'Tis a Memoir

by Frank McCourt

  A wow in any classroom means something is happening.

  There is no talk of quizzes or tests and if grades have to be assigned for the bureaucrats well then students are capable of evaluating themselves. We know what's going on in "Little Red Riding Hood," that if you don't follow the path the way your mother tells you you're gonna meet that big bad wolf and there will be trouble, man, trouble, and like how come everyone complains about violence on television and no one says a word about the viciousness of the father and stepmother in "Hansel and Gretel," how come?

  From the back of the room a boy's angry cry, Fathers are such assholes.

  And for a whole class period there's a heated discussion of "Humpty Dumpty."

  Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall,

  Humpty Dumpty had a great fall;

  All the king's horses

  And all the king's men

  Couldn't put Humpty together again.

  So, I ask, what's going on in this nursery rhyme? The hands are up. Well, like, this egg falls off the wall and if you study biology or physics you know you can never put an egg back together again. I mean, like, it's common sense.

  Who says it's an egg? I ask.

  Of course it's an egg. Everyone knows that.

  Where does it say it's an egg?

  They're thinking. They're searching the text for egg, any mention, any hint of egg. They won't give in.

  There are more hands and indignant assertions of egg. All their lives they knew this rhyme and there was never a doubt that Humpty Dumpty was an egg. They're comfortable with the idea of egg and why do teachers have to come along and destroy everything with all this analysis.

  I'm not destroying. I just want to know where you got the idea that Humpty is an egg.

  Because, Mr. McCourt, it's in all the pictures and whoever drew the first picture musta known the guy who wrote the poem or he'd never have made it an egg.

  All right. If you're content with the idea of egg we'll let it be but I know the future lawyers in this class will never accept egg where there is no evidence of egg.

  As long as there's no threat of grades they're comfortable with the matter of childhood and when I suggest they write their own children's books they don't complain, they don't resist.

  Oh, yeah, yeah, what a great idea.

  They are to write, illustrate and bind their books, original work, and when they're finished I take them to an elementary school down the street on First Avenue to be read and evaluated by real critics, the ones who would read such books, third and fourth graders.

  Oh, yeah, yeah, the little ones, that'd be cute.

  On a bitter January day the little ones are brought to Stuyvesant by their teacher. Aw, gee, look at 'em. So c-u-t-e. Look at their little coats and earmuffs and mittens and their little colored boots and their little frozen faces. Aw, cute.

  The books are laid out on a long table, books of all sizes, shapes, and the room blazes with color. My students sit and stand, giving up their seats to their little critics who sit on desks, their feet dangling far above the floor. One by one they come to the table to select the books they read and to comment. I've already warned my students these small children are poor liars, all they know for the moment is the truth. They read from sheets their teacher helped them prepare.

  The book I read is Petey and the Space Spider. This book is okay except for the beginning, the middle and the end.

  The author, a tall Stuyvesant junior, smiles weakly and looks at the ceiling. His girlfriend hugs him.

  Another critic. The book I read was called Over There and I didn't like it because people shouldn't write about war and people shooting each other in the face and going to the bathroom in their pants because they're scared. People shouldn't write about things like that when they can write about nice things like flowers and pancakes.

  For the little critic there is wild applause from her classmates, from the Stuyvesant authors a stony silence. The author of Over There glares over the head of his critic.

  Their teacher had asked her pupils to answer the question, Would you buy this book for yourself or anyone else?

  No, I wouldn't buy this book for me or anyone. I already have this book. It was written by Dr. Seuss.

  The critic's classmates laugh and their teacher tells them shush but they can't stop and the plagiarist, sitting on the windowsill, turns red and doesn't know what to do with his eyes. He's a bad boy, did the wrong thing, gave the little ones ammunition for their jeers, but I want to comfort him because I know why he did that bad thing, that he could hardly be in the mood for creating a children's book when his parents separated during the Christmas break, that he's caught in the bitterness of a custody battle, doesn't know what to do when mother and father pull him in opposite directions, that he feels like running to his grandfather in Israel, that with all this he can meet his English assignment only by stapling together a few pages on which he has copied a Dr. Seuss story and illustrating it with stick figures, that this is surely the lowest point in his life and how do you handle the humiliation when you're caught in the act by this smartass third grader who stands there laughing in the spotlight. He looks at me across the room and I shake my head, hoping he understands that I understand. I feel I should go to him, put my arm around his shoulder, comfort him, but I hold back because I don't want third graders or high school juniors to think I condone plagiarism. For the moment I have to hold the high moral ground and let him suffer.

  The little ones get into their winter clothes and leave and my classroom is quiet. A Stuyvesant author who suffered negative criticism says he hopes those damn kids get lost in the snow. Another tall junior, Alex Newman, says he feels okay because his book was praised but what those kids did to a few of the authors was disgraceful. He says some of those kids are assassins and there is agreement around the room.

