'Tis

by Frank McCourt

  Still, on my way back to the hotel in a Catholic taxi, I dreamed I could easily roam Belfast with an avenging flamethrower. I’d aim it at that bastard in his red beret and reduce him to cinders. I’d pay back the Brits for the eight hundred years of tyranny. Oh, by Jesus, I’d do my bit with a fifty-caliber machine gun. I would, indeed, and I was ready to sing “Roddy McCorley goes to die on the bridge of Toome today,” till I remembered that that was my father’s song and decided instead I’d have a nice quiet pint with Paddy and Kevin in the bar of our Belfast hotel and before I went to sleep that night I’d call Alberta so that she could hold the phone to Maggie and I’d carry my daughter’s gurgle into my dreams.

  Mam flew over and stayed with us awhile at our rented flat in Dublin. Alberta went shopping on Grafton Street and Mam strolled with me to St. Stephen’s Green with Maggie in her pram. We sat by the water and threw crumbs to ducks and sparrows. Mam said it was lovely to be in this place in Dublin in the latter end of August the way you could feel autumn coming in with the odd leaf drifting before you and the light changing on the lake. We looked at children wrestling in the grass and Mam said it would be lovely to stay here a few years and see Maggie grow up with an Irish accent, not that she had anything against the American accent, but wasn’t it a pure pleasure to listen to these children and she could see Maggie growing and playing on this very grass.

  When I said it would be lovely a shiver went through me and she said someone was walking on my grave. We watched the children play and looked at the light on the water and she said, You don’t want to go back, do you?

  Back where?

  New York.

  How do you know that?

  I don’t have to lift the lid to know what’s in the pot.

  The porter at the Shelbourne Hotel said it would be no bother at all to keep an eye on Maggie’s pram against the railings outside while we sat in the lounge, a sherry for Mam, a pint for me, a bottle of milk for Maggie on Mam’s lap. Two women at the next table said Maggie was a dote, a right dote she was, oh gorgeous, and wasn’t she the spittin’ image of Mam herself. Ah, no, said Mam, I’m only the grandmother.

  The women were drinking sherry like my mother but the three men were lowering pints and you could see from their tweed caps, red faces and great red hands they were farmers. One, with a dark green cap, called to my mother, The little child might be a lovely child, missus, but you’re not so bad yourself.

  Mam laughed and called back to him, Ah, sure, you’re not so bad either.

  Begod, missus, if you were a little older I’d run away with you.

  Well, said Mam, if you were a little younger I’d go.

  People all around the lounge were laughing and Mam threw her head back and laughed herself and you could see from the shine in her eyes she was having the time of her life. She laughed till Maggie whimpered and Mam said the child had to be changed and we’d have to go. The man with the dark green cap put on a begging act. Yerra, don’t go, missus. Your future is with me. I’m a rich widow man with a farm o’ land.

  Money isn’t everything, said Mam.

  But I have a tractor, missus. We could ride together and how would that suit you?

  It stirs me, said Mam, but I’m still a married woman and when I put on the widow’s weeds you’ll be the first to know.

  Fair enough, missus. I live in the third house on the left as you enter the southwest coast of Ireland, a grand place called Kerry.

  I heard of it, said Mam. ’Tis known for sheep.

  And powerful rams, missus, powerful.

  You’re never short of an answer, are you?

  Come to Kerry with me, missus, and we’ll walk the hills wordless.

  Alberta was already at the flat making lamb stew and when Kevin Sullivan dropped in with Ben Kiely, the writer, there was enough for everyone and we drank wine and sang because there isn’t a song in the world Ben doesn’t know. Mam told the story of our time in the Shelbourne Hotel. Lord above, she said, that man had a way with him and if it wasn’t for Maggie needing to be changed and wiped I’d be on my way to Kerry.

  In the nineteen seventies Mam was in her sixties. The emphysema that came from years of smoking left her so breathless she dreaded leaving her apartment anymore and the more she stayed at home the heavier she grew. For a while she came to Brooklyn to take care of Maggie on weekends but that stopped when she could no longer climb the subway stairs. I accused her of not wanting to see her granddaughter.

  I do want to see her but ’tis hard for me to get around anymore.

  Why don’t you lose weight?

  ’Tis hard for an elderly woman to lose weight and anyway why should I?

  Don’t you want to have some kind of life where you’re not sitting in your apartment all day looking out the window?

  I had my life, didn’t I, and what use was it? I just want to be left alone.

  There were attacks which left her gasping and when she visited Michael in San Francisco he had to rush her to the hospital. We told her she was ruining our lives the way she always got sick on holidays, Christmas, New Year’s Eve, Easter. She shrugged and laughed and said, Pity about ye now.

  No matter how her health was, no matter how breathless, she climbed the hill to the Broadway bingo hall till she fell one night and broke her hip. After the operation she was sent to an upstate convalescent home and then stayed with me at a summer bungalow in Breezy Point at the tip of the Rockaway Peninsula. Every morning she slept late and when she woke sat slumped on the side of her bed, staring out the window at a wall. After a while she’d drag herself into the kitchen for breakfast and when I barked at her for eating too much bread and butter, that she’d be the size of a house, she barked back at me, For the love o’ Jesus, leave me alone. The bread and butter is the only comfort I have.

