'Tis

by Frank McCourt

  I want to say all this but Alberta makes peace. Oh, that’s all right. Maybe Mam is tired with the excitement of coming to New York and if we have a nice cup of tea and a piece of cake we’ll all relax.

  Mam says, No, thank you to the cake, she couldn’t eat another morsel but she would like a cup of tea till, again, she sees the tea bag in her cup and tells us this isn’t a proper cup of tea at all.

  I tell her that’s what we have and that’s what she’s getting though what I don’t tell her is that I’d like to throw the tea bag between her eyes.

  She said no to the cake but here she is pushing it into her mouth and swallowing with hardly a chew and then picking up and eating the crumbs from around her plate, the woman who didn’t want the cake.

  She glances at the teacup. Well, if that’s the only tea ye have I suppose I’ll have to drink it. She lifts the tea bag on her spoon and squeezes it till the water turns brown and wants to know why there’s a lemon on her saucer.

  Alberta says some people like lemon with their tea.

  Mam says she never heard the likes of that, it’s disgusting.

  Alberta removes the lemon and Mam says she’d like milk and sugar, if you don’t mind. She asks for a match for her cigarette and smokes while she drinks only half the tea to show she doesn’t care for it.

  Alberta asks if she and Alphie would like to see a movie in the neighborhood but Mam says, no, they have to be getting back to Manhattan and it’s too late.

  Alberta says it isn’t that late and Mam says it’s late enough.

  I walk with my mother and Alphie up Henry Street and over to the subway at Borough Hall. It’s a bright January night and all along the street there are still Christmas lights glowing and flickering in the windows. Alphie talks about the elegance of the houses and says thanks for the dinner. Mam says she doesn’t know why people can’t put the dinner in a bowl and give it to you without a plate under it. She thinks that kind of thing is putting on airs.

  When the train comes in I shake hands with Alphie. I bend over to kiss my mother and hand her a twenty-dollar bill but she pulls her face away and sits in the train with her back to me and I walk away with the money back in my pocket.

  44

  For eight years I traveled on the Staten Island Ferry. I would take the RR train from Brooklyn to Whitehall Street in Manhattan, walk to the terminal, slip a nickel into a turnstile slot, buy coffee and a doughnut, plain no sugar, and wait on a bench with a newspaper filled with yesterday’s disasters.

  Mr. Jones taught music at McKee High School though when you saw him on the ferry you might have thought he was a university professor or head of a law firm. You might have thought that even though he was a Negro who would become a black and, in later years, an African-American. Every day he wore a different three-piece suit and a hat to match. He wore shirts with collars or held in place with gold stick pins. His watch and rings were gold, too, and delicate. The old Italian shoeshine men loved him for the daily trade and generous tips and they left his shoes dazzling. Every morning he read the Times and held it with fingers protruding from little leather gloves that covered the area below the wrist to beyond the knuckles. He smiled when he told me of concerts and operas he’d attended the night before or of summer trips to Europe especially to Milan and Salzburg. He put his hand on my arm and told me I must not die before I sit in La Scala. Another teacher joked one morning that the kids at McKee must be impressed with his clothes, all that elegance, you know, and Mr. Jones said, I dress for what I am. The teacher shook his head and Mr. Jones went back to his Times. On the ferry back that day the other teacher told me Mr. Jones didn’t see himself as a Negro at all, that he’d call to the black kids to stop bopping down the hall. The black kids didn’t know what to make of Mr. Jones with all that elegance. They knew that whatever music they liked Mr. Jones would be up there talking about Mozart, playing his music on the phonograph or illustrating passages on the piano, and when it was time for the Christmas assembly he’d have his boys and girls up on the stage caroling like angels.

  Every morning on the ferry I passed the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island and thought of my mother and father coming to this country. When they sailed in were they excited as I was that first sunny October morning? Teachers going to McKee and other schools on Staten Island sat on the ferry and looked toward the statue and the island. They must have thought of their parents and grandparents coming into this place and they might have thought of all the hundreds who were sent back. It must have saddened them the way it saddened me to see Ellis Island neglected and crumbling and that ferry docked by the side low in the water, the ferry that took the immigrants from Ellis Island to the island of Manhattan and if they looked hard enough they saw ghosts hungry for the landing.

