You donat see him roaming the streets kicking everything in sight till the toes hang out of his boots, oh, no, heas a good boy, dancing for his poor mother.
Mam wets an old towel and scrubs my face till it stings, she wraps the towel around her finger and sticks it in my ears and claims thereas enough wax there to grow potatoes, she wets my hair to make it lie down, she tells me shut up and stop the whinging, that these dancing lessons will cost her sixpence every Sat.u.r.day, which I could have earned bringing Bill Galvin his dinner and G.o.d knows she can barely afford it.
I try to tell her,Ah, Mam, sure you donat have to send me to dancing school when you could be smoking a nice Woodbine and having a cup of tea, but she says, Oh, arenat you clever.Youare going to dance if I have to give up the f.a.gs forever.
If my pals see my mother dragging me through the streets to an Irish dancing cla.s.s Iall be disgraced entirely.They think itas all right to dance and pretend youare Fred Astaire because you can jump all over the screen with Ginger Rogers. There is no Ginger Rogers in Irish dancing and you canat 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 a.r.s.es, but I canat say that to Mam, shead kill me.
Thereas a gramophone in Mrs. OaConnoras 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. OaConnor 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. OaConnor.
Mam says, I have the sixpence,Mrs. OaConnor.
Ah, yes,Mrs.McCourt, hold on a minute.
She waddles to a table and brings back the head of a black boy with 141.
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. OaConnor gasps and laughs and says to my mother, Isnat that a howl, now? Mam says itas a howl. She tells me behave myself and come home dancing.
I donat want to stay in this place where Mrs. OaConnor canat take the sixpence herself instead of letting me nearly lose my hand in the black boyas mouth. I donat 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, donat 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. OaConnor loves Cyril for didnat he bring her fame and didnat she teach him every step he knows, oh, dance, Cyril, dance, oh, Jesus, he floats around the room, heas an angel out of heaven and stop the frowning, Frankie McCourt, or youall have a puss on you like a pound of tripe, dance, Frankie, dance, pick up your feet for the love oa 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 danceras 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 Iam dizzy and making a pure eejit of myself and blushing and foolish till I want to cry but Iam saved when the record stops and the gramophone goes hoosh hoosh.
Mrs. OaConnor 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 donat 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 wonat 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 142.
kitchen, onetwothreefourfivesixseven onetwothree and a onetwothree.
She has a good laugh with Bridey.Thatas not too bad for your first time.
In a month youall be like a regular Cyril Benson.
I donat 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. Doesnat he have a great notion of himself. Fred Astaire how are you.
Mam says Fred Astaire went to his lessons every Sat.u.r.day and didnat go around kicking the toes out of his boots and if I wanted to be like him Iad have to go to Mrs. OaConnoras every week.
The fourth Sat.u.r.day 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 Iam dancing, that everyone knows dancing is a sissy thing and Iall wind up like Cyril Benson wearing a kilt and medals and dancing all over with girls. He says next thing Iall be sitting in the kitchen knitting socks. He says dancing will destroy me and I wonat 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 Iam finished with the dancing, that I have sixpence in my pocket for Mrs. OaConnor thatas supposed to go into the black boyas mouth, that Iam going to the Lyric Cinema instead. Sixpence will get the two of us in with tuppence left over for two squares of Cleevesa 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 theyare called. I already did aThe Siege of Ennisa and aThe Walls of Limerick,a which are real dances. Now I have to make up names and dances. Mam says she never heard of a dance called aThe Siege of Dingleabut if thatas 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, thatas a fine dance and youall be a powerful Irish dancer and a credit to the men who died for their country. Mam says, That wasnat much for a sixpence.
Next week itas a George Raft film and the week after that a cowboy film with George OaBrien.Then itas James Cagney and I canat take 143.
Billy because I want to get a bar of chocolate to go with my Cleevesa toffee and Iam having a great time till thereas a terrible pain in my jaw and itas a tooth out of my gum stuck in my toffee and the pain is killing me. Still, I canat 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. Thereas 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 wouldnat know whether to s.h.i.t or go blind.
I have to go home now and worry because you canat go through the world short a tooth without your mother knowing. Mothers know everything and sheas always looking into our mouths to see if thereas any cla.s.s of disease. Sheas there by the fire and Dad is there and theyare asking me the same old questions, the dance and the name of the dance.
