'Tis a Memoir

by Frank McCourt

  He handed me back the telephone. And I'll tell you something else, he said. It's that goddam Harry Ball that's responsible for all them pigeons shitting on my air conditioner. He sits in his goddam aluminum beach chair when he's looking for a parking spot and feeds them pigeons over at Borough Hall. I told him once cut it out, that they were just rats with wings, and he got so mad he wouldn't talk to me for weeks and that suited me fine. These old guys feed pigeons because they don't have wives no more, anymore? I dunno. I ran away from the orphanage but I don't feed pigeons.

  He knocked on our door one night and when I opened it he was in his ragged bathrobe, holding a sheaf of papers, and drunk. It was his will and he wanted to read me part of it. No, he wouldn't have coffee. It killed him, but he'd have a beer.

  So, you helped me out and Alberta had me up for dinner and no one ever has old guys up for dinner so I'm leaving you four thousand dollars and Alberta four thousand and I'm leaving you my Thomas Aquinas and my ties. Here's what it says in the will, To Frank McCourt I leave my collection of ties which he has admired and which are anything but somber.

  When we moved to Warren Street we lost touch with Virgil for a while though I wanted him to be godfather at Maggie's christening. Instead there was a call from a lawyer telling me of Virgil Frank's death and the terms of his will as it pertained to us. However, said the lawyer, he changed his mind about the Summa Theologica and the ties, so all you get is the money. Do you accept this?

  Sure, yes, but why did he change it?

  He heard you went to Ireland for a visit and that upset him because you contributed to the gold flow.

  What do you mean?

  According to Mr. Frank's will President Johnson said a few years ago that Americans traveling abroad were draining the country of gold and weakening the economy and that's why you're not getting the ties that are anything but somber and the three volumes of Aquinas. Okay?

  Oh, sure.

  Now that we had a portion of a down payment we searched the neighborhood for a house. Our landlady, Hortensia Odones, heard we'd been looking and one day she climbed the outside fire escape at the back of the house and startled me when I saw her head at the kitchen window with the great curly wig.

  Frankie, Frankie, open the window. It's cold out here. Lemme in.

  I reached out to help her in but she yelled, Watch my hair, watch my hair, and I had to do the heavy work of hauling her in the kitchen window while she hung on to her wig.

  Whoo, she said, whoo. Frankie, you got any rum?

  No, Hortensia, only wine or Irish whiskey.

  Gimme a whiskey, Frankie. My ass is frozen.

  Here, Hortensia. Tell me, why don't you come up the stairs?

  Because it's dark down there, that's why, and I can't afford to keep lights goin' night an' day an' I can see the fire escape day an' night.

  Oh.

  And what's this I hear? You an' Alberta lookin' for a house? Why don't you buy this one?

  How much?

  Fifty thousand.

  Fifty thousand?

  That's right. Is that too much?

  Oh, no. That's fine.

  The day we signed the agreement we drank rum with her while she told us how sad she was to leave this house after all the years she was there, not with her husband, Odones, but her boyfriend, Louis Weber, who was famous for running the numbers game in the neighborhood and even though he was Puerto Rican he was afraid of nobody, not even the Cosa Nostra who tried to take over till Louis walked into the Don's house down in Carroll Gardens and said, What is this shit? excuse the language, and the Don admired Louis for his balls and told his goombahs back off, don't bother Louis, and you know, Frankie, no one messes with the Italians in Carroll Gardens. You don't see no coloreds or PRs down there, no sir, and if you do they're passing through.

  The Mafia might have backed away from Louis but Hortensia said you couldn't trust them and anytime she and Louis went for a drive they rode with two guns between them, his and hers, and he told her if anyone came with trouble and put him out of commission she was to take the steering wheel and yank it toward the sidewalk so that they'd hit a pedestrian instead of traffic and the insurance company would take care of things and if they didn't and gave Hortensia any trouble he'd leave her with a set of phone numbers of a few guys, PRs, the goddam Mafia wasn't the only game in town, and these guys would take care of the insurance companies, the greedy bastards, excuse the language, Alberta, is there any rum left, Frankie?

