Suffrage
Why would a 17th-century writer
warn people that a chapel was only for "private or secret suffrages"?
Because suffrage has been used since the 14th century to mean
"prayer" (especially a prayer requesting divine help or
intercession). So how did suffrage come to mean "a vote" or "the
right to vote"? To answer that, we must look to the word's Medieval Latin
ancestor, suffrāgium, which can be translated as meaning "vote,"
"support," or "prayer." That term produced descendants in a
number of languages, and English picked up its senses of suffrage from two
different places. We took the "prayer" sense from a Middle French
suffrāgium offspring that emphasized the word's spiritual aspects, and we
elected to adopt the "voting" senses directly from the original
Latin.
Targeted killings of journalists surged in 2020, group says
Its tally of journalists and
media workers killed in connection with their work by mid-December was just
slightly lower than in 2019, when the press freedom group counted 53 dead, even
though many journalists reported less from the field in 2020 because of the
coronavirus pandemic.
The group said 68% were killed
outside of war zones this year. That confirms a trend noted by the group since
2016, when only four out of 10 deaths were in countries not at war.
Targeted killings of journalists
surged in 2020, accounting for 84% of deaths, sharply up from 63% in 2019, the
group said.
It again listed Mexico as the
deadliest country for media workers, counting at least eight journalists killed
there in connection with their work in 2020. Among them was Julio Valdivia, a
newspaper reporter whose decapitated body was found in September in an area
ridden with organized crime.
Among six media deaths that the
group counted in Iraq was the killing in July of Hisham al-Hashimi, a leading
expert on the Islamic State and other armed groups, who was shot dead outside
his Baghdad home.
Reporters Without Borders also
noted an increase in the killings of investigative journalists, including four
who were looking into organized crime groups, 10 who were reporting on
corruption and the misuse of public funds and three who were working on
environmental issues including illegal mining and land grabs.
Reporting on civil unrest also
proved particularly deadly, the group said, with seven journalists killed while
covering protests — four of them in Iraq, two in Nigeria and one in Colombia.
Reporters Without Borders report:
https://rsf.org/sites/default/files/rsf_round-up_killed.pdf
Franchise
Franchise was voted into early 14th-century English as both a noun and verb. It is from the Anglo-French verb franchir, meaning "to free," itself from franc, "free." To be perfectly frank, the word franchise is most often encountered today with reference to restaurant chains or professional sports teams (e.g., "a franchise quarterback"), not to mention branded retail stores and sequel-driven movies and novels. These commercial meanings are far from the original meaning of the word in English: "freedom or immunity from some burden or restriction vested in a person or group." This meaning evolved into the "right to vote" sense of the word.
You showed tremendous discipline and focus
You showed tremendous discipline and focus to change bad habits. So be easy on yourself and recognize the efforts you’ve given so far. Be patient with yourself. The thing your attempting isn’t easy.
NYCPLAYWRIGHTS
*** NYCPLAYWRIGHTS 10 YEAR ANNIVERSARY ***
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Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant
Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant ( August 5 1850 – July 6 1893) was a 19th-century French author, remembered as a master of the short story form, and as a representative of the Naturalist school, who depicted human lives and destinies and social forces in disillusioned and often pessimistic terms.
Maupassant was a protégé of
Gustave Flaubert and his stories are characterized by economy of style and
efficient, seemingly effortless dénouements (outcomes). Many are set during the
Franco-Prussian War of the 1870s, describing the futility of war and the
innocent civilians who, caught up in events beyond their control, are permanently
changed by their experiences.
He wrote 300 short stories, six novels, three
travel books, and one volume of verse. His first published story, "Boule
de Suif" ("The Dumpling", 1880), is often considered his
masterpiece.
A Memoir of a Childhood
Angela's Ashes
A Memoir of a Childhood
By Frank McCourt
My father and mother should have
stayed in New York where they met and
married and where I was born.
Instead, they returned to Ireland when I
was four, my brother, Malachy,
three, the twins, Oliver and Eugene,
barely one, and my sister,
Margaret, dead and gone.
When I look back on my childhood I wonder how
I survived at all. It
was, of course, a miserable
childhood: the happy childhood is hardly
worth your while. Worse than the
ordinary miserable childhood is the
miserable Irish childhood, and
worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic
childhood.
People everywhere brag and whimper about the
woes of their early
years, but nothing can compare
with the Irish version: the poverty; the
shiftless loquacious alcoholic
father; the pious defeated mother moaning
by the fire; pompous priests;
bullying schoolmasters; the English and the
terrible things they did to us
for eight hundred long years.
Above all-we were wet.
Out in the Atlantic Ocean great sheets of rain
gathered to drift
slowly up the River Shannon and
settle forever in Limerick. The rain
dampened the city from the Feast
of the Circumcision to New Year's Eve.
It created a cacophony of hacking
coughs, bronchial rattles, asthmatic
wheezes, consumptive croaks. It
turned noses into fountains, lungs into
bacterial sponges. It provoked
cures galore; to ease the catarrh you
boiled onions in milk blackened
with pepper; for the congested passages
you made a paste of boiled flour
and nettles, wrapped it in a rag, and
slapped it, sizzling, on the
chest.
From October to April the walls of Limerick
glistened with the
damp. Clothes never dried: tweed
and woolen coats housed living things,
sometimes sprouted mysterious
vegetations. In pubs, steam rose from damp
bodies and garments to be inhaled
with cigarette and pipe smoke laced
with the stale fumes of spilled
stout and whiskey and tinged with the
odor of piss wafting in from the
outdoor jakes where many a man puked up
his week's wages.
The rain drove us into the church-our refuge,
our strength, our
only dry place. At Mass,
Benediction, novenas, we huddled in great damp
clumps, dozing through priest
drone, while steam rose again from our
clothes to mingle with the
sweetness of incense, flowers and candles.
Limerick gained a reputation for piety, but we
knew it was only the
rain.
My father, Malachy McCourt, was born on a farm
in Toome, County
Antrim. Like his father before,
he grew up wild, in trouble with the
English, or the Irish, or both.
He fought with the Old IRA and for some
desperate act he wound up a
fugitive with a price on his head.
When I was a child I would look at my father,
the thinning hair,
the collapsing teeth, and wonder
why anyone would give money for a head
like that. When I was thirteen my
father's mother told me a secret: as a
wee lad your poor father was
dropped on his head. It was an accident, he
was never the same after, and you
must remember that people dropped on
their heads can be a bit
peculiar.
Because of the price on the head he had been
dropped on, he had to
be spirited out of Ireland via
cargo ship from Galway. In New York, with
Prohibition in full swing, he
thought he had died and gone to hell for
his sins. Then he discovered
speakeasies and he rejoiced.
After wandering and drinking in America and
England he yearned for
peace in his declining years. He
returned to Belfast, which erupted all
around him. He said, A pox on all
their houses, and chatted with the
ladies of Andersontown. They
tempted him with delicacies but he waved
them away and drank his tea. He
no longer smoked or touched alcohol, so
what was the use? It was time to
go and he died in the Royal Victoria
Hospital.
My mother, the former Angela Sheehan, grew up
in a Limerick slum
with her mother, two brothers,
Thomas and Patrick, and a sister, Agnes.
She never saw her father, who had
run off to Australia weeks before her
birth.
After a night of drinking porter in the pubs
of Limerick he
staggers down the lane singing
his favorite song, Who threw the overalls
in Mrs. Murphy's chowder?
Nobody spoke so he said it all the louder It's
a dirty Irish trick
and I can lick the Mick Who threw
the overalls in Murphy's chowder.
He's in great form altogether and he thinks
he'll play a while with
little Patrick, one year old.
Lovely little fella. Loves his daddy.
Laughs when Daddy throws him up
in the air. Upsy daisy, little Paddy,
upsy daisy, up in the air in the
dark, so dark, oh, Jasus, you miss the
child on the way down and poor
little Patrick lands on his head, gurgles
a bit, whimpers, goes quiet.
Grandma heaves herself from the bed, heavy
with the child in her belly, my
mother. She's barely able to lift little
Patrick from the floor. She moans
a long moan over the child and turns on
Grandpa. Get out of it. Out. If
you stay here a minute longer I'll take
the hatchet to you, you drunken
lunatic. By Jesus, I'll swing at the end
of a rope for you. Get out.
Grandpa stands his ground like a man. I have a
right, he says, to
stay in me own house.
She runs at him and he melts before this
whirling dervish with a
damaged child in her arms and a
healthy one stirring inside. He stumbles
from the house, up the lane, and
doesn't stop till he reaches Melbourne
in Australia.
Little Pat, my uncle, was never the same
after. He grew up soft in
the head with a left leg that
went one way, his body the other. He never
learned to read or write but God
blessed him in another way. When he
started to sell newspapers at the
age of eight he could count money
better than the Chancellor of the
Exchequer himself. No one knew why he
was called Ab Sheehan, The Abbot,
but all Limerick loved him.
My mother's troubles began the night she was
born. There is my
grandmother in the bed heaving
and gasping with the labor pains, praying
to St. Gerard Majella, patron
saint of expectant mothers. There is Nurse
O'Halloran, the midwife, all
dressed up in her finery. It's New Year's
Eve and Mrs. O'Halloran is
anxious for this child to be born so that she
can rush off to the parties and
celebrations. She tells my grandmother:
Will you push, will you, push.
Jesus, Mary and holy St. Joseph, if you
don't hurry with this child it
won't be born till the New Year and what
good is that to me with me new
dress? Never mind St. Gerard Majella. What
can a man do for a woman at a
time like this even if he is a saint? St.
Gerard Majella my arse.
My grandmother switches her prayers to St.
Ann, patron saint of
difficult labor. But the child
won't come. Nurse O'Halloran tells my
grandmother, Pray to St. Jude,
patron saint of desperate cases.
St. Jude, patron of desperate cases, help me.
I'm desperate. She
grunts and pushes and the
infant's head appears, only the head, my
mother, and it's the stroke of
midnight, the New Year. Limerick City
erupts with whistles, horns,
sirens, brass bands, people calling and
singing, Happy New Year. Should
auld acquaintance be forgot, and church
bells all over ring out the
Angelus and Nurse O'Halloran weeps for the
waste of a dress, that child
still in there and me in me finery. Will you
come out, child, will you?
Grandma gives a great push and the child is in
the world, a lovely girl with
black curly hair and sad blue eyes.
Ah, Lord above, says Nurse O'Halloran, this
child is a time
straddler, born with her head in
the New Year and her arse in the Old or
was it her head in the Old Year
and her arse in the New. You'll have to
write to the Pope, missus, to
find out what year this child was born in
and I'll save this dress for next
year.
And the child was named Angela for the Angelus
which rang the
midnight hour, the New Year, the
minute of her coming and because she was
a little angel anyway.
Love her as in childhood
Though feeble, old and grey.
For you'll never miss a mother's love
Till she's buried beneath the clay.
At the St. Vincent de Paul School, Angela
learned to read, write,
and calculate and by her ninth
year her schooling was done. She tried her
hand at being a charwoman, a
skivvy, a maid with a little white hat
opening doors, but she could not
manage the little curtsy that is
required and her mother said, You
don't have the knack of it. You're pure
useless. Why don't you go to
America where there's room for all sorts of
uselessness? I'll give you the
fare.
She arrived in New York just in time for the
first Thanksgiving Day
of the Great Depression. She met
Malachy at a party given by Dan
MacAdorey and his wife, Minnie,
on Classon Avenue in Brooklyn. Malachy
liked Angela and she liked him.
He had a hangdog look, which came from
the three months he had just
spent in jail for hijacking a truck. He and
his friend John McErlaine
believed what they were told in the speakeasy,
that the truck was packed to the
roof with cases of canned pork and
beans. Neither knew how to drive
and when the police saw the truck lurch
and jerk along Myrtle Avenue they
pulled it over. The police searched the
truck and wondered why anyone
would hijack a truck containing, not pork
and beans, but cases of buttons.
With Angela drawn to the hangdog look and
Malachy lonely after
three months in jail, there was
bound to be a knee-trembler.
A knee-trembler is the act itself done up
against a wall, man and
woman up on their toes, straining
so hard their knees tremble with the
excitement that's in it.
That knee-trembler put Angela in an
interesting condition and, of
course, there was talk. Angela
had cousins, the MacNamara sisters, Delia
and Philomena, married,
respectively, to Jimmy Fortune of County Mayo,
and Tommy Flynn, of Brooklyn
itself.
Delia and Philomena were large women,
great-breasted and fierce.
When they sailed along the
sidewalks of Brooklyn lesser creatures stepped
aside, respect was shown. The
sisters knew what was right and they knew
what was wrong and any doubts
could be resolved by the One, Holy, Roman,
Catholic and Apostolic Church.
They knew that Angela, unmarried, had no
right to be in an interesting
condition and they would take steps.
Steps they took. With Jimmy and Tommy in tow
they marched to the
speakeasy on Atlantic Avenue
where Malachy could be found on Friday,
payday when he had a job. The man
in the speak, Joey Cacciamani, did not
want to admit the sisters but
Philomena told him that if he wanted to
keep the nose on his face and
that door on its hinges he'd better open up
for they were there on God's
business. Joey said, Awright, awright, you
Irish. Jeezoz! Trouble, trouble.
Malachy, at the far end of the bar, turned
pale, gave the great
breasted ones a sickly smile,
offered them a drink. They resisted the
smile and spurned the offer.
Delia said, We don't know what class of a
tribe you come from in the North
of Ireland.
Philomena said, There is a suspicion you might
have Presbyterians
in your family, which would
explain what you did to our cousin.
Jimmy said, Ah, now, ah, now. 'Tisn't his
fault if there's
Presbyterians in his family.
Delia said, You shuddup.
Tommy had to join in. What you did to that
poor unfortunate girl is
a disgrace to the Irish race and
you should be ashamed of yourself.
Och, I am, said Malachy. I am.
Nobody asked you to talk, said Philomena. You
done enough damage
with your blather, so shut your
yap.
And while your yap is shut, said Delia, we're
here to see you do
the right thing by our poor
cousin, Angela Sheehan.
Malachy said, Och, indeed, indeed. The right
thing is the right
thing and I'd be glad to buy you
all a drink while we have this little
talk.
Take the drink, said Tommy, and shove it up
your ass.
Philomena said, Our little cousin no sooner
gets off the boat than
you are at her. We have morals in
Limerick, you know, morals. We're not
like jackrabbits from Antrim, a
place crawling with Presbyterians.
Jimmy said, He don't look like a Presbyterian.
You shuddup, said Delia.
Another thing we noticed, said Philomena. You
have a very odd
manner.
Malachy smiled. I do?
You do, says Delia. I think 'tis one of the
first things we noticed
about you, that odd manner, and
it gives us a very uneasy feeling.
'Tis that sneaky little Presbyterian smile,
said Philomena.
Och, said Malachy, it's just the trouble I
have with my teeth.
Teeth or no teeth, odd manner or no odd
manner, you're gonna marry
that girl, said Tommy. Up the
middle aisle you're going.
Och, said Malachy, I wasn't planning to get
married, you know.
There's no work and I wouldn't be
able to support...
Married is what you're going to be, said
Delia.
Up the middle aisle, said Jimmy.
You shuddup, said Delia.
Malachy watched them leave. I'm in a desperate
pickle, he told Joey
Cacciamani.
Bet your ass, said Joey. I see them babes
comin' at me I jump inna
Hudson River.
Malachy considered the pickle he was in. He
had a few dollars in
his pocket from the last job and
he had an uncle in San Francisco or one
of the other California Sans.
Wouldn't he be better off in California,
far from the great breasted
MacNamara sisters and their grim husbands? He
would, indeed, and he'd have a
drop of the Irish to celebrate his
decision and departure. Joey
poured and the drink nearly took the lining
off Malachy's gullet. Irish,
indeed! He told Joey it was a Prohibition
concoction from the devil's own
still. Joey shrugged. I don't know
nothing. I only pour. Still, it
was better than nothing and Malachy would
have another and one for
yourself, Joey, and ask them two decent Italians
what they'd like and what are you
talking about, of course, I have the
money to pay for it.
He awoke on a bench in the Long Island
Railroad Station, a cop
rapping on his boots with a
nightstick, his escape money gone, the
MacNamara sisters ready to eat
him alive in Brooklyn.
On the feast of St. Joseph, a bitter day in
March, four months
after the knee-trembler, Malachy
married Angela and in August the child
was born. In November Malachy got
drunk and decided it was time to
register the child's birth. He
thought he might name the child Malachy,
after himself, but his North of
Ireland accent and the alcoholic mumble
confused the clerk so much he
simply entered the name Male on the
certificate.
Not until late December did they take Male to
St. Paul's Church to
be baptized and named Francis
after his father's father and the lovely
saint of Assisi. Angela wanted to
give him a middle name, Munchin, after
the patron saint of Limerick but
Malachy said over his dead body. No son
of his would have a Limerick
name. It's hard enough going through life
with one name. Sticking on middle
names was an atrocious American habit
and there was no need for a
second name when you're christened after the
man from Assisi.