I tell them I learned aThe Walls of Corka and I dance around the kitchen trying to hum a made-up tune and dying with the pain of my tooth. Mam says, aWalls oa Cork,a my eye, thereas no such dance, and Dad says, Come over here. Stand there before me.Tell us the truth, Did you go to your dancing cla.s.ses today?
I canat tell a lie anymore because my gum is killing me and thereas blood in my mouth. Besides, I know they know everything and thatas what theyare telling me now. Some snake of a boy from the dancing school saw me going to the Lyric Cinema and told and Mrs. OaConnor sent a note to say she hadnat 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 doesnat care about my tooth or anything. He says Iam going to confession and drags me over to the Redemptorist church because itas Sat.u.r.day and confessions go on all day. He tells me Iam a bad boy, heas ashamed of me that I went to the pictures instead of learning Irelandas national dances, the jig, the reel, the dances that men and women fought and died for down those sad centuries. He says thereas 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 Iam a hooligan for going to the pictures instead of my dancing lessons although he thinks himself that dancing is a dangerous thing almost 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 motheras sixpence 144.
and lying and thereas a hot place in h.e.l.l for the likes of me, say a decade of the rosary and ask G.o.das forgiveness for youare dancing at the gates of h.e.l.l itself, child.
Iam 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 Rankas 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 Sat.u.r.day morning.
Mam says,Why canat he be like the other men from the lanes of Limerick? Theyare home before the Angelus rings at six oaclock, they hand over their wages, change their shirts, have their tea, get a few shillings from the wife and theyare off to the pub for a pint or two.
Mam tells Bridey Hannon that Dad canat be like that and wonat be like that. She says heas a right b.l.o.o.d.y 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. Heall brag to the world he did his bit for Ireland when it was neither popular nor profitable, that heall 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 theyare invited to step outside and settle this for once and for all.
Oh, no, says Mam, they wonat disagree and they wonat step outside, that bunch of tinkers and knackers and begrudgers that hang around the pubs.They tell him heas a grand man, even if heas from the North, and atwould be an honor to accept a pint from such a patriot.
Mam tells Bridey, I donat know under G.o.d what Iam 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 G.o.d is good. Mam says sheas sure G.o.d is good for someone somewhere but He hasnat been seen lately in the lanes of Limerick.
Bridey laughs. Oh,Angela, you could go to h.e.l.l for that, and Mam says,Arenat I there already, Bridey?
145.
And they laugh and drink their tea and smoke their Woodbines and tell one another the f.a.g is the only comfort they have.
aTis.
Question Quigley tells me I have to go to the Redemptorist church on Friday and join the boysa division of the Arch Confraternity.
You have to join.You canat 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 donat 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. Itas the sermon that saves millions of Chinese and other heathens from winding up in h.e.l.l 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 theyall know youare a good Catholic. He says his father is a loyal member and thatas how he got a good pensionable job cleaning lavatories at the railway station and when he grows up himself heall get a good job too unless he runs away and joins the Royal Canadian Mounted Police so that he can sing aIall Be Calling You Ooo Ooo Ooo,a 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 prefectas seat.The prefect and his a.s.sistant 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 Bene- 146.
diction or commit any other sacrileges. If you miss one night the man in the office wants to know why,wants to know if youare 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.Thatas the worst thing you can say to any Catholic in Limerick or Ireland itself because of what happened in the Great Famine. If youare absent twice the man in the office sends you a yellow summons to appear and explain yourself and if youare absent three times he sends The Posse, which is five or six big boys from your section who search the streets to make sure youare 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 Iall come out and give every one oa ye a good fong in the hole of yeer a.r.s.e.These are not good Confraternity mothers and the director will say we should pray for them that theyall see the error of their ways.
The worst thing of all is a visit from the director of the Confraternity himself, Father Gorey. Heall 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 youare slipping away from the Confraternity and putting your immortal soul in danger.The mothers are terrified and the fathers will whisper, Iam not here, Iam not here, and theyall make sure you go to the Confraternity from this on out so they wonat be disgraced and shamed entirely with the neighbors muttering behind their hands.
The Question takes me to the section St. Finbaras, and the prefect tells me sit over there and shut up. His name is Declan Collopy, heas 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 heas making this the best section in the Confraternity and if Iam ever absent heall break my a.r.s.e and send the bits to my mother.Thereas 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 youare ever absent it better be a death, not a death in the family but your own death. Do you hear me?
