Mam says, Because 'tis Christmas and he has sore eyes and the nut is good for the sore eyes.
Michael says, Will the nut make his eyes better?
'Twill.
Will it make one eye better or will it make two eyes better?
The two eyes, I think.
Malachy says, If I had another nut I'd give it to him for his eyes.
Mam says, I know you would.
Dad watches us a moment eating our chocolates. He lifts the latch, goes out the door and pulls it shut.
Mam tells Bridey Hannon, Days are bad but nights are worse and will this rain ever stop? She tries to ease the bad days by staying in bed and letting Malachy and me light the fire in the morning while she sits up in the bed passing Alphie bits of bread and holding the mug to his mouth for the tea that's in it. We have to go downstairs to Ireland to wash our faces in the basin under the tap and try to dry ourselves in the old damp shirt that hangs over the back of a chair. She makes us stand by the bed to see if we left rings of dirt around our necks and if we did it's back down to the tap and the damp shirt. When there's a hole in a pair of pants she sits up and patches it with any rag she can find. We wear short pants till we're thirteen or fourteen and our long stockings always have holes to be darned. If she has no wool for the darning and the stockings are dark we can blacken our ankles with shoe polish for the respectability that's in it. It's a terrible thing to walk the world with skin showing through the holes of our stockings. When we wear them week after week the holes grow so big we have to pull the stocking forward under the toes so that the hole in the back is hidden in the shoe. On rainy days the stockings are soggy and we have to hang them before the fire at night and hope they'll dry by morning. Then they're hard with dirt cake and we're afraid to pull them on our feet for fear they'll fall on the floor in bits before our eyes. We might be lucky enough to get our stockings on but then we have to block the holes in our shoes and I fight with my brother, Malachy, over any scrap of cardboard or paper in the house. Michael is only six and he has to wait for anything left over unless Mam threatens us from the bed that we're to help our small brother. She says, If ye don't fix yeer brother's shoes an' I have to get out of this bed there will be wigs on the green. You'd have to feel sorry for Michael because he's too old to play with Alphie and too young to play with us and he can't fight with anyone for the same reasons.
The rest of the dressing is easy, the shirt I wore to bed is the shirt I wear to school. I wear it day in day out. It's the shirt for football, for climbing walls, for robbings orchards. I go to Mass and the Confraternity in that shirt and people sniff the air and move away. If Mam gets a docket for a new one at the St. Vincent de Paul the old shirt is promoted to towel and hangs damp on the chair for months or Mam might use bits of it to patch other shirts. She might even cut it up and let Alphie wear it a while before it winds up on the floor pushed against the bottom of the door to block the rain from the lane.
We go to school through lanes and back streets so that we won't meet the respectable boys who go to the Christian Brothers' School or the rich ones who go to the Jesuit school, Crescent College. The Christian Brothers' boys wear tweed jackets, warm woolen sweaters, shirts, ties and shiny new boots. We know they're the ones who will get jobs in the civil service and help the people who run the world. The Crescent College boys wear blazers and school scarves tossed around their necks and over their shoulders to show they're cock o' the walk. They have long hair which falls across their foreheads and over their eyes so that they can toss their quiffs like Englishmen. We know they're the ones who will go to university, take over the family business, run the government, run the world. We'll be the messenger boys on bicycles who deliver their groceries or we'll go to England to work on the building sites. Our sisters will mind their children and scrub their floors unless they go off to England, too. We know that. We're ashamed of the way we look and if boys from the rich schools pass remarks we'll get into a fight and wind up with bloody noses or torn clothes. Our masters will have no patience with us and our fights because their sons go to the rich schools and, Ye have no right to raise your hands to a better class of people so ye don't.
You never know when you might come home and find Mam sitting by the fire chatting with a woman and a child, strangers. Always a woman and child. Mam finds them wandering the streets and if they ask, Could you spare a few pennies, miss? her heart breaks. She never has money so she invites them home for tea and a bit of fried bread and if it's a bad night she'll let them sleep by the fire on a pile of rags in the corner. The bread she gives them always means less for us and if we complain she says there are always people worse off and we can surely spare a little from what we have.
