Aunt Aggie is still in the bed with Alphie. She tells Malachy to fill Alphie's bottle with milk and bring it to him. She tells me to start the fire in the range, that there's paper and wood in a box and coal in the coal scuttle. If the fire won't start sprinkle it with a little paraffin oil. The fire is slow and smoky and I sprinkle it with the paraffin oil, it flares up, whoosh, and nearly takes my eyebrows off. There is smoke everywhere and Aunt Aggie rushes into the kitchen. She shoves me away from the range. Jesus above, can't you do anything right? You're supposed to open the damper, you eejit.
I don't know anything about dampers. In our house we have a fireplace in Ireland downstairs and a fireplace in Italy upstairs and no sign of a damper. Then you go to your aunt's house and you're supposed to know all about dampers. There's no use telling her this is the first time you ever lit a fire in a range. She'll just give you another thump on the skull and send you flying. It's hard to know why grown people get so angry over little things like dampers. When I'm a man I won't go around thumping small children over dampers or anything else. Now she yells at me, Look at Lord Muck standing there. Would you ever think of opening the window and letting out the smoke? Of course you wouldn't. You have a puss on you like your father from the North. Do you think now you can boil the water for the tea without burning the house down?
She cuts three slices from a loaf, smears them with margarine for us and goes back to bed. We have the tea and bread and it's one morning we're glad to go to school where it's warm and there are no yelling aunts.
After school she tells me sit at the table and write my father a letter about Mam in the hospital and how we're all at Aunt Aggie's till Mam comes home. I'm to tell him we're all happy and in the best of health, send money, food is very dear, growing boys eat a lot, ha ha, Alphie the baby needs clothes and nappies.
I don't know why she's always angry. Her flat is warm and dry. She has electric light in the house and her own lavatory in the backyard. Uncle Pa has a steady job and he brings home his wages every Friday. He drinks his pints at South's pub but never comes home singing songs of Ireland's long woeful history. He says, A pox on all their houses, and he says the funniest thing in the world is that we all have arses that have to be wiped and no man escapes that. The minute a politician or a Pope starts his blather Uncle Pa thinks of him wiping his arse. Hitler and Roosevelt and Churchill all wipe their arses. De Valera, too. He says the only people you can trust in that department are the Mahommedans for they eat with one hand and wipe with the other. The human hand itself is a sneaky bugger and you never know what it's been up to.
There are good times with Uncle Pa when Aunt Aggie goes to the Mechanics' Institute to play cards, forty-five. He says, To hell with the begrudgers. He gets himself two bottles of stout from Souths, six buns and a half pound of ham from the shop on the corner. He makes tea and we sit by the range drinking it, eating our ham sandwiches and buns and laughing over Uncle Pa and the way he goes on about the world. He says, I swallowed the gas, I drink the pint, I don't give a fiddler's fart about the world and its cousin. If little Alphie gets tired and cranky and cries Uncle Pa pulls his shirt back from his chest and tells him, Here, have a suck of diddy momma. The sight of that flat chest and the nipple shocks Alphie and makes him good again.
Before Aunt Aggie comes home we have to wash the mugs and clean up so she won't know we were stuffing ourselves with buns and ham sandwiches. She'd nag Uncle Pa for a month if she ever found out and that's what I don't understand. Why does he let her nag him like that? He went to the Great War, he was gassed, he's big, he has a job, he makes the world laugh. It's a mystery. That's what the priests and the masters tell you, everything is a mystery and you have to believe what you're told.
I could easily have Uncle Pa for a father. We'd have great times sitting by the fire in the range drinking tea and laughing over the way he farts and says, Light a match. That's a present from the Germans.
Aunt Aggie torments me all the time. She calls me scabby eyes. She says I'm the spitting image of my father, I have the odd manner, I have the sneaky air of a northern Presbyterian, I'll probably grow up and build an altar to Oliver Cromwell himself, I'll run off and marry an English tart and cover my house with pictures of the royal family.
