'Tis a Memoir

by Frank McCourt

  They passed up their nickels and dimes. They groaned when they thumbed the book, Five Great Plays of Shakespeare. Man, I can't read this old English.

  I wished I could have dominated my classes like other teachers, imposed on them classic English and American literature. I failed. I caved in and took the easy way with Catcher in the Rye and when that was taken dodged and danced my way to Shakespeare. We'd read the plays and enjoy ourselves and why not? Wasn't he the best?

  Still my students complained till someone called out, Shit, man, excuse the language, Mr. McCourt, but here's this guy saying Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.

  Where? Where? The class wanted to know the page number and all around the room boys declaimed Mark Antony's speech, flung out their arms and laughed.

  Another discovered Hamlet's To be or not to be soliloquy and soon the room was filled with ranting Hamlets.

  The girls raised their hands. Mr. McCourt, the boys have all these great speeches and there's nothing for us.

  Oh, girls, girls, there's Juliet, Lady Macbeth, Ophelia, Gertrude.

  We spent two days plucking morsels from the five plays, Romeo and Juliet; Julius Caesar; Macbeth; Hamlet; Henry IV, Part One.

  My students led and I followed because there was nothing else to do. Remarks had been passed in the hallways, in the students' cafeteria.

  Hey, wass dat?

  It's a book, man.

  Oh, yeah? What book?

  Shakespeare. We're reading Shakespeare.

  Shakespeare? Shit, man, you not reading Shakespeare.

  When the girls wanted to act out Romeo and Juliet the boys yawned and obliged. This would be sissy romantic stuff till the fight scene where Mercutio dies in style, telling the world about his wound.

  'Tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door/But 'tis enough, 'twill serve.

  To be or not to be was the passage everyone memorized but when they recited it they had to be reminded this was a meditation on suicide and not an incitement to arms.

  Oh, yeah?

  Yeah.

  The girls wanted to know why everyone picked on Ophelia especially Laertes, Polonious, Hamlet. Why didn't she fight back? They had sisters like that who were married to bastard sons o' bitches, excuse the language, and you wouldn't believe what they put up with.

  A hand went up. Why didn't Ophelia run away to America?

  Another hand. Because there was no America in the old days. It had to be discovered.

  Whadda you talkin' about? There was always an America. Where do you think the Indians lived?

  I told them they'd have to look it up and the opposing hands agreed to go to the library and report next day.

  One hand, There was an America in Shakespeare's time and she coulda went.

  The other hand, There was an America in Shakespeare's time but no America in Ophelia's time and she cuddena went. If she went in Shakespeare's time there was nothing but Indians and Ophelia woulda been uncomfortable in a tepee which is what they called their houses.

  We moved on to Henry IV, Part One, and all the boys wanted to be Hal, Hotspur, Falstaff. The girls complained again there was nothing for them except for Juliet, Ophelia, Lady Macbeth and Queen Gertrude and look what happened to them. Didn't Shakespeare like women? Did he have to kill everyone who wore a skirt?

  The boys said that's the way it is and the girls snapped back they were sorry we didn't read The Scarlet Letter because one of them had read it and told the rest how Hester Prynne had her beautiful baby, Pearl, and the father was a jerk who died miserable and Hester got her revenge on the whole town of Boston and wasn't that much better than poor Ophelia floating down a stream, out of her mind, talking to herself and throwin' flowers around, wasn't it?

  Mr. Sorola came to observe me with the new head of the Academic Department, Mrs. Popp. They smiled and didn't complain about this Shakespeare book not being on the syllabus though the next term Mrs. Popp took this class away from me. I lodged a grievance and had a hearing before the superintendent. I said that was my class, I had started them reading Shakespeare and I wanted to continue in the next term. The superintendent ruled against me on the grounds that my attendance record was spotty and erratic.

  My Shakespeare students were probably lucky in having the head of the department as their teacher. She was surely more organized than I and more likely to discover deeper meanings.

  48

  Paddy Clancy lived around the corner from me in Brooklyn Heights. He called to see if I'd like to go to the opening of a new bar in the Village, the Lion's Head.

  Of course I'd like to go and I stayed till the bar closed at 4 A.M. and missed work the next day. The bartender, Al Koblin, thought for a while I was one of the singing Clancy Brothers and charged me nothing for the drinks till he discovered I was only Frank McCourt, a teacher. Now even though I had to pay for my drinks I didn't mind because the Lion's Head became my home away from home, a place where I could feel comfortable the way I never did in uptown bars.

  Reporters from the offices of the Village Voice drifted in from next door and they attracted journalists from everywhere. The wall opposite the bar was soon adorned with the framed book jackets of writers who were regular customers.

