestant she graduated from a Catholic convent school in Fall River, Massachusetts, and she smiles at the memory of that graduation summer when she had a different date nearly every night. She might be smiling but I feel a great surge of rage and envy and I'd like to kill the boys who ate popcorn with her and probably kissed her in drive-in movies. Now she's living with her father and stepmother up on Riverside Drive and her grandmother is here for a while till she settles in and gets used to the city. She's not a bit shy about telling me she likes my Irish accent and she even liked looking at the back of my head in class the way my hair is black and wavy. This makes me blush and even though it's dark in Rocky's she can see the blush and she thinks it's cute.

  I have to get used to the way they say cute in New York. If you say someone is cute in Ireland you're saying he's cunning and sneaky.

  I'm in Rocky's and I'm in heaven drinking beer with this girl who could have stepped down from a movie screen, another Virginia Mayo. I know I'm the envy of every man and boy in Rocky's, that it'll be the same on the streets, heads turning and wondering who I am that I'm with the loveliest girl in NYU and Manhattan itself.

  After two hours she has to go to her next class. I'm ready to carry her books the way they do in the movies but she says, No, better that I stay here awhile in case we run into Bob who wouldn't be a bit pleased to see her with the likes of me. She laughs and reminds me he's big, thanks for the beer, see you next week in class, and she's gone.

  Her glass is still on the table and it's marked with pink lipstick. I put it to my lips for the taste of her and dream that some day I'll kiss the lips themselves. I press her glass against my cheek and think of her kissing the football player and there are dark clouds in my head. Why would she sit with me in Rocky's if she's kinda engaged to him? Is that the way it is in America? If you love a woman you're supposed to be loyal to her at all times. If you don't love her then it's all right to drink beer in Rocky's with someone else. If she goes to Rocky's with me then she doesn't love him and that makes me feel better.

  Is it that she feels sorry for me with my Irish accent and my red eyes? Is she able to guess that it's hard for me to talk to girls unless they talk to me first?

  All over America there are men who walk up to girls and say, Hi. I could never do that. I'd feel foolish saying Hi in the first place because I didn't grow up with it. I'd have to say Hello or something grown-up. Even when they talk to me I never know what to say. I don't want them to know I never went to high school and I don't want them to know I grew up in an Irish slum. I'm so ashamed of the past that all I can do is lie about it.

  The lecturer in English Composition, Mr. Calitri, would like us to write an essay on a single object from our childhood, an object that had significance for us, something domestic, if possible.

  There isn't an object in my childhood I'd want anyone to know about. I wouldn't want Mr. Calitri or anyone in the class to know about the slum lavatory we shared with all those families in Roden Lane. I could make up something but I can't think of anything like the things other students talk about, the family car, Dad's old baseball mitt, the sled they had so much fun with, the old icebox, the kitchen table where they did their homework. All I can think of is the bed I shared with my three brothers and even though I'm ashamed of it I have to write about it. If I make up something that's nice and respectable and don't write about the bed I'll be tormented. Besides, Mr. Calitri will be the only one reading it and I'll be safe.

  THE BED

  When I was growing up in Limerick my mother had to go to the St. Vincent de Paul Society to see if she could get a bed for me and my brothers, Malachy, Michael, and Alphie who was barely walking. The man at the St. Vincent de Paul said he could give her a docket to go down to the Irishtown to a place that sold secondhand beds. My mother asked him couldn't we get a new bed because you never know what you're getting with an old one. There could be all kinds of diseases.

  The man said beggars can't be choosers and my mother shouldn't be so particular.

  But she wouldn't give up. She asked if it was possible at least to find out if anyone had died in the bed. Surely that wasn't asking too much. She wouldn't want to be lying in her own bed at night thinking about her four small sons sleeping on a mattress that someone had died on, maybe someone that had a fever or consumption.

  The St. Vincent de Paul man said, Missus, if you don't want this bed give me back the docket and I'll give it to someone that's not so particular.

  Mam said, Ah, no, and she came home to get Alphie's pram so that we could carry the mattress, the spring and the bedstead. The man in the shop in the Irishtown wanted her to take a mattress with hair sticking out and spots and stains all over but my mother said she wouldn't let a cow sleep on a bed like that, didn't the man have another mattress over there in the corner? The man grumbled and said, All right, all right. Bejesus, the charity cases is gettin' very particular these days, and he stayed behind his counter watching us drag the mattress outside.