  Poor Louis, she said, the Kefauver Commission was bothering him but he died in his bed and I never go for a ride no more but he left me a gun downstairs, you wanna see my gun, Frankie, no? well, I have it and anyone comes into my apartment without an invitation gets it, Frankie, right between the eyes, bang, boom, he's gone.

  Neighbors smiled and nodded and told us we had bought a gold mine, that everyone knew Louis had buried money in the basement of our new house where Hortensia still lived, or over our heads in the false ceiling of the living room. All we had to do was pull down that ceiling and we'd be up to our armpits in hundred-dollar bills.

  When Hortensia moved out we dug up the basement to install a new waste line. No buried money. We pulled down false ceilings, exposed bricks and beams. We tapped on walls and someone suggested we consult a psychic.

  We found an old doll with tufts of hair, no eyes, no arms, one leg. We kept it for our two-year-old, Maggie, who called it The Beast and loved it over all her other dolls.

  Hortensia moved to a small street-level apartment on Court Street and stayed there till she died or moved back to Puerto Rico. I often wished I had spent more time with her and a bottle of rum or that I had introduced her to Virgil Frank so that we could have rum and Irish whiskey and talk about Louis Weber and the gold flow and ways of reducing your telephone bills with an egg timer.

  51

  It's 1969 and I'm substitute teaching for Joe Curran, who is out for a few weeks with the drink. His students ask if I know Greek and seem disappointed that I don't. After all, Mr. Curran would sit at his desk and read or recite from memory long passages from The Odyssey, yeah, in Greek, and he'd remind his students daily he was a graduate of Boston Latin School and Boston College and tell them anyone who didn't know his Greek or Latin couldn't consider himself educated, could never lay claim to being a gentleman. Yes, yes, this might be Stuyvesant High School, says Mr. Curran, and you might be the brightest kids from here to the foothills of the Rockies, your heads stuffed with science and mathematics, but all you need in this life is your Homer, your Sophocles, your Plato, your Aristotle, your Aristophanes for the lighter moments, your Virgil for the dark places, your Horace to escape the mundane, and your Juvenal when you're completely pissed off with the world. The grandeur, boys, the grandeur that was Greece and the glory that was Rome.

  It wasn't the Greeks or the Romans his students loved, it was the forty minutes when Joe droned or declaimed and they could daydream, catch up on homework for other classes, doodle, nibble at sandwiches from home, carve their initials on desks that might have been occupied by James Cagney, Thelonius Monk or certain Nobel Laureates. Or they could dream of the nine girls who had just been admitted for the first time in the school's history. The nine Vestal Virgins, Joe Curran called them, and there were complaints from parents that the suggestiveness of his language was inappropriate.

  Oh, inappropriate my ass, said Joe. Why can't they speak simple English? Why can't they use a simple word like wrong?

  His students said, Yeah, wasn't it something to see the girls in the hallway, nine girls, nearly three thousand boys and what about the boys in the school, fifty percent for Chrissakes, who didn't want the girls, what about that? They had to be dead from the waist down, didn't they?

  Then you'd wonder about Mr. Curran himself up there shifting into English to talk about The Iliad and the friendship of Achilles and Patroclus, he couldn't stop talking about those two old Greeks, and how Achilles was so furious with Hector for killing Patroclus he ki
lled Hector and dragged his body behind his chariot to show the power of his love for his dead friend, the love that dare not speak its name.

  But, boys oh boys, is there a sweeter moment in all of literature than that moment when Hector removed his helmet to calm the fears of his child? Oh, if only all our fathers removed their helmets. And when Joe blubbered into his gray handkerchief and used words like piss you knew he'd left the school at lunch hour for a little tot around the corner at the Gashouse Bar. There were days he returned so excited from thoughts that had come to him on the bar stool he wanted to thank God for leading him to teaching so that he could forget the Greeks for a while to sing the praises of the great Alexander Pope and his Ode on Solitude.

