If my pals see my mother dragging me through the streets to an Irish dancing class I'll be disgraced entirely. They think it's all right to dance and pretend you're Fred Astaire because you can jump all over the screen with Ginger Rogers. There is no Ginger Rogers in Irish dancing and you can't jump all over. You stand straight up and down and keep your arms against yourself and kick your legs up and around and never smile. My uncle Pa Keating said Irish dancers look like they have steel rods up their arses, but I can't say that to Mam, she'd kill me.
There's a gramophone in Mrs. O'Connor's playing an Irish jig or a reel and boys and girls are dancing around kicking their legs out and keeping their hands to their sides. Mrs. O'Connor is a great fat woman and when she stops the record to show the steps all the fat from her chin to her ankles jiggles and I wonder how she can teach the dancing. She comes over to my mother and says, So, this is little Frankie? I think we have the makings of a dancer here. Boys and girls, do we have the makings of a dancer here?
We do, Mrs. O'Connor.
Mam says, I have the sixpence, Mrs. O'Connor.
Ah, yes, Mrs. McCourt, hold on a minute.
She waddles to a table and brings back the head of a black boy with kinky hair, big eyes, huge red lips and an open mouth. She tells me put the sixpence in the mouth and take my hand out before the black boy bites me. All the boys and girls watch and they have little smiles. I drop in the sixpence and pull my hand back before the mouth snaps shut. Everyone laughs and I know they wanted to see my hand caught in the mouth. Mrs. O'Connor gasps and laughs and says to my mother, Isn't that a howl, now? Mam says it's a howl. She tells me behave myself and come home dancing.
I don't want to stay in this place where Mrs. O'Connor can't take the sixpence herself instead of letting me nearly lose my hand in the black boy's mouth. I don't want to stay in this place where you have to stand in line with boys and girls, straighten your back, hands by your sides, look ahead, don't look down, move your feet, move your feet, look at Cyril, look at Cyril, and there goes Cyril, all dressed up in his saffron kilt and the medals jingling, medals for this and medals for that and the girls love Cyril and Mrs. O'Connor loves Cyril for didn't he bring her fame and didn't she teach him every step he knows, oh, dance, Cyril, dance, oh, Jesus, he floats around the room, he's an angel out of heaven and stop the frowning, Frankie McCourt, or you'll have a puss on you like a pound of tripe, dance, Frankie, dance, pick up your feet for the love o'Jesus, onetwothreefourfivesixseven onetwothree and a onetwothree, Maura, will you help that Frankie McCourt before he ties his two feet around his poll entirely, help him, Maura.
Maura is a big girl about ten. She dances up to me with her white teeth and her dancer's dress with all the gold and yellow and green figures that are supposed to come from olden times and she says, Give me your hand, little boy, and she wheels me around the room till I'm dizzy and making a pure eejit of myself and blushing and foolish till I want to cry but I'm saved when the record stops and the gramophone goes hoosh hoosh.
Mrs. O'Connor says, Oh, thank you, Maura, and next week, Cyril, you can show Frankie a few of the steps that made you famous. Next week, boys and girls, and don't forget the sixpence for the little black boy.
Boys and girls leave together. I make my own way down the stairs and out the door hoping my pals won't see me with boys who wear kilts and girls with white teeth and fancy dresses from olden times.
Mam is having tea with Bridey Hannon, her friend from next door. Mam says, What did you learn? and makes me dance around the kitchen, onetwothreefourfivesixseven onetwothree and a onetwothree. She has a good laugh with Bridey. That's not too bad for your first time. In a month you'll be like a regular Cyril Benson.
I don't want to be Cyril Benson. I want to be Fred Astaire.
They turn hysterical, laughing and squirting tea out of their mouths, Jesus love him, says Bridey. Doesn't he have a great notion of himself. Fred Astaire how are you.
Mam says Fred Astaire went to his lessons every Saturday and didn't go around kicking the toes out of his boots and if I wanted to be like him I'd have to go to Mrs. O'Connor's every week.
The fourth Saturday morning Billy Campbell knocks at our door. Mrs. McCourt, can Frankie come out and play? Mam tells him, No, Billy. Frankie is going to his dancing lesson.