There was a delay the day of the baptism when
the chosen godfather,
John McErlaine, got drunk at the
speakeasy and forgot his
responsibilities. Philomena told
her husband, Tommy, he'd have to be
godfather. Child's soul is in
danger, she said. Tommy put his head down
and grumbled. All right. I'll be
godfather but I'm not goin' to be
responsible if he grows up like
his father causin' trouble and goin'
through life with the odd manner
for if he does he can go to John
McErlaine at the speakeasy. The
priest said, True for you, Tom, decent
man that you are, fine man that
never set foot inside a speakeasy.
Malachy, fresh from the speakeasy
himself, felt insulted and wanted to
argue with the priest, one
sacrilege on top of another. Take off that
collar and we'll see who's the
man. He had to be held back by the great
breasted ones and their husbands
grim. Angela, new mother, agitated,
forgot she was holding the child
and let him slip into the baptismal
font, a total immersion of the
Protestant type. The altar boy assisting
the priest plucked the infant
from the font and restored him to Angela,
who sobbed and clutched him,
dripping, to her bosom. The priest laughed,
said he had never seen the likes,
that the child was a regular little
Baptist now and hardly needed a
priest. This maddened Malachy again and
he wanted to jump at the priest
for calling the child some class of a
Protestant. The priest said,
Quiet, man, you're in God's house, and when
Malachy said, God's house, my
arse, he was thrown out on Court Street
because you can't say arse in
God's house.
After baptism Philomena said she had tea and
ham and cakes in her
house around the corner. Malachy
said, Tea? and she said, Yes, tea, or is
it whiskey you want? He said tea
was grand but first he'd have to go and
deal with John McErlaine, who
didn't have the decency to carry out his
duties as godfather. Angela said,
You're only looking for an excuse to
run to the speakeasy, and he
said, As God is my witness, the drink is the
last thing on my mind. Angela
started to cry. Your son's christening day
and you have to go drinking.
Delia told him he was a disgusting specimen
but what could you expect from
the North of Ireland.
Malachy looked from one to the other, shifted
on his feet, pulled
his cap down over his eyes,
shoved his hands deep in his trouser pockets,
said, Och, aye, the way they do
in the far reaches of County Antrim,
turned, hurried up Court Street
to the speakeasy on Atlantic Avenue where
he was sure they'd ply him with
free drink in honor of his son's baptism.
At Philomena's house the sisters and their
husbands ate and drank
while Angela sat in a corner
nursing the baby and crying. Philomena
stuffed her mouth with bread and
ham and rumbled at Angela, That's what
you get for being such a fool.
Hardly off the boat and you fall for that
lunatic. You shoulda stayed
single, put the child up for adoption, and
you'd be a free woman today.
Angela cried harder and Delia took up the
attack, Oh, stop it, Angela, stop
it. You have nobody to blame but
yourself for gettin' into trouble
with a drunkard from the North, a man
that doesn't even look like a
Catholic, him with his odd manner. I'd say
that... that... Malachy has a
streak of the Presbyterian in him right
enough. You shuddup, Jimmy.
If I was you, said Philomena, I'd make sure
there's no more
children. He don't have a job, so
he don't, an' never will the way he
drinks. So... no more children,
Angela. Are you listenin' to me?
I am, Philomena.
A year later another child was born. Angela
called him Malachy
after his father and gave him a
middle name, Gerard, after his father's
brother.
The MacNamara sisters said Angela was nothing
but a rabbit and they
wanted nothing to do with her
till she came to her senses.
Their husbands agreed.
I'm in a playground on Classon Avenue in
Brooklyn with my brother,
Malachy. He's two, I'm three.
We're on the seesaw.
Up, down, up, down.
Malachy goes up.
I get off.
Malachy goes down. Seesaw hits the ground. He
screams. His hand is
on his mouth and there's blood.
Oh, God. Blood is bad. My mother will kill me.
And here she is, trying to run across the
playground. Her big belly
slows her.
She says, What did you do? What did you do to
the child?
I don't know what to say. I don't know what I
did.
She pulls my ear. Go home. Go to bed. Bed?
In the middle of the day?
She pushes me toward the playground gate. Go.
She picks up Malachy and waddles off.
My father's friend, Mr. MacAdorey, is outside
our building. He's
standing at the edge of the
sidewalk with his wife, Minnie, looking at a
dog lying in the gutter. There is
blood all around the dog's head. It's
the color of the blood from Malachy's
mouth.
Malachy has dog blood and the dog has Malachy
blood.
I pull Mr. MacAdorey's hand. I tell him
Malachy has blood like the
dog.
Oh, he does, indeed, Francis. Cats have it,
too. And Eskimos. All
the same blood.
Minnie says, Stop that, Dan. Stop confusing
the wee fellow. She
tells me the poor wee dog was hit
by a car and he crawled all the way
from the middle of the street
before he died. Wanted to come home, the
poor wee creature.
Mr. MacAdorey says, You'd better go home,
Francis. I don't know
what you did to your wee brother,
but your mother took him off to the
hospital. Go home, child.
Will Malachy die like the dog, Mr. MacAdorey?
Minnie says, He bit his tongue. He won't die.
Why did the dog die?
It was his time, Francis.
The apartment is empty and I wander between
the two rooms, the
bedroom and the kitchen. My
father is out looking for a job and my mother
is at the hospital with Malachy.
I wish I had something to eat but
there's nothing in the icebox but
cabbage leaves floating in the melted
ice. My father said never eat
anything floating in water for the rot that
might be in it. I fall asleep on
my parents' bed and when my mother
shakes me it's nearly dark. Your
little brother is going to sleep a
while. Nearly bit his tongue off.
Stitches galore. Go into the other
room.
My father is in the kitchen sipping black tea
from his big white
enamel mug. He lifts me to his
lap.
Dad, will you tell me the story about Coo Coo?
Cuchulain. Say it after me, Coo-hoo-lin. I'll
tell you the story
when you say the name right.
Coo-hoo-lin.
I say it right and he tells me the story of
Cuchulain, who had a
different name when he was a boy,
Setanta. He grew up in Ireland where
Dad lived when he was a boy in
County Antrim. Setanta had a stick and
ball and one day he hit the ball
and it went into the mouth of a big dog
that belonged to Culain and
choked him. Oh, Culain was angry and he said,
What am I to do now without my
big dog to guard my house and my wife and
my ten small children as well as
numerous pigs, hens, sheep?
Setanta said, I'm sorry. I'll guard your house
with my stick and
ball and I'll change my name to
Cuchulain, the Hound of Culain. He did.
He guarded the house and regions
beyond and became a great hero, the
Hound of Ulster itself. Dad said
he was a greater hero than Hercules or
Achilles that the Greeks were
always bragging about and he could take on
King Arthur and all his knights
in a fair fight which, of course, you
could never get with an
Englishman anyway.
That's my story. Dad can't tell that story to
Malachy or any other
children down the hall.
He finishes the story and lets me sip his tea.
It's bitter, but I'm
happy there on his lap.
For days Malachy's tongue is swollen and he
can hardly make a sound
never mind talk. But even if he
could no one is paying any attention to
him because we have two new
babies who were brought by an angel in the
middle of the night. The
neighbors say, Ooh, Ah, they're lovely boys,
look at those big eyes.
Malachy stands in the middle of the room,
looking up at everyone,
pointing to his tongue and
saying, Uck, uck. When the neighbors say,
Can't you see we're looking at
your little brothers? he cries, till Dad
pats him on the head. Put in your
tongue, son, and go out and play with
Frankie. Go on.
In the playground I tell Malachy about the dog
who died in the
street because someone drove a
ball into his mouth. Malachy shakes his
head. No uck ball. Car uck kill
dog. He cries because his tongue hurts
and he can hardly talk and it's
terrible when you can't talk. He won't
let me push him on the swing. He
says, You uck kill me uck on seesaw. He
gets Freddie Leibowitz to push
him and he's happy, laughing when he
swings to the sky. Freddie is
big, he's seven, and I ask him to push me.
He says, No, you tried to kill
your brother.
I try to get the swing going myself but all I
can do is move it
back and forth and I'm angry
because Freddie and Malachy are laughing at
the way I can't swing. They're
great pals now, Freddie, seven, Malachy,
two. They laugh every day and
Malachy's tongue gets better with all the
laughing.
When he laughs you can see how white and small
and pretty his teeth
are and you can see his eyes
shine. He has blue eyes like my mother. He
has golden hair and pink cheeks.
I have brown eyes like Dad. I have black
hair and my cheeks are white in
the mirror. My mother tells Mrs.
Leibowitz down the hall that
Malachy is the happiest child in the world.
She tells Mrs. Leibowitz down the
hall, Frankie has the odd manner like
his father. I wonder what the odd
manner is but I can't ask because I'm
not supposed to be listening.
I wish I could swing up into the sky, up into
the clouds. I might
be able to fly around the whole
world and not hear my brothers, Oliver
and Eugene, cry in the middle of
the night anymore. My mother says
they're always hungry. She cries
in the middle of the night, too. She
says she's worn out nursing and
feeding and changing and four boys is too
much for her. She wishes she had
one little girl all for herself. She'd
give anything for one little
girl.
I'm in the playground with Malachy. I'm four,
he's three. He lets
me push him on the swing because
he's no good at swinging himself and
Freddie Leibowitz is in school.
We have to stay in the playground because
the twins are sleeping and my
mother says she's worn out. Go out and
play, she says, and give me some
rest. Dad is out looking for a job again
and sometimes he comes home with
the smell of whiskey, singing all the
songs about suffering Ireland.
Mam gets angry and says Ireland can kiss
her arse. He says that's nice
language to be using in front of the
children and she says never mind
the language, food on the table is what
she wants, not suffering Ireland.
She says it was a sad day Prohibition
ended because Dad gets the drink
going around to saloons offering to
sweep out the bars and lift
barrels for a whiskey or a beer. Sometimes he
brings home bits of the free
lunch, rye bread, corned beef, pickles. He
puts the food on the table and
drinks tea himself. He says food is a
shock to the system and he
doesn't know where we get our appetites. Mam
says, They get their appetites
because they're starving half the time.
When Dad gets a job Mam is cheerful and she
sings,
Anyone can see why I wanted your kiss,
It had to be and the reason is this
Could it be true, someone like you
Could love me, love me?
When Dad brings home the first week's wages
Mam is delighted she
can pay the lovely Italian man in
the grocery shop and she can hold her
head up again because there's
nothing worse in the world than to owe and
be beholden to anyone. She cleans
the kitchen, washes the mugs and
plates, brushes crumbs and bits
of food from the table, cleans out the
icebox and orders a fresh block
of ice from another Italian. She buys
toilet paper that we can take
down the hall to the lavatory and that, she
says, is better than having the
headlines from the Daily News blackening
your arse. She boils water on the
stove and spends a day at a great tin
tub washing our shirts and socks,
diapers for the twins, our two sheets,
our three towels. She hangs
everything out on the clotheslines behind the
apartment house and we can watch
the clothes dance in wind and sun. She
says you wouldn't want the
neighbors to know what you have in the way of
a wash but there's nothing like
the sweetness of clothes dried by the
sun.
When Dad brings home the first week's wages on
a Friday night we
know the weekend will be
wonderful. On Saturday night Mam will boil water
on the stove and wash us in the
great tin tub and Dad will dry us.
Malachy will turn around and show
his behind. Dad will pretend to be
shocked and we'll all laugh. Mam
will make hot cocoa and we'll be able to
stay up while Dad tells us a
story out of his head. All we have to do is
say a name, Mr. MacAdorey or Mr.
Leibowitz down the hall, and Dad will
have the two of them rowing up a
river in Brazil chased by Indians with
green noses and puce shoulders.
On nights like that we can drift off to
sleep knowing there will be a
breakfast of eggs, fried tomatoes and fried
bread, tea with lashings of sugar
and milk and, later in the day, a big
dinner of mashed potatoes, peas
and ham, and a trifle Mam makes, layers
of fruit and warm delicious
custard on a cake soaked in sherry.
When Dad brings home the first week's wages
and the weather is fine
Mam takes us to the playground.
She sits on a bench and talks to Minnie
MacAdorey. She tells Minnie
stories about characters in Limerick and
Minnie tells her about characters
in Belfast and they laugh because there
are funny people in Ireland,
North and South. Then they teach each other
sad songs and Malachy and I leave
the swings and see-saws to sit with
them on the bench and sing, A
group of young soldiers one night in a camp
Were talking of sweethearts they
had.
All seemed so merry except one young lad,
And he was downhearted and sad.
Come and join us, said one of the boys,
Surely there's someone for you.
But Ned shook his head and proudly he said I
am in love with two,
Each like a mother to me,
From neither of them shall I part.
For one is my mother,
God bless her and love her,
The other is my sweetheart.
Malachy and I sing that song and Mam and
Minnie laugh till they cry
at the way Malachy takes a deep
bow and holds his arms out to Mam at the
end. Dan MacAdorey comes along on
his way home from work and says Rudy
Vallee better start worrying
about the competition.
When we go home Mam makes tea and bread and
jam or mashed potatoes
with butter and salt. Dad drinks
the tea and eats nothing. Mam says, God
above, How can you work all day
and not eat? He says, The tea is enough.
She says, You'll ruin your
health, and he tells her again that food is a
shock to the system. He drinks
his tea and tells us stories and shows us
letters and words in the Daily
News or he smokes a cigarette, stares at
the wall, runs his tongue over
his lips.
When Dad's job goes into the third week he
does not bring home the
wages. On Friday night we wait
for him and Mam gives us bread and tea.
The darkness comes down and the
lights come on along Classon Avenue.
Other men with jobs are home
already and having eggs for dinner because
you can't have meat on a Friday.
You can hear the families talking
upstairs and downstairs and down
the hall and Bing Crosby is singing on
the radio, Brother, can you spare
a dime?
Malachy and I play with the twins. We know Mam
won't sing Anyone
can see why I wanted your kiss.
She sits at the kitchen table talking to
herself, What am I going to do?
till it's late and Dad rolls up the
stairs singing Roddy McCorley. He
pushes in the door and calls for us,
Where are my troops? Where are my
four warriors?
Mam says, Leave those boys alone. They're gone
to bed half hungry
because you have to fill your
belly with whiskey.
He comes to the bedroom door. Up, boys, up. A
nickel for everyone
who promises to die for Ireland.
Deep in Canadian woods we met
From one bright island flown.
Great is the land we tread, but yet
Our hearts are with our own.
Up, boys, up. Francis, Malachy, Oliver,
Eugene. The Red Branch
Knights, the Fenian Men, the IRA.
Up, up.
Mam is at the kitchen table, shaking, her hair
hanging damp, her
face wet. Can't you leave them
alone? she says. Jesus, Mary and Joseph,
isn't it enough that you come
home without a penny in your pocket without
making fools of the children on
top of it?
She comes to us. Go back to bed, she says.
I want them up, he says. I want them ready for
the day Ireland will
be free from the center to the
sea.
Don't cross me, she says, for if you do it'll
be a sorry day in
your mother's house.
He pulls his cap down over his face and cries,
My poor mother. Poor
Ireland. Och, what are we going
to do?
Mam says, You're pure stone mad, and she tells
us again to go to
bed.
On the morning of the fourth Friday of Dad's
job Mam asks him if
he'll be home tonight with his
wages or will he drink everything again?
He looks at us and shakes his
head at Mam as if to say, Och, you
shouldn't talk like that in front
of the children.
Mam keeps at him. I'm asking you, Are you
coming home so that we
can have a bit of supper or will
it be midnight with no money in your
pocket and you singing Kevin
Barry and the rest of the sad songs?
He puts on his cap, shoves his hands into his
trouser pockets,
sighs and looks up at the
ceiling. I told you before I'll be home, he
says.
Later in the day Mam dresses us. She puts the
twins into the pram
and off we go through the long
streets of Brooklyn. Sometimes she lets
Malachy sit in the pram when he's
tired of trotting along beside her. She
tells me I'm too big for the
pram. I could tell her I have pains in my
legs from trying to keep up with
her but she's not singing and I know
this is not the day to be talking
about my pains.
We come to a big gate where there's a man
standing in a box with
windows all around. Mam talks to
the man. She wants to know if she can go
inside to where the men are paid
and maybe they'd give her some of Dad's
wages so he wouldn't spend it in
the bars. The man shakes his head. I'm
sorry, lady, but if we did that
we'd have half the wives in Brooklyn
storming the place. Lotta men
have the drinking problem but there's
nothing we can do long as they
show up sober and do their work.
We wait across the street. Mam lets me sit on
the sidewalk with my
back against the wall. She gives
the twins their bottles of water and
sugar but Malachy and I have to
wait till she gets money from Dad and we
can go to the Italian for tea and
bread and eggs.
When the whistle blows at half five men in
caps and overalls swarm
through the gate, their faces and
hands black from the work. Mam tells us
watch carefully for Dad because
she can hardly see across the street
herself, her eyes are that bad.
There are dozens of men, then a few, then
none. Mam is crying, Why couldn't
ye see him? Are ye blind or what?
She goes back to the man in the box. Are you
sure there wouldn't be
one man left inside?
No, lady, he says. They're out. I don't know
how he got past you.