Michael is just as bad. He brings home stray dogs and old men. You never know when you'll find a dog in the bed with him. There are dogs with sores, dogs with no ears, no tails. There's a blind greyhound he found in the park tormented by children. Michael fought off the children, picked up the greyhound that was bigger than himself and told Mam the dog could have his supper. Mam says, What supper? We're lucky if there's a cut of bread in the house. Michael tells her the dog can have his bread. Mam says that dog has to go tomorrow and Michael cries all night and cries worse in the morning when he finds the dog dead in the bed beside him. He won't go to school because he has to dig a grave outside where the stable was and he wants all of us to dig with him and say the rosary. Malachy says it's useless saying prayers for a dog, how do you know he was even a Catholic? Michael says, Of course he was a Catholic dog. Didn't I have him in my arms? He cries so hard over the dog Mam lets us all stay at home from school. We're so delighted we don't mind helping Michael with the grave and we say three Hail Marys. We're not going to stand there wasting a good day off from school saying the rosary for a dead greyhound. Michael is only six but when he brings old men home he manages to get the fire going and give them tea. Mam says it's driving her crazy to come home and find these old men drinking out of her favorite mug and mumbling and scratching by the fire. She tells Bridey Hannon that Michael has a habit of bringing home old men all a bit gone in the head and if he doesn't have a bit of bread for them he knocks on neighbors' doors and has no shame begging for it. In the end she tells Michael, No more old men. One of them left us with lice and we're plagued.
The lice are disgusting, worse than rats. They're in our heads and ears and they sit in the hollows of our collarbones. They dig into our skin. They get into the seams of our clothes and they're everywhere in the coats we use as blankets. We have to search every inch of Alphie's body because he's a baby and helpless.
The lice are worse than the fleas. Lice squat and suck and we can see our blood through their skins. Fleas jump and bite and they're clean and we prefer them. Things that jump are cleaner than things that squat.
We all agree there will be no more stray women and children, dogs and old men. We don't want any more diseases and infections.
Michael cries.
Grandma's next-door neighbor, Mrs. Purcell, has the only wireless in her lane. The government gave it to her because she's old and blind. I want a radio. My grandmother is old but she's not blind and what's the use of having a grandmother who won't go blind and get a government radio?
Sunday nights I sit outside on the pavement under Mrs. Purcell's window listening to plays on the BBC and Radio Eireann, the Irish station. You can hear plays by O'Casey, Shaw, Ibsen and Shakespeare himself, the best of all, even if he is English. Shakespeare is like mashed potatoes, you can never get enough of him. And you can hear strange plays about Greeks plucking out their eyes because they married their mothers by mistake.
One night I'm sitting under Mrs. Purcell's window listening to Macbeth. Her daughter, Kathleen, sticks her head out the door. Come in, Frankie. My mother says you'll catch the consumption sitting on the ground in this weather.
Ah, no, Kathleen. It's all right.
No. Come in.
They give me tea and a grand cut of bread slathered w
ith blackberry jam. Mrs. Purcell says, Do you like the Shakespeare, Frankie?
I love the Shakespeare, Mrs. Purcell.
Oh, he's music, Frankie, and he has the best stories in the world. I don't know what I'd do with meself of a Sunday night if I didn't have the Shakespeare.
When the play finishes she lets me fiddle with the knob on the radio and I roam the dial for distant sounds on the shortwave band, strange whispering and hissing, the whoosh of the ocean coming and going and the Morse Code dit dit dit dot. I hear mandolins, guitars, Spanish bagpipes, the drums of Africa, boatmen wailing on the Nile. I see sailors on watch sipping mugs of hot cocoa. I see cathedrals, skyscrapers, cottages. I see Bedouins in the Sahara and the French Foreign Legion, cowboys on the American prairie. I see goats skipping along the rocky coast of Greece where the shepherds are blind because they married their mothers by mistake. I see people chatting in cafes, sipping wine, strolling on boulevards and avenues. I see night women in doorways, monks chanting vespers, and here is the great boom of Big Ben, This is the BBC Overseas Service and here is the news.
Mrs. Purcell says, Leave that on, Frankie, so we'll know the state of the world.
