Angela's Ashes

by Frank McCourt

  I can't go back. I'm never going back. You can come here any time you like.

  His eyes glint with tears and that gives me such a pain in my heart I want to say, All right, I'll come with you. I'm only saying that. I know I'll never be able to face Laman Griffin again and I don't know if I can look at my mother. I watch Michael go up the lane with the sole of his shoe broken and clacking along the pavement. When I start that job at the post office I'll buy him shoes so I will. I'll give him an egg and take him to the Lyric Cinema for the film and the sweets and then we'll go to Naughton's and eat fish and chips till our bellies are sticking out a mile. I'll get money some day for a house or a flat with electric light and a lavatory and beds with sheets blankets pillows like the rest of the world. We'll have breakfast in a bright kitchen with flowers dancing in a garden beyond, delicate cups and saucers, eggcups, eggs soft in the yolk and ready to melt the rich creamery butter, a teapot with a cozy on it, toast with butter and marmalade galore. We'll take our time and listen to music from the BBC or the American Armed Forces Network. I'll buy proper clothes for the whole family so our arses won't be hanging out of our pants and we won't have the shame. The thought of the shame brings a pain in my heart and starts me sniffling. The Abbot says, What's up with you? Didn't you have your bread? Didn't you have your tay? What more do you want? 'Tis an egg you'll be lookin' for next.

  There's no use talking to someone who was dropped on his head and sells papers for a living.

  He complains he can't be feeding me forever and I'll have to get my own bread and tea. He doesn't want to come home and find me reading in the kitchen with the electric lightbulb blazing away. He can read numbers so he can and when he goes out to sell papers he reads the electric meter so he'll know how much I used and if I don't stop turning on that light he'll take the fuse out and carry it in his pocket and if I put another fuse in he'll have the electricity pulled out altogether and go back to gas, which was good enough for his poor dead mother and will surely suit him for all he does is sit up in the bed to eat his fish and chips and count his money before he goes to sleep.

  I get up early like Dad and go on long walks into the country. I walk around the graveyard in the old abbey at Mungret where my mother's relations are buried and I go up the boreen to the Norman castle at Carrigogunnell where Dad brought me twice. I climb to the top and Ireland is spread out before me, the Shannon shining its way to the Atlantic. Dad told me this castle was built hundreds of years ago and if you wait for the larks to stop their singing over there you can hear the Normans below hammering and talking and getting ready for battle. Once he brought me here in the dark so that we could hear Norman and Irish voices down through the centuries and I heard them. I did.

  Sometimes I'm up there alone on the heights of Carrigogunnell and there are voices of Norman girls from olden times laughing and singing in French and when I see them in my mind I'm tempted and I climb to the very top of the castle where once there was a tower and there in full view of Ireland I interfere with myself and spurt all over Carrigogunnell and fields beyond.

  That's a sin I could never tell a priest. Climbing to great heights and going at yourself before all of Ireland is surely worse than doing it in a private place with yourself or with another or with some class of a beast. Somewhere down there in the fields or along the banks of the Shannon a boy or a milkmaid might have looked up and seen me in my sin and if they did I'm doomed because the priests are always saying that anyone who exposes a child to sin will have a millstone tied around his neck and be cast into the sea.

  Still, the thought of someone watching me brings on the excitement again. I wouldn't want a small boy to be watching me. No, no, that would surely lead to the millstone, but if there was a milkmaid gawking up she'd surely get excited and go at herself though I don't know if girls can go at themselves when they don't have anything to go at. No equipment, as Mikey Molloy used to say.

  I wish that old deaf Dominican priest would come back so that I could tell him my troubles with the excitement but he's dead now and I'll have to face a priest who'll go on about the millstone and the doom.

  Doom. That's the favorite word of every priest in Limerick.

  I walk back along O'Connell Avenue and Ballinacurra where people have their bread and milk delivered early to their doorsteps and surely there's no harm if I borrow a loaf or a bottle with every intention of giving it back when I get my job at the post office. I'm not stealing, I'm borrowing, and that's not a mortal sin. Besides, I stood on top of a castle this morning and committed a sin far worse than stealing bread and milk and if you commit one sin you might as well commit a few more because you get the same sentence in hell. One sin, eternity. A dozen sins, eternity.

  Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, as my mother would say. I drink the odd pint of milk and leave the bottle so that the milkman won't be blamed for not delivering. I like milkmen because one of them gave me two broken eggs which I swallowed raw with bits of shells and all. He said I'd grow up powerful if I had nothing else but two eggs in a pint of porter every day. Everything you need is in the egg and everything you want is in the pint.

  Some houses get better bread than others. It costs more and that's what I take. I feel sorry for the rich people who will get up in the morning and go to the door and find their bread missing but I can't let myself starve to death. If I starve I'll never have the strength for my telegram boy job at the post office, which means I'll have no money to put back all that bread and milk and no way of saving to go to America and if I can't go to America I might as well jump into the River Shannon. It's only a few weeks till I get my first wages in the post office and surely these rich people won't collapse with the hunger till then. They can always send the maid out for more. That's the difference between the poor and the rich. The poor can't send out for more because there's no money to send out for more and if there was they wouldn't have a maid to send. It's the maids I have to worry about. I have to be careful when I borrow the milk and the bread and they're at the front doors polishing knobs, knockers and letter boxes. If they see me they'll be running to the woman of the house, Oh, madam, madam, there's an urchin beyant that's makin' off with all the milk and bread.

  Beyant. Maids talk like that because they're all from the country, Mullingar heifers, says Paddy Clohessy's uncle, beef to the heels, and they wouldn't give you the steam of their piss.

  I bring home the bread and even if The Abbot is surprised he doesn't say, Where did you get it? because he was dropped on his head and that knocks the curiosity out of you. He just looks at me with his big eyes that are blue in the middle and yellow all around and slurps his tea from the great cracked mug his mother left behind. He tells me, That's me mug and don't be drinkin' your tay oush of ish.

  Oush of ish. That's the Limerick slum talk that always worried Dad. He said, I don't want my sons growing up in a Limerick lane saying, Oush of ish. It's common and low-class. Say out of it properly.

  And Mam said, I hope it keeps fine for you but you're not doing much to get us oush of ish.

  *

  Out beyond Ballinacurra I climb orchard walls for apples. If there's a dog I move on because I don't have Paddy Clohessy's way of talking to them. Farmers come at me but they're always slow in their rubber boots and even if they jump on a bicycle to chase me I jump over walls where they can't take a bike.

  The Abbot knows where I got the apples. If you grow up in the lanes of Limerick you're bound to rob the odd orchard sooner or later. Even if you hate apples you have to rob orchards or your pals will say you're a sissy.

  I always offer The Abbot an apple but he won't eat it because of the scarcity of teeth in his head. He has five left and he won't risk leaving them in an apple. If I cut the apple into slices he still won't eat it because that's not the proper way to eat an apple. That's what he says and if I say, You slice bread before you eat it, don't you? he says, Apples is apples and bread is bread.

  That's how you talk when you're dropped on your h
ead.

  Michael comes again with warm tea in a milk bottle and two cuts of fried bread. I tell him I don't need it anymore. Tell Mam I'm taking care of myself and I don't need her tea and fried bread, thank you very much. Michael is delighted when I give him an apple and I tell him come every second day and he can have more. That stops him from asking me to go back to Laman Griffins and I'm glad it stops his tears.

  There's a market down in Irishtown where the farmers come on Saturdays with their vegetables, hens, eggs, butter. If I'm there early they'll give me a few pennies for helping unload their carts or motor cars. At the end of the day they'll give me vegetables they can't sell, anything crushed, bruised or rotten in parts. One farmer's wife always gives me cracked eggs and tells me, Fry them eggs tomorrow when you come back from Mass in a state of grace for if you ate them eggs with a sin on your sowl they'll stick in your gullet, so they will.

  She's a farmer's wife and that's how they talk.