We go back through the long streets of
Brooklyn. The twins hold up
their bottles and cry for more
water and sugar. Malachy says he's hungry
and Mam tells him wait a little,
we'll get money from Dad and we'll all
have a nice supper. We'll go to
the Italian and get eggs and make toast
with the flames on the stove and
we'll have jam on it. Oh, we will, and
we'll all be nice and warm.
It's dark on Atlantic Avenue and all the bars
around the Long
Island Railroad Station are
bright and noisy. We go from bar to bar
looking for Dad. Mam leaves us
outside with the pram while she goes in or
she sends me. There are crowds of
noisy men and stale smells that remind
me of Dad when he comes home with
the smell of the whiskey on him.
The man behind the bar says, Yeah, sonny,
whaddya want? You're not
supposeta be in here, y'know.
I'm looking for my father. Is my father here?
Naw, sonny, how'd I know dat? Who's your
fawdah?
His name is Malachy and he sings Kevin Barry.
Malarkey?
No, Malachy.
Malachy? And he sings Kevin Barry?
He calls out to the men in the bar, Youse
guys, youse know guy
Malachy what sings Kevin Barry?
Men shake their heads. One says he knew a guy
Michael sang Kevin
Barry but he died of the drink
which he had because of his war wounds.
The barman says, Jeez, Pete, I didn't ax ya to
tell me history o'
da woild, did I? Naw, kid. We
don't let people sing in here. Causes
trouble. Specially the Irish. Let
'em sing, next the fists are flying.
Besides, I never hoid a name like
dat Malachy. Naw, kid, no Malachy here.
The man called Pete holds his glass toward me.
Here, kid, have a
sip, but the barman says, Whaddya
doin', Pete? Tryina get the kid drunk?
Do that again, Pete, an' I'll
come out an' break y'ass.
Mam tries all the bars around the station
before she gives up. She
leans against a wall and cries.
Jesus, we still have to walk all the way
to Classon Avenue and I have four
starving children. She sends me back
into the bar where Pete offered
me the sip to see if the barman would
fill the twins' bottles with
water and maybe a little sugar in each. The
men in the bar think it's very
funny that the barman should be filling
baby bottles but he's big and he
tells them shut their lip. He tells me
babies should be drinking milk
not water and when I tell him Mam doesn't
have the money he empties the
baby bottles and fills them with milk. He
says, Tell ya mom they need that
for the teeth an' bones. Ya drink water
an' sugar an' all ya get is
rickets. Tell ya Mom.
Mam is happy with the milk. She says she knows
all about teeth and
bones and rickets but beggars
can't be choosers.
When we reach Classon Avenue she goes straight
to the Italian
grocery shop. She tells the man
her husband is late tonight, that he's
probably working overtime, and
would it be at all possible to get a few
things and she'll be sure to see
him tomorrow?
The Italian says, Missus, you always pay your
bill sooner or later
and you can have anything you
like in this store.
Oh, she says, I don't want much.
Anything you like, missus, because I know
you're an honest woman
and you got a bunch o' nice kids
there.
We have eggs and toast and jam though we're so
weary walking the
long streets of Brooklyn we can
barely move our jaws to chew. The twins
fall asleep after eating and Mam
lays them on the bed to change their
diapers. She sends me down the
hall to rinse the dirty diapers in the
lavatory so that they can be hung
up to dry and used the next day.
Malachy helps her wash the twins'
bottoms though he's ready to fall
asleep himself.
I crawl into bed with Malachy and the twins. I
look out at Mam at
the kitchen table, smoking a
cigarette, drinking tea, and crying. I want
to get up and tell her I'll be a
man soon and I'll get a job in the place
with the big gate and I'll come
home every Friday night with money for
eggs and toast and jam and she
can sing again Anyone can see why I wanted
your kiss.
The next week Dad loses the job. He comes home
that Friday night,
throws his wages on the table and
says to Mam, Are you happy now? You
hang around the gate complaining
and accusing and they sack me. They were
looking for an excuse and you
gave it to them.
He takes a few dollars from his wages and goes
out. He comes home
late roaring and singing. The
twins cry and Mam shushes them and cries a
long time herself.
We spend hours in the playground when the
twins are sleeping, when
Mam is tired, and when Dad comes
home with the whiskey smell on him,
roaring about Kevin Barry getting
hanged on a Monday morning or the Roddy
McCorley song, Up the narrow
street he stepped Smiling and proud and
young About the hemp rope on his
neck The golden ringlets clung, There's
never a tear in the blue eyes
Both glad and bright are they, As Roddy
McCorley goes to die On the
bridge of Toome today.
When he sings he marches around the table, Mam
cries and the twins
howl with her. She says, Go out,
Frankie, go out, Malachy. You shouldn't
see your father like this. Stay
in the playground. We don't mind going to
the playground.
We can play with the leaves piling up on the
ground and we can push
each other on the swings but then
winter comes to Classon Avenue and the
swings are frozen and won't even
move. Minnie MacAdorey says, God help
these poor wee boys.
They don't have a glove between them. That
makes me laugh because I
know Malachy and I have four
hands between us and one glove would be
silly. Malachy doesn't know what
I'm laughing at: He won't know anything
till he's four going on five.
Minnie brings us in and gives us tea and
porridge with jam in it.
Mr. MacAdorey sits in an armchair
with their new baby, Maisie. He holds
her bottle and sings, Clap hands,
clap hands, Till Daddy comes home, With
buns in his pocket For Maisie
alone.
Clap hands, clap hands,
Till Daddy comes home,
For Daddy has money
And Mammy has none.
Malachy tries to sing that song but I tell him
stop, it's Maisie's
song. He starts to cry and Minnie
says, There, there. You can sing the
song. That's a song for all the
children. Mr. MacAdorey smiles at Malachy
and I wonder what kind of world
is it where anyone can sing anyone else's
song.
Minnie says, Don't frown, Frankie. It makes
your face dark and God
knows it's dark enough. Some day
you'll have a little sister and you can
sing that song to her. Och, aye.
You'll have a little sister, surely.
Minnie is right and Mam gets her wish. There's
a new baby soon, a
little girl, and they call her
Margaret. We all love Margaret. She has
black curly hair and blue eyes
like Mam and she waves her little hands
and chirps like any little bird
in the trees along Classon Avenue. Minnie
says there was a holiday in
heaven the day this child was made. Mrs.
Leibowitz says the world never
saw such eyes, such a smile, such
happiness. She makes me dance, says
Mrs. Leibowitz.
When Dad comes home from looking for a job he
holds Margaret and
sings to her: In a shady nook one
moonlit night A leprechaun I spied.
With scarlet cap and coat of green
A cruiskeen by his side.
'Twas tick tock tick his hammer went
Upon a tiny shoe.
Oh, I laugh to think he was caught at last,
But the fairy was laughing, too.
He walks around the kitchen with her and talks
to her. He tells her
how lovely she is with her curly
black hair and the blue eyes of her
mother. He tells her he'll take
her to Ireland and they'll walk the Glens
of Antrim and swim in Lough
Neagh. He'll get a job soon, so he will, and
she'll have dresses of silk and
shoes with silver buckles.
The more Dad sings to Margaret the less she
cries and as the days
pass she even begins to laugh.
Mam says, Look at him trying to dance with
that child in his arms, him with
his two left feet. She laughs and we all
laugh.
The twins cried when they were small and Dad
and Mam would say
Whisht and Hush and feed them and
they'd go back to sleep. But when
Margaret cries there's a high
lonely feeling in the air and Dad is out of
bed in a second, holding her to
him, doing a slow dance around the table,
singing to her, making sounds
like a mother. When he passes the window
where the streetlight shines in
you can see tears on his cheeks and
that's strange because he never
cries for anyone unless he has the drink
taken and he sings the Kevin
Barry song and the Roddy McCorley song. Now
he cries over Margaret and he has
no smell of drink on him.
Mam tells Minnie MacAdorey, He's in heaven
over that child. He
hasn't touched a drop since she
was born. I should've had a little girl a
long time ago.
Och, they're lovely, aren't they? says Minnie.
The little boys are
grand, too, but you need a little
girl for yourself.
My mother laughs, For myself? Lord above, if I
didn't nurse her I
wouldn't be able to get near her
the way he wants to be holding her day
and night.
Minnie says it's lovely, all the same, to see
a man so charmed with
his little girl for isn't
everyone charmed with her?
Everyone.
The twins are able to stand and walk and they
have accidents all
the time. Their bottoms are sore
because they're always wet and shitty.
They put dirty things in their
mouths, bits of paper, feathers,
shoelaces, and they get sick. Mam
says we're all driving her crazy. She
dresses the twins, puts them in
the pram, and Malachy and I take them to
the playground. The cold weather
is gone and the trees have green leaves
up and down Classon Avenue.
We race the pram around the playground and the
twins laugh and make
goo-goo sounds till they get
hungry and start to cry. There are two
bottles in the pram filled with
water and sugar and that keeps them quiet
for awhile till they're hungry
again and they cry so hard I don't know
what to do because they're so
small and I wish I could give them all
kinds of food so that they'd
laugh and make the baby sounds. They love
the mushy food Mam makes in a
pot, bread mashed up in milk and water and
sugar. Mam calls it bread and
goody.
If I take the twins home now Mam will yell at
me for giving her no
rest or for waking Margaret. We
are to stay in the playground till she
sticks her head out the window
and calls for us. I make funny faces for
the twins to stop their crying. I
put a piece of paper on my head and let
it fall and they laugh and laugh.
I push the pram over to Malachy playing
on the swings with Freddie
Leibowitz. Malachy is trying to tell Freddie
all about the way Setanta became
Cuchulain. I tell him stop telling that
story, it's my story. He won't
stop. I push him and he cries, Waah, waah,
I'll tell Mam. Freddie pushes me
and everything turns dark in my head and
I run at him with fists and knees
and feet till he yells, Hey, stop,
stop, and I won't because I
can't, I don't know how, and if I stop
Malachy will go on taking my
story from me. Freddie pushes me away and
runs off, yelling, Frankie tried
to kill me. Frankie tried to kill me. I
don't know what to do because I
never tried to kill anyone before and now
Malachy, on the swing, cries,
Don't kill me, Frankie, and he looks so
helpless I put my arms around him
and help him off the swing. He hugs me.
I won't tell your story anymore.
I won't tell Freddie about Coo, Coo. I
want to laugh but I can't because
the twins are crying in the pram and
it's dark in the playground and
what's the use of trying to make funny
faces and letting things fall off
your head when they can't see you in
the dark?
The Italian grocery shop is across the street
and I see bananas,
apples, oranges. I know the twins
can eat bananas. Malachy loves bananas
and I like them myself. But you
need money, Italians are not known for
giving away bananas especially to
the McCourts who owe them money already
for groceries.
My mother tells me all the time, Never, never
leave that playground
except to come home. But what am
I to do with the twins bawling with the
hunger in the pram? I tell
Malachy I'll be back in a minute. I make sure
no one is looking, grab a bunch
of bananas outside the Italian grocery
shop and run down Myrtle Avenue,
away from the playground, around the
block and back to the other end
where there's a hole in the fence. We
push the pram to a dark corner
and peel the bananas for the twins. There
are five bananas in the bunch and
we feast on them in the dark corner.
The twins slobber and chew and
spread banana over their faces, their
hair, their clothes. I realize
then that questions will be asked. Mam
will want to know why the twins
are smothered in bananas, where did you
get them? I can't tell her about
the Italian shop on the corner. I will
have to say, A man.
That's what I'll say. A man.
Then the strange thing happens. There's a man
at the gate of the
playground. He's calling me. Oh,
God, it's the Italian. Hey, sonny, come
'ere. Hey, talkin' to ya. Come
'ere.
I go to him.
You the kid wid the little bruddas, right?
Twins?
Yes, sir.
Heah. Gotta bag o' fruit. I don' give it to
you I trow id out.
Right? So, heah, take the bag. Ya
got apples, oranges, bananas. Ya like
bananas, right? I think ya like
bananas, eh? Ha, ha. I know ya like the
bananas. Heah, take the bag. Ya
gotta nice mother there. Ya father? Well,
ya know, he's got the problem,
the Irish thing. Give them twins a banana.
Shud 'em up. I hear 'em all the
way cross the street.
Thank you, sir.
Jeez. Polite kid, eh? Where ja loin dat?
My father told me to say thanks, sir.
Your father? Oh, well.
Dad sits at the table reading the paper. He
says that President
Roosevelt is a good man and
everyone in America will soon have a job. Mam
is on the other side of the table
feeding Margaret with a bottle. She has
the hard look that frightens me.
Where did you get that fruit?
The man.
What man?
The Italian man gave it to me.
Did you steal that fruit?
Malachy says, The man. The man gave Frankie
the bag.
And what did you do to Freddie Leibowitz? His
mother was here.
Lovely woman. I don't know what
we'd do without her and Minnie MacAdorey.
And you had to attack poor
Freddie.
Malachy jumps up and down. He din't. He din't.
Din't try to kill
Freddie. Din't try to kill me.
Dad says, Whisht, Malachy, whisht. Come over
here. And he takes
Malachy on his lap.
My mother says, Go down the hall and tell
Freddie you're sorry.
But Dad says, Do you want to tell Freddie
you're sorry?
I don't.
My parents look at one another. Dad says,
Freddie is a good boy. He
was only pushing your little
brother on the swing. Isn't that right?
He was trying to steal my Cuchulain story.
Och, now. Freddie doesn't care about the Cuchulain
story. He has
his own story. Hundreds of
stories. He's Jewish.
What's Jewish?
Dad laughs. Jewish is, Jewish is people with
their own stories.
They don't need Cuchulain. They
have Moses. They have Samson.
What's Samson?
If you go down and talk to Freddie I'll tell
you about Samson
later. You can tell Freddie
you're sorry and you'll never do it again and
you can even ask him about
Samson. Anything you like as long as you talk
to Freddie. Will you?
The baby gives a little cry in my mother's
arms and Dad jumps up,
dropping Malachy to the floor. Is
she all right? My mother says, Of
course she's all right. She's
feeding. God above, you're a bundle of
nerves.
They're talking about Margaret now and I'm
forgotten. I don't care.
I'm going down the hall to ask
Freddie about Samson, to see if Samson is
as good as Cuchulain, to see if
Freddie has his own story or if he still
wants to steal Cuchulain. Malachy
wants to go with me now that my father
is standing and doesn't have a
lap anymore.
Mrs. Leibowitz says, Oh, Frankie, Frankie,
come in, come in. And
little Malachy. And tell me,
Frankie, what did you do to Freddie? Tried
to kill him? Freddie is a good
boy, Frankie. Reads his book. Listens to
radio with his papa. He swinks
you brother on swink. And you try to kill
him. Oh, Frankie, Frankie. And
you poor mother and her sick baby.
She's not sick, Mrs. Leibowitz.
Sick she is. Zat is one sick baby. I know from
sick babies. I work
in hoztipal. Don't tell me,
Frankie. Come in, come in. Freddie, Freddie,
Frankie is here. Come out.
Frankie won't kill you no more. You and little
Malachy. Nice Chewish name, have
piece cake, eh? Why they give you a
Chewish name, eh? So, glass milk,
piece cake. You boys so thin, Irish
don't eat.
We sit at the table with Freddie, eating cake,
drinking milk. Mr.
Leibowitz sits in an armchair
reading the paper, listening to the radio.
Sometimes he speaks to Mrs.
Leibowitz and I don't understand because
strange sounds come from his
mouth. Freddie understands. When Mr.
Leibowitz makes the strange
sounds Freddie gets up and takes him a piece
of cake. Mr. Leibowitz smiles at
Freddie and pats his head and Freddie
smiles back and makes the strange
sounds.
Mrs. Leibowitz shakes her head at Malachy and
me. Oy, so thin. She
says Oy so much Malachy laughs
and says Oy and the Leibowitzes laugh and
Mr. Leibowitz says words we can
understand, When Irish oyes are smiling.
Mrs. Leibowitz laughs so hard her
body shakes and she holds her stomach
and Malachy says Oy again because
he knows that makes everyone laugh. I
say Oy but no one laughs and I
know Oy belongs to Malachy the way
Cuchulain belongs to me and
Malachy can have his Oy.
Mrs. Leibowitz, my father said Freddie has a
favorite story.
Malachy says, Sam, Sam, Oy. Everyone laughs
again but I don't
because I can't remember what
comes after Sam. Freddie mumbles through
his cake, Samson, and Mrs.
Leibowitz tells him, Don't talk wiz you mouse
full, and I laugh because she's
grown-up and she says mouse instead of
mouth. Malachy laughs because I
laugh and the Leibowitzes look at each
other and smile. Freddie says,
Not Samson. My favorite story is David and
the giant, Goliath. David killed
him dead with a slingshot, a stone in
his head. His brains was on the
ground.
Were on the ground, says Mr. Leibowitz.
Yes, Papa. Papa.
That's what Freddie calls his father and Dad
is what I call my
father.
My mother's whisper wakes me. What's up with
the child? It's still
early and there isn't much
morning in the room but you can see Dad over
by the window with Margaret in
his arms. He's rocking her and sighing,
Och.
Mam says, Is she, is she sick?