  That was the wall I coveted, the wall that haunted me and had me dreaming that some day I'd look up at a framed book jacket of my own. Up and down the bar writers, poets, journalists, playwrights talked about their work, their lives, their assignments, their travels. Men and women would have a drink while waiting for cars to planes that would take them to Vietnam, Belfast, Nicaragua. New books came out, Pete Hamill, Joe Flaherty, Joel Oppenheimer, Dennis Smith, and went up on the wall, while I hung on the periphery of the accomplished, the ones who knew the magic of print. At the Lion's Head you had to prove yourself in ink or be quiet. There was no place here for teachers and I went on looking at the wall, envious.

  Mam moved into a small apartment across the street from Malachy on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Now she could see Malachy, his new wife, Diana, their sons, Conor and Cormac, my brother Alphie, his wife, Lynn, and their daughter, Allison.

  She could have visited all of us as often as she liked and when I asked her why she didn't she barked at me, I don't want to be beholden to anyone. It irritated me always when I called and asked her what she was doing and she said, Nothing. If I suggested that she get out of the house and visit a community center or a senior citizens' center she'd say, Arrah, for the love o' Jesus, will you leave me alone. Whenever Alberta invited her to dinner she always made a point of being late, complaining of the long journey from her Manhattan apartment to our house in Brooklyn. I wanted to tell her she didn't have to come at all if it was such a bother to her and the last thing she needed anyway was a dinner she was getting that fat, but I curbed my tongue so that there wouldn't be tension at the table. Unlike the first time she came to dinner and pushed the noodles aside she now devoured everything before her though if you offered her a second helping she'd look prim and say no thanks as if she had the appetite of a butterfly and then pick at the crumbs on the table. If I told her she didn't have to pick at crumbs, there was more food in the kitchen, she'd tell me leave her alone, that I was getting to be a right bloody torment. If I told her she'd be better off if she'd stayed in Ireland she'd bristle, What do you mean I'd be better off?

  Well, you wouldn't be lying in bed half the day with the radio stuck to your ear listening to every half-witted show they have.

  I listen to Malachy on the radio and what's wrong with that?

  You listen to everything. You do nothing.

  Her face would grow pale, her nose pointed, she'd pick at crumbs no longer there and there might be a hint of watery eyes. Then I'd be pricked with guilt and invite her to stay for the night so that she wouldn't have to take that long subway ride to Manhattan.

  No, thank you, I'd rather be in my own bed, if you don't mind.

  Oh, I suppose you're afraid of the sheets, all those diseases from
foreigners in the Laundromat?

  And she'd say, I think now 'tis the drink talking. Where's my coat?

  Alberta would try to soften the moment with another invitation to stay, that we had new sheets and Mam needn't be nervous.

  'Tisn't the sheets at all. I just want to go home, and when she saw me put on my coat she'd say, I don't need anyone to walk me to the subway. I can find my own way.

  You're not going to walk these streets by yourself.

  I walk the streets by myself all the time.

  It was a long silent walk up Court Street to the subway at Borough Hall. I wanted to say something to her. I wanted to get past my irritation and my anger and ask her that simple question, How are you, Mam?

  I couldn't.

  When we reached the station she said I didn't have to pay a fare to get through the turnstiles. She'd be all right on the platform. There were people there and she'd be safe. She was used to it.

  I went in with her thinking we might say something to each other but when the train arrived I let her go without even an attempt at a kiss and watched her stumble toward a seat as the train pulled from the station.

  Down near Court Street and Atlantic Avenue I remembered something she had told me months ago while we sat waiting for Thanksgiving dinner. Isn't it remarkable, she said, the way things turn out in people's lives?

  What do you mean?

  Well, I was sitting in my apartment and I was feeling lonesome so I went up and sat on one of those benches they have in the grassy island in the middle of Broadway and this woman came along, a shopping bag woman, one of the homeless ones, all tattered and greasy, rootin' around in the garbage can till she found a newspaper and sat beside me reading it till she asked me if she could borrow my glasses because she could only read the headlines with the sight she had and when she talked I noticed she had an Irish accent so I asked her where she came from and she told me Donegal a long time ago and wasn't it lovely to be sitting on a bench in the middle of Broadway with people noticing things and asking where you came from. She asked if I could spare a few pennies for soup and I said instead she could come with me to the Associated supermarket and we'd get some groceries and have a proper meal. Oh, she couldn't do that, she said, but I told her that's what I was going to do anyway. She wouldn't come inside the store. She said they wouldn't want the likes of her. I got bread and butter and rashers and eggs and when we got home I told her she could go in and have a nice shower and she was delighted with herself though there wasn't much I could do about her clothes or the bags she carried. We had our dinner and watched television till she started falling asleep on me and I told her lie down there on the bed but she wouldn't. God knows the bed is big enough for four but she laid down on the floor with a shopping bag under her head and when I woke up in the morning she was gone and I missed her.

  I know it wasn't the dinner wine that had me against the wall in a fit of remorse. It was the thought of my mother being so lonesome she had to sit on a street bench, so lonesome she missed the company of a homeless shopping bag woman. Even in the bad days in Limerick she always had an open hand and an open door and why couldn't I be like that to her?