After the news there is the American Armed Forces Network and it's lovely to hear the American voices easy and cool and here is the music, oh, man, the music of Duke Ellington himself telling me take the A train to where Billie Holiday sings only to me,
I can't give you anything but love, baby.
That's the only thing I've plenty of, baby.
Oh, Billie, Billie, I want to be in America with you and all that music, where no one has bad teeth, people leave food on their plates, every family has a lavatory, and everyone lives happily ever after.
And Mrs. Purcell says, Do you know what, Frankie?
What, Mrs. Purcell?
That Shakespeare is that good he must have been an Irishman.
The rent man is losing his patience. He tells Mam, Four weeks behind you are, missus. That's one pound two shillings. This has to stop for I have to go back to the office and report to Sir Vincent Nash that the McCourts are a month behind. Where am I then, missus? Out on my arse jobless and a mother to support that's ninety-two and a daily communicant in the Franciscan church. The rent man collects the rents, missus, or he loses the job. I'll be back next week and if you don't have the money, one pound eight shillings and sixpence total, 'tis out on the pavement you'll be with the skies dripping on your furniture.
Mam comes back up to Italy and sits by the fire wondering where in God's name she'll get the money for a week's rent never mind the arrears. She'd love a cup of tea but there's no way of boiling the water till Malachy pulls a loose board off the wall between the two upstairs rooms. Mam says, Well, 'tis off now and we might as well chop it up for the fire. We boil the water and use the rest of the wood for the morning tea but what about tonight and tomorrow and ever after? Mam says, One more board from that wall, one more and not another one. She says that for two weeks till there's nothing left but the beam frame. She warns us we are not to touch the beams for they hold up the ceiling and the house itself.
Oh, we'd never touch the beams.
She goes to see Grandma and it's so cold in the house I take the hatchet to one of the beams. Malachy cheers me on and Michael claps his hands with excitement. I pull on the beam, the ceiling groans and down on Mam's bed there's a shower of plaster, slates, rain. Malachy says, Oh, God, we'll all be killed, and Michael dances around singing, Frankie broke the house, Frankie broke the house.
We run through the rain to tell Mam the news. She looks puzzled with Michael chanting, Frankie broke the house, till I explain there's a hole in the house and it's falling down. She says, Jesus, and runs through the streets with Grandma trying to keep up.
Mam sees her bed buried under plaster and slates and pulls at her hair, What'll we do at all, at all? and screams at me for interfering with the beams. Grandma says, I'll go to the landlord's office and tell them fix this before ye are all drowned entirely.
She's back in no time with the rent man. He says, Great God in heaven, where's the other room?
Grandma says, What room?
I rented ye two rooms up here and one is gone. Where is that room?
Mam says, What room?
There were two rooms up here and now there's one. And what happened to the wall? There was a wall. Now there's no wall. I distinctly remember a wall because I distinctly remember a room. Now where is that wall? Where is that room?
Grandma says, I don't remember a wall and if I don't remember a wall how can I remember a room?
Ye don't remember? Well, I remember. Forty years a landlord's agent and I never seen the likes of this. By God, 'tis a desperate situation altogether when you can't turn your back but tenants are not paying their rent and making walls and rooms disappear on top of it. I want to know where that wall is and what ye did with the room, so I do.
Mam turns to us. Do any of ye remember a wall?
Michael pulls at her hand. Is that the wall we burned in the fire?
The rent man says, Dear God in heaven, this beats Banagher, this takes the bloody biscuit, this is goin' beyond the beyonds. No rent and what am I to tell Sir Vincent below in the office? Out, missus, I'm puttin' ye out. One week from today I'll knock on this door and I want to find nobody at home, everybody out never to return. Do you have me, missus?
Mam's face is tight. 'Tis a pity you weren't alive in the times when the English were evicting us and leaving us on the side of the road.
No lip, missus, or I'll send the men to put ye out tomorrow.
He goes out the door and leaves it open to show what he thinks of us. Mam says, I don't know in God's name what I'm going to do. Grandma says, Well, I don't have room for ye but your cousin, Gerard Griffin, is living out the Rosbrien Road in that little house of his mother's and he'd surely be able to take ye in till better times come. 'Tis all hours of the night but I'll go up and see what he says and Frank can come with me.