  52

  When Henry Wozniak taught Creative Writing and English and American Literature he wore a shirt, a tie and a sports jacket every day. He was faculty adviser to the Stuyvesant High School literary magazine, Caliper, and to the students’ General Organization, and he was active in the union, the United Federation of Teachers.

  He changed. On the first day of school in September 1973, he roared up Fifteenth Street on a Harley-Davidson motorbike and parked it outside the school. Students said, Hi, Mr. Wozniak, though they hardly recognized him with his shaved head, his earring, his black leather jacket, black collarless shirt, worn jeans so tight they didn’t need the wide belt with the large buckle, the bunch of keys that dangled from that belt, his black leather boots with the elevated heels.

  He said Hi back to the students but he didn’t linger and smile the way he used to when he didn’t mind if students called him The Woz. Now he was reserved with them and with teachers at the time clock. He told the English Department chairman, Roger Goodman, he wanted regular En-glish classes, that he would even take freshmen and sophomores and drill them in grammar, spelling, vocabulary. He told the principal he was withdrawing from all nonteaching activities.

  Because of Henry I became the Creative Writing teacher. You can do it, said Roger Goodman, and he bought me a beer and a hamburger at the Gashouse Bar around the corner to fortify me. You can handle it, he said. After all, hadn’t I written pieces for the Village Voice and other papers and wasn’t I planning to write more?

  All right, Roger, but what the hell is Creative Writing and how do you teach it?

  Ask Henry, said Roger, he did it before you.

  I found Henry in the library and asked him how you teach creative writing.

  Disneyland, he said.

  What?

  Take a trip to Disneyland. Every teacher should do it.

  Why?

  It’s an enlarging experience. In the meantime, remember one little nursery rhyme and take it as your mantra,

  Little BoPeep has lost her sheep,

  And cannot tell where to find them;

  Leave them alone, and they’ll come home,

  Wagging their tails behind them.


  That was all I got from Henry and, except for an occasional hallway Hi, we never talked again.

  I write my name on the board and think of Mr. Sorola’s remark that fifty percent of teaching is procedure and if so how should I proceed? This class is an elective and that means they’re here because they asked for it and if I ask them to write something there should be no whining.

  I have to give myself breathing room. I write on the board, Funeral Pyres, two hundred words, do now.

  What? Funeral pyres? What kinda topic is that to write about? What’s a funeral pyre anyway?

  You know what a funeral is, don’t you? You know what a pyre is. You’ve seen pictures of women in India climbing on their husbands’ funeral pyres, haven’t you? It’s called suttee, a new word for your vocabulary.

  A girl calls out, That’s disgusting, that’s really disgusting.

  What?

  Women killing themselves just because their husbands are dead. That really sucks.

  It’s what they believe. Maybe it shows their love.

  How could it show their love when the man is dead? Don’t these women have any self-respect?

  Of course they do and they show it by committing suttee.

  Mr. Wozniak would never tell us to write stuff like this.

  Mr. Wozniak isn’t here, so write your two hundred words.

  They write and hand in their scribbled lines and I know I’ve started off on the wrong foot though I know also that if I ever want a lively class discussion there’s always suttee.

  On Saturday mornings, my daughter, Maggie, watches television cartoons with her friend Claire Ficarra from down the street. They giggle, scream, clutch each other, jump up and down while I sneer in the kitchen and read the paper. Between their chatter and the television noise I catch snatches of a Saturday morning all-American mythology, names repeated weekly, Roadrunner, Woody Woodpecker, Donald Duck, the Partridge Family, Bugs Bunny, the Brady Bunch, Heckel and Jeckel. The idea of mythology loosens my sneer and I take my coffee to join the girls before the television set.

  Oh, Dad, are you going to watch with us?

  I am.

  Wow, Maggie, says Claire, your dad is cool.

  I’m sitting with them because they helped me yoke violently two disparate characters, Bugs Bunny and Odysseus.

  Maggie had said, Bugs Bunny, he’s so mean to Elmer Fudd, and Claire had said, Yeah, Bugs is nice and funny and clever but why is he so mean to Elmer?

  When I returned to my classes on Monday morning I announced my great discovery, the similarities between Bugs Bunny and Odysseus, that they were devious, romantic, wily, charming, that Odysseus was the first draft dodger while Bugs showed no evidence of ever having served his country or of ever having done anything for anyone except to cause mischief, that the major difference between them was that Bugs simply drifted from one mischief to another while Odysseus had a mission, to get home to Penelope and Telemachus.

  What prompted me then to ask the simple question that caused the class to explode, When you were a child what did you watch on Saturday mornings?