  We had to push the pram up and down the streets of Limerick three times for the mattress and the different parts of the iron bedstead, the head, the end, the supports and the spring. My mother said she was ashamed of her life and wished she could do this at night. The man said he was sorry for her troubles but he closed at six sharp and wouldn't stay open if the Holy Family came for a bed.

  It was hard pushing the pram because it had one bockety wheel that wanted to go its own way and it was harder still with Alphie buried under the mattress screaming for his mother.

  My father was there to drag the mattress upstairs and he helped us put the spring and the bedstead together. Of course he wouldn't help us push the pram two miles from the Irishtown because he'd be ashamed of the spectacle. He was from the North of Ireland and they must have a different way of bringing home the bed.
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  We had old overcoats to put on the bed because the St. Vincent de Paul Society wouldn't give us a docket for sheets and blankets. My mother lit the fire and when we sat around it drinking tea she said at least we're all off the floor and isn't God good.

  The next week Mr. Calitri sits on the edge of his desk on the platform. He pulls our essays from his bag and tells the class, Not a bad set of essays, some a little too sentimental. But there's one I'd like to read you if the author doesn't mind, "The Bed."

  He looks toward me and lets his eyebrows go up as if to say, Do you mind? I don't know what to say though I'd like to tell him, No, no, please don't tell the world what I came from, but the heat is in my face already and I can only shrug to him as if I don't care.

  He reads "The Bed." I can feel the whole class looking at me and I'm ashamed. I'm glad Mike Small isn't in this class. She'd never look at me again. There are girls in the class and they're probably thinking they should move away from me. I want to tell them this is a made-up story but Mr. Calitri is up there talking about it now, telling the class why he gave it an A, that my style is direct, my subject matter rich. He laughs when he says rich. You know what I mean, he says. He tells me I should continue to explore my rich past, and he smiles again. I don't know what he's talking about. I'm sorry I ever wrote about that bed and I'm afraid everyone will pity me and treat me like a charity case. The next time I have to take a class in English Composition I'll put my family in a comfortable house in the suburbs and I'll make my father a postman with a pension.

  At the end of the class students nod to me and smile and I wonder if they're already feeling sorry for me.

  Mike Small came from another world, she and her football player. They might be from different parts of America but they were teenagers and it was the same all over. They went on dates on Saturday nights where the boy would have to meet the girl at her house and of course she would never be at the door waiting for him because that would show she was too eager and word would get around and she'd be alone every Saturday night the rest of her life. The boy would have to wait in the living room with a silent dad who always looked disapproving behind his newspaper knowing what he did on dates in the old days himself and wondering what was going to be done to his little daughter. The mother would fuss and want to know what movie they were going to and what time they'd be home because her daughter was a nice girl who needed a good night's sleep to keep that glow in her complexion for church tomorrow morning. At the movies they held hands and if the boy was lucky he might get a kiss and accidentally touch her breast. If that happened she'd give him a sharp look and that meant the body was being reserved for the honeymoon. After the movie they'd have hamburgers and milk shakes at the soda fountain with all the other high school kids, the boys in crew cuts and the girls in skirts and bobby sox. They'd sing along with the jukebox and the girls would squeal over Frankie. If the girl liked the boy she might let him have a long kiss at her door, maybe one dart of a tongue in the mouth, but if he tried to keep the tongue in there she'd back away and tell him good night, she had a nice time, thank you, and that was another reminder the body was being reserved for the honeymoon.

  Some girls would let you touch and feel and kiss but they wouldn't let you go all the way and they were known as ninety percenters. There was some hope for ninety percenters but the all-the-way girls had such a reputation no one in town would want to marry them and they were the ones who would pack up one day and go to New York where everyone does everything.

  That is what I saw in the movies or what I heard in the army from GIs who came from all over the country. If you had a car and a girl said yes she'd go with you to a drive-in movie you knew she was expecting more than popcorn and the doings up there on the screen. There was no sense in just going for a kiss. You could get that in a regular movie house. The drive-in was where you got the tongue into the mouth and the hand on the breast and if she let you get to the nipple, man, she was yours. The nipple was like a key that opened the legs and if you weren't with another couple it was into the backseat and who cared about the goddam movie?

  The GIs said there were funny nights when you might be making out but your friend was having trouble in the backseat with his girl who was sitting up and watching the movie or it might be vice versa where your buddy is making out and you're so frustrated you want to explode in your pants. Sometimes your buddy might be finished with his girl and she's ready to take you on and that's pure heaven, man, because not only are you getting laid the one who rejected you is sitting there stonefaced pretending to watch the movie but really listening to you back there and sometimes she can't stand it anymore and climbs on you and you're caught between two broads in the backseat. Goddam.

