Angela's Ashes

by Frank McCourt

  Michael gets a notion in his head that this is Africa and keeps asking, Where's Tarzan? Where's Tarzan? He runs up and down the backyard with no pants on trying to imitate Tarzan yodeling from tree to tree. Malachy looks over the fences into the other yards and tells us, They have gardens. They're growing things. We can grow things. We can have our own spuds and everything.

  Mam calls from the back door, See if ye can find anything to start the fire in here.

  There's a wooden shed built against the back of the house. It's collapsing and surely we could use some of the wood for the fire. Mam is disgusted with the wood we bring in. She says it's rotten and full of white maggots but beggars can't be choosers. The wood sizzles above the burning paper and we watch the white maggots try to escape. Michael says he feels sorry for the white maggots but we know he's sorry for everything in the world.

  Mam tells us this house used to be a shop, that Laman Griffin's mother sold groceries through the little window and that's how she was able to send Laman away to Rockwell College so that he could wind up as an officer in the Royal Navy. Oh, he was, indeed. An officer in the Royal Navy, and here's a picture of him with other officers all having dinner with a famous American film star Jean Harlow. He was never the same after he met Jean Harlow. He fell madly in love with her but what was the use? She was Jean Harlow and he was nothing but an officer in the Royal Navy and it drove him to drink and they threw him out of the Navy. Now look at him, a common laborer for the Electricity Supply Board and a house that's a disgrace. You'd look at this house and never know there was a human being living in it. You can see Laman never moved a thing since his mother died and now we have to clean up so that we can live in this place.

  There are boxes packed with bottles of purple hair oil. While Mam is out in the lavatory we open a bottle and smear it on our heads. Malachy says the smell is gorgeous but when Mam comes back she says, What's that horrible stink? and wants to know why our heads are suddenly greasy. She makes us stick our heads under the tap outside and dry ourselves with an old towel pulled out from under a pile of magazines called The Illustrated London News so old they have pictures of Queen Victoria and Prince Edward waving. There are bars of Pear's soap and a thick book called Pear's Encyclopedia, which keeps me up day and night because it tells you everything about everything and that's all I want to know.

  There are bottles of Sloan's Liniment, which Mam says will come in handy when we get cramps and pains from the damp. The bottles say, Here's the pain, Where's the Sloan's? There are boxes of safety pins and bags packed with women's hats that crumble when you touch them. There are bags with corsets, garters, women's high button shoes and different laxatives that promise glowing cheeks, bright eyes and a curl in your hair. There are letters from General Eoin O'Duffy to Gerard Griffin, Esq., saying welcome to the ranks of the National Front, the Irish Blueshirts, that it is a privilege to know a man like Gerard Griffin is interested in the movement with his excellent education, his Royal Navy training, his reputation as a great rugby player on the Young Munster team that won the national championship, the Bateman Cup. General O'Duffy is forming an Irish Brigade that will soon sail off to Spain to fight with that great Catholic Generalissimo Franco himself, and Mr. Griffin would be a powerful addition to the Brigade.

  Mam says Laman's mother wouldn't let him go. She didn't spend all those years slaving away in a little shop to send him to college so that he could go gallivanting off to Spain for Franco so he stayed at home and got that job digging holes for the poles of the Electricity Supply Board along country roads and his mother was happy to have him home to herself every night but Friday when he drank his pint and moaned over Jean Harlow.

  Mam is happy we'll have loads of paper for lighting the fire though the wood we burn from that collapsing shed leaves a sickening smell and she worries the white maggots will escape and breed.

  We work all day moving boxes and bags to the shed outside. Mam opens all the windows to air the house and let out the smell of the hair oil and the years of no air. She says it's a relief to be able to see the floor again and now we can sit down and have a nice cup of tea in peace, ease and comfort, and won't it be lovely when the warm weather comes and we might be able to have a garden and sit outside with our tea the way the English do.