  An eruption of Mickey Mouse, Flotsam and Jetsam, Tom and Jerry, Mighty Mouse, Crusader Rabbit, dogs, cats, mice, monkeys, birds, ants, giants.

  Stop. Stop.

  I threw out pieces of chalk. Here, you and you and you, go to the board. Write the names of these cartoons and shows. Put them in categories. This is what scholars will be poring over a thousand years hence. This is your mythology. Bugs Bunny. Donald Duck.

  The lists covered all the boards and there still wasn’t enough room. They could have covered floor and ceiling and continued into the hallway, thirty-five students in each class dredging up the detritus of countless Saturday morning shows. I called above the din, Did these shows have theme songs and music?

  Another eruption. Songs, hummings, mood music, reminiscences of favorite scenes and episodes. They could have sung and chanted and acted well past the bell and into the night. From the board they copied lists into their notebooks and they didn’t ask why, they didn’t complain. They told each other and me they couldn’t believe they’d watched so much television in their lives. Hours and hours. Wow. I asked them, How many hours? and they said days, months, maybe years. Wow again. If you were sixteen you probably spent three years of your life before a TV set.

  53

  Before Maggie was born I dreamed of being a Kodak daddy. I’d wield a camera and assemble an album of milestone pictures, Maggie moments after her birth, Maggie on her first day of kindergarten, Maggie graduating from kindergarten, from elementary school, high school and, above all, college.

  The college wouldn’t be some sprawling urban affair, NYU, Fordham, Columbia. No, my lovely daughter would spend four years in one of those sweet New England colleges so exquisite they find the Ivy League vulgar. She’d be blonde and tanned, strolling the greensward with an Episcopalian lacrosse star, scion of a Boston Brahmin family. His name would be Doug. He’d have bright blue eyes, powerful shoulders, a frank direct look. He’d call me sir and crush my hand in his manly honest way. He and Maggie would be married in the honest stone Episcopalian church on campus, showered with confetti under an arch of lacrosse sticks, the sport of a better class of people.

  And I’d be there, proud Kodak dad, awaiting my first grandchild, half Irish Catholic, half Boston Brahmin Episcopalian. There would be a christening and a garden party, and I’d be snapping away with my Kodak, white tents, women in hats, everyone pasteled, Maggie with child, comfort, class, security.

  That’s what I dreamed when I held her bottle, changed her diapers, bathed her in the kitchen sink, taped her infant gurglings. The first three years I secured her in a little basket and rode my bicycle around Brooklyn Heights. When she toddled I took her to the playground and while she discovered sand and other children I eavesdropped on mothers around me. They talked about kids, husbands, how they couldn’t wait to get back to their own careers in the real world. They’d lower their voices and whisper about affairs and I’d wonder if I should make a move. No. They were already suspicious of me. Who was this guy sitting around with mothers on a summer morning when real men were at work?

  They didn’t know I was born lower class, using daughter and wife to ease myself into their world. They worried about something that comes before kindergarten, preschool, and I was learning that kids have to be kept busy. A few wild minutes in the sandbox is okay but play should really be structured and supervised. You just can’t have enough structure. If a child is aggressive you have to worry. Quiet? Same worry. It’s all antisocial behavior. Kids must learn to adjust, or else.

  I wanted to send Maggie to a public elementary school or even the Catholic school down the street but Alberta insisted on an ivy-covered pile that had once been a school for Episcopalian girls and I didn’t have the stomach for the fight. It would surely be more respectable and we’d meet a better class of people.

  Oh, we did. There were stockbrokers, investment bankers, engineers, heirs to old fortunes, professors, obstetricians. There would be parties where they’d say, And what do you do? and when I said I was a teacher they’d turn away. It didn’t matter that we had a mortgage on a Cobble Hill brownstone, that we kept in step with other gentrifying couples, exposing our bricks, our beams, ourselves.

  It was too much for me. I didn’t know how to be a husband, a father, a house owner with two tenants, a certified member of the middle class. I didn’t know how to proceed, how to dress, how to chatter of the stockmarket at parties, how to play squash or golf, how to give a testosteronic handshake and look my man in the eye with a, Pleasure to meet you, sir.

  Alberta would say she wanted nice things and I never knew what that meant. Or I didn’t care. She’d want to go antiquing along Atlantic Avenue and I’d want to chat with Sam Colton in his Montague Street bookshop or have a beer at the Blarney Rose with Yonk Kling. Alberta would talk about Queen Anne tables, Regency sideboards, Victorian ewers, and I didn’t give a fiddler’s fart. Her friends talke
d about good taste and rounded on me when I said good taste was what pops up when the imagination dies. The air was thick with good taste and I felt suffocated.

  The marriage had become a sustained squabble and there was Maggie, trapped in the middle of it. After school every day she had to follow the routine passed down by a Yankee grandmother in Rhode Island. Change your clothes, drink milk, eat cookies, do your homework because you’re not getting out of the house till you do. That’s what you’re supposed to do. That’s what your mother did. Then you can play with Claire till it’s dinnertime where you have to sit with parents who are civil only because of you.