He waits for me at the bottom of Barrack Hill. He wants to know why I'm dancing, that everyone knows dancing is a sissy thing and I'll wind up like Cyril Benson wearing a kilt and medals and dancing all over with girls. He says next thing I'll be sitting in the kitchen knitting socks. He says dancing will destroy me and I won't be fit to play any kind of football, soccer, rugby or Gaelic football itself because the dancing teaches you to run like a sissy and everyone will laugh.
I tell him I'm finished with the dancing, that I have sixpence in my pocket for Mrs. O'Connor that's supposed to go into the black boy's mouth, that I'm going to the Lyric Cinema instead. Sixpence will get the two of us in with tuppence left over for two squares of Cleeves' toffee, and we have a great time looking at Riders of the Purple Sage.
Dad is sitting by the fire with Mam and they want to know what steps I learned today and what they're called. I already did "The Siege of Ennis" and "The Walls of Limerick," which are real dances. Now I have to make up names and dances. Mam says she never heard of a dance called "The Siege of Dingle" but if that's what I learned go ahead, dance it, and I dance around the kitchen with my hands down by my sides making my own music, diddley eye di eye di eye diddley eye do you do you, Dad and Mam clapping in time with my feet. Dad says, Och, that's a fine dance and you'll be a powerful Irish dancer and a credit to the men who died for their country. Mam says, That wasn't much for a sixpence.
Next week it's a George Raft film and the week after that a cowboy film with George O'Brien. Then it's James Cagney and I can't take Billy because I want to get a bar of chocolate to go with my Cleeves' toffee and I'm having a great time till there's a terrible pain in my jaw and it's a tooth out of my gum stuck in my toffee and the pain is killing me. Still, I can't waste the toffee so I pull out the tooth and put it in my pocket and chew the toffee on the other side of my mouth blood and all. There's pain on one side and delicious toffee on the other and I remember what my uncle Pa Keating would say, There are times when you wouldn't know whether to shit or go blind.
I have to go home now and worry because you can't go through the world short a tooth without your mother knowing. Mothers know everything and she's always looking into our mouths to see if there's any class of disease. She's there by the fire and Dad is there and they're asking me the same old questions, the dance and the name of the dance. I tell them I learned "The Walls of Cork" and I dance around the kitchen trying to hum a made-up tune and dying with the pain of my tooth. Mam says, "Walls o' Cork," my eye, there's no such dance, and Dad says, Come over here. Stand there before me. Tell us the truth, Did you go to your dancing classes today?
I can't tell a lie anymore because my gum is killing me and there's blood in my mouth. Besides, I know they know everything and that's what they're telling me now. Some snake of a boy from the dancing school saw me going to the Lyric Cinema and told and Mrs. O'Connor sent a note to say she hadn't seen me in ages and was I all right because I had great promise and could follow in the footsteps of the great Cyril Benson.
Dad doesn't care about my tooth or anything. He says I'm going to confession and drags me over to the Redemptorist church because it's Saturday and confessions go on all day. He tells me I'm a bad boy, he's ashamed of me that I went to the pictures instead of learning Ireland's national dances, the jig, the reel, the dances that men and women fought and died for down those sad centuries. He says there's many a young man that was hanged and now moldering in a lime pit that would be glad to rise up and dance the Irish dance.
The priest is old and I have to yell my sins at him and he tells me I'm a hooligan for going to the pictures instead of my dancing lessons although he thinks himself that dancing is a dangerous thing almo
st as bad as the films, that it stirs up thoughts sinful in themselves, but even if dancing is an abomination I sinned by taking my mother's sixpence and lying and there's a hot place in hell for the likes of me, say a decade of the rosary and ask God's forgiveness for you're dancing at the gates of hell itself, child.
I'm seven, eight, nine going on ten and still Dad has no work. He drinks his tea in the morning, signs for the dole at the Labour Exchange, reads the papers at the Carnegie Library, goes for his long walks far into the country. If he gets a job at the Limerick Cement Company or Rank's Flour Mills he loses it in the third week. He loses it because he goes to the pubs on the third Friday of the job, drinks all his wages and misses the half day of work on Saturday morning.
