Frank McCourt - 'Tis

You think you did? Goddammit, excuse me, miss, don’t you know?

I did, sir.

Did you remove a paper napkin?

I cleaned up. I emptied the ashtrays.

Paper napkin that was here. Did you take it?

I don’t know.

Well, lemme tell you something, McCourt. This young lady here is the daughter of the president of the Traffic Club that rents a huge space in this hotel and she had a paper napkin with a phone number from a Princeton boy and if you don’t find that piece of paper your ass is in hot water, excuse me, miss. Now what did you do with the trash you took away?

It’s gone down to the big garbage bins near the kitchen.

All right. Go down there and search for that paper napkin and don’t come back without it.

The girl who lost the napkin sobs and tells me her father has a lotta influence here and she wouldn’t want to be me if I don’t find that piece of paper. Her friends are looking at me and I feel my face is on fire with my eyes.

The maître d’ snaps at me again. Go get it, McCourt, and report back here.

The garbage bins by the kitchen are overflowing and I don’t know how I’m going to find a small piece of paper lost in all that waste, coffee grounds, bits of toast, fishbones, eggshells, grapefruit skins. I’m on my knees poking and separating with a fork from the kitchen where the Puerto Ricans are singing and laughing and banging on pots and that makes me wonder what I’m doing on my knees.

So I get up and go into the kitchen saying nothing to the Puerto Ricans calling to me, Frankie, Frankie, Irish boy, we teach you Sponish. I find a clean paper napkin, write a made-up phone number on it, stain it with coffee, hand it to the maître d’ who hands it to the girl with her friends cheering on all sides. She thanks the maître d’ and passes him a tip, a whole dollar, and my only sorrow is that I won’t be there when she calls that number.

7

There’s a letter from my mother to say times are hard at home. She knows my wages aren’t great and she’s grateful for the ten dollars every week but could I spare an extra few dollars for shoes for Michael and Alphie? She had a job taking care of an old man but he was a great disappointment the way he died unexpected when she thought he’d hang on till the New Year so that she’d have a few shillings for shoes and a Christmas dinner, ham or something with a bit of dignity in it. She says sick people shouldn’t hire people to take care of them and give them false hope of a job when they know very well they’re in the throes. There’s nothing coming in now but the money I’m sending and it looks as if poor Michael will have to leave school and get a job the minute he turns fourteen next year and that’s a shame and she’d like to know, Is this what we fought the English for that half the children of Ireland should be wandering street, field and boreen with nothing between them and their feet but the skin?

I’m already sending her the ten dollars out of the thirty-two I get at the Biltmore Hotel though it’s more like twenty-six when they deduct the Social Security and the income tax. After the rent I have twenty dollars and my mother gets ten of that and I have ten for food and the subway when it rains. The rest of the time I walk to save the nickel. Now and then I go mad with myself and go to a film at the Sixty-eighth Street Playhouse and I know enough to sneak in a Hershey bar or two bananas which is the cheapest food on earth. Sometimes when I peel my banana people from Park Avenue with sensitive noses will sniff and whisper to each other, Is that a banana I’m smelling? and the next thing is they’re threatening to complain to the management.

But I don’t care anymore. If they go to the usher to complain I’m not going to skulk in the men’s room eating my banana. I’ll go to the Democratic Party in the Biltmore Hotel and tell them I’m an American citizen with an Irish accent and why am I being tormented over eating a banana during a Gary Cooper film?

The winter might be coming in Ireland but it’s colder here and the clothes I brought from Ireland are useless for a New York winter. Eddie Gilligan says if that’s all I’m going to wear on the streets I’ll be dead before I’m twenty. He says if I’m not too proud I can go to that big Salvation Army place on the West Side and get all the winter clothes I need for a few dollars. He says make sure I get clothes that make me look like an American and not the Paddy-from-the-bog stuff that makes me look like a turnip farmer.

But I can’t go to the Salvation Army now because of the fifteen-dollar international money order for my mother and I can’t get leftovers from the Puerto Ricans in the Biltmore kitchen anymore for fear they might catch my eye disease.

Eddie Gilligan says there’s talk about my eyes. He was called in by personnel because he’s the shop steward and they told him I’m never to go near the kitchen again in case I might touch a towel or something and leave all the Puerto Rican dishwashers and Italian cooks half blind with conjunctivitis or whatever I have. The only reason I’m kept on the job at all is that I was sent by the Democratic Party and they pay plenty for the big offices they rent in the hotel. Eddie says Mr. Carey might be a tough boss but he stands up for his own kind and tells personnel where to get off, tells them the minute they try to lay off a kid with bad eyes the Democratic Party will know about it and that will be the end of the Biltmore Hotel. They’ll see a strike that’ll bring out the whole goddam Hotel Workers’ Union. No more room service. No elevators. Eddie says, Fat bastards will have to walk and the chambermaids won’t be putting toilet paper in the bathrooms. Imagine that: fat old bastards stuck with nothing to wipe their asses and all because of your bad eyes, kid.

We’ll walk, says Eddie, the whole goddam union. We’ll close down every hotel in the city. But I gotta tell you they gave me the name of this eye doctor on Lexington Avenue. You gotta see him and report back in a week.

The doctor’s office is in an old building, up four flights of stairs. Babies are crying and a radio is playing

Boys and girls together

Me and Mamie O’Rourke

We’ll trip the light fantastic

On the sidewalks of New York.

The doctor tells me, Come in, sit in this chair, whassa matter with your eyes? You here for glasses?

I have some kind of infection, Doctor.

Jesus, yeah. That’s some infection all right. How long you had this?

Nine years, Doctor. I was in the eye hospital in Ireland when I was eleven.

He pokes at my eyes with a little piece of wood and pats them with cotton swabs which stick to the lids and make me blink. He tells me stop blinking, how the hell do I expect him to examine my eyes if I sit there blinking like a maniac? But I can’t help it. The more he pokes and swabs the more I blink till he’s so irritated he throws the stick with the swab stuck to it out the window. He pulls out drawers in his desk and curses and slams them in again till he finds a small bottle of whiskey and a cigar and that puts him in such a good humor he sits at his desk and laughs.

Still blinking, eh? Well, kid, I’ve been looking at eyes for thirty-seven years and I never saw anything like that. What are you, Mexican or something?

No, I’m Irish, Doctor.

What you have there they don’t have that in Ireland. And that’s not conjunctivitis. I know from conjunctivitis. That’s something else and I can tell you you’re lucky you have eyes at all. What you have I saw in guys coming back from the Pacific, New Guinea and places like that. You ever in New Guinea?

No, Doctor.

Now what you have to do is shave that head completely. You’ve got some kind of infectious dandruff like the guys from New Guinea and it’s falling into your eyes. That hair will have to come off and you’ll have to scrub that scalp every day with a prescription soap. Scrub that scalp till it tingles. Scrub that scalp till it shines and come back to see me. That’ll be ten dollars, kid.