Frank McCourt - 'Tis

We had old overcoats to put on the bed because the St. Vincent de Paul Society wouldn’t give us a docket for sheets and blankets. My mother lit the fire and when we sat around it drinking tea she said at least we’re all off the floor and isn’t God good.

The next week Mr. Calitri sits on the edge of his desk on the platform. He pulls our essays from his bag and tells the class, Not a bad set of essays, some a little too sentimental. But there’s one I’d like to read you if the author doesn’t mind, “The Bed.”

He looks toward me and lets his eyebrows go up as if to say, Do you mind? I don’t know what to say though I’d like to tell him, No, no, please don’t tell the world what I came from, but the heat is in my face already and I can only shrug to him as if I don’t care.

He reads “The Bed.” I can feel the whole class looking at me and I’m ashamed. I’m glad Mike Small isn’t in this class. She’d never look at me again. There are girls in the class and they’re probably thinking they should move away from me. I want to tell them this is a made-up story but Mr. Calitri is up there talking about it now, telling the class why he gave it an A, that my style is direct, my subject matter rich. He laughs when he says rich. You know what I mean, he says. He tells me I should continue to explore my rich past, and he smiles again. I don’t know what he’s talking about. I’m sorry I ever wrote about that bed and I’m afraid everyone will pity me and treat me like a charity case. The next time I have to take a class in English Composition I’ll put my family in a comfortable house in the suburbs and I’ll make my father a postman with a pension.

At the end of the class students nod to me and smile and I wonder if they’re already feeling sorry for me.

Mike Small came from another world, she and her football player. They might be from different parts of America but they were teenagers and it was the same all over. They went on dates on Saturday nights where the boy would have to meet the girl at her house and of course she would never be at the door waiting for him because that would show she was too eager and word would get around and she’d be alone every Saturday night the rest of her life. The boy would have to wait in the living room with a silent dad who always looked disapproving behind his newspaper knowing what he did on dates in the old days himself and wondering what was going to be done to his little daughter. The mother would fuss and want to know what movie they were going to and what time they’d be home because her daughter was a nice girl who needed a good night’s sleep to keep that glow in her complexion for church tomorrow morning. At the movies they held hands and if the boy was lucky he might get a kiss and accidentally touch her breast. If that happened she’d give him a sharp look and that meant the body was being reserved for the honeymoon. After the movie they’d have hamburgers and milk shakes at the soda fountain with all the other high school kids, the boys in crew cuts and the girls in skirts and bobby sox. They’d sing along with the jukebox and the girls would squeal over Frankie. If the girl liked the boy she might let him have a long kiss at her door, maybe one dart of a tongue in the mouth, but if he tried to keep the tongue in there she’d back away and tell him good night, she had a nice time, thank you, and that was another reminder the body was being reserved for the honeymoon.

Some girls would let you touch and feel and kiss but they wouldn’t let you go all the way and they were known as ninety percenters. There was some hope for ninety percenters but the all-the-way girls had such a reputation no one in town would want to marry them and they were the ones who would pack up one day and go to New York where everyone does everything.

That is what I saw in the movies or what I heard in the army from GIs who came from all over the country. If you had a car and a girl said yes she’d go with you to a drive-in movie you knew she was expecting more than popcorn and the doings up there on the screen. There was no sense in just going for a kiss. You could get that in a regular movie house. The drive-in was where you got the tongue into the mouth and the hand on the breast and if she let you get to the nipple, man, she was yours. The nipple was like a key that opened the legs and if you weren’t with another couple it was into the backseat and who cared about the goddam movie?

The GIs said there were funny nights when you might be making out but your friend was having trouble in the backseat with his girl who was sitting up and watching the movie or it might be vice versa where your buddy is making out and you’re so frustrated you want to explode in your pants. Sometimes your buddy might be finished with his girl and she’s ready to take you on and that’s pure heaven, man, because not only are you getting laid the one who rejected you is sitting there stonefaced pretending to watch the movie but really listening to you back there and sometimes she can’t stand it anymore and climbs on you and you’re caught between two broads in the backseat. Goddam.

Men in the army said you’d have no respect later for the girl who let you go all the way and you’d have only a little respect for the ninety percenter. Of course you’d have complete respect for the girl who said no and sat up watching the movie. That’s the girl that was pure, not damaged goods, and the girl you’d want to be the mother of your children. If you married a girl who fooled around how would you ever know you were the real father of your kids?

I know that if Mike Small ever went to a drive-in she was the one who sat up and watched the movie. Anything else would be too much of a pain to think about especially when it’s hard to think of her even kissing the football player at her own door with her father inside waiting.

The nuns tell me Mrs. Klein is losing her wits with the drink and neglecting poor Michael what’s left of him. They’re moving them to places where they can be cared for, Catholic homes, though it’s better not to tell anyone about Michael for fear some Jewish organization would claim him. Sister Mary Thomas is not against Jews but she doesn’t want to lose a precious soul like Michael’s.

One of Mary O’Brien’s boarders is gone back to Ireland to settle on his father’s five acres and marry a girl from down the road. I can have his bed for eighteen dollars a week and help myself in the morning to whatever is in the fridge. The other Irish boarders work on the piers and warehouses and they bring home canned fruits or bottles of rum and whiskey from cases that accidentally fell when ships were being unloaded. Mary says isn’t it wonderful that when you say there’s something you’d like a whole case of it is accidentally dropped the next day on the docks. There are Sunday mornings we don’t bother cooking breakfast we’re that happy in the kitchen with slices of pineapple in heavy syrup and glasses of rum to wash it down. Mary reminds us about Mass but we’re content enough with our pineapple and rum and soon Timmy Coin is calling for a song even if it’s a Sunday morning. He works in Merchants Refrigerating and often brings home a great side of beef on Friday nights. He’s the only one who cares about going to Mass though he makes sure he’s back in no time for the pineapple and rum which can’t last forever.

Frankie and Danny Lennon are twins, Irish-Americans. Frankie lives in another apartment and Danny is a boarder with Mary. Their father, John, lives on the streets, wanders around with a pint of wine in a brown paper bag, and cleans Mary’s apartment in exchange for a shower, a sandwich and a few drinks. His sons laugh and sing, “Oh, my papa, to me he was so wonderful.”

Frankie and Danny take classes at City College, one of the best colleges in the country and free. Even though they’re studying accounting they’re always excited over their courses in literature. Frankie talks about seeing a girl on the subway reading James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and how anxious he was to sit beside her and discuss Joyce. All the way from 34th Street to 181st Street he would leave his seat and move toward her, never having the courage to talk to her, and losing his seat each time to another passenger. At last when the train pulled in to 181st Street he bent to her and said, Great book, isn’t it? and she jerked back from him and let out a cry. He wanted to tell her, Sorry, sorry, but the doors were closing and he was out on the platform with people in the train glaring at him.