Mam says, Why can't he be like the other men from the lanes of Limerick? They're home before the Angelus rings at six o'clock, they hand over their wages, change their shirts, have their tea, get a few shillings from the wife and they're off to the pub for a pint or two.
Mam tells Bridey Hannon that Dad can't be like that and won't be like that. She says he's a right bloody fool the way he goes to pubs and stands pints to other men while his own children are home with their bellies stuck to their backbones for the want of a decent dinner. He'll brag to the world he did his bit for Ireland when it was neither popular nor profitable, that he'll gladly die for Ireland when the call comes, that he regrets he has only one life to give for his poor misfortunate country and if anyone disagrees they're invited to step outside and settle this for once and for all.
Oh, no, says Mam, they won't disagree and they won't step outside, that bunch of tinkers and knackers and begrudgers that hang around the pubs. They tell him he's a grand man, even if he's from the North, and 'twould be an honor to accept a pint from such a patriot.
Mam tells Bridey, I don't know under God what I'm going to do. The dole is nineteen shillings and sixpence a week, the rent is six and six, and that leaves thirteen shillings to feed and clothe five people and keep us warm in the winter.
Bridey drags on her Woodbine, drinks her tea and declares that God is good. Mam says she's sure God is good for someone somewhere but He hasn't been seen lately in the lanes of Limerick.
Bridey laughs. Oh, Angela, you could go to hell for that, and Mam says, Aren't I there already, Bridey?
And they laugh and drink their tea and smoke their Woodbines and tell one another the fag is the only comfort they have.
'Tis.
Question Quigley tells me I have to go to the Redemptorist church on Friday and join the boys' division of the Arch Confraternity. You have to join. You can't say no. All the boys in the lanes and back streets that have fathers on the dole or working in laboring jobs have to join.
Question says, Your father is a foreigner from the North and he don't matter but you still have to join.
Everyone knows Limerick is the holiest city in Ireland because it has the Arch Confraternity of the Holy Family, the biggest sodality in the world. Any city can have a Confraternity, only Limerick has the Arch.
Our Confraternity fills the Redemptorist church five nights a week, three for the men, one for the women, one for the boys. There is Benediction and hymn singing in English, Irish and Latin and best of all the big powerful sermon Redemptorist priests are famous for. It's the sermon that saves millions of Chinese and other heathens from winding up in hell with the Protestants.
The Question says you have to join the Confraternity so that your mother can tell the St. Vincent de Paul Society and they'll know you're a good Catholic. He says his father is a loyal member and that's how he got a good pensionable job cleaning lavatories at the railway station and when he grows up himself he'll get a good job too unless he runs away and joins the Royal Canadian Mounted Police so that he can sing "I'll Be Calling You Ooo Ooo Ooo," like Nelson Eddy singing to Jeanette MacDonald expiring with consumption there on the sofa. If he brings me to the Confraternity the man in the office will write his name in a big book and some day he might be promoted to prefect of a section, which is all he wants in life next to wearing the Mountie uniform.
The prefect is head of a section which is thirty boys from the same lanes and streets. Every section has the name of a saint whose picture is painted on a shield stuck on top of a pole by the prefect's seat. The prefect and his assistant take the attendance and keep an eye on us so that they can give us a thump on the head in case we laugh during Benediction or commit any other sacrileges. If you miss one night the man in the office wants to know why, wants to know if you're slipping away from the Confraternity or he might say to the other man in the office, I think our little friend here has taken the soup. That's the worst thing you can say to any Catholic in Limerick or Ireland itself because of what happened in the Great Famine. If you're absent twice the man in the office sends you a yellow summons to appear and explain yourself and if you're absent three times he sends The Posse, which is five or six big boys from your section who search the streets to make sure you're not out enjoying yourself when you should be on your knees at the Confraternity praying for the Chinese and other lost souls. The Posse will go to your house and tell your mother your immortal soul is in danger. Some mothers worry but others will say, Get away from my door or I'll come out and give every one o' ye a good fong in the hole of yeer arse. These are not good Confraternity mothers and the director will say we should pray for them that they'll see the error of their ways.