She tells me put on a coat but I don't have one and she says, I suppose there's no use in asking if ye have an umbrella either. Come on.
She pulls the shawl over her head and I follow her out the door, up the lane, through the rain to Rosbrien Road nearly two miles away. She knocks on the door of a little cottage in a long row of little cottages. Are you there, Laman? I know you're in there. Open the door.
Grandma, why are you calling him Laman? Isn't his name Gerard?
How would I know? Do I know why the world calls your uncle Pat Ab? Everyone calls this fella Laman. Open the door. We'll go in. He might be working overtime.
She pushes the door. It's dark and there's a damp sweet smell in the room. This room looks like the kitchen and there's a smaller room next to it. There's a little loft above the bedroom with a skylight where the rain is beating. There are boxes everywhere, newspapers, magazines, bits of food, mugs, empty tins. We can see two beds taking up all the space in the bedroom, a great acre of a bed and a smaller one near the window. Grandma pokes at a lump in the big bed. Laman, is that you? Get up, will you, get up.
What? What? What? What?
There's trouble. Angela is gettin' evicted with the children an' 'tis delvin' out of the heavens. They need a bit of shelter till they get on their feet an' I have no room for them. You can put them up in the loft if you like but that wouldn't do because the small ones wouldn't be able to climb and they'd fall down an' get killed so you go up there an' they can move in here.
All right, all right, all right, all right.
He hoists himself from the bed and there's a whiskey smell. He goes to the kitchen and pulls the table to the wall for his climb to the loft. Grandma says, That's fine now. Ye can move up here tonight an' ye won't have the eviction men coming after ye.
Grandma tells Mam she's going home. She's tired and drenched and she's not twenty-five anymore. She says there's no need to be taking beds or furniture with all the stuff that's up in Laman Griffin's. We put Alphie in the pram and pi
le around him the pot, the pan, the kettle, the jam jars and mugs, the Pope, two bolsters and the coats from the beds. We drape the coats over our heads and push the pram through the streets. Mam tells us be quiet going up the lane or the neighbors will know we got the eviction and there will be shame. The pram has a bockety wheel which tilts it and makes it go in different directions. We try to keep it straight and we're having a great time because it must be after midnight and surely Mam won't make us go to school tomorrow. We're moving so far from Leamy's School now maybe we'll never have to go again. Once we get away from the lane Alphie bangs on the pot with the spoon and Michael sings a song he heard in a film with Al Jolson, Swanee, how I love ya, how I love ya, my dear ol' Swanee. He makes us laugh the way he tries to sing in a deep voice like Al Jolson.
Mam says she's glad it's late and there's no one on the streets to see our shame.
Once we get to the house we take Alphie and everything else from the pram so that Malachy and I can run back down to Roden Lane for the trunk. Mam says she'd die if she lost that trunk and everything in it.
Malachy and I sleep at opposite ends of the small bed. Mam takes the big bed with Alphie beside her and Michael at the bottom. Everything is damp and musty and Laman Griffin snores over our heads. There are no stairs in this house and that means no angel ever on the seventh step.
But I'm twelve going on thirteen and I might be too old for angels.
It's still dark when the alarm goes off in the morning and Laman Griffin snorts and blows his nose and hawks the stuff from his chest. The floor creaks under him and when he pisses for ages into the chamber pot we have to stuff our mouths with coats to stop the laughing and Mam hisses at us to be quiet. He grumbles away above us before he climbs down to get his bicycle and bang his way out the door. Mam whispers, The coast is clear, go back to sleep. Ye can stay at home today.
We can't sleep. We're in a new house, we have to pee and we want to explore. The lavatory is outside, about ten steps from the back door, our own lavatory, with a door you can close and a proper seat where you can sit and read squares of the Limerick Leader Laman Griffin left behind for wiping himself. There is a long backyard, a garden with tall grass and weeds, an old bicycle that must have belonged to a giant, tin cans galore, old papers and magazines rotting into the earth, a rusted sewing machine, a dead cat with a rope around his neck that somebody must have thrown over the fence.
Angela's Ashes Page 31