I want to get away from her and I can think of only one way, to make myself sick and go to the hospital. I get up in the middle of the night and go to her backyard. I can pretend I'm going to the lavatory. I stand out in the open in the freezing weather and hope I'll catch pneumonia or the galloping consumption so that I'll go to the hospital with the nice clean sheets and the meals in the bed and books brought by the girl in the blue dress. I might meet another Patricia Madigan and learn a long poem. I stand in the backyard for ages in my shirt and bare feet looking up at the moon which is a ghostly galleon riding upon cloudy seas and go back to bed shivering hoping I'll wake up in the morning with a terrible cough and flushed cheeks. But I don't. I feel fresh and lively and I'd be in great form if I could be at home with my mother and brothers.
There are days when Aunt Aggie tells us she can't stand the sight of us another minute, Get away from me. Here, scabby eyes, take Alphie out in his pram, take your brothers, go to the park and play, do anything ye like and don't come back till teatime when the Angelus is ringing, not a minute later, do ye hear me, not a minute later. It's cold but we don't care. We push the pram up O'Connell Avenue out to Ballinacurra or the Rosbrien Road. We let Alphie crawl around in fields to look at cows and sheep and we laugh when the cows nuzzle him. I get under the cows and squirt the milk into Alphie's mouth till he's full and throws it up. Farmers chase us till they see how small Michael and Alphie are. Malachy laughs at the farmers. He says, Hit me now with the child in me arms. Then he has a great notion, Why can't we go to our own house and play a while? We find twigs and bits of wood in the fields and rush to Roden Lane. There are matches by the fireplace in Italy and we have a good fire going in no time. Alphie falls asleep and soon the rest of us drift off till the Angelus booms out of the Redemptorist church and we know we're in trouble with Aunt Aggie for being late.
We don't care. She can yell at us all she wants but we had a grand time out the country with the cows and the sheep and then the lovely fire above in Italy.
You can tell she never has grand times like that. Electric light and a lavatory but no grand times.
Grandma comes for her on Thursdays and Sundays and they take the bus to the hospital to see Mam. We can't go because children are not allowed and if we say, How's Mam? they look cranky and tell us she's all right, she'll live. We'd like to know when she's getting out of hospital so that we can all go back home but we're afraid to open our mouths.
Malachy tells Aunt Aggie one day he's hungry and could he have a piece of bread. She hits him with a rolled-up Little Messenger of the Sacred Heart and there are tears on his eyelashes. He doesn't come home from school the next day and he's still gone at bedtime. Aunt Aggie says, Well, I suppose he ran away. Good riddance. If he was hungry he'd be here. Let him find comfort in a ditch.
Next day Michael runs in from the street, Dad's here, Dad's here, and runs back out and there's Dad sitting on the hall floor hugging Michael, crying, Your poor mother, your poor mother, and there's a smell of drink on him. Aunt Aggie is smiling, Oh, you're here, and she makes tea and eggs and sausages. She sends me out for a bottle of stout for Dad and I wonder why she's so pleasant and generous all of a sudden. Michael says, Are we going to our own house, Dad?
We are, son.
Alphie is back in the pram with the three old coats and coal and wood for the fire. Aunt Aggie stands at her door and tells us be good boys, come back for tea anytime, and there's a bad word for her in my head, Oul' bitch. It's in my head and I can't help it and I'll have to tell the priest in confession.
Malachy isn't in a ditch, he's there in our own house eating fish and chips a drunken soldier dropped at the gate of the Sarsfield Barracks.
Mam comes home in two days. She's weak an
d white and walks slowly. She says, The doctor told me keep warm, have plenty of rest and nourishing food, meat and eggs three times a week. God help us, those poor doctors don't have a notion of not having. Dad makes tea and toasts bread for her on the fire. He fries bread for the rest of us and we have a lovely night up in Italy where it's warm. He says he can't stay forever, he has to go back to work in Coventry. Mam wonders how he'll get to Coventry without a penny in his pocket. He's up early on Holy Saturday and I have tea with him by the fire. He fries four cuts of bread and wraps them in pages of the Limerick Chronicle, two cuts in each coat pocket. Mam is still in bed and he calls to her from the bottom of the stairs, I'm going now. She says, All right. Write when you land. My father is going to England and she won't even get out of the bed. I ask if I can go with him to the railway station. No, he's not going there. He's going to the Dublin road to see if he can get a lift. He pats my head, tells me take care of my mother and brothers and goes out the door. I watch him go up the lane till he turns the corner. I run up the lane to see him go down Barrack Hill and down St. Joseph's Street. I run down the hill and follow him as far as I can. He must know I'm following him because he turns and calls to me, Go home, Francis. Go home to your mother.