The worst thing of all is a visit from the director of the Confraternity himself, Father Gorey He'll stand at the top of the lane and roar in the voice that converted the Chinese millions, Where is the house of Frank McCourt? He roars even though he has your address in his pocket and knows very well where you live. He roars because he wants the world to know you're slipping away from the Confraternity and putting your immortal soul in danger. The mothers are terrified and the fathers will whisper, I'm not here, I'm not here, and they'll make sure you go to the Confraternity from this on out so they won't be disgraced and shamed entirely with the neighbors muttering behind their hands.
The Question takes me to the section St. Finbar's, and the prefect tells me sit over there and shut up. His name is Declan Collopy, he's fourteen and he has lumps on his forehead that look like horns. He has thick ginger eyebrows that meet in the middle and hang over his eyes and his arms hang down to his kneecaps. He tells me he's making this the best section in the Confraternity and if I'm ever absent he'll break my arse and send the bits to my mother. There's no excuse for absence because there was a boy in another section that was dying and still they brought him in on a stretcher. He says, If you're ever absent it better be a death, not a death in the family but your own death. Do you hear me?
I do, Declan.
Boys in my section tell me that prefects get rewards if there is perfect attendance. Declan wants to get out of school as soon as he can and get a job selling linoleum at Cannock's big shop on Patrick Street. His uncle, Foncey, sold linoleum there for years and made enough money to start his own shop in Dublin, where he has his three sons selling linoleum. Father Gorey, the director, can easily get Declan the reward of a job at Cannock's if he's a good prefect and has perfect attendance in his section and that's why Declan will destroy us if we're absent. He tells us, No one will stand between me and the linoleum.
Declan likes Question Quigley and lets him miss an occasional Friday night because the Question said, Declan, when I grow up and get married I'm going to cover my house in linoleum and I'll buy it all from you.
Other boys in the section try this trick with Declan but he says, Bugger off, ye'll be lucky enough to have a pot to piss in never mind yards of linoleum.
Dad says when he was my age in Toome he served Mass for years and it's time for me to be an altar boy. Mam says, What's the use? The child doesn't have proper clothes for school never mind the altar. Dad says the altar boy robes will cover the clothes and she says we don't have the money for robes and the wash they need every week.
He says God will pro
vide and makes me kneel on the kitchen floor. He takes the part of the priest for he has the whole Mass in his head and I have to know the responses. He says, Introibo ad altare Dei, and I have to say, Ad Deum qui laetiflcat juventutem meam.
Every evening after tea I kneel for the Latin and he won't let me move till I'm perfect. Mam says he could at least let me sit but he says Latin is sacred and it is to be learned and recited on the knees. You won't find the Pope sitting around drinking tea while he speaks the Latin.
The Latin is hard and my knees are sore and scabby and I'd like to be out in the lane playing though still I'd like to be an altar boy helping the priest vest in the sacristy, up there on the altar all decked out in my red and white robes like my pal Jimmy Clark, answering the priest in Latin, moving the big book from one side of the tabernacle to the other, pouring water and wine into the chalice, pouring water over the priest's hands, ringing the bell at Consecration, kneeling, bowing, swinging the censer at Benediction, sitting off to the side with the palms of my hands on my knees all serious while he gives his sermon, everyone in St. Joseph's looking at me and admiring my ways.
In a fortnight I have the Mass in my head and it's time to go to St. Joseph's to see the sacristan, Stephen Carey, who is in charge of altar boys. Dad polishes my boots. Mam darns my socks and throws an extra coal on the fire to heat up the iron to press my shirt. She boils water to scrub my head, neck, hands and knees and any inch of skin that shows. She scrubs till my skin burns and tells Dad she wouldn't give it to the world to say her son went on the altar dirty. She wishes I didn't have scabby knees from running around kicking canisters and falling down pretending I was the greatest footballer in the world. She wishes we had a drop of hair oil in the house but water and spit will keep my hair from sticking up like black straw in a mattress. She warns me speak up when I go to St. Joseph's and don't be mumbling in English or Latin. She says, 'Tis a great pity you grew out of your First Communion suit but you have nothing to be ashamed of, you come from good blood, McCourts, Sheehans, or my mother's family the Guilfoyles that owned acre after acre in County Limerick before the English took it away and gave it to footpads from London.