  Happy the man whose wish and care

  A few paternal acres bound

  Content to breathe his native air,

  In his own ground.

  And remember, boys and girls, is there a girl here? raise your hand if you're a girl, no girls? remember, boys, that Pope was indebted to Horace and Horace was indebted to Homer and Homer was indebted to God knows who. Will you promise on your mothers' heads to remember that? If you remember Pope's debt to Horace you'll know no one springs full-blown from his father's head. Will you remember?

  We will, Mr. Curran.

  What am I to tell Joe's students who complain that they have to read The Odyssey and all this old stuff? Who cares what happened in ancient Greece or Troy with men dying right and left over that stupid Helen? Who cares? Boys in the class say you wouldn't catch them fighting to the death over some girl that didn't want them. Yeah, they could understand Romeo and Juliet because a lotta families are dumb about you going out with someone from another religion and they could understand West Side Story and the gangs but they could never believe grown men would leave home the way Odysseus left Penelope and Telemachus and go off to fight over this stupid chick who didn't know enough to come inside. They have to admit Odysseus was cool the way he tried to dodge the draft, acting crazy an' all and they like the way Achilles fooled him because Achilles is nowhere near as smart as Odysseus but like they can't believe he'd stay away twenty years fighting and fooling around and expect Penelope to like sit there spinning and weaving and telling the suitors get lost. Girls in the class say they can believe it, they really can, that women can be true forever because that's the way women are, and one girl tells the class what she read in a Byron poem, that man's love is of his life a thing apart, 'tis woman's whole existence. Boys hoot at this but girls applaud and tell them what all the psychology books say, that boys their age are three years behind in mental development though there are some in this class who must be at least six years behind and they should therefore shut up. The boys try to be sarcastic, raising their eyebrows and telling each other, Oh, law de daw, smell me, I'm developed, but the girls look at each other, shrug, toss their hair and ask me in a lofty tone if we could please get back to the lesson.

  Lesson? What are they talking about? What lesson? All I can remember is the usual high school whine about why we have to read this and why we have to read that, and my irritation, my unspoken response, is that you have to read it, goddammit, because it's part of the curriculum and because I'm telling you read it, I'm the teacher, and if you don't cut the whining and complaining you'll get an English grade on your report card that will make zero look like a gift from the gods because I'm standing here listening to you and looking at you, the privileged, the chosen, the pampered, with nothing to do but go to school, hang out, do a little studying, go to college, get into a money-making racket, grow into your fat forties, still whining, still complaining, when there are millions around the world who'd offer fingers and toes to be in your seats, nicely clothed, well fed, with the world by the balls.

  That's what I'd like to say and never will because I might be accused of using inappropriate language and that would give me a Joe Curran fit. No. I can't talk like that because I have to find my way in this place, a far cry from McKee Vocational and Technical High School.

  In the spring of 1972 the English Department chairman, Roger Goodman, offers me a permanent position at Stuyvesant High School. I'll have my own five classes and a building assignment where, once more, I'll keep order in the students' cafeteria and make sure no one drops ice cream wrappers or bits of hot dog on the floor though boys and girls are allowed to sit together here and romance kills appetites.

  I'll have a small homeroom, the first nine girls, seniors and ready to graduate. The girls are kind. They bring me things, coffee, bagels, newspapers. They're critical. They say I should do something about my hair, let the sideburns grow, this is 1972 and I should get with it, be cool, and do something about my clothes. They say I dress like an old man, and even though I have a few gray hairs I don't have to look so old. They tell me I look uptight and one of them kneads my neck and shoulders. Relax, she says, relax, we're harmless, and they laugh the way women laugh when they share a secret and you think it's about you.

  I'll have five classes a day five days a week where I have to memorize the names of one hundred and seventy-five students along with the names of a full homeroom class next year, another thirty-five, and I'll have to be particularly careful with the Chinese and Korean students with their sarcastic, That's okay if you don't know our names, Mr. McCourt, we all look the same. Or they might laugh, Yeah, and all you white people look the same.