  Mam had moved with Alphie to an apartment on the West Side. Then Alphie left to be his own man in the Bronx and Mam moved to Flatbush Avenue near Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn. Her building was shabby but she felt comfortable having a place of her own where she’d be under obligation to nobody. She could walk to any number of bingo games and she was content, thank you.

  In my early years at McKee High School I enrolled at Brooklyn College for classes leading to a master’s degree in English. I started with summer courses and continued with afternoon and evening classes into the aca-demic year. I would take the ferry from Staten Island to Manhattan and walk to a subway train at Bowling Green that took me to the end of the Flatbush line near Brooklyn College. On ferry and train I could read for my classes or correct the work of my students at McKee.

  I told my students I wanted neat, clean, legible work but they handed in whatever they had scribbled quickly on buses and trains, in shop classes when the teacher wasn’t looking, or in the cafeteria. The papers were dotted with the stains of coffee, Coke, ice cream, ketchup, sneezes, and a lusciousness where girls had blotted their lips. A set of such papers would so irritate me I’d fling them over the side of the ferry and watch with satisfaction while they sank below the water to create a Sargasso of illiteracy.

  When they asked for their papers I told them they were so bad that if I had returned them each paper would have been given a zero and would they prefer that to nothing at all?

  They weren’t sure and when I thought of it I wasn’t sure myself. Zero or nothing at all? We discussed it for a whole period and decided that nothing at all was better than zero on your report card because you can’t divide nothing at all by anything and you can divide zero if you use algebra or something like that because a zero is something and nothing at all is nothing at all and nobody could argue with that. Also, if your parents see a zero on your report card they’re upset, the ones who care, but if they see nothing they don’t know what to think and it’s better to have a father and mother who don’t know what to think than a father and mother looking at a zero and giving you a punch upside your head.

  After my classes at Brooklyn College I would sometimes leave the train at Bergen Street to visit my mother. If she knew I was coming she’d make soda bread so warm and delicious it melted in the mouth as fast as the butter she slathered on it. She made tea in a teapot and couldn’t help sniffing at the idea of tea bags. I told her tea bags were just a convenience for people with busy lives and she said no one is so busy they can’t take time to make a decent cup of tea and if you are that busy you don’t deserve a decent cup of tea for what is it all about anyway? Are we put into this world to be busy or to chat over a nice cup of tea?

  My brother Michael married Donna from California in Malachy’s apartment on West Ninety-third Street. Mam bought a new dress for the occasion but you could see she didn’t approve of the proceedings. There was her lovely son Michael getting married and no sign of a priest, nothing but a Protestant minister in the living room who could pass for a grocer or an off-duty policeman in his collar and tie. Malachy had rented two dozen folded chairs and when we took our places I noticed Mam’s absence. She was in the kitchen smoking a cigarette. I told her the wedding was ab
out to begin and she told me she had to finish her cigarette. Mam, for Christ’s sake, your son is getting married. She said that was his problem, she had to finish her fag and when I told her she was keeping everyone waiting her face tightened, the nose went up in the air, she stubbed out her butt in the ashtray and took her time going to the living room. On the way in she whispered she had to go to the bathroom and I hissed at her that she’d bloody well have to wait. She sat in her chair and stared over the head of the Protestant minister. No matter what was said, no matter what softness or sweetness surged here, she wouldn’t be part of it, wouldn’t yield, and when bride and groom were kissed and hugged Mam sat with her purse in her lap staring straight ahead so that the world would know she was seeing nothing, especially the sight of her lovely son Michael falling into the clutches of Protestants and their ministers.

  When I visited Mam on Flatbush Avenue and we had the tea she said wasn’t it a peculiar thing she was back in this part of the world after all these years, a place where she had five children, though three would die, the little girl here in Brooklyn, and twin boys in Ireland. It might have been too much for her to think about that little girl, dead at twenty-one days, a short distance from here. She knew that if you walked down Flatbush Avenue to where it crossed Atlantic Avenue you’d still see the bars my father went wild in, spending his wages, forgetting his children. No, she wouldn’t talk about that, either. When I asked her about her days in Brooklyn she doled out scraps and then went silent. What was the use? The past is the past and it’s dangerous to go back.