  But they're softened up for the American Literature of the junior year, ready for the rant of Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. We chant Vachel Lindsay and Robert Service and T. S. Eliot, who can be recruited for either side of the Atlantic. We tell jokes because every joke is a short story with a fuse and an explosion. We journey back into childhood for games and street rhymes, Miss Lucy and Ring-around-a-rosy, and visiting educators wonder what's going on in this classroom.

  And tell me, Mr. McCourt, how does that prepare our children for college and the demands of society?

  55

  On the table by the bed in my mother's apartment there were bottles of pills, tablets, capsules, liquid medicines, take this for that and that for this three times a day when it's not four but not when you're driving or operating heavy machinery, take before, during and after meals avoiding alcohol and other stimulants and be sure you don't mix your medications, which Mam did, confusing the emphysema pills with the pills for the pain of her new hip and the pills that put her to sleep or woke her up and the cortisone that bloated her and caused hair to grow on her chin so that she was terrified to leave the house without her little blue plastic razor in case she might be away awhile and in danger of sprouting all kinds of hair and she'd be ashamed of her life, so she would, ashamed of her life.

  The city provided a woman to care for her, bathe her, cook, take her for walks if she was able for it. When she wasn't able for it she watched television and the woman watched with her though she reported later that Mam spent much of her time staring at a spot on the wall or looking out the window delighting in the times her grandson, Conor, called up to her and they chatted while he hung from the iron bars that secured her windows.

  The woman from the city lined up the pill bottles and warned Mam to take them in a certain order during the night but Mam would forget and become so confused no one knew what she might have done to herself and the ambulance would have to take her to Lenox Hill Hospital where she was now well known.

  The last time she was in the hospital I called her from my school to ask how she was.

  Ah, I dunno.

  What do you mean you dunno?
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  I'm fed up. They're sticking things in me and pulling things out of me.

  Then she whispered, If you're coming to see me, would you do me a favor?

  I would. What is it?

  You're not to tell anyone about this.

  I won't. What is it?

  Will you bring me a blue plastic razor?

  A plastic razor? For what?

  Never mind. Couldn't you just bring it and stop asking questions?

  Her voice broke and there was sobbing.

  All right, I'll bring it. Are you there?

  She could barely talk with the sobbing. And when you come up give the razor to the nurse and don't come in till she tells you.

  I waited while the nurse took in the razor and screened Mam from the world. On her way out, the nurse whispered, She's shaving. It's the cortisone. She's embarrassed.

  All right, said Mam, you can come in now and don't be asking me any questions even if you didn't do what I asked you.

  What do you mean?

  I asked you for a blue plastic razor and you brought me a white one.

  What's the difference?

  There's a big difference but you wouldn't know. I won't say another word about it.

  You look fine.

  I'm not fine. I'm fed up, I told you. I just want to die.

  Oh, stop. You'll be out by Christmas. You'll be dancing.

  I will not be dancing. Look, there's women running around this country getting abortions right and left and I can't even die.

  What in God's name is the connection between you and women getting abortions?

  Her eyes filled. Here I am in the bed, dying or not dying, and you're tormenting me with theology.

  My brother Michael came into the room, all the way from San Francisco. He prowled the area around her bed. He kissed her and massaged her shoulders and feet. That'll relax you, he said.

  I'm relaxed, she said. If I was any more relaxed I'd be dead and wouldn't that be a relief.

  Michael looked at her and at me and around the room and his eyes were watery. Mam told him he should be back in San Francisco with his wife and children.

  I'll be going back tomorrow.

  Well, it was hardly worth your while, all this traveling, was it?

  I had to see you.

  She drifted off and we went to a bar on Lexington Avenue for a few drinks with Alphie and Malachy's son, young Malachy. We didn't talk about Mam. We listened to young Malachy, who was twenty and didn't know what to do with his life. I told him since his mother was Jewish he could go to Israel and join the army. He said he wasn't Jewish but I insisted he was, that he had the right of return. I told him if he went to the Israeli Consulate and announced he wanted to join the Israeli army it would be a publicity coup for them. Imagine, young Malachy McCourt, a name like that, joining the Israeli army. He'd be on the front page of every paper in New York.

  He said no, he didn't want his ass shot off by those crazy Arabs. Michael said he wouldn't be up there on the front lines, he'd be back where he could be used for propaganda purposes and all those exotic Israeli girls would be throwing themselves at him.

  He said no again and I told him it was a waste of time buying him drinks when he wouldn't do a simple thing like joining the Israeli army and carving out a career for himself. I told him if I had a Jewish mother I'd be in Jerusalem in a minute.

