'Tis a Memoir

by Frank McCourt

  Of course I won't say this to Mike Small for fear she might think I'm arguing with her. She might turn on her heel and march back to Bob the football player.

  Now Mr. Calitri wants us to write a family essay where there's adversity, a dark moment, a setback, and even though I don't want to go into the past there's something that happened to my mother that demands to be written.

  THE PLOT

  When the war started and food was rationed in Ireland the government offered poor families plots of land in fields outside Limerick. Each family could have a sixteenth of an acre, clear it and grow whatever vegetables they liked.

  My father applied for a plot out the road in Rosbrien and the government lent him a spade and a fork for the work. He took my brother Malachy and me to help him. When my brother Michael saw the spade he cried and wanted to go too but he was only four and he would have been in the way. My father told him, Whisht, that when we came back from Rosbrien we'd bring him berries.

  I asked my father if I could carry the spade and I was soon sorry because Rosbrien was miles outside Limerick. Malachy had started out carrying the fork but my father took it away from him because of the way he was swinging it and nearly knocking people's eyes out. Malachy cried till my father said he'd let him carry the spade all the way home. My brother soon forgot the fork when he saw a dog who was willing to chase a stick for miles till he frothed white stuff with the weariness and lay down on the road looking up with the stick between his paws and we had to leave him.

  When my father saw the plot he shook his head. Rocks, he said, rocks and stones. And all we did that day was to make a pile by the low wall along the road. My father used the spade to keep digging up rocks and even though I was only nine I noticed two men in the next plots talking and looking at him and laughing in a quiet way. I asked my father why and he gave a small laugh himself and said, The Limerickman gets the dark earth and the man from the North gets the rocky plot.

  We worked till the darkness came and we were so weak with hunger we couldn't pick up another rock. We didn't mind one bit if he carried the fork and spade and wished he could carry us, too. He said we were big boys, good workers, our mother would be proud of us, there would be tea and fried bread, and he marched ahead with his long strides till halfway home he stopped suddenly. Your brother Michael, he said. We promised him berries. We'll have to go back out the road to the bushes.

  Malachy and I complained so much that we were tired and could hardly walk another step that my father told us go home, he'd get the berries himself. I asked why couldn't he get the berries tomorrow and he said he had promised Michael berries for tonight, not tomorrow, and away he went with the spade and fork on his shoulder.

  When Michael saw us he started to cry, Berries, berries. He stopped when we told him, Dad is out the road in Rosbrien getting your berries so will you quit the crying and let us have our fried bread and tea.

  We could have eaten a whole loaf between us but my mother said, Leave some for your father. She shook her head. He's such a fool going all the way back there for the berries. Then she looked at Michael the way he was standing at the door looking up the lane for a sign of my father and she shook her head in a smaller way.

  Soon Michael spotted my father and he was gone up the lane calling out, Dad, Dad, did you get the berries? We could hear Dad, In a minute, Michael, in a minute.

  He stood the spade and fork in a corner and emptied his coat pockets on to the table. Berries he brought, the great black juicy berries you find at the tops and backs of bushes beyond the reach of children, berries he plucked in the dark of Rosbrien. My mouth watered and I asked my mother if I could have a berry and she said, Ask Michael, they're his.

  I didn't have to ask him. He handed me the biggest of the berries, the juiciest, and he handed one to Malachy. He offered berries to my mother and father but they said no thanks, they were his berries. He offered Malachy and me another berry each and we took them. I thought if I had berries like that I'd keep them all for myself but Michael was different and maybe he didn't know any better because he was four.

  After that we went to the plot every day but Sunday and cleared it of rocks and stones till we reached the earth and helped my father with the planting of potatoes, carrots and cabbage. There were times we left him and roamed the road, hunting for berries and eating so many it gave us the runs.