  Laman Griffin comes home at six every night but Friday, has his tea and goes to bed till next morning. Saturdays he goes to bed at one in the afternoon and stays there till Monday morning. He pulls the kitchen table over to the wall under the loft, climbs up on a chair, pulls the chair up to the table, climbs up on the chair again, catches a leg of the bed, pulls himself up. If he's too drunk on Fridays he makes me climb up for his pillow and blankets and sleeps on the kitchen floor by the fire or falls into bed with me and my brothers and snores and farts all night.

  When we first moved in he complained over how he gave up his room downstairs for the loft and he's worn out climbing up and down to go to the lavatory in the backyard. He calls down, Bring the table, the chair, I'm coming down, and we have to clear off the table and pull it to the wall. He's fed up, he's finished with the climbing, he's going to use his mother's lovely chamber pot. He lies in bed all day reading books from the library, smoking Gold Flake cigarettes and throwing Mam a few shillings to send one of us to the shop so that he can have scones with his tea or a nice bit of ham and sliced tomato. Then he calls to Mam, Angela, this chamber pot is full, and she drags chair and table to climb for the chamber pot, empty it in the lavatory outside, rinse it and climb back to the loft. Her face gets tight and she says, Is there anything else your lordship would like this day? and he laughs, Woman's work, Angela, woman's work and free rent.

  Laman throws down his library card from the loft and tells me get him two books, one on angling, one on gardening. He writes a note to the librarian to say his legs are killing him from digging holes for the Electricity Supply Board and from now on Frank McCourt will be getting his books. He knows the boy is only thirteen going on fourteen and he knows the rules are strict about allowing children into the adult part of the library but the boy will wash his hands and behave himself and do what he's told, thank you.

  The librarian reads the note and says 'tis an awful pity about Mr. Griffin, he's a true gentleman and a man of great learning, you wouldn't believe the books he reads, sometimes four a week, that one day he took home a book in French, French, if you don't mind, on the history of the rudder, the rudder, if you don't mind, she'd give anything for a look inside his head for it must be packed with all sorts of learning, packed, if you don't mind.

  She picks out a gorgeous book with colored pictures about English gardens. She says, I know what he likes in the fishing department, and chooses a book called In Search of the Irish Salmon by Brigadier General Hugh Colton. Oh, says the librarian, he reads hundreds of books about English officers fishing in Ireland. I've read some myself out of pure curiosity and you can see why those officers are glad to be in Ireland after all they put up with in India and Africa and other desperate places. At least the people here are polite. We're known for that, the politeness, not running around throwing spears at people.

  Laman lies in the bed, reads his books, talks down from the loft about the day his legs will heal and he'll be out there in the back planting a garden which will be famous far and wide for color and beauty and when he's not gardening he'll be roaming the rivers around Limerick and bringing home salmon that will make your mouth water. His mother left a recipe for salmon that's a family secret and if he had the time and his legs weren't killing him he'd find it someplace in this house. He says now that I'm reliable I can get a book for myself every week but don't be bringing home filth. I want to know what the filth is but he won't tell me so I'll have to find out for myself.

  Mam says she wants to join the library too but it's a long walk from Laman's house, two miles, and would I mind getting her a book every week, a romance by Charlotte M. Brame or any other nice writer. She doesn't want any books about English officers lookin
g for salmon or books about people shooting each other. There's enough trouble in the world without reading about people bothering fish and each other.

  Grandma caught a chill the night we had the trouble in the house in Roden Lane and the chill turned into pneumonia. They shifted her to the City Home Hospital and now she's dead.

  Her oldest son, my uncle Tom, thought he'd go to England to work like other men in the lanes of Limerick but his consumption got worse and he came back to Limerick and now he's dead.

  His wife, Galway Jane, followed him, and four of their six children had to be put into orphanages. The oldest boy, Gerry, ran away and joined the Irish army, deserted and crossed to the English army. The oldest girl, Peggy, went to Aunt Aggie and lives in misery.