Och, she's very quiet and she's a wee bit
cold.
My mother is out of the bed, taking the child.
Go for the doctor.
Go for God's sake, and my father
is pulling on his trousers over his
shirt, no jacket, shoes, no socks
on this bitter day.
We wait in the room, the twins asleep at the
bottom of the bed,
Malachy stirring beside me.
Frankie, I want a drink of water. Mam rocks
in her bed with the baby in her
arms. Oh, Margaret, Margaret, my own
little love. Open your lovely
blue eyes, my little leanv.
I fill a cup of water for Malachy and me and
my mother wails, Water
for you and your brother. Oh,
indeed, Water, is it? And nothing for your
sister. Your poor little sister.
Did you ask if she had a mouth in her
head? Did you ask if she'd like a
drop of water? Oh, no. Go on and drink
your water, you and your brother,
as if nothing happened. A regular day
for the two of you, isn't it? And
the twins sleeping away as if they
didn't have a care and their poor
little sister sick here in my arms.
Sick in my arms. Oh, sweet Jesus
in heaven.
Why is she talking like this? She's not
talking like my mother
today. I want my father. Where is
my father?
I get back into bed and start to cry. Malachy
says, Why you cry?
Why you cry? till Mam is at me
again. Your sister is sick in my arms and
you're there whining and
whinging. If I go over to that bed I'll give you
something to whinge about.
Dad is back with the doctor. Dad has the
whiskey smell. The doctor
examines the baby, prods her,
raises her eyelids, feels her neck, arms,
legs. He straightens up and
shakes his head. She's gone. Mam reaches for
the baby, hugs her, turns to the
wall. The doctor wants to know, Was
there any kind of accident? Did
anyone drop the baby? Did the boys play
too hard with her? Anything?
My father shakes his head. Doctor says he'll
have to take her to
examine her and Dad signs a
paper. My mother begs for another few minutes
with her baby but the doctor says
he doesn't have all day. When Dad
reaches for Margaret my mother
pulls away against the wall. She has the
wild look, her black curly hair
is damp on her forehead and there is
sweat all over her face, her eyes
are wide open and her face is shiny
with tears, she keeps shaking her
head and moaning, Ah, no, ah, no, till
Dad eases the baby from her arms.
The doctor wraps Margaret completely in
a blanket and my mother cries,
Oh, Jesus, you'll smother her. Jesus, Mary
and Joseph, help me. The doctor
leaves. My mother turns to the wall and
doesn't make a move or sound. The
twins are awake, crying with the
hunger, but Dad stands in the
middle of the room, staring at the ceiling.
His face is white and he beats on
his thighs with his fists. He comes to
the bed, puts his hand on my
head. His hand is shaking. Francis, I'm
going out for cigarettes.
Mam stays in the bed all day, hardly moving.
Malachy and I fill the
twins' bottles with water and
sugar. In the kitchen we find a half loaf
of stale bread and two cold
sausages. We can't have tea because the milk
is sour in the icebox where the
ice is melted again and everyone knows
you can't drink tea without milk
unless your father gives it to you out
of his mug while he's telling you
about Cuchulain.
The twins are hungry again but I know I can't
give them water and
sugar all day and night. I boil
sour milk in a pot, mash in some of the
stale bread, and try to feed them
from a cup, bread and goody. They make
faces and run to Mam's bed,
crying. She keeps her face to the wall and
they run back to me, still
crying. They won't eat the bread and goody
till I kill the taste of the sour
milk with sugar. Now they eat and smile
and rub the goody over their
faces. Malachy wants some and if he can eat
it, so can I. We all sit on the
floor eating the goody and chewing on the
cold sausage and drinking water
my mother keeps in a milk bottle in the
icebox.
After we eat and drink we have to go to the
lavatory down the hall
but we can't get in because Mrs.
Leibowitz is inside, humming and
singing. She says, Wait,
chiltren, wait, darlinks. Won't be two seconds.
Malachy claps his hands and
dances around, singing, Wait, chiltren, wait,
darlinks. Mrs. Leibowitz opens
the lavatory door. Look at him. Little
actor awready. So, chiltren,
how's you mother?
She's in bed, Mrs. Leibowitz. The doctor took
Margaret and my
father went for cigarettes.
Oh, Frankie, Frankie. I said that was one sick
child.
Malachy is clutching himself. Have to pee.
Have to pee.
So, pee awready. You boys pee and we see you
mother.
After we pee Mrs. Leibowitz comes to see Mam.
Oh, Mrs. McCourt. Oy
vey, darlink. Look at this. Look
at these twins. Naked. Mrs. McCourt,
what is mazzer, eh? The baby she
is sick? So talk to me. Poor woman. Here
turn around, missus. Talk to me.
Oy, this is one mess. Talk to me, Mrs.
McCourt.
She helps my mother sit up against the wall.
Mam seems smaller.
Mrs. Leibowitz says she'll bring
some soup and tells me get some water to
wash my mother's face. I dip a
towel in cold water and pat her forehead.
She presses my hand against her
cheeks. Oh, Jesus, Frankie. Oh, Jesus.
She won't let my hand go and I'm
frightened because I've never seen her
like this before. She's saying
Frankie only because it's my hand she's
holding and it's Margaret she's
thinking about, not me. Your lovely
little sister is dead, Frankie.
Dead. And where is your father? She lets
my hand drop. I said where is
your father? Drinking. That's where he is.
There isn't a penny in the house.
He can't get a job but he finds money
for the drink, money for the
drink, money for the drink, money for the
drink. She rears back, knocks her
head on the wall and screams, Where is
she? Where is she? Where is my
little girl? Oh, Jesus, Mary and Joseph,
help me this night. I'll go mad,
so I will, I'll go pure mad.
Mrs. Leibowitz rushes in. Missus, missus, what
is it? The little
girl. Where is she?
My mother screams again, Dead, Mrs. Leibowitz.
Dead. Her head drops
and she rocks back and forth.
Middle of the night, Mrs. Leibowitz. In her
pram. I should have been watching
her. Seven weeks she had in this world
and died in the middle of the
night, alone, Mrs. Leibowitz, all alone in
that pram.
Mrs. Leibowitz holds my mother in her arms.
Shush, now, shush.
Babies go like that. It happens,
missus. God takes them.
In the pram, Mrs. Leibowitz. Near my bed. I
could have picked her
up and she didn't have to die,
did she? God doesn't want little babies.
What is God going to do with
little babies?
I don't know, missus. I don't know from God.
Have soup. Good soup.
Make you strong. You boys. Get
bowls. I give you soup.
What's bowls, Mrs. Leibowitz?
Oh, Frankie. You don't know bowl? For the
soup, darlink. You don'
have a bowl? So get cups for the
soup. I mix pea soup and lentil soup. No
ham. Irish like the ham. No ham,
Frankie. Drink, missus. Drink you soup.
She spoons the soup into my mother's mouth,
wipes the dribble from
her chin. Malachy and I sit on
the floor drinking from mugs. We spoon the
soup into the twins' mouths. It
is lovely and hot and tasty. My mother
never makes soup like this and I
wonder if there's any chance Mrs.
Leibowitz could ever be my
mother. Freddie could be me and have my mother
and my father, too, and he could
have Malachy and the twins for brothers.
He can't have Margaret anymore
because she's like the dog in the street
that was taken away. I don't know
why she was taken away. My mother said
she died in her pram and that
must be like getting hit by a car because
they take you away.
I wish little Margaret could be here for the
soup. I could give it
to her with a spoon the way Mrs.
Leibowitz is giving it to my mother and
she'd gurgle and laugh the way
she did with Dad. She wouldn't cry anymore
and my mother wouldn't be in the
bed day and night and Dad would be
telling me Cuchulain stories and
I wouldn't want Mrs. Leibowitz to be my
mother anymore. Mrs. Leibowitz is
nice but I'd rather have my father
telling me Cuchulain stories and
Margaret chirping and Mam laughing when
Dad dances with two left feet.
Minnie MacAdorey comes in to help. Mother o'
God, Mrs. Leibowitz,
these twins smell to the high
heavens.
I don't know about Mother o' God, Minnie, but
these twins need a
wash. They need clean diapers.
Frankie, where are the clean diapers?
I don't know.
Minnie says, They're just wearing rags for
diapers. I'll get some
of Maisie's. Frankie, you take
off those rags and throw them out.
Malachy removes Oliver's rag and I struggle
with Eugene. The safety
pin is stuck and when he wriggles
it comes loose, sticks him in the hip,
and starts him screaming for Mam.
But Minnie is back with a towel and
soap and hot water. I help her
wash away the caked shit and she lets me
shake talcum powder on the twins'
raw sore skin. She says they're good
little boys and she has a big
surprise for them. She goes down the hall
and brings back a pot of mashed
potatoes for all of us. There is plenty
of salt and butter in the
potatoes and I wonder if there's any chance
Minnie could be my mother so that
I could eat like this all the time. If
I could have Mrs. Leibowitz and
Minnie for mothers at the same time I'd
have no end of soup and mashed
potatoes.
Minnie and Mrs. Leibowitz sit at the table.
Mrs. Leibowitz says
something has to be done. These
children are running wild and where is
the father? I hear Minnie whisper
he's out for the drink. Mrs. Leibowitz
says terrible, terrible, the way the
Irish drink. Minnie says her Dan
doesn't drink. Never touches the
stuff and Dan told her that when the
baby died that poor man, Malachy
McCourt, went mad all over Flatbush
Avenue and Atlantic Avenue, that
he was thrown out of all the bars around
the Long Island Railroad Station,
that the cops would have thrown him in
jail if it was anything else but
the death of that lovely little baby.
Here he has four lovely little boys, says
Minnie, but it's no
comfort to him. That little girl
brought out something in him. You know
he didn't even drink after she
was born and that was a miracle.
Mrs. Leibowitz wants to know where Mam's
cousins are, the big women
with the quiet husbands. Minnie
will find them and tell them the children
are neglected, running wild, sore
arses and everything.
Two days later Dad returns from his cigarette
hunt. It's the middle
of the night but he gets Malachy
and me out of the bed. He has the smell
of the drink on him. He has us
stand at attention in the kitchen. We are
soldiers. He tells us we must
promise to die for Ireland.
We will, Dad, we will.
All together we sing Kevin Barry,
On Mountjoy one Monday morning,
High upon the gallows tree,
Kevin Barry gave his young life
For the cause of liberty.
Just a lad of eighteen summers
Sure there's no one can deny
As he marched to death that morning
How he held his head on high.
There's a knock at the door, Mr. MacAdorey.
Och, Malachy, for God's
sake, it's three in the morning. You
have the whole house woke with the
singing.
Och, Dan, I'm only teaching the boys to die
for Ireland.
You can teach them to die for Ireland in the
daytime, Malachy.
'Tis urgent, Dan, 'tis urgent.
I know, Malachy, but they're only children.
Babies. You go to bed
now like a dacent man.
Bed, Dan! What am I to do in bed? Her little
face is there day and
night, her curly black hair and
her lovely blue eyes. Oh, Jesus, Dan,
what will I do? Was it the hunger
that killed her, Dan?
Of course not. Your missus was nursing her.
God took her. He has
his reasons.
One more song, Dan, before we go to bed.
Good night, Malachy.
Come on, boys. Sing.
Because he loved the motherland,
Because he loved the green
He goes to meet a martyr's fate
With proud and joyous mien;
True to the last, oh! true to the last
He treads the upward way;
Young Roddy McCorley goes to die
On the bridge at Toome today.
You'll die for Ireland, won't you, boys?
We will, Dad.
And we'll all meet your little sister in
heaven, won't we, boys?
We will, Dad.
My brother is standing with his face pressed
against a leg of the
table and he's asleep. Dad lifts
him, staggers across the room, places
him in the bed by my mother. I
climb into bed and my father, still in his
clothes, lies beside me. I'm
hoping he'll put his arms around me but he
goes on singing about Roddy
McCorley and talking to Margaret, Oh, my
little curly-haired, blue-eyed
love, I would dress you in silks and take
you to Lough Neagh, till day is
at the window and I fall asleep.
That night Cuchulain comes to me. There's a
big green bird on his
shoulder that keeps singing about
Kevin Barry and Roddy McCorley and I
don't like that bird because
there's blood dripping from his mouth when
he sings. In one hand Cuchulain
carries the gae bolga, the spear that is
so mighty only he can throw it.
In the other hand he carries a banana,
which he keeps offering to the
bird, who just squawks and spits blood at
him. You'd wonder why Cuchulain
puts up with a bird like that. If the
twins ever spat blood at me when
I offered them a banana I think I'd hit
them on the head with it.
In the morning my father is at the kitchen
table and I tell him my
dream. He says there were no
bananas in Ireland in the old times and even
if there were Cuchulain would
never offer one to that bird because that
was the one that came over from
England for the summer and perched on his
shoulder when he was dying and
propped up against a stone and when the
men of Erin which is Ireland
wanted to kill him they were afraid till
they saw the bird drinking
Cuchulain's blood and then they knew it was
safe to attack him, the dirty
bloody cowards. So you have to be wary of
birds, Francis, birds and
Englishmen.
Most of the day Mam lies in bed with her face
to the wall. If she
drinks tea or eats anything she
throws up in the bucket under the bed and
I have to empty it and rinse it
in the lavatory down the hall. Mrs.
Leibowitz brings her soup and
funny bread that is twisted. Mam tries to
slice it but Mrs. Leibowitz
laughs and tells her just pull. Malachy calls
it pull bread but Mrs. Leibowitz
says, No, it's challah, and teaches us
how to say it. She shakes her
head. Oy, you Irish. You'll live forever
but you'll never say challah like
a Chew.
Minnie MacAdorey brings potatoes and cabbage
and sometimes a piece
of meat. Och, times are hard,
Angela, but that lovely man, Mr. Roosevelt,
will find a job for everyone and
your husband will have work. Poor man,
it's not his fault there's a
Depression. He looks for work day and night.
My Dan is lucky, four years with
the city and he don't drink. He grew up
in Toome with your husband. Some
drink. Some don't. Curse of the Irish.
Now eat, Angela. Build yourself
up after your loss.
Mr. MacAdorey tells Dad there's work with the
WPA and when he gets
the work there's money for food
and Mam leaves the bed to clean the twins
and to feed us. When Dad comes
home with the drink smell there's no money
and Mam screams at him till the
twins cry, and Malachy and I run out to
the playground. On those nights
Mam crawls back into bed and Dad sings
the sad songs about Ireland. Why
doesn't he hold her and help her sleep
the way he did with my little
sister who died? Why doesn't he sing a
Margaret song or a song that will
dry Mam's tears? He still gets Malachy
and me out of bed to stand in our
shirts promising to die for Ireland.
One night he wanted to make the
twins promise to die for Ireland but they
can't even talk and Mam screamed
at him, You mad oul' bastard, can't you
leave the children alone?
He'll give us a nickel for ice cream if we
promise to die for
Ireland and we promise but we
never get the nickel.
We get soup from Mrs. Leibowitz and mashed
potatoes from Minnie
MacAdorey and they show us how to
take care of the twins, how to wash
their bottoms and how to wash
diaper rags after they get them all shitty.
Mrs. Leibowitz calls them diapers
and Minnie calls them nappies but it
doesn't matter what they call
them because the twins get them shitty
anyway. If Mam stays in the bed
and Dad goes out looking for a job we can
do what we like all day. We can
put the twins in the small swings in the
park and swing them till they get
hungry and cry. The Italian man calls
to me from across the street,
Hey, Frankie, c'mere. Watch out crossing da
street. Dem twins hungry again?
He gives us bits of cheese and ham and
bananas but I can't eat bananas
anymore after the way the bird spat blood
at Cuchulain.
The man says his name is Mr. Dimino and that's
his wife, Angela,
behind the counter. I tell him
that's my mother's name. No kiddin', kid.
Your mother is Angela? I didn't
know the Irish had any Angelas. Hey,
Angela, his mother's name is
Angela. She smiles. She says, Thatsa nice.
Mr. Dimino asks me about Mam and Dad and who
cooks for us. I tell
him we get food from Mrs.
Leibowitz and Minnie MacAdorey. I tell him all
about the diapers and the nappies
and how they get shitty anyway and he
laughs. Angela, you listenin' to
this? Thank God you're Italian, Angela.
He says, Kid, I gotta talk to
Mrs. Leibowitz. Ya gotta have relations can
take care of you. Ya see Minnie
MacAdorey, tell her come in see me. You
kids runnin' wild.
Two big women are at the door. They say, Who
are you?
I'm Frank. Frank! How old are you?
I'm four going on five.
You're not very big for your age, are you?
I don't know.
Is your mother here?
She's in the bed.
What is she doing in the bed on a fine day in
the middle of the
day?
She's sleeping. Well, we'll come in. We have
to talk to your
mother.
They brush past me into the room. Jesus, Mary
and Joseph, the smell
of this place. And who are these
children?
Malachy runs smiling to the big women. When he
smiles you can see
how white and straight and pretty
his teeth are and you can see the shiny
blue of his eyes, the pink of his
cheeks. All that makes the big women
smile and I wonder why they
didn't smile when they talked to me.