  My father said in no time we'd be digging up our crop but he wouldn't be here to do it. There was no work in Limerick and the English were looking for people to work in their war factories. It was hard for him to think of working for the English after what they did to us but the money was tempting and as long as the Americans had entered the war it was surely a just cause.

  He went off to England with hundreds of men and women. Most sent money home but he spent his in the pubs of Coventry and forgot he had a family. My mother had to borrow from her own mother and ask for credit from Kathleen O'Connell's grocery shop. She had to beg for food from the St. Vincent de Paul Society or wherever she could get it. She said it would be a great relief to us and we'd be saved when the time came to dig up our spuds, our carrots, our lovely heads of cabbage. Oh, we'd have a right feed then and if God was good He might send us a nice piece of ham and that wasn't asking too much when you lived in Limerick, the ham capital of all Ireland.

  The day came and she put the new baby, Alphie, in the pram. She borrowed a coal sack from Mr. Hannon next door. We'll fill it, she said. I carried the fork and Malachy the spade so that he wouldn't be knocking people's eyes out with the prongs. My mother said, Don't be swinging those tools or I'll give ye a good clitther on the gob.

  A smack in the mouth.

  When we arrived at Rosbrien there were other women digging in the plots. If there was a man in the field he was old and not able for the work in England. My mother said hello across the low wall to this woman and that woman and when they didn't answer back she said, They must be all gone deaf with the bending over.

  She left Alphie in the pram outside the plot wall and told Michael mind the baby and don't be hunting for berries. Malachy and I jumped over the wall but she had to sit on it, swing her legs over, and get down on the other side. She sat a minute and said, There's nothing in the world like a new potato with salt and butter. I'd give me two eyes for it.

  We lifted the spade and fork and went to the plot but for all we got there we might as well have stayed at home. The earth was still fresh from being dug and turned over and white worms crawled in the holes where the potatoes and carrots and heads of cabbage used to be.

  My mother said to me, Is this the right plot?

  'Tis.

  She walked the length of it and back. The other women were busy bending over and picking things out of the ground. I could see she wanted to say something to them but I could see also she knew it was no use. I went to pick up the spade and fork and she barked at me, Leave them. They're no use to us now with everything gone. I wanted to say something but her face was so white I was afraid she'd hit me and I backed away, over the wall.

  She came over the wall herself, sitting, swinging her legs, sitting again till Michael said, Mam, can I go hunting berries?

  You can, she said. You might as well.

  If Mr. Calitri likes this story he might make me read it to the class and they'll roll their eyes and say, More misery. The girls might have felt sorry for me over the bed but that's enough, surely. If I go on writing about my miserable childhood they'll say, Stop, stop, life is hard enough, we have our own troubles. So, from now on, I'll write stories about my family moving to the suburbs of Limerick where everyone is well fed and clean from taking a bath at least once a week.

  31

  Paddy Arthur McGovern warns me that if I keep on listening to that noisy jazz music I'll wind up like the Lennon brothers so American I'll forget I'm Irish altogether and what will I be then. It's no use telling him how the Lennons could be so excited about James Joyce. He'd say, Oh, James Joyce, me arse. I grew up in the County
Cavan and no one there ever heard of him and if you don't watch your step you'll be running to Harlem and jitterbuggin' with Negro girls.

  He's going to an Irish dance on Saturday night and if I have any sense I'll go with him. He wants to dance only with Irish girls because if you dance with Americans you never know what you're getting.

  At the Jaeger House on Lexington Avenue Mickey Carton is up there with his band Ruthie Morrissey singing "A Mother's Love Is a Blessing." A great crystal ball revolves on the ceiling, flecking the ballroom with floating silver spots. Paddy Arthur is no sooner in the door than he's waltzing around with the first girl he asks to dance. He has no trouble getting girls to dance and why should he with his six feet one, his black curly hair, his rich black eyebrows, his blue eyes, the dimple on his chin, the cool way he has of offering his hand that says, Come up, girl, so that the girl would never dream of saying no to this vision of a man and when they move out on the floor, no matter what class of a dance it is, waltz, fox-trot, lindy, two-step, he steers her around with hardly a glance at her and when he leads her back to her seat she's the envy of every giggling girl on the seats along the wall.