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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 Cannockas 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 Cannockas if heas a good prefect and has perfect attendance in his section and thatas why Declan will destroy us if weare 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 Iam going to cover my house in linoleum and Iall buy it all from you.
Other boys in the section try this trick with Declan but he says, b.u.g.g.e.r off, yeall be lucky enough to have a pot to p.i.s.s in never mind yards of linoleum.
Dad says when he was my age in Toome he served Ma.s.s for years and itas time for me to be an altar boy. Mam says,Whatas the use? The child doesnat have proper clothes for school never mind the altar. Dad says the altar boy robes will cover the clothes and she says we donat have the money for robes and the wash they need every week.
He says G.o.d will provide and makes me kneel on the kitchen floor.
He takes the part of the priest for he has the whole Ma.s.s in his head and I have to know the responses. He says, Introibo ad altare Dei, and I have to say, Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam.
Every evening after tea I kneel for the Latin and he wonat let me move till Iam 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 wonat find the Pope sitting around drinking tea while he speaks the Latin.
The Latin is hard and my knees are sore and scabby and Iad like to be out in the lane playing though still Iad 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 priestas hands, ringing the bell at Consecration, kneeling, bowing, swinging the 148.
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.
Josephas looking at me and admiring my ways.
In a fortnight I have the Ma.s.s in my head and itas time to go to St.
Josephas 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 wouldnat give it to the world to say her son went on the altar dirty. She wishes I didnat 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. Josephas and donat be mumbling in English or Latin. She says, aTis 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 motheras family the Guilfoyles that owned acre after acre in County Limerick before the English took it away and gave it to footpads from London.
Dad holds my hand going through the streets and people look at us because of the way weare saying Latin back and forth. He knocks at the sacristy door and tells Stephen Carey,This is my son, Frank, who knows the Latin and is ready to be an altar boy.
Stephen Carey looks at him, then me. He says,We donat have room for him, and closes the door.
Dad is still holding my hand and squeezes till it hurts and I want to cry out. He says nothing on the way home. He takes off his cap, sits by the fire and lights a Woodbine. Mam is smoking, too.Well, she says, is he going to be an altar boy?
Thereas no room for him.
Oh. She puffs on her Woodbine. Iall tell you what it is, she says. aTis cla.s.s distinction. They donat want boys from lanes on the altar.They donat want the ones with scabby knees and hair sticking up.Oh,no, they want the nice boys with hair oil and new shoes that have fathers with suits and ties and steady jobs.Thatas what it is and atis hard to hold on to the Faith with the sn.o.bbery thatas in it.
Och, aye.
Oh, och aye my a.r.s.e. Thatas all you ever say.You could go to the 149.
priest and tell him you have a son that has a head stuffed with Latin and why canat he be an altar boy and what is he going to do with all that Latin?
Och, he might grow up to be a priest.
I ask him if I can go out and play.Yes, he says, go out and play.
Mam says,You might as well.
VI.
Mr. OaNeill is the master in the fourth cla.s.s at school.We call him Dotty because heas small like a dot. He teaches in the one cla.s.sroom with a platform so that he can stand above us and threaten us with his ash plant and peel his apple for all to see.The first day of school in September he writes on the blackboard three words which are to stay there the rest of the year, Euclid, geometry, idiot. He says if he catches any boy interfering with these words that boy will go through the rest of his life with one hand. He says anyone who doesnat understand the theorems of Euclid is an idiot. Now, repeat after me, Anyone who doesnat understand the theorems of Euclid is an idiot. Of course we all know what an idiot is because thatas what the masters keep telling us we are.
Brendan Quigley raises his hand. Sir, whatas a theorem and whatas a Euclid?
We expect Dotty to lash at Brendan the way all the masters do when you ask them a question but he looks at Brendan with a little smile.Ah, now, hereas a boy with not one but two questions. What is your name, boy?
Brendan Quigley, sir.
This is a boy who will go far.Where will he go, boys?
Far, sir.
Indeed and he will.The boy who wants to know something about 151.
the grace, elegance and beauty of Euclid can go nowhere but up. In what direction and no other can this boy go, boys?
Up, sir.
Without Euclid, boys, mathematics would be a poor doddering thing.Without Euclid we wouldnat be able to go from here to there.
Without Euclid the bicycle would have no wheel.Without Euclid St.
Joseph could not have been a carpenter for carpentry is geometry and geometry is carpentry.Without Euclid this very school could never have been built.
Paddy Clohessy mutters behind me, f.e.c.kina Euclid.