  She must have had nightmares alone in that apartment.

  45

  Stanley spends more time in the teachers’ cafeteria than anyone. When he sees me he sits with me, drinks coffee, smokes cigarettes and delivers monologues on everything.

  Like most teachers he has five classes but his speech therapy students are often absent because of the shame of stammering and trying to make themselves understood with cleft palates. Stanley gives them inspirational speeches and even though he tells them they’re as good as anyone else they don’t believe him. Some are in my regular English classes and they write compositions saying it’s all right for Mr. Garber to talk, he’s a nice guy and all, but he doesn’t know what it’s like to walk up to a girl and ask her to dance when you can’t get the first word out of your mouth. Oh, yeah, it’s all right for Mr. Garber to help their stammer with singing in his class but what good is that when you go to the dance?

  In the summer of 1961 Alberta wanted to be married at Grace Episcopal Church in Brooklyn Heights. I refused. I told her I’d rather be married in City Hall than in some pale imitation of the One, Holy, Roman, Catholic and Apostolic Church. Episcopalians irritated me. Why couldn’t they stop the damned nonsense? They’re up there with their statues and crosses and holy water and even confession, so why don’t they call Rome and tell them they want to return?

  Alberta said, All right, all right, and we went to the Municipal Building in Manhattan. It wasn’t required but we had Brian McPhillips as best man and his wife, Joyce, as bridesmaid. Our ceremony was delayed because of a quarrel between the couple ahead of us. She said to him, You goin’ be married to me with that green umbrella on you arm? He said that was his umbrella and he wasn’t going to leave it out in this office to be stolen. She nodded toward us and told him, These people ain’t gonna steal you goddam green umbrella, excuse the language on my wedding day. He said he wasn’t accusin’ nobody of nothin’ but goddam he paid a lot for that umbrella on Chambers Street from a guy that steals them and he wasn’t givin’ it up for nobody. She told him, Well, then, marry you damn umbrella, and she picked up her bag and walked out. He told her if she walked out now that was the end and she turned to the four of us and the woman behind the desk and the official coming out of the small wedding chapel and said, The end? What you talkin’ about, man? We be livin’ together three years an’ you tell me this is the end? You don’t tell me this is the end. I tell you and I’m tellin’ you that umbrella ain’t goin’ to my weddin’ an’ if you insist there’s a certain party in South Carolina, a certain ex-wife, that would like to know where you at an’ I be glad to tell her if you know what I mean, certain party lookin’ for alimony an’ child support. So take you choice, Byron, me in that little room with the man an’ no umbrella or you back in South Carolina with you umbrella standin’ before a judge tellin’ you, Pay up, Byron, support you wife an’ child.

  The official at the door of the wedding chapel asked if they were ready. Byron asked me if I was the one getting married today and would I mind holding his umbrella because he could see that I was like him, going nowhere but into that little room. End of the road, man, end of the road. I wished him good luck but he shook his head and said, Damn, why we all whupped like this?

  In a few minutes they were back to sign papers, the bride smiling, Byron grim. We all wished them good luck again and followed the official into the room. He smiled and said, Are we all atthembled?

  Brian looked at me, raised his eyebrows.

  The official said, Do you promith to love, honor, cherith? and I struggled to keep myself from laughing. How could I survive this wedding conducted by a man with such a powerful lisp? I’d have to think of some way of controlling myself. That’s it. The umbrella on my arm. Oh, God, I’ll fall apart. I’m caught between the lisp and the umbrella and I can’t laugh. Alberta would kill me for laughing at our own wedding. You’re allowed to weep with joy but you must never laugh and here I am made helpless by this man with the lisp, promithing thith and that, first man ever in New York to be married with a green umbrella on his arm, solemn thought that kept me from laughing, and the ceremony was over, the ring on Alberta’s finger, groom and bride kissing and being congratulated by Brian and Joyce till the door opened and there was Byron. Man, you got my umbrella? You did that for me? Kep’ it right here? Wanna have a drink? Celebrate?

  Alberta signaled no to me with a little shake of her head.

  I told Byron I was sorry. We were meeting friends who were giving us a party.