  He comes to the bar where I'm having a beer for the courage that might be in it. He wants to know why I'm not up dancing. Sure what's the use of coming here if you don't dance with them grand girls along the wall?

  He's right. The grand girls sitting along the wall are like the girls in Cruise's Hotel in Limerick except they're wearing dresses the likes of which you'd never see in Ireland, silk and taffeta and materials strange to me, pink, puce, light blue, ornamented here and there with lacy bows, dresses with no shoulders so stiff at the front that when the girl turns to the right the dress stays where it is. Their hair is trapped with pins and combs for fear it might tumble rich to the shoulders. They sit with their hands in their laps holding fancy purses and they smile only when they talk to each other. Some sit dance after dance, ignored by the men, till they're forced to dance with the girls beside them. They clump across the floor and when the dance ends move to the bar for lemonade or orange squash, the drink of girl couples.

  I can't tell Paddy I'd rather stay where I am, safe at the bar. I can't tell him that going to any kind of a dance gives me a sick empty feeling, that even if a girl got up to dance with me I wouldn't know what to say to her. I could manage a waltz, oompah, oompah, but I could never be like the men on the floor who whisper and make girls laugh so hard they can hardly dance for a whole minute. Buck used to say in Germany that if you can make a girl laugh you're halfway up her leg.

  Paddy dances again and comes to the bar with a girl named Maura and tells me she has a friend, Dolores, who's shy because she's Irish-American and would I dance with her since I was born here and we'd make a good match with her ignorance of Irish dancing and my listening to that jazz music all the time.

  Maura looks at Paddy and smiles. He smiles down at her and winks at me. She says, Excuse me. I want to make sure Dolores is okay, and when she's gone Paddy whispers she's the one he's going home with. She's a head waitress in Schrafft's Restaurant with her own apartment, saving money to go back to Ireland and this will be Paddy's lucky night. He says I should be nice to Dolores, you never know, and he winks again. I think I'll be gettin' me hole tonight, he says.

  Me hole. Of course that's what I'd like myself but that's not the way I'd say it. I prefer Mikey Molloy's way of saying it in Limerick when he called it the excitement. If you're like Paddy with Irish women jumping into your arms you probably don't remember one from another and they all become one hole until you meet the girl you like and she makes you realize she wasn't put into the world to fall on her back for your pleasure. I could never think about Mike Small like that or even Dolores who's standing there blushing and shy, the way I feel myself. Paddy nudges me and talks out of the side of his mouth, Ask her to dance, for Christ's sake.

  All that comes out of me is a mumble and I'm lucky Mickey Carton is playing a waltz with Ruthie singing "There's One Fair County in Ireland," the only dance where I might not make a fool of myself. Dolores smiles at me and blushes and I blush back and there go the two of us blushing around the floor with little silver spots floating across our faces. If I stumble she steps along with me in such a way that the stumble becomes a dance step and after a while I think I'm Fred Astaire and she's Ginger Rogers and I whirl her around sure the girls along the wall are admiring me and dying for a dance with me.

  The waltz stops and even though I'm ready to leave the floor for fear Mickey might start a lindy or a jitterbug Dolores pauses as if to say, Why don't we dance this? And she's so easy on her feet and so light with her touch I look at the other couples, how cool they are, and it's no trouble at all to do it with Dolores, whatever it is, and I push her and pull and twirl her like a top till I'm sure all the girls are eyeing me and envying Dolores till I'm so full of myself I don't notice there's a girl sitting near the door with a crutch sticking out where it shouldn't be and when my foot catches in it I go flying into the laps of the grand girls along the wall who push me off in a rough unfriendly way remarking that some people shouldn't be allowed on the dance floor if they can't hold their drink.