  Men in the army said you'd have no respect later for the girl who let you go all the way and you'd have only a little respect for the ninety percenter. Of course you'd have complete respect for the girl who said no and sat up watching the movie. That's the girl that was pure, not damaged goods, and the girl you'd want to be the mother of your children. If you married a girl who fooled around how would you ever know you were the real father of your kids?

  I know that if Mike Small ever went to a drive-in she was the one who sat up and watched the movie. Anything else would be too much of a pain to think about especially when it's hard to think of her even kissing the football player at her own door with her father inside waiting.

  The nuns tell me Mrs. Klein is losing her wits with the drink and neglecting poor Michael what's left of him. They're moving them to places where they can be cared for, Catholic homes, though it's better not to tell anyone about Michael for fear some Jewish organization would claim him. Sister Mary Thomas is not against Jews but she doesn't want to lose a precious soul like Michael's.

  One of Mary O'Brien's boarders is gone back to Ireland to settle on his father's five acres and marry a girl from down the road. I can have his bed for eighteen dollars a week and help myself in the morning to whatever is in the fridge. The other Irish boarders work on the piers and warehouses and they bring home canned fruits or bottles of rum and whiskey from cases that accidentally fell when ships were being unloaded. Mary says isn't it wonderful that when you say there's something you'd like a whole case of it is accidentally dropped the next day on the docks. There are Sunday mornings we don't bother cooking breakfast we're that happy in the kitchen with slices of pineapple in heavy syrup and glasses of rum to wash it down. Mary reminds us about Mass but we're content enough with our pineapple and rum and soon Timmy Coin is calling for a song even if it's a Sunday morning. He works in Merchants Refrigerating and often brings home a great side of beef on Friday nights. He's the only one who cares about going to Mass though he makes sure he's back in no time for the pineapple and rum which can't last forever.

  Frankie and Danny Lennon are twins, Irish-Americans. Frankie lives in another apartment and Danny is a boarder with Mary. Their father, John, lives on the streets, wanders around with a pint of wine in a brown paper bag, and cleans Mary's apartment in exchange for a shower, a sandwich and a few drinks. His sons laugh and sing, "Oh, my papa, to me he was so wonderful."

  Frankie and Danny take classes at City College, one of the best colleges in the country and free. Even though they're studying accounting they're always excited over their courses in literature. Frankie talks about seeing a girl on the subway reading James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and how anxious he was to sit beside her and discuss Joyce. All the way from 34th Street to 181st Street he would leave his seat and move toward her, never having the courage to talk to her, and losing his seat each time to another passenger. At last when the train pulled in to 181st Street he bent to her and said, Great book, isn't it? and she jerked back from him and let out a cry. He wanted to tell her, Sorry, sorry, but the doors were closing and he was out on the platform with people in the train glaring at him.

  They love jazz and they're like two mad professors in the living room, putting records on the phonograph, c
licking their fingers to the beat, telling me all about the great musicians on this Benny Goodman record, Gene Krupa, Harry James, Lionel Hampton, Benny himself. They tell me this was the greatest jazz concert of all time and the first time a black man was allowed on the Carnegie Hall stage. And listen to him, listen to Lionel Hampton, all velvet and glide, listen to him and Benny coming in, listen, and here comes Harry sending in a few notes to tell you watch out, I'm flying, I'm flying, and Krupa going bap-bap-bap-do-bap-de-bap, hands, feet going, sing sing sing, and the whole damn band wild, man, wild, and the audience, listen to that audience, outa their mind, man, outa their everlovin' mind.

  They play Count Basie, point their fingers and laugh when the Count hits those single notes, and when they play Duke Ellington they're all over the living room clicking fingers and stopping to tell me, listen, listen to this and I listen because I never listened like this before and now I hear what I never heard before and I have to laugh with the Lennons when the musicians take passages from tunes and turn them upside down and inside out and put them back again as if to say, look, we borrowed your little tune awhile to play our own way but don't worry, here it's back again and you go hum it, honey, you sing that mother, man.

  The Irish boarders complain this is just a lot of noise. Paddy Arthur McGovern says, Shure, yeer not Irish at all with that stuff. What about some Irish songs on that machine? What about a few Irish dance tunes?