Malachy says, I'm Malachy and this is Oliver
and this is Eugene,
they're twins, and that's Frankie
over there.
The big woman with the brown hair says, Well,
you're not a bit shy,
are you? I'm your mother's
cousin, Philomena, and this is your mother's
cousin, Delia. I'm Mrs. Flynn and
she's Mrs. Fortune and that's what you
call us.
Good God, says Philomena. Those twins are
naked. Don't you have
clothes for them?
Malachy says, They're all shitty.
Delia barks. See. That's what happens. A mouth
like a sewer, and no
wonder with a father from the
North. Don't use that word. That's a bad
word, a curse word. You could go
to hell using a word like that.
What's hell? says Malachy. You'll know soon
enough, says Delia.
The big women sit at the table with Mrs.
Leibowitz and Minnie
MacAdorey. Philomena says it's
terrible what happened to Angela's little
baby. They heard all about it and
you'd wonder, wouldn't you, what they
did with the little body. You
might wonder and I might wonder but Tommy
Flynn didn't wonder. Tommy said
that Malachy from the North got money for
that baby. Money? says Mrs.
Leibowitz. That's right, says Philomena.
Money. They take bodies any age
and do experiments on them and there's
not much left to give back nor
would you want back bits of baby when they
can't be buried in consecrated
ground in that condition.
That's terrible, says Mrs. Leibowitz. A father
or mother would
never give the baby for something
like that.
They would, says Delia, when they have the
craving for the drink.
They'd give their own mothers
when they have the craving so what's a baby
that's dead and gone in the first
place?
Mrs. Leibowitz shakes her head and rocks in
her chair. Oy, she
says, oy, oy, oy. The poor baby.
The poor mother. I thank God my husband
don'have no what you call it?
Craving? Right, craving. It's the Irish
have the craving.
Not my husband, says Philomena. I'd break his
face if he came home
with the craving. Of course,
Delia's Jimmy has the craving. Every Friday
night you see him slipping into
the saloon.
You needn't start insulting my Jimmy, says
Delia. He works. He
brings home his wages.
You'd want to keep an eye on him, says
Philomena. The craving could
get the better of him and you'd
have another Malachy from the North on
your hands.
Mind your own bloody business, says Delia. At
least Jimmy is Irish,
not born in Brooklyn like your
Tommy.
And Philomena has no answer for that.
Minnie is holding her baby and the big women
say she's a lovely
baby, clean, not like this pack
of Angela's running around this place.
Philomena says she doesn't know
where Angela got her dirty habits because
Angela's mother was spotless, so
clean you could eat your dinner off her
floor.
I wonder why you'd want to eat your dinner off
the floor when you
had a table and a chair.
Delia says something has to be done about
Angela and these children
for they are a disgrace, so they
are, enough to make you ashamed to be
related. A letter has to be
written to Angela's mother. Philomena will
write it because a teacher in
Limerick told her once she had a fine fist.
Delia has to tell Mrs. Leibowitz
that a fine fist means good handwriting.
Mrs. Leibowitz goes down the hall to borrow
her husband's fountain
pen, paper and an envelope. The
four women sit at the table and make up a
letter to send to my mother's
mother: Dear Aunt Margaret, I take pen in
hand to write you this letter and
hope this finds you as it leaves us in
the best of health. My husband
Tommy is in fine form working away and
Delia's husband Jimmy is in fine
form working away and we hope this finds
you in fine form. I am very sorry
to tell you that Angela is not in fine
form as the baby died, the little
girl that was called Margaret after
yourself, and Angela has not been
the same since lying in the bed with
her face to the wall. To make
matters worser we think she's expecting
again and that's too much
altogether. The minute she losses one child
there is another one on the way.
We don't know how she does it. She's
married four years, five children
and another on the way. That shows you
what can happen when you marry
someone from the North for they have no
control over themselves up there
a bunch of Protestands that they are. He
goes out for work every day but
we know he spends all his time in the
saloons and gets a few dollars
for sweeping floors and lifting barrels
and spends the money right back
on the drink. It's terrible, Aunt
Margaret, and we all think Angela
and the children would be better off in
her native land. We don't have
the money to buy the tickets ourselves for
times is hard but you might be
able to see your way. Hopping this finds
you in fine form as it leaves us
thank God and His Blessed Mother.
I remain your loving neice
Philomena Flynn (what was MacNamara) and last
but not least your
neice Delia Fortune (what was
MacNamara, too, ha ha ha)
Grandma Sheehan sent money to Philomena and
Delia. They bought the
tickets, found a steamer trunk at
the St. Vincent de Paul Society, hired
a van to take us to the pier in
Manhattan, put us on the ship, said Goodbye and good riddance, and went away.
The ship pulled away from the dock. Mam said,
That's the Statue of
Liberty and that's Ellis Island
where all the immigrants came in. Then
she leaned over the side and
vomited and the wind from the Atlantic blew
it all over us and other happy
people admiring the view. Passengers
cursed and ran, seagulls came
from all over the harbor and Mam hung limp
and pale on the ship's rail.
II
In a week we arrived at Moville,
County Donegal, where we took a bus to
Belfast and from there another
bus to Toome in County Antrim. We left the
trunk in a shop and set out to
walk the two miles up the road to Grandpa
McCourt's house. It was dark on
the road, the dawn barely stirring on the
hills beyond.
Dad carried the twins in his arms and they
took turns crying with
the hunger. Mam stopped every few
minutes to sit and rest on the stone
wall along the road. We sat with
her and watched the sky turn red and
then blue. Birds started to chirp
and sing in the trees and as the dawn
came up we saw strange creatures
in the fields, standing, looking at us.
Malachy said, What are they, Dad?
Cows, son.
What are cows, Dad?
Cows are cows, son.
We walked farther along the brightening road
and there were other
creatures in the fields, white
furry creatures.
Malachy said, What are they, Dad?
Sheep, son.
What are sheep, Dad?
My father barked at him, Is there any end to
your questions? Sheep
are sheep, cows are cows, and
that over there is a goat. A goat is a
goat. The goat gives milk, the
sheep gives wool, the cow gives
everything. What else in God's
name do you want to know?
And Malachy yelped with fright because Dad
never talked like that,
never spoke sharply to us. He
might get us up in the middle of the night
and make us promise to die for
Ireland but he never barked like this.
Malachy ran to Mam and she said,
There, there, love, don't cry. Your
father is just worn out carrying
the twins and 'tis hard answering all
those questions when you're
carting twins through the world.
Dad set the twins on the road and held out his
arms to Malachy. Now
the twins started to cry and
Malachy clung to Mam, sobbing. The cows
mooed, the sheep maaed, the goat
ehehed, the birds twittered in the
trees, and the beep beep of a
motor car cut through everything. A man
called from the motor car, Good
Lord, what are you people doing on this
road at this hour of an Easter
Sunday morning?
Dad said, Good morning, Father.
Father? I said. Dad, is that your father?
Mam said, Don't ask him any questions.
Dad said, No, no, this is a priest.
Malachy said, What's a-? but Mam put her hand
over his mouth.
The priest had white hair and a white collar.
He said, Where are
you going?
Dad said, Up the road to McCourts of
Moneyglass, and the priest
took us in his motor car. He said
he knew the McCourts, a fine family,
good Catholics, some daily
communicants, and he hoped he'd see us all at
Mass, especially the little
Yankees who didn't know what a priest was,
God help us.
At the house my mother reaches for the gate
latch. Dad says, No,
no, not that way. Not the front
gate. They use the front door only for
visits from the priest or
funerals.
We make our way around the house to the
kitchen door. Dad pushes in
the door and there's Grandpa
McCourt drinking tea from a big mug and
Grandma McCourt frying something.
Och, says Grandpa, you're here.
Och, we are, says Dad. He points to my mother.
This is Angela, he
says. Grandpa says, Och, you must
be worn out, Angela. Grandma says
nothing, she turns back to the
frying pan. Grandpa leads us through the
kitchen to a large room with a
long table and chairs. He says, Sit down
and have some tea. Would you like
boxty?
Malachy says, What's boxty?
Dad laughs. Pancakes, son. Pancakes made with
potatoes.
Grandpa says, We have eggs. It's Easter Sunday
and you can have all
the eggs you can hold.
We have tea and boxty and boiled eggs and we
all fall asleep. I
wake up in a bed with Malachy and
the twins. My parents are in another
bed over by the window. Where am
I? It's getting dark. This is not the
ship. Mam snores hink, Dad snores
honk. I get up and poke at Dad. I have
to pee. He says, Use the chamber
pot.
What?
Under the bed, son. The chamber pot. It has
roses on it and maidens
cavorting in the glen. Pee in
that, son.
I want to ask him what he's talking about for
even if I'm bursting
I feel strange peeing into a pot
with roses and maidens cavorting,
whatever they are. We had nothing
like this in Classon Avenue where Mrs.
Leibowitz sang in the lavatory
while we clutched ourselves in the hall.
Now Malachy has to use the chamber pot but he
wants to sit on it.
Dad says, No, you can't do that,
son. You have to go outside. When he
says that I have to go, too, to
sit. He leads us downstairs and through
the big room where Grandpa is
sitting reading by the fire and Grandma is
dozing in her chair. It's dark
outside, though the moon is bright enough
for us to see where we're going.
Dad opens the door of a little house
that has a seat with a hole in
it. He shows Malachy and me how to sit on
the hole and how to wipe ourselves
with squares of newspaper stuck on a
nail. Then he tells us wait while
he goes inside, closes the door and
grunts. The moon is so bright I
can look down the field and see the
things called cows and sheep and
I wonder why they don't go home.
In the house there are other people in the
room with my
grandparents. Dad says, These are
your aunts: Emily, Nora, Maggie, Vera.
Your aunt Eva is in Ballymena
with children like you. My aunts are not
like Mrs. Leibowitz and Minnie
MacAdorey, they nod their heads but they
don't hug us or smile. Mam comes
into the room with the twins and when
Dad tells his sisters, This is
Angela and these are the twins, they just
nod again.
Grandma goes to the kitchen and soon we have
bread and sausages and
tea. The only one who speaks at
the table is Malachy. He points his spoon
at the aunts and asks their names
again. When Mam tells him eat his
sausage and be quiet his eyes
fill with tears and Aunt Nora reaches over
to comfort him. She says, There,
there, and I wonder why everyone says
there there when Malachy cries. I
wonder what there there means.
It's quiet at the table till Dad says, Things
are terrible in
America. Grandma says, Och, aye.
I read it in the paper. But they say Mr.
Roosevelt is a good man and if
you stayed you might have work by now.
Dad shakes his head and Grandma says, I don't
know what you're
going to do, Malachy. Things are
worse here than they are in America. No
work here and, God knows, we
don't have room in this house for six more
people.
Dad says, I thought I might get work on some
of the farms. We could
get a small place.
Where would you stay in the meantime? says
Grandma. And how would
you support yourself and your
family?
Och, I could go on the dole, I suppose.
You can't get off a ship from America and go
on the dole, says
Grandpa. They make you wait a
while and what would you do while you're
waiting?
Dad says nothing and Mam looks straight ahead
at the wall.
You'd be better off in the Free State, says
Grandma. Dublin is big
and surely there's work there or
in the farms around.
You're entitled to money from the IRA, too,
says Grandpa. You did
your bit and they've been handing
out money to men all over the Free
State. You could go to Dublin and
ask for help. We can loan you the bus
fare to Dublin. The twins can sit
on your lap and you won't have to pay
for them.
Dad says, Och, aye, and Mam stares at the wall
with tears in her
eyes.
After we ate we went back to bed and next
morning, all the grownups sat around looking sad. Soon a man came in a motor
car and took us
back down the road to the shop
which had our trunk. They lifted the trunk
up on the roof of a bus and we
got into the bus. Dad said we were going
to Dublin. Malachy said, What's
Dublin? but no one answered him. Dad held
Eugene on his lap and Mam held
Oliver. Dad looked out at the fields and
told me this is where Cuchulain
liked to go for a walk. I asked him where
Cuchulain hit the ball into the
dog's mouth and he said a few miles away.
Malachy said, Look, look, and we looked. It
was a great silvery
sheet of water and Dad said it
was Lough Neagh, the largest lake in
Ireland, the lake where Cuchulain
used to swim after his great battles.
Cuchulain would get so hot that
when he jumped into Lough Neagh it boiled
over and warmed the surrounding
countryside for days. Some day we'd all
come back and go swimming like
Cuchulain himself. We'd fish for eels and
fry them in a pan not like
Cuchulain, who would pluck them from the lough
and swallow them, wriggling,
because there's great power in an eel.
Is that right, Dad?
'Tis.
Mam didn't look out the window at Lough Neagh.
Her cheek rested on
top of Oliver's head and she
stared at the floor of the bus.
Soon the bus is rolling into a place where
there are big houses,
motor cars, horses pulling carts,
people on bicycles and hundreds
walking. Malachy is excited. Dad,
Dad, where's the playground, the
swings? I want to see Freddie
Leibowitz.
Och, son, you're in Dublin now, far from
Classon Avenue. You're in
Ireland, a long way from New
York.
When the bus stops the trunk is lifted down and
set on the floor of
the bus station. Dad tells Mam
she can sit on a bench in the station
while he goes to see the IRA man
in a place called Terenure. He says
there are lavatories in the
station for the boys, he won't be long, he'll
have money when he returns and
we'll all have food. He tells me go with
him and Mam says, No, I need him
to help. But when Dad says, I'll need
help carrying all that money, she
laughs and says, All right, go with
your Pop.
Your Pop. That means she's in a good mood. If
she says your father
it means she's in a bad mood.
Dad holds my hand as I trot along beside him.
He's a fast walker,
it's a long way to Terenure and
I'm hoping he'll stop and carry me the
way he did with the twins in
Toome. But he lopes along and says nothing
except to ask people where
Terenure is. In awhile he says we're in
Terenure and now we have to find
Mr. Charles Heggarty of the IRA. A man
with a pink patch on his eye
tells us we're on the right street, Charlie
Heggarty lives at number
fourteen, God blast him. The man tells Dad, I
can see you're a man that did his
bit. Dad says, Och, I did my bit, and
the man says, I did me bit, too,
and what did it get me but one eye less
and a pension that wouldn't feed
a canary.
But Ireland is free, says Dad, and that's a
grand thing.
Free, my arse, the man says. I think we were
better off under the
English. Good luck to you anyway,
mister, for I think I know what you're
here for.
A woman opens the door at number fourteen. I'm
afraid, she says,
that Mr. Heggarty is busy. Dad
tells her he just walked all the way from
the middle of Dublin with his
small son, that he left wife and three
children waiting for him at the
bus place, and if Mr. Heggarty is that
busy then we'll wait for him on
the doorstep.
The woman is back in a minute to say Mr.
Heggarty has a little time
to spare and would you come this
way. Mr. Heggarty is sitting at a desk
near a glowing fire. He says,
What can I do for you? Dad stands before
the desk and says, I have just
returned from America with wife and four
children. We have nothing. I
fought with a Flying Column during the
Troubles and I'm hoping you can
help me now in the time of need.
Mr. Heggarty takes Dad's name and turns the
pages of a big book on
his desk. He shakes his head, No,
no record of your service here. Dad
makes a long speech. He tells Mr.
Heggarty how he fought, where, when,
how he had to be smuggled out of
Ireland because of the price on his
head, how he was raising his sons
to love Ireland.
Mr. Heggarty says he's sorry but he can't be
handing out money to
every man who wanders in claiming
he did his bit. Dad says to me,
Remember this, Francis. This is
the new Ireland. Little men in little
chairs with little bits of paper.
This is the Ireland men died for. Mr.
Heggarty says he'll look into
Dad's claim and he'll be sure to let him
know what turns up. He'll let us
have money to take the bus back into the
city. Dad looks at the coins in
Mr. Heggarty's hand and says, You could
add to that and make the price of
a pint.
Oh, it's the drink you want, is it?
One pint is hardly drink.
You'd walk the miles back and make the boy
walk because you want a
pint, wouldn't you?
Walking never killed anyone.
I want you to leave this house, says Mr.
Heggarty, or I'll call a
guard, and you can be sure you'll
never hear from me again. We're not
handing out money to support the
Guinness family.
Night falls along the streets of Dublin.
Children laugh and play
under streetlights, mothers call
from doorways, smells of cooking come at
us all the way, through windows
we see people around tables, eating. I'm
tired and hungry and I want Dad
to carry me but I know there's no use
asking him now the way his face
is tight and set. I let him hold my hand
and I run to keep up with him
till we reach the bus place where Mam is
waiting with my brothers.
They're all asleep on the bench, my mother and
three brothers. When
Dad tells Mam there's no money
she shakes her head and sobs, Oh, Jesus,
what are we going to do? A man in
a blue uniform comes over and asks her,
What's up, missus? Dad tells him
we're stranded there at the bus station,
we have no money and no place to
stay and the children are hungry. The
man says he's going off duty now,
he'll take us to the police barracks
where he has to report anyway,
and they'll see what can be done.
The man in uniform tells us we can call him
guard. That's what you
call policemen in Ireland. He
asks us what you call policemen in America
and Malachy says, cop. The guard
pats him on the head and tells him he's
a clever little Yankee.