  That night I returned to Mam's room. A man stood at the end of her bed. He was bald, he had a gray beard and a gray three-piece suit. He jingled the change in his trouser pocket and told my mother, You know, Mrs. McCourt, you have every right to be angry when you're ill and you do have a right to express it.

  He turned to me. I'm her psychiatrist.

  I'm not angry, said Mam. I just want to die and ye won't let me.

  She turned to me. Will you tell him go away?

  Go away, Doctor.

  Excuse me, I'm her doctor.

  Go away.

  He left and Mam complained they were tormenting her with priests and psychiatrists and even if she was a sinner she'd done penance a hundred times over, that she was born doing penance. I'm dying for something in my mouth, she said, something tarty like lemonade.

  I brought her an artificial lemon filled with concentrated juice and poured it into a glass with a little water. She tasted it. I asked you for lemonade and all you gave me was water.

  No, that's lemonade.

  She's tearful again. One little thing I ask you, one little thing and you can't do it for me. Would it be too much to ask you to shift my feet, would it? They're in the one place all day.

  I want to ask her why she doesn't move her feet herself but that will only lead to tears so I move them.

  How's that?

  How's what?

  Your feet.

  What about my feet?

  I moved them.

  You did? Well, I didn't feel it. You won't give me lemonade. You won't shift my feet. You won't bring me a proper blue plastic razor. Oh, God, what use is it having four sons if you can't get your feet shifted?

  All right. Look. I'm moving your feet.

  Look? How can I look? 'Tis hard for me to lift my head from the pillow to be looking at my feet. Are you done tormenting me?

  Is there anything else?

  It's a furnace in here. Would you open the window?

  But it's freezing outside.

  There are tears. Can't get me lemonade, can't . . .

  All right, all right. I open the window to a blast of cold air from Seventy-seventh Street that freezes the sweat on her face. Her eyes are closed and when I kiss her there is no taste of salt.

  Should I stay awhile or even all night? The nurses don't seem to mind. I could push this chair back, rest my head against the wall and doze. No. I might as well go home. Maggie will be singing tomorrow with the choir at the Plymouth Church and I don't want her to see me slouching and red-eyed.

  All the way back to Brooklyn I feel I should return to the hospital but a friend is having an opening night party for his bar, the Clark Street Station. There is music and merry chatter. I stand outside. I can't go in.

  When Malachy calls at three in the morning he doesn't have to say the words. All I can do is make a cup of tea the way Mam did at unusual times and sit up in the bed in a dark darker than darkness knowing by now they've moved her to a colder place, that gray fleshly body that carried seven of us into the world. I sip my hot tea for the comfort because there are feelings I didn't expect. I thought I'd know the grief of the grown man, the fine high mourning, the elegiac sense to suit the occasion. I didn't know I'd feel like a child cheated.

  I'm sitting up in the bed with my knees pulled to my chest and there are tears that won't come to my eyes but beat instead like a small sea around my heart.

  For once, Mam, my bladder is not near my eye and why isn't it?

  Here I am looking at my lovely ten-year-old daughter, Maggie, in her white dress, singing Protestant hymns with the choir at the Plymouth Church of the Brethren when I should be at Mass praying for the repose of the soul of my mother, Angela McCourt, mother of seven, believer, sinner, though when I contemplate her seventy-three years on this earth I can't believe the Lord God Almighty on His throne would even dream of consigning her to the flames. A God like that wouldn't deserve the time of day. Her life was Purgatory enough and surely she's in the better place with her three children, Margaret, Oliver, Eugene.

  After the service I tell Maggie her grandmother has died and she wonders why I'm dry-eyed. You know, Dad, it's all right if you cry.

  My brother Michael has returned to San Francisco and I'm meeting Malachy and Alphie for breakfast on West Seventy-second Street near the Walter B. Cooke Funeral Home. When Malachy orders a hearty meal Alphie says, I don't know how you can eat so much with your mother dead, and Malachy tells him, I have to sustain my grief, don't I?

  Afterward, at the funeral home, we meet Diana and Lynn, wives of Malachy and Alphie. We sit in a semicircle at the desk of the funeral c
ounselor. He wears a gold ring, a gold watch, a gold tie clasp, gold spectacles. He wields a gold pen and flashes a consoling golden smile. He places a large book on the desk and tells us the first casket is a very elegant item and would be somewhat less than ten thousand dollars, very nice indeed. We don't linger. We tell him keep turning the pages till he reaches the last item, a coffin for less than three thousand. Malachy inquires, What is the absolute rock-bottom price?

  Well, sir, will this be interment or cremation?

  Cremation.

  Before he answers I try to lighten the moment by telling him and my family of the conversation I had with Mam a week ago.

  What do you want us to do with you when you go?

  Oh, I'd like to be brought back and buried with my family in Limerick.

  Mam, do you know the cost of transporting someone your size?