In a week there's a letter to say he arrived safely, that we are to be good boys, attend to our religious duties and above all obey our mother. In another week there's a telegram money order for three pounds and we're in heaven. We'll be rich, there will be fish and chips, jelly and custard, films every Saturday at the Lyric, the Coliseum, the Carlton, the Atheneum, the Central and the fanciest of all, the Savoy. We might even wind up having tea and cakes at the Savoy Cafe with the nobs and toffs of Limerick. We'll be sure to hold our teacups with our little fingers sticking out.
The next Saturday there's no telegram nor the Saturday after nor any Saturday forever. Mam begs again at the St. Vincent de Paul Society and smiles at the Dispensary when Mr. Coffey and Mr. Kane have their bit of a joke about Dad having a tart in Piccadilly. Michael wants to know what a tart is and she tells him it's something you have with tea. She spends most of the day by the fire with Bridey Hannon puffing on her Woodlbines, drinking weak tea. The bread crumbs from the morning are always on the table when we come home from school. She never washes the jam jars or mugs and there are flies in the sugar and wherever there is sweetness.
She says Malachy and I have to take turns looking after Alphie, taking him out in the pram for a bit of fresh air. The child can't be kept in Italy from October to April. If we tell her we want to play with our pals she might let fly with a right cross to the head that stings the ears.
We play games with Alphie and the pram. I stand at the top of Barrack Hill and Malachy is at the bottom. When I give the pram a push down the hill Malachy is supposed to stop it but he's looking at a pal on roller skates and it speeds by him across the street and through the doors of Leniston's pub where men are having a peaceful pint and not expecting a pram with a dirty-faced child saying Goo goo goo goo. The barman shouts this is a disgrace, there must be a law against this class of behavior, babies roaring through the door in bockety prams, he'll call the guards on us, and Alphie waves at him and smiles and he says, all right, all right, the child can have a sweet and a lemonade, the brothers can have lemonade too, that raggedy pair, and God above, 'tis a hard world, the minute you think you're getting ahead a pram comes crashing through the door and you're dishing out sweets and lemonade right and left, the two of ye take that child and go home to yeer mother.
Malachy has another powerful idea, that we could go around Limerick like tinkers pushing Alphie in his pram into pubs for the sweets and lemonade, but I don't want Mam finding out and hitting me with her right cross. Malachy says I'm not a sport and runs off. I push the pram over to Henry Street and up by the Redemptorist church. It's a gray day, the church is gray and the small crowd of people outside the door of the priests' house is gray. They're waiting to beg for any food left over from the priests' dinner.
There in the middle of the crowd in her dirty gray coat is my mother.
This is my own mother, begging. This is worse than the dole, the St. Vincent de Paul Society, the Dispensary. It's the worst kind of shame, almost as bad as begging on the streets where the tinkers hold up their scabby children, Give us a penny for the poor child, mister, the poor child is hungry, missus.
My mother is a beggar now and if anyone from the lane or my school sees her the family will be disgraced entirely. My pals will make up new names and torment me in the schoolyard and I know what they'll say,
Frankie McCourt
beggar woman's boy
scabby-eyed
dancing
blubber-gob
Jap
The door of the priests' house swings open and the people rush with their hands out. I can hear them, Brother, brother, here, brother, ah, for the love o' God, brother. Five children at home, brother. I can see my own mother pushed along. I can see the tightness of her mouth when she snatches at a bag and turns from the door and I push the pram up the street before she can see me.
I don't want to go home anymore. I push the pram down to the Dock Road, out to Corkanree where all the dust and garbage of Limerick is dumped and burned. I stand a while and look at boys chase rats. I don't know why they have to torture rats that are not in their houses. I'd keep going on into the country forever if I didn't have Alphie bawling with the hunger, kicking his chubby legs, waving his empty bottle.