At the police barracks the sergeant tells us
we can spend the
night. He's sorry but all he can
offer is the floor. It's Thursday and
the cells are filled with men who
drank their dole money and wouldn't
leave the pubs.
The guards give us hot sweet tea and thick
slices of bread
slathered with butter and jam and
we're so happy we run around the
barracks, playing. The guards say
we're a great bunch of little Yanks and
they'd like to take us home but I
say, No, Malachy says, No, the twins
say, No, No, and all the guards
laugh. Men in cells reach out and pat our
heads, they smell like Dad when
he comes home singing about Kevin Barry
and Roddy McCorley going to die.
The men say, Jasus, will ye listen to
them. They sound like bloody
fillum stars. Did yez fall outa the sky or
what? Women in cells at the other
end tell Malachy he's gorgeous and the
twins are dotes. One woman talks
to me. C'mere, love, would you like a
sweet? I nod, and she says, All
right, put your hand out. She takes
something sticky from her mouth
and puts it on my hand. There you are
now, she says, a nice bit of
butterscotch. Put that in your mouth. I
don't want to put it in my mouth
because it's sticky and wet from her
mouth but I don't know what
you're supposed to do when a woman in a cell
offers you sticky butterscotch
and I'm about to put it in my mouth when a
guard comes, takes the
butterscotch and throws it back at the woman. You
drunken hoor, he says, leave the
child alone, and all the women laugh.
The sergeant gives my mother a blanket and she
sleeps stretched out
on a bench. The rest of us lie on
the floor. Dad sits with his back to
the wall, his eyes open under the
peak of his cap, and he smokes when the
guards give him cigarettes. The
guard who threw the butterscotch at the
woman says he's from Ballymena in
the north and he talks with Dad about
people they know there and in
other places like Cushendall and Toome. The
guard says he'll have a pension
some day and he'll live on the shores of
Lough Neagh and fish his days
away. Eels, he says, eels galore. Jasus, I
love a fried eel. I ask Dad, Is
this Cuchulain? and the guard laughs till
his face turns red. Ah, Mother o'
God, did yez hear this? The lad wants
to know if I'm Cuchulain. A
little Yank and he knows all about Cuchulain.
Dad says, No, he's not Cuchulain but he's a
fine man who will live
on the shores of Lough Neagh and
fish his days away.
* * * *
Dad is shaking me. Up, Francis, up. It is
noisy in the barracks. A
boy mopping the floor is singing,
Anyone can see why I wanted your kiss,
It had to be and the reason is
this, Could it be true, someone like you
Could love me, love me?
I tell him that's my mother's song and he's to
stop singing it but
he just puffs on his cigarette
and walks away and I wonder why people
have to sing other people's
songs. Men and women coming out of the cells
are yawning and grunting. The
woman who offered me the butterscotch stops
and says, I had a drop taken,
child. I'm sorry I made a fool of you, but
the guard from Ballymena tells
her, Move on, you oul' hoor, before I lock
you up again.
Oh, lock me up, she says. In, out. What does
it matter, you blue
arsed bastard.
Mam is sitting up on the bench, the blanket
wrapped around her. A
woman with gray hair brings her a
mug of tea and tells her, Sure, I'm the
sergeant's wife and he said you
might need help. Would you like a nice
soft-boiled egg, missus?
Mam shakes her head, no.
Ah, now, missus, surely you should have a nice
egg in your
condition.
But Mam shakes her head and I wonder how she
can say no to a softboiled egg when there's nothing in the world like it.
All right, ma'am, says the sergeant's wife, a
bit of toast, then,
and something for the children
and your poor husband.
She goes back to another room and soon there's
tea and bread. Dad
drinks his tea but gives us his
bread and Mam says, Will you eat your
bread, for God's sake. You won't
be much use to us falling down with the
hunger. He shakes his head and
asks the sergeant's wife is there any
chance of a cigarette. She brings
him the cigarette and tells Mam the
guards in the barracks have taken
up a collection to pay our train fares
to Limerick. There will be a
motor car to pick up our trunk and leave us
at Kingsbridge Railway Station
and, You'll be in Limerick in three or
four hours.
Mam puts up her arms and hugs the sergeant's
wife. God bless you
and your husband and all the
guards, Mam says. I don't know what we'd do
without you. God knows 'tis a
lovely thing to be back among our own.
'Tis the least we could do, says the
sergeant's wife. These are
lovely children you have and I'm
from Cork meself and I know what 'tis to
be in Dublin without two pennies
to rub together.
Dad sits at the other end of the bench,
smoking his cigarette,
drinking his tea. He stays that
way till the motor car comes to take us
through the streets of Dublin.
Dad asks the driver if he'd mind going by
way of the G. P. O. and the
driver says, Is it a stamp you want or what?
No, says Dad. I hear they put up
a new statue of Cuchulain to honor the
men who died in 1916 and I'd like
to show it to my son here who has a
great admiration for Cuchulain.
The driver says he has no notion of who this
Cuchulain was but he
wouldn't mind stopping one bit.
He might come in himself and see what the
commotion is all about for he
hasn't been in the G. P. O. since he was a
boy and the English nearly
wrecked it with their big guns firing up from
the Liffey River. He says you'll
see the bullet holes all over the front
and they should be left there to
remind the Irish of English perfidy. I
ask the man what's perfidy and he
says ask your father and I would but
we're stopping outside a big
building with columns and that's the G. P.
O.
Mam stays in the motor car while we follow the
driver into the G.
P. O. There he is, he says,
there's your man Cuchulain.
And I feel tears coming because I'm looking at
him at last,
Cuchulain, there on his pedestal
in the G. P. O. He's golden and he has
long hair, his head is hanging
and there's a big bird perched on his
shoulder.
The driver says, Now what in God's name is
this all about? What's
this fellow doin' with the long
hair and the bird on his shoulder? And
will you kindly tell me, mister,
what this has to do with the men of
1916?
Dad says, Cuchulain fought to the end like the
men of Easter Week.
His enemies were afraid to go
near him till they were sure he was dead
and when the bird landed on him
and drank his blood they knew.
Well, says the driver, 'tis a sad day for the
men of Ireland when
they need a bird to tell them a
man is dead. I think we better go now or
we'll be missing that train to
Limerick.
The sergeant's wife said she'd send a telegram
to Grandma to meet
us in Limerick and there she was
on the platform, Grandma, with white
hair, sour eyes, a black shawl,
and no smile for my mother or any of us,
even my brother, Malachy, who had
the big smile and the sweet white
teeth. Mam pointed to Dad. This
is Malachy, she said, and Grandma nodded
and looked away. She called two
boys who were hanging around the railway
station and paid them to carry
the trunk. The boys had shaved heads,
snotty noses, and no shoes and we
followed them through the streets of
Limerick. I asked Mam why they
had no hair and she said their heads were
shaved so that the lice would
have no place to hide. Malachy said, What's
a lice? and Mam said, Not lice.
One of them is a louse. Grandma said,
Will ye stop it! What kind o'
talk is this? The boys whistled and laughed
and trotted along as if they had
shoes and Grandma told them, Stop that
laughin' or 'tis droppin' an'
breakin' that trunk ye'll be. They stopped
the whistling and laughing and we
followed them into a park with a tall
pillar and a statue in the middle
and grass so green it dazzled you.
Dad carried the twins, Mam carried a bag in
one hand and held
Malachy's hand with the other.
When she stopped every few minutes to
catch her breath, Grandma said,
Are you still smokin' them fags? Them
fags will be the death of you.
There's enough consumption in Limerick
without people smokin' fags on
top of it an'
'tis a rich man's foolishness.
Along the path through the park there were
hundreds of flowers of
different colors that excited the
twins. They pointed and made squeaky
noises and we laughed, everyone
except Grandma, who pulled her shawl over
her head. Dad stopped and put the
twins down so that they could be closer
to the flowers. He said, Flowers,
and they ran back and forth, pointing,
trying to say Flowers. One of the
boys with the trunk said, God, are they
Americans? and Mam said, They
are. They were born in New York. All the
boys were born in New York. The
boy said to the other boy, God, they're
Americans. They put the trunk
down and stared at us and we stared back at
them till Grandma said, Are ye
goin' to stand here all day lookin' at
flowers an' gawkin' at each
other? And we all moved on again, out of the
park, down a narrow lane and into
another lane to Grandma's house.
There is a row of small houses on each side of
the lane and Grandma
lives in one of the small houses.
Her kitchen has a shiny polished black
iron range with a fire glowing in
the grate. There is a table along the
wall under the window and a press
opposite with cups and saucers and
vases. This press is always
locked and she keeps the key in her purse
because you're not supposed to
use anything in there unless someone dies
or returns from foreign parts or
there's a visit by a priest.
There is a picture on the wall by the range of
a man with long
brown hair and sad eyes. He is
pointing to his chest where there is a big
heart with flames coming out of
it. Mam tells us, That's the Sacred Heart
of Jesus, and I want to know why
the man's heart is on fire and why
doesn't He throw water on it?
Grandma says, Don't these children know
anything about their religion?
and Mam tells her it's different in
America. Grandma says the Sacred
Heart is everywhere and there's no
excuse for that kind of
ignorance.
Under the picture of the man with the burning
heart there is a
shelf with a red glass holding a
flickering candle and next to it a small
statue. Mam tells us, That's the
Baby Jesus, the Infant of Prague, and if
ye ever need anything pray to
Him.
Malachy says, Mam, could I tell Him I'm
hungry, and Mam puts her
finger to her lips.
Grandma grumbles around the kitchen making tea
and telling Mam to
cut the loaf of bread and don't
make the cuts too thick. Mam sits by the
table with her breath coming hard
and says she'll cut the bread in a
minute. Dad takes the knife and
starts slicing the bread and you can see
Grandma doesn't like that. She
frowns at him but says nothing even though
he makes thick slices.
There aren't enough chairs for everyone so I
sit on the stairs with
my brothers to have bread and
tea. Dad and Mam sit at the table and
Grandma sits under the Sacred
Heart with her mug of tea. She says, I
don't know under God what I'm
goin' to do with ye. There is no room in
this house. There isn't room for
even one of ye.
Malachy says, Ye, ye, and starts to giggle and
I say, Ye, ye, and
the twins say, Ye, ye, and we're
laughing so hard we can hardly eat our
bread.
Grandma glares at us. What are ye laughin' at?
There's nothin' to
laugh at in this house. Ye better
behave yeerselves before I go over to
ye.
She won't stop saying Ye, and now Malachy is
helpless with
laughter, spewing out his bread
and tea, his face turning red.
Dad says, Malachy and the rest of you, stop
it. But Malachy can't,
he goes on laughing till Dad
says, Come over here. He rolls up Malachy's
sleeve and raises his hand to
slap his arm.
Are you going to behave yourself?
Malachy's eyes fill with tears and he nods, I
will, because Dad
never raised his hand like that
before. Dad says, Be a good boy and go
sit with your brothers, and he
pulls down the sleeve and pats Malachy on
the head.
That night Mam's sister, Aunt Aggie, came home
from her job in the
clothing factory. She was big
like the MacNamara sisters, and she had
flaming red hair. She wheeled a
large bicycle into the little room behind
the kitchen and came out to her
supper. She was living in Grandma's
because she had a fight with her
husband, Pa Keating, who told her, when
he had drink taken, You're a
great fat cow, go home to your mother.
That's what Grandma told Mam and
that's why there was no room for us in
Grandma's house. She had herself,
Aunt Aggie, and her son Pat, who was my
uncle and who was out selling
newspapers.
Aunt Aggie complained when Grandma told her
Mam would have to sleep
with her that night. Grandma
said, Oh, will you shut your gob. 'Tis only
for one night an' that won't kill
you an' if you don't like it you can go
back to your husband where you
belong anyway instead of runnin' home to
me. Jesus, Mary an' Holy St.
Joseph, look at this house- you an' Pat an'
Angela and her clatther of
Americans. Will I have any peace in the latter
end of my life?
She spread coats and rags on the floor of the
little back room and
we slept there with the bicycle.
Dad stayed on a chair in the kitchen,
took us to the lavatory in the
backyard when we needed it, and in the
night hushed the twins when they
cried from the cold.
In the morning, Aunt Aggie came for her
bicycle telling us, Will ye
mind yeerselves, will ye? Will ye
get out of my way?
When she left, Malachy kept saying, Will ye
mind yeerselves, will
ye? Will ye get out of the way,
will ye? and I could hear Dad laughing
out in the kitchen till Grandma
came down the stairs and he had to tell
Malachy be quiet.
That day Grandma and Mam went out and found a
furnished room on
Windmill Street where Aunt Aggie
had a flat with her husband, Pa Keating.
Grandma paid the rent, ten
shillings for two weeks. She gave Mam money
for food, loaned us a kettle, a
pot, a frying pan, knives and spoons, jam
jars to be used for mugs, a
blanket and a pillow. She said that was all
she could afford anymore, that
Dad would have to get up off his arse, get
a job, go on the dole, go for the
charity at the St. Vincent de Paul
Society or go on the relief.
The room had a fireplace where we could boil
water for our tea or
an egg in case we ever came into
money. We had a table and three chairs
and a bed, which Mam said was the
biggest she had ever seen. We were glad
of the bed that night, worn out
after nights on floors in Dublin and in
Grandma's. It didn't matter that
there were six of us in the bed, we were
together, away from grandmothers
and guards, Malachy could say ye ye ye
and we could laugh as much as we
liked.
Dad and Mam lay at the head of the bed,
Malachy and I at the
bottom, the twins wherever they
could find comfort. Malachy made us laugh
again. Ye, ye, ye, he said, and
oy oy oy, and then fell asleep. Mam made
the little hink hink snore sound
that told us she was sleeping. In the
moonlight I could look up the
length of the bed and see Dad still awake
and when Oliver cried in his
sleep Dad reached for him and held him.
Whisht, he said. Whisht.
Then Eugene sat up, screaming, tearing at
himself. Ah, ah, Mommy,
Mommy. Dad sat up. What? What's
up, son? Eugene went on crying and when
Dad leaped from the bed and
turned on the gaslight we saw the fleas,
leaping, jumping, fastened to our
flesh. We slapped at them and slapped
but they hopped from body to
body, hopping, biting. We tore at the bites
till they bled. We jumped from
the bed, the twins crying, Mam moaning,
Oh, Jesus, will we have no rest!
Dad poured water and salt into a jam jar
and dabbed at our bites. The salt
burned but he said we'd feel better
soon.
Mam sat by the fireplace with the twins on her
lap. Dad pulled on
his trousers and dragged the
mattress off the bed and out to the street.
He filled the kettle and the pot
with water, stood the mattress against
the wall, pounded it with a shoe,
told me to keep pouring water on the
ground to drown the fleas
dropping there. The Limerick moon was so bright
I could see bits of it shimmering
in the water and I wanted to scoop up
moon bits but how could I with
the fleas leaping on my legs. Dad kept
pounding with the shoe and I had
to run back through the house to the
backyard tap for more water in
the kettle and the pot. Mam said, Look at
you. Your shoes are drenched and
you'll catch your death and your father
will surely get the pneumonia
without a shoe to his foot.
A man on a bicycle stopped and wanted to know
why Dad was beating
that mattress. Mother o' God, he
said, I never heard such a cure for
fleas. Do you know that if a man
could jump like a flea one lep would
take him halfway to the moon? The
thing to do is this, when you go back
inside with that mattress stick
it on the bed upside down and that will
confuse the little buggers. They
won't know where they are and they'll be
biting the mattress or each
other, which is the best cure of all. After
they bite the human being they
have the frenzy, you know, for there are
other fleas around them that also
bit the human being and the smell of
the blood is too much for them
and they go out of their minds. They're a
right bloody torment an' I should
know for didn't I grow up in Limerick,
down in the Irishtown, an' the
fleas there were so plentiful an' forward
they'd sit on the toe of your
boot an' discuss Ireland's woeful history
with you. It is said there were
no fleas in ancient Ireland, that they
were brought in be the English to
drive us out of our wits entirely, an'I
wouldn't put it past the English.
An'isn't it a very curious thing that
St. Patrick drove the snakes out
of Ireland an' the English brought in
the fleas. For centuries Ireland
was a lovely peaceful place, snakes
gone, not a flea to be found. You
could stroll the four green fields of
Ireland without fear of snakes
an' have a good night's sleep with no
fleas to bother you. Them snakes
were doin' no harm, they wouldn't bother
you unless you cornered them an'
they lived off other creatures that move
under bushes an'such places,
whereas the flea sucks the blood from you
mornin' noon an' night for that's
his nature an' he can't help himself. I
hear for a fact that places that
have snakes galore have no fleas.
Arizona, for instance. You're
forever hearing about the snakes of Arizona
but when did you ever hear of
fleas in Arizona? Good luck to you. I have
to be careful standin' here for
if one of them gets on my clothes I might
as well invite his whole family
home. They multiply faster than Hindus.
Dad said, You wouldn't by any chance have a
cigarette, would you?
A cigarette? Oh, sure, of course. Here you
are. Aren't I nearly
destroyed from the fags myself.
