Frank McCourt - 'Tis

She pours the drinks and barks at me when I ask her what kielbasa is. She says she can’t believe the ignorance in the world. Two years in the U.S. Army and you don’t know from kielbasa? No wonder the Communists are taking over. It’s Polish, for Christ’s sakes, sausage, and you should watch me fry it in case you marry someone who’s not Irish, a nice girl who might demand her kielbasa.

We stay in the kitchen with another vodka while the kielbasa sizzles and the sauerkraut stews with a vinegar smell. Mrs. Klein puts three plates on a tray and pours a glass of Manischewitz for Michael what’s left of him. He loves it, she says, loves the Manischewitz with the pierogi and kielbasa.

I follow her through her bedroom into a small dark room where Michael, what’s left of him, sits up in the bed, staring ahead. We bring in chairs and use his bed as a table. Mrs. Klein turns on the radio and we listen to oompah oompah accordion music. That’s his favorite music, she says. Anything European. He gets nostalgic, you know, nostalgic for Europe, for Christ’s sakes. Don’t you, Michael? Don’t you? I’m talking to you. Merry Christmas, Michael, merry goddam Christmas. She tears off her wig and throws it into a corner. No more pretending, Michael. I’ve had it. Talk to me or next year I cook American. Next year the turkey, Michael, the stuffing, the cranberry sauce, the works, Michael.

He stares straight ahead and the kielbasa grease glistens around his plate. His mother fiddles with the radio till she finds Bing Crosby singing “White Christmas.”

Better get used to it, Michael. Next year Bing and the stuffing. To hell with kielbasa.

She pushes her plate aside on the bed and falls asleep with her head by Michael’s elbow. I wait awhile, take my dinner to the kitchen, dump it into the garbage, return to my room and fall into my own bed.

Timmy Coin works at Merchants Refrigerating Company and lives at Mary O’Brien’s boarding house at 720 West 180 Street around the corner from where I live. He tells me drop in any time for a cup of tea, Mary is that friendly.

It’s not a real boarding house, it’s a big apartment, and there are four boarders each paying eighteen dollars a week. They get a decent breakfast any time they like not like Logan’s in the Bronx where we had to go to Mass or be in a state of grace. Mary herself would rather sit in her kitchen on a Sunday morning, drinking tea, smoking cigarettes and smiling over the boarders and their stories of how they got these desperate hangovers that make them swear never again. She tells me I can always move in there if one of the boys leaves to go back to Ireland. They’re always going back, she says. They think they can get a few dollars together and settle down on the old farm with some girl from the village but what do you do night after night with nothing but the wife opposite you knitting by the light of the fire and you thinking of the lights of New York, the dance halls on the East Side and the lovely cozy bars on Third Avenue.

I’d like to move into Mary O’Brien’s to get away from Mrs. Agnes Klein who seems to stand forever on the other side of her door waiting for me to turn the key in the lock so that she can shove a vodka and orange juice into my hand. It doesn’t matter to her that I have to read or write papers for my classes at NYU. It doesn’t matter that I’m worn out from the midnight shift on the piers or warehouse platforms. She wants to tell me the story of her life, how Eddie charmed her ass off better than any Irishman and watch out for the Jewish girls, Frank, they can be very charming, too, and very what-do-you-call-it? very sensual and before you know it you’re stepping on the glass.

Stepping on the glass?

That’s right, Frank. Do you mind if I call you Frank? They won’t marry you without you stepping on the wineglass, smashing it. Then they want you to convert so the kids will be Jewish and inherit everything. But I wouldn’t. I was going to but my mother said if I ever turned Jewish she’d throw herself off the George Washington Bridge and between you and me I didn’t give a shit if she jumped and bounced off a passing tugboat. She’s not the one that stopped me from turning Jewish. I kept the faith for my dad, decent man, little problem with the drink, but what could you expect with a name like Canty that’s all over the County Kerry which I expect to see some day if God grants me health. They say the County Kerry is so green and pretty and I never see green. I see nothing but this apartment and the supermarket, nothing but this apartment and Michael what’s left of him at the end of the hall. My father said it would break his heart if I became Jewish, not that he had anything against them, poor suffering people, but hadn’t we suffered, too, and was I going to turn my back on generations of people getting hanged and burned right and left? He came to the wedding but not my mother. She said what I was doing was putting Christ back up there suffering on the cross, wounds an’ all. She said people in Ireland starved to death before they’d take the Protestant soup and what would they say about my behavior? Eddie held me in his arms and told me he had trouble with his family, too, told me when you love someone you can tell the whole world kiss your ass, and look what happened to Eddie, wound up in a goddam oven, God forgive the language.

She sits on my bed, puts her glass on the floor, covers her face with her hands. Jesus, Jesus, she says. I can’t sleep thinking what they did to him and what did Michael see. What did Michael see? I saw the pictures in the papers. Jesus. And I know them, the Germans. They live here. They have delicatessens and children and I ask them, Did you kill my Eddie? and they look at me.

She cries, lies back on my bed and falls asleep and I don’t know if I should wake her and tell her I’m worn out myself, that I’m paying twelve dollars a week so that she can fall asleep in my bed while I try to sleep on the hard couch in the corner which is waiting for my brother Michael coming here in a few months.

I tell this to Mary O’Brien and her boarders and they get hysterical laughing. Mary says, Ah, God love her. I know poor Agnes and all belongin’ to her. There are days she loses her wits entirely and wanders the neighborhood without her wig asking everyone where’s the rabbi so that she can convert for the sake of her son, poor Michael in the bed what’s left of him.

Every fortnight two nuns come to help Mrs. Klein. They wash Michael what’s left of him and change his sheets. They clean the apartment and watch over her while she takes a bath. They brush her wig so that it doesn’t have that tangled look. She doesn’t know it but they weaken her vodka with water and if she gets drunk it’s all in her head.

Sister Mary Thomas is curious about me. Do I practice my religion and what school do I go to because she sees books and notebooks? When I tell her NYU she frowns and wonders if I’m not worried about losing my religion in such a place. I can’t tell her I stopped going to Mass years ago, she and Sister Beatrice are so good to Mrs. Klein and Michael in the bed what’s left of him.

Sister Mary Thomas whispers to me something I’m never to tell another soul unless it’s a priest, that she took the liberty of baptizing Michael. After all, he’s not really Jewish since his mother is Irish Catholic and Sister would hate to think what might happen to Michael if he died without the sacrament. Didn’t he suffer enough in Germany, little boy looking at his father being led off or worse? And doesn’t he deserve the purification of baptism in case he doesn’t wake up some morning in there in the bed?

She wants to know now what is my situation here? Am I encouraging Agnes to drink or is it vice versa? I tell her I don’t have time for anything I’m so busy with school and work and trying to sleep a little. She wants to know if I’d do her a little favor, something to ease her soul. If I have a moment and poor Agnes is sleeping or passed out with the watery vodka would I go down the hall, kneel by Michael’s bed and say a few Hail Marys, maybe a decade of the rosary. He might not understand but you never know. With God’s help the Hail Marys might sink into his poor troubled brain and help him return to the realm of the living, back to the True Faith which came down to him on his mother’s side.