  The Irish army is looking for boys who are musical and would like to train in the Army School of Music. They accept my brother, Malachy, and he goes off to Dublin to be a soldier and play the trumpet.

  Now I have only two brothers at home and Mam says her family is disappearing before her very eyes.

  XIII

  Boys from my class at Leamy's School are going on a weekend cycling trip to Killaloe. They tell me I should borrow a bicycle and come. All I need is a blanket, a few spoons of tea and sugar and a few cuts of bread to keep me going. I'll learn to cycle on Laman Griffin's bicycle every night after he goes to bed and he'll surely let me borrow it for the two days in Killaloe.

  The best time to ask him for anything is Friday night when he's in a good mood after his night of drinking and his dinner. He brings home the same dinner in his overcoat pockets, a big steak dripping blood, four potatoes, an onion, a bottle of stout. Mam boils the potatoes and fries the steak with sliced onion. He keeps his overcoat on, sits at the table and eats the steak out of his hands. The grease and blood roll down his chin and on to the overcoat where he wipes his hands. He drinks his stout and laughs that there's nothing like a great bloody steak of a Friday night and if that's the worst sin he ever commits he'll float to heaven body and soul, ha ha ha.

  Of course you can have my bike, he says. Boy should be able to get out and see the countryside. Of course. But you have to earn it. You can't be getting something for nothing, isn't that right?

  'Tis.

  And I have a job for you. You don't mind doing a bit of a job, do you?

  I don't.

  And you'd like to help your mother?

  I would.

  Well, now, that very chamber pot is full since this morning. I want you to climb up and get it and take it to the lavatory and rinse it under the tap abroad and climb back up with it.

  I don't want to empty his chamber pot but I dream of cycling miles on the road to Killaloe, fields and sky far from this house, a swim in the Shannon, a night sleeping in a barn. I pull the table and chair to the wall. I climb up and under the bed there's the plain white chamber pot streaked brown and yellow, brimming with piss and shit. I lay it gently at the edge of the loft so that it won't spill, climb down to the chair, reach for the chamber pot, bring it down, turn my face away, hold it while I step down to the table, place it on the chair, step to the floor, take the chamber pot to the lavatory, empty it, and get sick behind the lavatory till I get used to this job.

  Laman says I'm a good boy and the bike is mine anytime I want it as long as the chamber pot is empty and I'm there to run to the shop for his cigarettes, go to the library for books and do whatever else he wants. He says, You have a great way with a chamber pot. He laughs and Mam stares into the dead ashes in the fireplace.

  It's raining so hard one day, Miss O'Riordan the librarian says, Don't go out in that or you'll ruin the books you're carrying. Sit down over there and behave yourself. You can read all about the saints while you're waiting.

  There are four big books, Butler's Lives of the Saints. I don't want to spend my life reading about saints but when I start I wish the rain would last forever. Whenever you see pictures of saints, men or women, they're always looking up to heaven where there are clouds filled with little fat angels carrying flowers or harps giving praise. Uncle Pa Keating says he can't think of a single saint in heaven he'd want to sit down and have a pint with. The saints in these books are different. There are stories about virgins, martyrs, virgin martyrs and they're worse than any horror film at the Lyric Cinema.

  I have to look in the dictionary to find out what a virgin is. I know the Mother of God is the Virgin Mary and they call her that because she didn't have a proper husband, only poor old St. Joseph. In the Lives of the Saints the virgins are always getting into trouble and I don't know why. The dictionary says, Virgin, woman (usually a young woman) who is and remains in a state of inviolate chastity.

  Now I have to look up inviolate and chastity and all I can find here is that inviolate means not violated and chastity means chaste and that means pure from unlawful sexual intercourse. Now I have to look up intercourse and that leads to intromission, which leads to intromittent, the copulatory organ of any male animal. Copulatory leads to copulation, the union of the sexes in the art of generation and I don't know what that means and I'm too weary going from one word to another in this heavy dictionary which leads me on a wild goose chase from this word to that word and all because the people who wrote the dictionary don't want the likes of me to know anything.