  I'm not much better than a beggar now myself the way I stand at the doors of fish and chip shops when they're closing in hopes they might have burnt chips left over or bits of fish floating around in the grease. If they're in a hurry the shop owners will give me the chips and a sheet of paper for wrapping.

  The paper I like is the News of the World. It's banned in Ireland but people sneak it in from England for the shocking pictures of girls in swimming suits that are almost not there. Then there are stories of people committing all kinds of sins you wouldn't find in Limerick, getting divorces, committing adultery.

  Adultery. I still have to find out what that word means, look it up in the library. I'm sure it's worse than what the masters taught us, bad thoughts, bad words, bad deeds.

  I take my chips home and get into bed like The Abbot. If he has a few pints taken he sits up eating his chips from the Limerick Leader and singing "The Road to Rasheen." I eat my chips. I lick the News of the World. I lick the stories about people doing shocking things. I lick the girls in their bathing suits and when there's nothing left to lick I look at the girls till The Abbot blows out the light and I'm committing a mortal sin under the blanket.

  I can go to the library any time with Mam's card or Laman Griffin's. I'll never be caught because Laman is too lazy to get out of bed on a Saturday and Mam will never go near a library with the shame of her clothes.

  Miss O'Riordan smiles. The Lives of the Saints are waiting for you, Frank. Volumes and volumes. Butler, O'Hanlon, Baring-Gould. I've told the head librarian all about you and she's so pleased she's ready to give you your own grown-up card. Isn't that wonderful?

  Thanks, Miss O'Riordan.

  I'm reading all about St. Brigid, virgin, February first. She was so beautiful that men from all over Ireland panted to marry her and her father wanted her to marry someone important. She didn't want to marry anyone so she prayed to God for help and He caused her eye to melt in her head so that it dribbled down her cheek and left such a great welt the men of Ireland lost interest.

  Then there's St. Wilgefortis, virgin martyr, July twentieth. Her mother had nine children, all at the same time, four sets of twins and Wilgefortis the odd one, all winding up martyrs for the faith. Wilgefortis was beautiful and her father wanted to marry her off to the King of Sicily. Wilgefortis was desperate and God helped her by allowing a beard and a mustache to grow on her face, which made the King of Sicily think twice but sent her father into such a rage he had her crucified beard and all.

  St. Wilgefortis is the one you pray to if you're an Englishwoman with a troublesome husband.

  The priests never tell us about virgin martyrs like St. Agatha, February fifth. February is a powerful month for virgin martyrs. Sicilian pagans ordered Agatha to give up her faith in Jesus and like all the virgin martyrs she said, Nay. They tortured her, stretched her on the rack, tore her sides with iron hooks, burned her with blazing torches, and she said, Nay, I will not deny Our Lord. They crushed her breasts and cut them off but when they rolled her over hot coals it was more than she could bear so she expired, giving praise.

  Virgin martyrs always died singing hymns and giving praise not minding one bit if lions tore big chunks from their sides and gobbled them on the spot.

  How is it the priests never told us about St. Ursula and her eleven thousand maiden martyrs, October twenty-first? Her father wanted her to marry a pagan king but she said, I'll go away for awhile, three years, and think about it. So off she goes with her thousand noble ladies-in-waiting and their companions, ten thousand. They sailed around for awhile and traipsed through various countries till they stopped in Cologne where the chief of the Huns asked Ursula to marry him. Nay, she said, and the Huns killed her and the maidens with her. Why couldn't she say yes and save the lives of eleven thousand virgins? Why did virgin martyrs have to be so stubborn?

  I like St. Moling, an Irish bishop. He didn't live in a palace like the bishop of Limerick. He lived in a tree and when other saints visited him for dinner they would sit around on branches like birds having a grand time with their water and dry bread. He was walking along one day and a leper said, Hoy, St. Moling, where are you going? I'm going to Mass, says St. Moling. Well, I'd like to go to Mass too, so why don't you hoist me up on your back and carry me? St. Moling did but he no sooner had the leper up on his back than the leper started to complain. Your hair shirt, he said, is hard on my sores, take it off. St. Moling took off the shirt and off they went again. Then the leper says, I need to blow my nose. St. Moling says, I don't have any class of a handkerchief, use your hand. The leper says, I can't hold on to you and blow my nose at the same time. All right, says St. Moling, you can blow into my hand. That won't do, says the leper, I barely have a hand left with the leprosy and I can't hold on and blow into your hand. If you were a proper saint you'd twist around here and suck the stuff out of my head. St. Moling didn't want to suck the leper's snot but he did and offered it up and praised God for the privilege.