  49

  Teaching nine hours a week at New York Technical College in Brooklyn was easier than twenty-five hours a week at McKee Vocational and Technical High School. Classes were smaller, students older, and there were none of the problems a high school teacher has to deal with, the lavatory pass, the moaning over assignments, the mass of paperwork created by bureaucrats who have nothing to do but create new forms. I could supplement my reduced salary by teaching at Washington Irving Evening High School or substituting at Seward Park High School and Stuyvesant High School.

  The chairman of the English Department at the community college asked me if I'd like to teach a class of paraprofessionals. I said yes though I had no notion of what a paraprofessional was.

  That first class I found out. Here were thirty-six women, African-American with a sprinkling of Hispanics, ranging in age from early twenties to late fifties, teacher aides in elementary schools and in college now with government help. They'd get two-year associate degrees and, perhaps, continue their education so that someday they might become fully qualified teachers.

  That night there was little time for teaching. After I had asked the women to write a short autobiographical essay for the next class they gathered up their books and filed out, apprehensive, still unsure of themselves, of each other, of me. I had the whitest skin in the room.

  When we met again the mood was the same except for one woman who sat with her head on the desk, sobbing. I asked what was the matter. She raised her head, tears on her cheeks.

  I lost my books.

  Oh, well, I said, you'll get another set of books. Just go to the English Department and tell them what happened.

  You mean I won't get throwed out of college?

  No, you won't be throwed, thrown out of college.

  I felt like patting her head but I didn't know how to pat the head of a middle-aged woman who has lost her books. She smiled, we all smiled. Now we could begin. I asked for their compositions and told them I'd read some aloud though I wouldn't use their real names.

  The essays were stiff, self-conscious. As I read I wrote some of the more common misspelled words on the chalkboard, suggested changes in structure, pointed out grammatical errors. It was all dry and tedious till I suggested the ladies write simply and clearly. For their next assignment they could write on anything they liked. They looked surprised. Anything? But we don't have anything to write about. We don't have no adventures.

  They had nothing to write about, nothing but the tensions of their lives, summer riots erupting around them, assassinations, husbands who so often disappeared, children destroyed by drugs, their own daily grind of housework, jobs, school, raising children.

  They loved the strange ways of words. During a discussion on juvenile delinquency Mrs. Williams sang out, No kid o' mine gonna be no yoot.

  Yoot?

  Yeah, you know. Yoot. She held up a newspaper where the headline howled, Youth Slays Mom.

  Oh, I said, and Mrs. Williams went on, These yoots, y'know, runnin' around slayin' people. Killin' 'em, too. Any kid o' mine come home actin' like a yoot an' out he go on his you-know-what.

  The youngest woman in the class, Nicole, turned the tables on me. She sat in the back in a corner and never spoke till I asked the class if they'd like to write about their mothers. Then she raised her hand. How about your mother, Mr. McCourt?

  Questions came like bullets. Is she alive? How many children did she have? Where's your father? Did she have all those children with one man? Where is she living? Who's she living with? She's living alone? Your mother's living alone and she has four sons? How come?

  They frowned. They disapproved. Poor lady with four sons shouldn't be living alone. People should take care of their mothers but what do men know? You can never tell a man what it's like to be a mother and if it wasn't for the mothers America would fall apart.

  In April Martin Luther King was killed and classes were suspended for a week. When we met again I wanted to beg forgiveness for my race. Instead I asked for the essays I had already assigned. Mrs. Williams was indignant. Look, Mr. McCourt, when they tryin' to burn your house down you ain't sittin' around writin' no cawm-po-zishuns.

  In June Bobby Kennedy was killed. My thirty-six ladies wondered what was happening to the world but they agreed you have to carry on, that education was the only road to sanity. When they talked about their children their faces brightened and I became irrelevant to their talk. I sat on my desk while they told each other that now they were in college themselves they stood over their kids to make sure the homework was done.

  On the last night of classes in June there was a final examination. I watched those dark heads bent over papers, the mothers of two hundred and twelve children, and I knew, that no matter what they wrote or didn't write on those papers, no one would fail.

  Th
ey finished. The last paper had been handed in but no one was leaving. I asked if they had another class here. Mrs. Williams stood and coughed. Ah, Mr. McCourt, I must say, I mean we must say, it was a wonderful thing to come to college and learn so much about English and everything and we got you this little something hopin' you'll like it an' all.

  She sat down, sobbing, and I thought, This class begins and ends in tears.

  The gift was passed up, a bottle of shaving lotion in a fancy red and black box. When I sniffed it I was nearly knocked over but I sniffed again with gusto and told the ladies I'd keep the bottle forever in memory of them, this class, their yoots.

  Instead of going home after that class I took the subway to West Ninety-sixth Street in Manhattan and called my mother from a street telephone.

  Would you like to have a snack?

  I don't know. Where are you?

  I'm a few blocks away.

  Why?

  I just happened to be in the neighborhood.