  You lucky, man, you have friends. Me an’ Selma goin’ out to have a sangwidge an’ go to a movie. I don’t mind. Movie keeps her quiet, ha ha ha. Thanks for watchin’ my umbrella.

  Byron and Selma left and I fell against the wall, laughing. Alberta tried to keep a bit of dignity in the occasion but she gave way when she saw Brian and Joyce laughing, too. I tried to tell them how the thought of the green umbrella saved me from laughing over the lisp but the more I tried to talk the more helpless I became till we were clutching each other going down in the elevator and wiping our eyes outside in the August sun.

  It was a short walk to Diamond Dan O’Rourke’s Saloon for drinks and sandwiches with friends, Frank Schwake and his wife, Jean, and Jim Collins and his new wife, Sheila Malone. After that there was to be a party out in Queens given by Brian and Joyce who would drive Alberta and me in their Volkswagen.

  Schwake bought me a drink. So did Collins and Brian. The bartender bought us a round and I bought him a drink and left him a big tip. He laughed and said I should get married every day. I bought drinks for Schwake and Collins and Brian and they all wanted to buy me one again. Joyce whispered to Brian and I knew she was worried about the drinking. Alberta told me to slow down. She understood it was my wedding day but it was early and I should have respect for her and the guests at the reception later. I told her we were married barely five minutes and she was already telling me what to do. Of course I had respect for her and the guests. That’s all I ever had was respect and I was weary of having respect. I told her back off and there was such a state of tension Collins and Brian intervened. Brian said it was his job, that’s what best men are for. Collins said he knew me longer than Brian but Brian said, No, you don’t. I went to college with him. Collins said he didn’t know that. McCourt, how come you never told me you went to college with McPhillips? I told him I never saw a need to tell the world who I went to college with and for some reason that made us
all laugh. The bartender said it was nice to see people happy on their wedding day and we laughed even harder thinking of lisps and green umbrellas and Alberta telling me have respect for her and the guests. Of course I had respect for her on our wedding day till I went to the toilet and started thinking of how she rejected me for another man and I was ready to go out and confront her till I slipped on the slimy floor of the toilet in Diamond Dan O’Rourke’s and banged my head so hard against the big urinal I had a headache that made me forget the rejection. Alberta wanted to know why the back of my jacket was damp and when I told her there was a leak in the men’s room she didn’t believe me. You fell, didn’t you? No, I didn’t fall. There was a leak. She wouldn’t believe me, told me I was drinking too much and that so irritated me I was ready to walk out and live with a ballerina in a loft in Greenwich Village till Brian said, Oh, come on, don’t be an ass, it’s Alberta’s wedding day, too.

  Before going out to Queens we had to pick up a wedding cake at Schrafft’s on West Fifty-seventh Street. Joyce said she’d drive because Brian and I had been too enthusiastic with the celebrations at Diamond Dan’s while she and Alberta were saving themselves for the party that night. She stopped opposite Schrafft’s and said no when Brian offered to get the cake but he insisted and dodged the traffic. Joyce shook her head and said he was going to get killed. Alberta told me go help him but Joyce shook her head again and said that would only make things worse. Brian came out of Schrafft’s holding a big cake box against his chest and once more dodged cars till a taxi sideswiped him slightly at the street’s dividing line and the box fell to the ground. Joyce put her forehead against the steering wheel. Oh, God, she said, and I said I was going to help my best man, Brian. No, no, Alberta said, I’ll go. I told her this was man’s work, that I wouldn’t risk her life with these mad taxis on Fifty-seventh Street and I went to help Brian who was on his hands protecting the wrecked cake from the traffic zooming by him right and left. I knelt with him, tore a cardboard flap from the box, and we shoveled the cake back in with bits hanging here and there. The little bride and groom figures looked sad but we wiped them off and stuck them back on the cake, not the top, because we didn’t know where the top was anymore, but somewhere in the cake where we could push them in for the security. Joyce and Alberta called to us from the car that we’d better get off the street before the police came or we were killed and they were tired of waiting anyway, hurry up. When we got into the car Joyce told Brian pass the cake back to Alberta for safekeeping but he turned stubborn and said no, after all his troubles he’d hold on to it till we were at the apartment, and he did even if he had bits of cream and little green and yellow decorations all over his lap and his suit in general.