  I could understand my father sucking the bad stuff out of Michael's head when he was a baby and desperate but I don't understand why God wanted St. Moling to go around sucking the snot out of lepers' heads. I don't understand God at all and even if I'd like to be a saint and have everyone adore me I'd never suck the snot of a leper. I'd like to be a saint but if that's what you have to do I think I'll stay the way I am.

  Still, I'm ready to spend my life in this library reading about virgins and virgin martyrs till I get into trouble with Miss O'Riordan over a book someone left on the table. The author is Lin Yutang. Anyone can tell this is a Chinese name and I'm curious to know what the Chinese talk about. It's a book of essays about love and the body and one of his words sends me to the dictionary. Turgid. He says, The male organ of copulation becomes turgid and is inserted into the receptive female orifice.

  Turgid. The dictionary says swollen and that's what I am, standing there looking at the dictionary because I know now what Mikey Molloy was talking about all along, that we're no different from the dogs that get stuck in each other in the streets and it's shocking to think of all the mothers and fathers doing the likes of this.

  My father lied to me for years about the Angel on the Seventh Step.

  Miss O'Riordan wants to know what word I'm looking for. She always looks worried when I'm at the dictionary so I tell her I'm looking for canonize or beatific or any class of a religious word.

  And what's this? she says. This is not the Lives of the Saints.

  She picks up LinYutang and starts reading the page where I left the book face down on the table.

  Mother o'God. Is this what you were reading? I saw this in your hand.

  Well, I--I--only wanted to see if the Chinese, if the Chinese, ah, had any saints.

  Oh, indeed, you did. This is disgraceful. Filth. No wonder the Chinese are the way they are. But what could you expect of slanty eyes and yellow skin and you, now that I look at you, have a bit of the slanty eye yourself. You are to leave this library at once.

  But I'm reading the Lives of the Saints.
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  Out or I'll call the head librarian and she'll have the guards on you. Out. You should be running to the priest and confessing your sins. Out, and before you go hand me the library cards of your poor mother and Mr. Griffin. I have a good mind to write to your poor mother and I would if I thought it wouldn't destroy her entirely. Lin Yutang, indeed. Out.

  There's no use trying to talk to librarians when they're in that state. You could stand there for an hour telling them all you've read about Brigid and Wilgefortis and Agatha and Ursula and the maiden martyrs but all they think about is one word on one page of Lin Yutang.

  The People's Park is behind the library. It's a sunny day, the grass is dry, and I'm worn out begging for chips and putting up with librarians who get into a state over turgid and I'm looking at the clouds drifting above the monument and drifting off myself all turgid till I'm having a dream about virgin martyrs in bathing suits in the News of the World pelting Chinese writers with sheeps' bladders and I wake up in a state of excitement with something hot and sticky pumping out of me oh God my male organ of copulation sticking out a mile people in the park giving me curious looks and mothers telling their children come over here love come away from that fella someone should call the guards on him.

  The day before my fourteenth birthday I see myself in the glass in Grandma's sideboard. The way I look how can I ever start my job at the post office. Everything is torn, shirt, gansey, short pants, stockings, and my shoes are ready to fall off my feet entirely. Relics of oul' decency, my mother would call them. If my clothes are bad I'm worse. No matter how I drench my hair under the tap it sticks out in all directions. The best cure for standing up hair is spit, only it's hard to spit on your own head. You have to let go with a good one up in the air and duck to catch it on your poll. My eyes are red and oozing yellow, there are matching red and yellow pimples all over my face and my front teeth are so black with rot I'll never be able to smile in my life.