The oul' hacking cough, you know. So
powerful it nearly knocks me off
the bicycle. I can feel that cough
stirring in me solar plexus an'
workin' its way up through me entrails
till the next thing it takes off
the top o' me head.
He struck a match on a box, lit a cigarette
for himself and held
out the match for Dad. Of course,
he said, you're bound to have the cough
when you live in Limerick because
this is the capital city of the weak
chest and the weak chest leads to
the consumption. If all the people that
has consumption in Limerick were
to die this would be a ghost town,
though I don't have consumption
meself. No, this cough was a present from
the Germans. He paused, puffed on
his cigarette, and struggled with a
cough. Bejesus, excuse the
language, but the fags'll get me in the end.
Well, I'll leave you now to the
mattress an' remember what I told you,
confuse the little buggers.
He wobbled away on his bicycle, the cigarette
dangling from his
mouth, the cough racking his
body. Dad said, Limerickmen talk too much.
Come on, we'll put this mattress
back and see if there's any sleep in
this night.
Mam sat by the fireplace with the twins asleep
on her lap, and
Malachy lay curled up on the
floor by her feet. She said, Who was that
you were talking to? It sounded
very like Pa Keating, Aggie's husband. I
could tell by the cough. He got
that cough in France in the war when he
swallowed the gas.
We slept the rest of that night, and in the
morning we saw where
the fleas had feasted, our flesh
pink with flea welts and bright with the
blood of our scratches.
Mam made tea and fried bread, and once more
Dad dabbed at our bites
with the salty water. He hauled
the mattress outside again to the
backyard. On a cold day like this
the fleas would surely freeze to death
and we'd all have a good night's
sleep.
A few days later when we're settled into the
room Dad is shaking me
out of my dreams. Up, Francis,
up. Put on your clothes and run over for
your aunt Aggie. Your mother
needs her. Hurry.
Mam is moaning in the bed, her face pure
white. Dad has Malachy and
the twins out of the bed and
sitting on the floor by the dead fire. I run
across the street and knock on
Aunt Aggie's door till Uncle Pat Keating
comes coughing and grumbling, What's
up? What's up?
My mother is moaning in the bed. I think she's
sick.
Now Aunt Aggie comes grumbling. Ye are nothing
but trouble since ye
came from America.
Leave him alone, Aggie, he's only a child
that's doing what he's
told.
She tells Uncle Pa go back to bed, that he has
to go to work in the
morning not like some from the
North that she won't mention. He says, No,
no, I'm coming. There's something
wrong with Angela.
Dad tells me sit over there with my brothers.
I don't know what's
up with Mam because everyone is
whispering and I can barely hear Aunt
Aggie telling Uncle Pa the child
is lost run for the ambulance and Uncle
Pa is out the door, Aunt Aggie
telling Mam you can say what you like
about Limerick but the ambulance
is fast. She doesn't talk to my father,
never looks at him.
Malachy says, Dad, is Mammy sick?
Och, she'll be all right, son. She has to see
the doctor.
I wonder what child is lost because we're all
here, one two three
four of us, not a lost child
anywhere and why can't they tell me what's
wrong with my mother. Uncle Pa
comes back and the ambulance is right
behind him. A man comes in with a
stretcher and after they carry Mam away
there are blood spots on the
floor by the bed. Malachy bit his tongue and
there was blood and the dog on
the street had blood and he died. I want
to ask Dad to tell me if Mam will
be gone forever like my sister Margaret
but he's going with Mam and
there's no use asking Aunt Aggie anything for
fear she'd bite your head off.
She wipes away the blood spots and tells
us get back into bed and stay
there till Dad comes home.
It's the middle of the night and the four of
us are warm in the bed
and we fall asleep till Dad comes
home and tells us Mam is nice and
comfortable in the hospital and
she'll be home in no time.
Later, Dad goes to the Labour Exchange for the
dole. There is no
hope of a laboring man with a
North of Ireland accent getting a job in
Limerick.
When he returns, he tells Mam we'll be getting
nineteen shillings a
week. She says that's just enough
for all of us to starve on. Nineteen
shillings for six of us? That's
less than four dollars in American money
and how are we supposed to live
on that? What are we to do when we have
to pay rent in a fortnight? If
the rent for this room is five shillings a
week we'll have fourteen
shillings for food and clothes and coal to boil
the water for the tea.
Dad shakes his head, sips his tea from a jam
jar, stares out the
window and whistles "The
Boys of Wexford. " Malachy and Oliver clap their
hands and dance around the room
and Dad doesn't know whether to whistle
or smile because you can't do
both and he can't help himself. He has to
stop and smile and pat Oliver's
head and then go back to the whistling.
Mam smiles, too, but it's a very
quick smile and when she looks into the
ashes you can see the worry where
the corners of her mouth turn down.
Next day she tells Dad to mind the twins and
takes Malachy and me
with her to the St. Vincent de
Paul Society. We stand in a queue with
women wearing black shawls. They
ask our names and smile when we talk.
They say, Lord above, would you
listen to the little Yankees, and they
wonder why Mam in her American
coat would be looking for charity since
there's hardly enough for the
poor people of Limerick without Yanks
coming over and taking the bread
out of their mouths.
Mam tells them a cousin gave her that coat in
Brooklyn, that her
husband has no work, that she has
other children at home, twin boys. The
women sniff and pull their shawls
about them, they have their own
troubles. Mam tells them she had
to leave America because she couldn't
stand it after her baby girl
died. The women sniff again but now it's
because Mam is crying. Some say
they lost little ones, too, and there's
nothing worse in the world, you
could live as long as Methuselem's wife
but you never get over it. No man
can ever know what it is to be a mother
that has lost a child, not if the
man lived longer than two Methuselems.
They all have a good cry till a red-haired
woman passes a little
box around. The women pick
something from the box between their fingers
and stuff it up their noses. A
young woman sneezes and the red-haired
woman laughs. Ah, sure, Biddy,
you're not able for that snuff. Come here,
little Yankee boys, have a pinch.
She plants the brown stuff in our
nostrils and we sneeze so hard
the women stop crying and laugh till they
have to wipe their eyes with
their shawls. Mam tells us, That's good for
ye, 'twill clear yeer heads.
The young woman, Biddy, tells Mam we're two
lovely boys. She points
at Malachy. That little fella
with the goldy ringlet, isn't he gorgeous?
He could be a film star with
Shirley Temple. And Malachy smiles and warms
up the queue.
The woman with the snuff says to Mam, Missus,
I don't want to be
forward but I think you should be
sitting down for we heard about your
loss.
Another woman worries, Ah, no, they don't like
that.
Who don't like what?
Ah, sure, Nora Molloy, the Society don't like
us sittin' on the
steps. They want us to be
standin' respectful against the wall.
They can kiss my arse, says Nora, the
red-haired woman. Sit down
there, missus, on that step an'
I'll sit next to you an' if there's one
word out of the St. Vincent de
Paul Society I'll take the face off 'em,
so I will. Do you smoke, missus?
I do, says Mam, but I don't have them.
Nora takes a cigarette from a pocket in her
apron, breaks it, and
offers half to Mam.
The worried woman says, They don't like that
either. They say every
fag you smoke is taking food from
the mouth of your child. Mr. Quinlivan
inside is dead against it. He
says if you have money for the fags you
have money for food.
Quinlivan can kiss my arse, too, the grinny
oul' bastard. Is he
going to begrudge us a puff of a
fag, the only comfort we have in the
world?
A door opens at the end of the hall and a man
appears. Are any of
ye waiting for children's boots?
Women raise their hands, I am. I am.
Well, the boots are all gone. Ye'll have to
come back next month.
But my Mikey needs boots for school.
They're all gone, I told you.
But 'tis freezin' abroad, Mr. Quinlivan.
The boots are all gone. Nothing I can do.
What's this? Who's
smoking?
Nora waves her cigarette. I am, she says, and
enjoying it down to
the last ash.
Every puff you take, he starts.
I know, she says, I'm taking food out of the
mouths of my children.
You're insolent, woman. You'll get no charity
here.
Is that a fact? Well, Mr. Quinlivan, if I
don't get it here I know
where I will.
What are you talking about?
I'll go to the Quakers. They'll give me the
charity.
Mr. Quinlivan steps toward Nora and points a
finger. Do you know
what we have here? We have a
souper in our midst. We had the soupers in
the Famine. The Protestants went
round telling good Catholics that if
they gave up their faith and
turned Protestant they'd get more soup than
their bellies could hold and, God
help us, some Catholics took the soup,
and were ever after known as
soupers and lost their immortal souls doomed
to the deepest part of hell. And
you, woman, if you go to the Quakers
you'll lose your immortal soul
and the souls of your children.
Then, Mr. Quinlivan, you'll have to save us,
won't you?
He stares at her and she stares back at him.
His eyes wander to the
other women. One puts her hand to
her mouth to smother a laugh.
What are you tittering about? he barks.
Oh, nothing, Mr. Quinlivan. Honest to God.
I'm telling ye once more, no boots. And he
slams the door behind
him.
One by one the women are called into the room.
When Nora comes out
she's smiling and waving a piece
of paper. Boots, she says. Three pairs
I'm gettin' for my children.
Threaten the men in there with the Quakers
and they'll give you the drawers
off their arses.
When Mam is called she brings Malachy and me
in with her. We stand
before a table where three men
are sitting asking questions. Mr.
Quinlivan starts to say something
but the man in the middle says, Enough
out of you, Quinlivan. If we left
it up to you we'd have the poor people
of Limerick jumping into the arms
of the Protestants.
He turns to Mam, he wants to know where she
got that fine red coat.
She tells him what she told the
women outside and when she comes to the
death of Margaret she shakes and
sobs. She tells the men she's very sorry
for crying like that but it was
only a few months ago and she's not over
it yet, not even knowing where
her baby was buried if she was buried at
all, not knowing even if she was
baptized itself because she was so weak
from having the four boys she
didn't have the energy to be going to the
church for the baptism and it's a
heart scald to think Margaret might be
in Limbo forever with no hope of
her ever seeing the rest of us whether
we're in heaven, hell, or
Purgatory itself.
Mr. Quinlivan brings her his chair. Ah, now,
missus. Ah, now. Sit
down, will you. Ah, now.
The other men look at the table, the ceiling.
The man in the middle
says he's giving Mam a docket to
get a week's groceries at McGrath's shop
on Parnell Street. There will be
tea, sugar, flour, milk, butter and a
separate docket for a bag of coal
from Sutton's coal yard on the Dock
Road.
The third man says, Of course you won't be
getting this every week,
missus. We will be visiting your
house to see if there's a real need. We
have to do that, missus, so we
can review your claim.
Mam wipes her face on the back of her sleeve
and takes the docket.
She tells the men, God bless you
for your kindness. They nod and look at
the table, the ceiling, the walls
and tell her send in the next woman.
The women outside tell Mam, When you go to
McGrath's, keep an eye
on the oul' bitch for she'll
cheat you on the weight. She'll put stuff on
a paper on the scale with the
paper hanging down on her side behind the
counter where she thinks you
can't see it. She'll pull on that paper so
that you're lucky if you get half
of what you're supposed to get. And she
has pictures of the Virgin Mary
and the Sacred Heart of Jesus all over
the shop, and she's forever on
her knees abroad in St. Joseph's chapel
clackin' her rosary beads an'
breathing like a virgin martyr, the oul'
bitch.
Nora says, I'll go with you, missus. I'm on to
the same Mrs.
McGrath and I'll know if she's
cheating you.
She leads the way to the shop in Parnell
Street. The woman behind
the counter is pleasant to Mam in
her American coat till Mam shows the
St. Vincent de Paul docket. The
woman says, I don't know what you're
doing here at this hour of the
day. I never serve the charity cases
before six in the evening. But
this is your first time and I'll make an
exception.
She says to Nora, Do you have a docket, too?
No. I'm a friend helping this poor family with
their first docket
from the St. Vincent de Paul.
The woman lays a sheet of newspaper on the
scale and pours on flour
from a large bag. When she
finishes pouring, she says, There's a pound of
flour.
I don't think so, says Nora. That's a very
small pound of flour.
The woman flushes and glares, Are you accusin'
me?
Ah, no, Mrs. McGrath, says Nora. I think there
was a little
accident there the way your hip
was pressed against that paper and you
didn't even know the paper was
pulled down a bit. Oh, God, no. A woman
like you that's forever on her
knees before the Virgin Mary is an
inspiration to us all and is that
your money I see on the floor there?
Mrs. McGrath steps back quickly and the needle
on the scale jumps
and quivers. What money? she
says, till she looks at Nora, and knows.
Nora smiles. Must be a trick of
the shadows, she says, and smiles at the
scale. There was a mistake right
enough for that shows barely half a
pound of flour.
That scale gives me more trouble, says Mrs.
McGrath.
I'm sure it does, says Nora.
But my conscience is clear before God, says
Mrs. McGrath.
I'm sure it is, says Nora, and you're admired
by one and all at the
St. Vincent de Paul Society and
the Legion of Mary.
I try to be a good Catholic.
Try? God knows 'tis little trying you'd have
for you're well known
for having a kind heart and I was
wondering if you could spare a couple
of sweets for the little boys
here.
Well, now, I'm not a millionaire, but here...
God bless you, Mrs. McGrath, and I know it's
asking a lot but could
you possibly lend me a couple of
cigarettes?
Well, now, they're not on the docket. I'm not
here to supply
luxuries.
If you could see your way, missus, I'd be sure
to mention your
kindness to the St. Vincent de
Paul.
All right, all right, says Mrs. McGrath. Here.
One time for the
cigarettes and one time only.
God bless you, says Nora, and I'm sorry you
had so much trouble
with that scale.
On the way home we stopped in the People's
Park and sat on a bench
while Malachy and I sucked on our
sweets and Mam and Nora smoked their
cigarettes. The smoking brought
on Nora's cough and she told Mam the fags
would kill her in the end, that
there was a touch of consumption in her
family and no one lived to a ripe
old age, though who would want to in
Limerick, a place where you could
look around and the first thing you
noticed was a scarcity of gray
hairs, all the gray hairs either in the
graveyard or across the Atlantic
working on railroads or sauntering
around in police uniforms.
You're lucky, missus, that you saw a bit of
the world. Oh, God, I'd
give anything to see New York,
people dancing up and down Broadway
without a care. No, I had to go
and fall for a boozer with the charm,
Peter Molloy, a champion pint
drinker that had me up the pole and up the
aisle when I was barely
seventeen. I was ignorant, missus. We grew up
ignorant in Limerick, so we did,
knowing feck all about anything and
signs on, we're mothers before
we're women. And there's nothing here but
rain and oul' biddies saying the
rosary. I'd give me teeth to get out, go
to America or even England
itself. The champion pint drinker is always on
the dole and sometimes he even
drinks that and drives me so demented I
wind up in the lunatic asylum.
She drew on her cigarette and gagged, coughing
till her body rocked
back and forth, and in between
the coughs she whimpered, Jesus, Jesus.
When the cough died away she said
she had to go home and take her
medicine. She said, I'll see you
next week, missus, at the St. Vincent de
Paul. If you're stuck for
anything send a message to me at Vize's Field.
Ask anyone for the wife of Peter
Molloy, champion pint drinker.
Eugene is sleeping under a coat on the bed.
Dad sits by the
fireplace with Oliver on his lap.
I wonder why Dad is telling Oliver a
Cuchulain story. He knows the Cuchulain
stories are mine, but when I look
at Oliver I don't mind. His
cheeks are bright red, he's staring into the
dead fire, and you can see he has
no interest in Cuchulain. Mam puts her
hand on his forehead. I think he
has a fever, she says. I wish I had an
onion and I'd boil it in milk and
pepper. That's good for the fever. But
even if I had what would I boil
the milk on? We need coal for that fire.
She gives Dad the docket for the coal down the
Dock Road. He takes
me with him but it's dark and all
the coal yards are closed.
What are we going to do now, Dad?
I don't know, son.
Ahead of us women in shawls and small children
are picking up coal
along the road.
There, Dad, there's coal.
Och, no, son. We won't pick coal off the road.
We're not beggars.
He tells Mam the coal yards are closed and
we'll have to drink milk
and eat bread tonight, but when I
tell her about the women on the road
she passes Eugene to him.
If you're too grand to pick coal off the road
I'll put on my coat
and go down the Dock Road.
She gets a bag and takes Malachy and me with
her. Beyond the Dock
Road there is something wide and
dark with lights glinting in it. Mam
says that's the River Shannon.
She says that's what she missed most of
all in America, the River
Shannon. The Hudson was lovely but the Shannon
sings. I can't hear the song but
my mother does and that makes her happy.
The other women are gone from the
Dock Road and we search for the bits of
coal that drop from lorries. Mam
tells us gather anything that burns,
coal, wood, cardboard, paper. She
says, There are them that burn the
horse droppings but we're not
gone that low yet. When her bag is nearly
full she says, Now we have to
find an onion for Oliver. Malachy says
he'll find one but she tells him,
No, you don't find onions on the road,
you get them in shops.
The minute he sees a shop he cries out,
There's a shop, and runs
in.
Oonyen, he says. Oonyen for Oliver.