  Paddy is at the door with his arm around Maura. He's laughing but she's not. She looks at Dolores as if to sympathize with her but Dolores helps me to my feet, asking me if I'm all right. Maura comes over and whispers to her and turns to me. Will you take care of Dolores?

  I will.

  She and Paddy leave and Dolores says she'd like to leave, too. She lives in Queens and she says I really don't have to see her all the way home, the E train is safe enough. I can't tell her I'd like to take her home in the hope she might ask me in and there might be some excitement. She surely has her own apartment and she might feel so sorry about the way I tripped over the crutch she wouldn't have the heart to turn me away and we'd be in her bed in no time, warm, naked, mad for each other, missing Mass, breaking the Sixth Commandment over and over and not giving a fiddler's fart.

  When the E train rocks or stops quickly we're thrown together and I can smell her perfume and feel her thigh against mine. It's a good sign when she doesn't pull away from me and when she lets me hold her hand I'm in heaven till she starts talking about Nick, her boyfriend in the navy, and I put her hand back in her lap.

  I can't understand the women in this world, Mike Small who drinks beer with me in Rocky's and then runs to Bob, now this one who lures me onto the E train all the way to the last stop at 179th Street. Paddy Arthur would never have put up with this. Back at the dance hall he would have made certain there was no Nick in the navy and no one at home to interfere with his all-night plans. If there was any doubt he'd have jumped off the train at the next stop, so why don't I? I was soldier of the week in Fort Dix, I trained dogs, I go to college, I read books, and look at me now sneaking through the streets around NYU to avoid Bob the football player and taking a girl home who's planning to marry someone else. It seems everyone in the world has someone, Dolores her Nick, Mike Small her Bob, and Paddy Arthur is well into his night of excitement with Maura in Manhattan and what kind of a bloody fool am I traveling to the end of the line?

  I'm ready to jump off at the next stop and leave Dolores entirely when she takes my hand and tells me how nice I am, that I'm a good dancer, too bad about the crutch, we could have danced all night, that she likes the way I talk, the cute brogue, you can tell I was well brought up, it's so nice that I go to college, and she doesn't understand why I'm hanging around with Paddy Arthur who, it was easy to see, had no good on his mind with respect to Maura. She squeezes my hand and tells me I'm so nice to travel all the way home with her and she'll never forget me and I feel her thigh against mine all the way to the last stop and when we stand to leave the train I have to bend to hide the excitement that's throbbing in my trousers. I'm ready to walk her home but she stands by a bus stop and tells me she lives farther out, in Queens Village, and really, I don't have to go all the way, she'll be all right on the bus. She squee
zes my hand again and I wonder if there's any hope that this might be my lucky night and I'll wind up wild in bed like Paddy Arthur.

  While we wait for the bus she holds my hand again and tells me all about Nick in the navy, how her father doesn't like him because he's Italian and calls him all kinds of insulting names behind his back, how her mother really likes Nick but would never admit it in case her father might come home in a drunken rage and smash the furniture which wouldn't be the first time. The worst nights are when her brother, Kevin, visits and stands up to her father and you wouldn't believe the swearing and the rolling on the floor. Kevin is a linebacker at Fordham and a good match for her father.

  What's a linebacker?

  You don't know what a linebacker is?

  I don't.

  You're the first boy I ever met who didn't know what a linebacker is.

  Boy. I'm twenty-four years old and she's calling me a boy and I'm wondering do you have to be forty to be a man in America?

  All along I'm hoping that things are so terrible with her father she might have her own place but, no, she lives at home and there go my dreams for a night of excitement. You'd think a girl her age would have her own place so that she could invite in the likes of me who see her to the end of the line. I don't care if she squeezes my hand a thousand times. What's the use of having your hand squeezed on a bus in the middle of the night in Queens if there's no promise of a bit of excitement at the end of the journey?