  All I want to know is where I came from but if you ask anyone they tell you ask someone else or send you from word to word.

  All these virgin martyrs are told by Roman judges they have to give up their faith and accept the Roman gods but they say, Nay, and the judges have them tortured and killed. My favorite is St. Christina the Astonishing who takes ages to die. The judge says, Cut off her breast, and when they do she throws it at him and he goes deaf dumb and blind. Another judge is brought on the case and he says, Cut off the other breast, and the same thing happens. They try to kill her with arrows but they just bounce off her and kill the soldiers who shot them. They try to boil her in oil but she rocks in the vat and takes a nap for herself. Then the judges get fed up and have her head cut off and that does the job. The feast of St. Christina the Astonishing is the twenty-fourth of July and I think I'll keep that for myself along with the feast of St. Francis of Assisi on the fourth of October.

  The librarian says, You have to go home now, the rain is stopped, and when I'm going out the door she calls me back. She wants to write a note to my mother and she doesn't mind one bit if I read it. The note says, Dear Mrs. McCourt, Just when you think Ireland is gone to the dogs altogether you find a boy sitting in the library so absorbed in the Lives of the Saints he doesn't realize the rain has stopped and you have to drag him away from the aforesaid Lives. I think, Mrs. McCourt, you might have a future priest on your hands and I will light a candle in hopes it comes true. I remain, Yours truly, Catherine O'Riordan, Asst. Librarian.

  *

  Hoppy O'Halloran is the only master in Leamy's National School who ever sits. That's because he's the headmaster or because he has to rest himself from the twisting walk that comes from the short leg. The other masters walk back and forth in the front of the room or up and down the aisles and you never know when you'll get a whack of a cane or a slap of a strap for giving the wrong answer or writing something sloppy. If Hoppy wants to do anything to you he calls you to the front of the room to punish you before three classes.

  There are good days when he sits at the desk and talks about America. He says, My boys, from the frozen wastes of North Dakota to the fragrant orange groves of Florida, Americans enjoy all climates. He talks about American history, If the American farmer, with flintlock and musket, could wrest from the English a continent, surely we, warriors ever, can recover our island.

  If we don't want him tormenting us with algebra or Irish grammar all we have to do is ask him a question about America and that gets him so excited he might go on for the whole day.

  He sits at his desk and recites the tribes and chiefs he loves. Arapaho, Cheyenne, Chippewa, Sioux, Apache, Iroquois. Poetry, my boys, poetry. An
d listen to the chiefs, Kicking Bear, Rain-in-the-Face, Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and the genius, Geronimo.

  In seventh class he hands out a small book, a poem that goes on for pages and pages, The Deserted Village, by Oliver Goldsmith. He says that this seems to be a poem about England but it is a lament for the poet's native land, our own native land, Ireland. We are to get this poem by heart, twenty lines a night to be recited every morning. Six boys are called to the front of the room for reciting and if you miss a line you are slapped twice on each hand. He tells us put the books under the desks and the whole class chants the passage on the schoolmaster in the village.

  Beside yon straggling fence that skirts the way,

  With blossomed furze unprofitably gay,

  There, in his noisy mansion, skilled to rule

  The village master taught his little school.

  A man severe he was and stern to view,

  I knew him well, and every truant knew.

  Full well the boding tremblers learned to trace

  The day's disaster in his morning face.

  Full well they laughed with counterfeited glee

  At all his jokes for many a joke had he.

  Full well the busy whisper circling round

  Conveyed the dismal tidings when he frowned.

  He always closes his eyes and smiles when we reach the last lines of the passage,

  Yet he was kind, or, if severe in aught,

  The love he bore to learning was in fault.

  The village all declared how much he knew.

  'Twas certain he could write, and cipher too.

  Lands he could measure, terms and tides presage,