Mam runs into the shop and tells the women
behind the counter, I'm
sorry. The woman says, Lord, he's
a dote. Is he an American or what?
Mam says he is. The woman smiles and shows two
teeth, one on each
side of her upper gum. A dote,
she says, and look at them gorgeous goldy
curls. And what is it he wants
now? A sweet?
Ah, no, says Mam. An onion.
The woman laughs, An onion? I never heard a
child wanting an onion
before. Is that what they like in
America?
Mam says, I just mentioned I wanted to get an
onion for my other
child that's sick. Boil the onion
in milk, you know.
True for you, missus. You can't beat the onion
boiled in milk. And
look, little boy, here's a sweet
for yourself and one for the other
little boy, the brother, I
suppose.
Mam says, Ah, sure, you shouldn't. Say thank
you, boys.
The woman says, Here's a nice onion for the
sick child, missus.
Mam says, Oh, I can't buy the onion now,
missus. I don't have a
penny on me.
I'm giving you the onion, missus. Let it never
be said a child went
sick in Limerick for want of an
onion. And don't forget to sprinkle in a
little pepper. Do you have
pepper, missus?
Ah, no, I don't but I should be getting it any
day now.
Well, here, missus. Pepper and a little salt.
Do the child all the
good in the world.
Mam says, God bless you, ma'am, and her eyes
are watery.
Dad is walking back and forth with Oliver in
his arms and Eugene is
playing on the floor with a pot
and a spoon. Dad says, Did you get the
onion?
I did, says Mam, and more. I got coal and the
way of lighting it. I
knew you would. I said a prayer
to St. Jude. He's my favorite saint,
patron of desperate cases.
I got the coal. I got the onion, no help from
St. Jude.
Dad says, You shouldn't be picking up coal off
the road like a
common beggar. It isn't right.
Bad example for the boys.
Then you should have sent St. Jude down the
Dock Road.
Malachy says, I'm hungry, and I'm hungry, too,
but Mam says, Ye'll
wait till Oliver has his onion
boiled in milk.
She gets the fire going, cuts the onion in
half, drops it in the
boiling milk with a little butter
and sprinkles the milk with pepper. She
takes Oliver on her lap and tries
to feed him but he turns away and looks
into the fire.
Ah, come on, love, she says. Good for you.
Make you big and strong.
He tightens his mouth against the spoon. She
puts the pot down,
rocks him till he's asleep, lays
him on the bed and tells the rest of us
be quiet or she'll demolish us.
She slices the other half of the onion
and fries it in butter with
slices of bread. She lets us sit on the floor
around the fire where we eat the
fried bread and sip at the scalding
sweet tea in jam jars. She says,
That fire is good and bright so we can
turn off that gaslight till we
get money for the meter.
The fire makes the room warm and with the
flames dancing in the
coal you can see faces and
mountains and valleys and animals leaping.
Eugene falls asleep on the floor
and Dad lifts him to the bed beside
Oliver. Mam puts the boiled onion
pot up on the mantelpiece for fear a
mouse or rat might be at it. She
says she's tired out from the day, the
Vincent de Paul Society, Mrs.
McGrath's shop, the search for coal down
the Dock Road, the worry over
Oliver not wanting the boiled onion, and if
he's like this tomorrow she's
taking him to the doctor, and now she's
going to bed.
Soon we're all in bed and if there's the odd
flea I don't mind
because it's warm in the bed with
the six of us and I love the glow of
the fire the way it dances on the
walls and ceiling and makes the room go
red and black, red and black,
till it dims to white and black and all you
can hear is a little cry from
Oliver turning in my mother's arms.
In the morning Dad is lighting the fire,
making tea, cutting the
bread. He's already dressed and
he's telling Mam hurry up and get
dressed. He says to me, Francis,
your little brother Oliver is sick and
we're taking him to the hospital.
You are to be a good boy and take care
of your two brothers. We'll be
back soon.
Mam says, When we're out go easy with that
sugar. We're not
millionaires.
When Mam picks up Oliver and wraps him in a
coat Eugene stands on
the bed. I want Ollie, he says.
Ollie play.
Ollie will be back soon, she says, and you can
play with him. Now
you can play with Malachy and
Frank.
Ollie, Ollie, I want Ollie.
He follows Oliver with his eyes and when
they're gone he sits on
the bed looking out the window.
Malachy says, Genie, Genie, we have
bread, we have tea. Sugar on your
bread, Genie. He shakes his head and
pushes away the bread Malachy is
offering. He crawls to the place where
Oliver slept with Mam, puts his
head down and stares out the window.
Grandma is at the door. I heard your father
and mother were running
down Henry Street with the child
in their arms. Now where are they gone
to?
Oliver is sick, I said. He wouldn't eat the
boiled onion in milk.
What are you blatherin' about?
Wouldn't eat the boiled onion and got sick.
And who's minding ye?
I am.
And what's up with the child in the bed?
What's his name?
That's Eugene. He misses Oliver. They're twins.
I know they're twins. That child looks
starved. Have ye any
porridge here?
What's porridge? says Malachy.
Jesus, Mary and Holy St. Joseph! What's
porridge! Porridge is
porridge. That's what porridge
is. Ye are the most ignorant bunch o'
Yanks I ever seen. Come on, put
on yeer clothes and we'll go across the
street to your aunt Aggie. She's
there with the husband, Pa Keating, and
she'll give ye some porridge.
She picks up Eugene, wraps him in her shawl
and we cross the street
to Aunt Aggie's. She's living
with Uncle Pa again because he said she
wasn't a fat cow after all.
Do you have any porridge? Grandma says to Aunt
Aggie.
Porridge? Am I supposed to be feeding porridge
to a crowd of Yanks?
Pity about you, says Grandma. It won't kill
you to give them a
little porridge.
And I suppose they'll be wanting sugar and
milk on top of
everything or they might be
banging on my door looking for an egg if you
don't mind. I don't know why we
have to pay for Angela's mistakes.
Jesus, says Grandma, 'tis a good thing you
didn't own that stable
in Bethlehem or the Holy Family
would still be wanderin' the world
crumblin' with the hunger.
Grandma pushes her way past Aunt Aggie, puts
Eugene on a chair near
the fire and makes the porridge.
A man comes in from another room. He has
black curly hair and his skin is
black and I like his eyes because
they're very blue and ready to
smile. He's Aunt Aggie's husband, the man
who stopped the night we were
attacking the fleas and told us all about
fleas and snakes, the man with
the cough he got from swallowing gas in
the war.
Malachy says, Why are you all black? and Uncle
Pa Keating laughs
and coughs so hard he has to ease
himself with a cigarette. Oh, the
little Yanks, he says. They're
not a bit shy. I'm black because I work at
the Limerick Gas Works shoveling
coal and coke into the furnaces. Gassed
in France and back to Limerick to
work in the gas works. When you grow up
you'll laugh.
Malachy and I have to leave the table so the
big people can sit and
have tea. They have their tea but
Uncle Pa Keating, who is my uncle
because he's married to my aunt
Aggie, picks up Eugene and takes him on
his lap. He says, This is a sad
little fella, and makes funny faces and
silly sounds. Malachy and I laugh
but Eugene only reaches up to touch the
blackness of Pa Keating's skin,
and then when Pa pretends to bite his
little hand, Eugene laughs and
everyone in the room laughs. Malachy goes
to Eugene and tries to make him
laugh even more but Eugene turns away and
hides his face in Pa Keating's
shirt.
I think he likes me, says Pa, and that's when
Aunt Aggie puts down
her teacup and starts to bawl,
Waah, waah, waah, big teardrops tumbling
down her fat red face.
Aw, Jesus, says Grandma, there she is again.
What's up with you
this time?
And Aunt Aggie blubbers, To see Pa there with
a child on his lap
an' me with no hope of having my
own.
Grandma barks at her, Stop talkin' like that
in front of the
children. Have you no shame? When
God is good and ready He'll send you
your family.
Aunt Aggie sobs, Angela with five born an' one
just gone an' her so
useless she couldn't scrub a
floor an' me with none an' I can scrub an'
clean with the best and make any
class of a stew or a fry.
Pa Keating laughs, I think I'll keep this
little fella.
Malachy runs to him. No, no, no. That's my
brother, that's Eugene.
And I say, No, no, no, that's our
brother. Aunt Aggie pats the tears on
her cheeks. She says, I don't
want nothing of Angela's. I don't want
nothing that's half Limerick and
half North of Ireland, so I don't, so ye
can take him home. I'll have me
own someday if I have to do a hundred
novenas to the Virgin Mary and
her mother, St. Ann, or if I have to crawl
from here to Lourdes on me two
bended knees.
Grandma says, That's enough. Ye have had yeer
porridge and 'tis
time to go home and see if yeer
father and mother are back from the
hospital.
She puts on her shawl and goes to pick up
Eugene but he clutches so
hard at Pa Keating's shirt she
has to pull him away though he keeps
looking back at Pa till we're out
the door.
* * *
We followed Grandma back to our room. She put
Eugene in the bed and
gave him a drink of water. She
told him to be a good boy and go to sleep
for his little brother, Oliver,
would be home soon and they'd be playing
again there on the floor.
But he kept looking out the window.
She told Malachy and me we could sit on the
floor and play but to
be quiet because she was going to
say her prayers. Malachy went to the
bed and sat by Eugene and I sat
on a chair at the table making out words
on the newspaper that was our
tablecloth. All you could hear in the room
was Malachy whispering to make
Eugene happy and Grandma mumbling to the
click of her rosary beads. It was
so quiet I put my head on the table and
fell asleep.
Dad is touching my shoulder. Come on, Francis,
you have to take
care of your little brothers.
Mam is slumped on the edge of the bed, making
small crying sounds
like a bird. Grandma is pulling
on her shawl. She says, I'll go down to
Thompson the undertaker about the
coffin and the carriage. The St.
Vincent de Paul Society will
surely pay for that, God knows.
She goes out the door. Dad stands facing the
wall over the fire,
beating on his thighs with his
fists, sighing, Och, och, och.
Dad frightens me with his och, och, och, and
Mam frightens me with
her small bird sounds and I don't
know what to do though I wonder if
anyone will light the fire in the
grate so that we can have tea and bread
because it's a long time since we
had the porridge. If Dad would move
away from the fireplace I could
light the fire myself. All you need is
paper, a few bits of coal or
turf, and a match. He won't move so I try to
go around his legs while he's
beating on his thighs but he notices me and
wants to know why I'm trying to
light the fire. I tell him we're all
hungry and he lets out a crazy
laugh. Hungry? he says. Och, Francis, your
wee brother Oliver is dead. Your
wee sister is dead and your wee brother
is dead.
He picks me up and hugs me so hard I cry out.
Then Malachy cries,
my mother cries, Dad cries, I
cry, but Eugene stays quiet. Then Dad
sniffles, We'll have a feast.
Come on, Francis.
He tells my mother we'll be back in awhile but
she has Malachy and
Eugene on her lap in the bed and
she doesn't look up. He carries me
through the streets of Limerick
and we go from shop to shop with him
asking for food or anything they
can give to a family that has two
children dead in a year, one in
America, one in Limerick, and in danger
of losing three more for the want
of food and drink. Most shopkeepers
shake their heads. Sorry for your
troubles but you could go to the St.
Vincent de Paul Society or get
the public assistance.
Dad says he's glad to see the spirit of Christ
alive in Limerick
and they tell him they don't need
the likes of him with his northern
accent to be telling them about
Christ and he should be ashamed of
himself dragging a child around
like that like a common beggar, a tinker,
a knacker.
A few shopkeepers give bread, potatoes, tins
of beans and Dad says,
We'll go home now and you boys
can eat something, but we meet Uncle Pa
Keating and he tells Dad he's
very sorry for his troubles and would Dad
like to have a pint in this pub
here?
There are men sitting in this pub with great
glasses of black stuff
before them. Uncle Pa Keating and
Dad have the black stuff, too. They
lift their glasses carefully and
slowly drink. There is creamy white
stuff on their lips, which they
lick with little sighs. Uncle Pa gets me
a bottle of lemonade and Dad
gives me a piece of bread and I don't feel
hungry anymore. Still, I wonder
how long we'll sit here with Malachy and
Eugene hungry at home, hours from
the porridge, which Eugene didn't eat
anyway.
Dad and Uncle Pa drink their glass of black
stuff and have another.
Uncle Pa says, Frankie, this is
the pint. This is the staff of life. This
is the best thing for nursing
mothers and for those who are long weaned.
He laughs and Dad smiles and I laugh because I
think that's what
you're supposed to do when Uncle
Pa says something. He doesn't laugh when
he tells the other men about
Oliver dying. The other men tip their hats
to Dad. Sorry for your troubles,
mister, and surely you'll have a pint.
Dad says yes to the pints and soon he's
singing Roddy McCorley and
Kevin Barry and song after song I
never heard before and crying over his
lovely little girl, Margaret,
that died in America and his little boy,
Oliver, dead beyond in the City
Home Hospital. It frightens me the way he
yells and cries and sings and I
wish I could be at home with my three
brothers, no, my two brothers,
and my mother.
The man behind the bar says to Dad, I think
now, mister, you've had
enough. We're sorry for your
troubles but you have to take that child
home to his mother that must be
heartbroken by the fire.
Dad says, One, one more pint, just one, eh?
and the man says no.
Dad shakes his fist. I did me bit
for Ireland, and when the man comes out
and takes Dad's arm, Dad tries to
push him away.
Uncle Pa says, Come on now, Malachy, stop the
blaguarding. You have
to go home to Angela. You have a
funeral tomorrow and the lovely children
waiting for you.
But Dad struggles till a few men push him out
into the darkness.
Uncle Pa stumbles out with the
bag of food. Come on, he says. We'll go
back to your room.
Dad wants to go to another place for a pint
but Uncle Pa says he
has no more money. Dad says he'll
tell everyone his sorrows and they'll
give him pints. Uncle Pa says
that's a disgraceful thing to do and Dad
cries on his shoulder. You're a
good friend, he tells Uncle Pa. He cries
again till Uncle Pa pats him on
the back. It's terrible, terrible, says
Uncle Pa, but you'll get over
this in time.
Dad straightens up and looks at him. Never, he
says. Never.
Next day we rode to the hospital in a carriage
with a horse. They
put Oliver in a white box that
came with us in the carriage and we took
him to the graveyard. They put
the white box into a hole in the ground
and covered it with earth. My
mother and Aunt Aggie cried, Grandma looked
angry, Dad, Uncle Pa Keating, and
Uncle Pat Sheehan looked sad but did
not cry and I thought that if
you're a man you can cry only when you have
the black stuff that is called
the pint.
I did not like the jackdaws that perched on
trees and gravestones
and I did not want to leave
Oliver with them. I threw a rock at a jackdaw
that waddled over toward Oliver's
grave. Dad said I shouldn't throw rocks
at jackdaws, they might be
somebody's soul. I didn't know what a soul was
but I didn't ask him because I
didn't care. Oliver was dead and I hated
jackdaws. I'd be a man someday
and I'd come back with a bag of rocks and
I'd leave the graveyard littered
with dead jackdaws.
The morning after Oliver's burial Dad went to
the Labour Exchange
to sign and collect the week's
dole, nineteen shillings and sixpence. He
said he'd be home by noon, that
he'd get coal and make a fire, that we'd
have rashers and eggs and tea in
honor of Oliver, that we might even have
a sweet or two.
He wasn't home by noon, or one, or two, and we
boiled and ate the
few potatoes the shopkeepers had
given the day before. He wasn't home
anytime before the sun went down
that day in May. There was no sign of
him till we heard him, long after
the pubs closed, rolling along Windmill
Street, singing, When all around
a vigil keep, The West's asleep, the
West's asleep- Alas, and well may
Erin weep When Connacht lies in slumber
deep.
There lake and plain smile fair and free, 'Mid
rocks their guardian
chivalry.
Sing, Oh, let man learn liberty
From crashing wind and lashing sea.
He stumbled into the room, hanging on to the
wall. A snot oozed
from his nose and he wiped it
away with the back of his hand. He tried to
speak. Zeeze shildren should be
in bed. Lishen to me. Shildren go to bed.
Mam faced him. These children are hungry.
Where's the dole money?
We'll get fish and chips so
they'll have something in their bellies when
they go to sleep.
She tried to stick her hands into his pockets
but he pushed her
away. Have respheck, he said.
Reshpeck in front of shildren.
She struggled to get at his pockets. Where's
the money? The
children are hungry. You mad oul'
bastard, did you drink all the money
again? Just what you did in
Brooklyn.
He blubbered, Och, poor Angela. And poor wee
Margaret and poor wee
Oliver.
He staggered to me and hugged me and I smelled
the drink I used to
smell in America. My face was wet
from his tears and his spit and his
snot and I was hungry and I
didn't know what to say when he cried all
over my head.
Then he let me go and hugged Malachy, still
going on about the wee
sister and the wee brother cold
in the ground, and how we all have to
pray and be good, how we have to
be obedient and do what our mother tells
us. He said we have our troubles
but it's time for Malachy and me to
start school because there's
nothing like an education, it will stand to
you in the end, and you have to
get ready to do your bit for Ireland.