Mam has the fire going and something boiling in a pot. Malachy smiles and says she brought home corned beef and a few spuds from Kathleen O'Connell's shop. He wouldn't be so happy if he knew he was the son of a beggar. She calls us in from the lane and when we sit at the table it's hard for me to look at my mother the beggar. She lifts the pot to the table, spoons out the potatoes one each and uses a fork to lift out the corned beef.
It isn't corned beef at all. It's a great lump of quivering gray fat and the only sign of corned beef is a little nipple of red meat on top. We stare at that bit of meat and wonder who will get it. Mam says, That's for Alphie. He's a baby, he's growing fast, he needs it. She puts it on a saucer in front of him. He pushes it away with his finger, then pulls it back. He lifts it to his mouth, looks around the kitchen, sees Lucky the dog and throws it to him.
There's no use saying anything. The meat is gone. We eat our potatoes with plenty of salt and I eat my fat and pretend it's that nipple of red meat.
XI
Mam warns us, Ye are to keep yeer paws out of that trunk for there's nothing in there that's of the slightest interest or any of yeer business.
All she has in that trunk is a lot of papers, certificates of birth and baptism, her Irish passport, Dad's English passport from Belfast, our American passports and her bright red flapper dress with spangles and black frills she brought all the way from America. She wants to keep that dress forever to remind herself she was young and dancing.
I don't care what she has in the trunk till I start a football team with Billy Campbell and Malachy. We can't afford uniforms or boots and Billy says, How will the world know who we are? We don't even have a name.
I remember the red dress and a name comes to me, The Red Hearts of Limerick. Mam never opens the trunk so what does it matter if I cut off a piece of the dress to make seven red hearts we can stick on our chests? What you don't know won't bother you, she always says herself.
The dress is buried under the papers. I look at my passport picture when I was small and I can see why they call me Jap. There's a paper that says Marriage Certificate, that Malachy McCourt and Angela Sheehan were joined in Holy Matrimony on the twenty-eighth of March, 1930. How could that be? I was born on the nineteenth of August and Billy Campbell told me the father and mother have to be married nine months before there's a sign of a child. Here I am born into the world in half the time. That means I must be a miracle and I might grow up to be a saint with people celebrating the feast of St. Francis of Limerick.
I'll h
ave to ask Mikey Molloy, still the expert on Girls' Bodies and Dirty Things in General.
Billy says if we're to be great soccer players we have to practice and we're to meet over in the park. The boys complain when I hand out the hearts and I tell them if they don't like it they can go home and cut up their own mother's dresses and blouses.
We have no money for a proper ball so one of the boys brings a sheep's bladder stuffed with rags. We kick the bladder up and down the meadow till there are holes and rags start falling out and we get fed up kicking a bladder that's hardly there anymore. Billy says we're to meet tomorrow morning which is Saturday and go out Ballinacurra to see if we can challenge rich Crescent College boys to a proper game, seven a side. He says we're to pin our red hearts to our shirts even if they're red rags.
Malachy is going home for tea but I can't go because I have to see Mikey Molloy and find out why I was born in half the time. Mikey is coming out of his house with his father, Peter. It's Mikey's sixteenth birthday and his father is taking him to Bowles's pub for his first pint. Nora Molloy is inside screeching after Peter that if they go they can stay gone, she's done baking bread, she's never going to the lunatic asylum again, if he brings that child home drunk she'll go to Scotland and disappear from the face of the earth.
Peter tells Mikey, Pay no attention to her, Cyclops. The mothers of Ireland are always enemies of the first pint. My own mother tried to kill my father with a frying pan when he took me for the first pint.
Mikey asks Peter if I can come with them and have a lemonade.
Peter tells everyone in the pub that Mikey is there for his first pint and when all the men want to stand Mikey a pint Peter says, Ah, no, 'twould be a terrible thing if he had too much and turned against it entirely.
The pints are drawn and we sit against the wall, the Molloys with their pints and I with my lemonade. The men wish Mikey all the best in the life to come and wasn't it a gift from God that he fell off that spout years ago and never had the fit since and wasn't it a great pity about that poor little bugger, Quasimodo Dooley, carried off with the consumption after all his trouble talking for years like an Englishman so he could be on the BBC which is no fit place for an Irishman anyway.