  I know all this from my days as a substitute teacher but now I watch my students, my very own, stream into my room this first day of February 1972, feast of St. Brigid, and I'm praying to you, Brigid, because these are kids I'll be seeing five days a week for five months and I don't know if I'm up to it. The times they are a-changin' and you can see these Stuyvesant kids are worlds and years away from the ones I first met at McKee. We've had wars and assassinations since then, the two Kennedys, Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers. Boys at McKee wore short hair or pompadours greased back to a duck's ass. Girls had blouses and skirts and their hair was permed to the stiffness of a helmet. Stuyvesant boys wear hair so long people on the streets sneer, You can hardly tell them from the girls, ha ha. They wear tie-dye shirts, jeans and sandals so that no one will ever guess they come from comfortable families all over New York. Stuyvesant girls let hair and breasts hang loose and drive the boys mad with desire and cut their jeans at the knees for that cool poverty effect because like you know they've had it with all that middle-class crap.

  Oh, yeah, they're cooler than the McKee kids because they've got it made. In eight months they'll be at colleges and universities all over the country, Yale, Stanford, MIT, Williams, Harvard, lords and ladies of the earth, and here in my classroom they sit where they like, chatting, ignoring me, giving me their backs, one more teacher obstructing their way to graduation and the real world. Some stare as if to say, Who is this guy? They slump and slouch and gaze out the window or over my head. Now I have to get their attention and that's what I say, Excuse me, may I have your attention? A few stop talking and look at me. Others look offended at the interruption and turn away again.

  My three senior classes groan with the burden of the textbook they have to carry every day, an anthology of English literature. The juniors complain over the weight of their anthology of American literature. The books are sumptuous, richly illustrated, designed to challenge, motivate, illuminate, entertain, and they're expensive. I tell my students that carrying textbooks strengthens their upper bodies and hope the contents seep up to their minds.

  They glare at me. Who is this guy?

  There are teaching guides so detailed and comprehensive I need never think for myself. They are packed with enough quizzes, tests, examinations to keep my students in a constant state of nervous tension. There are hundreds of multiple choice questions, true or false questions, fill in the blank spaces, match column A with column B, peremptory questions ordering the student to explain why Hamlet was mean to his mother, what Keats meant by negative capability, what Melville was getting at in his chapter on the whiteness of
the whale.

  I'm ready, boys and girls, to march through the chapters from Hawthorne to Hemingway, from Beowulf to Virginia Woolf. Tonight you are to read the pages assigned. Tomorrow we'll discuss. There may be a quiz. Then again there may not be a quiz. Just don't gamble on it. Only the teacher knows for sure. On Tuesday there will be a test. Three Tuesdays from now there will be an exam, a big exam, and yes, it will count. Your whole report card grade hinges on this exam. You also have tests on physics and calculus? Sorry for your troubles. This is English, the queen of the curriculum.

  And you don't know it, boys and girls, but I am armed with my teaching guides on American and English literature. I have them safe here in my bag, all the questions that will have you scratching your little heads, gnawing your pencils, dreading report card day, and, I suppose, hating me because I'm the one who can thwart your high Ivy League ambitions. I'm the one who skulked around the lobby of the Biltmore Hotel cleaning up for your fathers and mothers.

  This is Stuyvesant and isn't this the best high school in the city, some say the best in the country? You asked for it. You could have gone to your neighborhood high schools where you'd be kings and queens, numero uno, top of your class. Here you're just one of the crowd, scrambling for grades to bolster the precious average that will slip you into the Ivy League. It's your great god, isn't it, the average? Down in the Stuyvesant basement they should construct a sanctum with an altar. They should mount on that altar a great red blinking neon 9, blink blink blink, the sacred initial digit you're desperate for on every grade, and you should pray and worship there. Oh, God, send me As and nineties.