Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt

Shush, it's a mystery.

There's no use asking more questions. If you ask a question they tell you it's a mystery, you'll understand when you grow up, be a good boy, ask your mother, ask your father, for the love o' Jesus leave me alone, go out and play. Dad gets his first job in Limerick at the cement factory and Mam is happy. She won't have to stand in the queue at the St.Vincent de Paul Society asking for clothes and boots for Malachy and me. She says it's not begging, it's charity, but Dad says it's begging and shameful. Mam says she can now pay off the few pounds she owes at Kath- leen O'Connell's shop and she can pay back what she owes her own mother. She hates to be under obligation to anyone, especially her own mother.

The cement factory is miles outside Limerick and that means Dad has to be out of the house by six in the morning. He doesn't mind because he's used to the long walks.The night before Mam makes him a flask of tea, a sandwich, a hard-boiled egg. She feels sorry for him the way he has to walk three miles out and three miles back.A bicycle would be handy but you'd have to be working a year for the price of it.Friday is payday and Mam is out of the bed early,cleaning the house and singing.

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Anyone can see why I wanted your kiss,

There isn't much to clean in the house.She sweeps the kitchen floor and the floor of Italy upstairs. She washes the four jam jars we use for mugs. She says if Dad's job lasts we'll get proper cups and maybe saucers and some day, with the help of God and His Blessed Mother, we'll have sheets on the bed and if we save a long time a blanket or two instead of those old coats which people must have left behind during the Great Famine. She boils water and washes the rags that keep Michael from shitting all over the pram and the house itself. Oh, she says, we'll have a lovely tea when your Pop brings home the wages tonight.

Pop. She's in a good mood.

Sirens and whistles go off all over the city when the men finish work at half-past five. Malachy and I are excited because we know that when your father works and brings home the wages you get the Friday Penny.We know this from other boys whose fathers work and we know that after your tea you can go to Kathleen O'Connell's shop and buy sweets. If your mother is in a good mood she might even give you tup- pence to go to the Lyric Cinema the next day to see a film with James Cagney.

The men who work in factories and shops in the city are coming into the lanes to have their supper, wash themselves and go to the pub. The women go to the films at the Coliseum or the Lyric Cinema.They buy sweets and Wild Woodbine cigarettes and if their husbands are working a long time they treat themselves to boxes of Black Magic chocolates.They love the romance films and they have a great time cry- ing their eyes out when there's an unhappy ending or a handsome lover goes away to be shot by Hindus and other non-Catholics.

We have to wait a long time for Dad to walk the miles from the cement factory.We can't have our tea till he's home and that's very hard because you smell the cooking of other families in the lane. Mam says it's a good thing payday is Friday when you can't eat meat because the smell of bacon or sausages in other houses would drive her out of her mind.We can still have bread and cheese and a nice jam jar of tea with lashings of milk and sugar and what more do you want?

The women are gone to the cinemas, the men are in the pubs, and

109 still Dad isn't home. Mam says it's a long way to the cement factory even if he's a fast walker. She says that but her eyes are watery and she's not singing anymore. She's sitting by the fire smoking a Wild Woodbine she got on credit from Kathleen O'Connell.The fag is the only luxury she has and she'll never forget Kathleen for her goodness. She doesn't know how long she can keep the water boiling in this ket- tle.There's no use making the tea till Dad gets home because it will be stewed, coddled, boiled and unfit to drink. Malachy says he's hungry and she gives him a piece of bread and cheese to keep him going. She says,This job could be the saving of us. 'Tis hard enough for him to get a job with his northern accent and if he loses this one I don't know what we're going to do.

The darkness is in the lane and we have to light a candle. She has to give us our tea and bread and cheese because we're so hungry we can't wait another minute. She sits at the table, eats a bit of bread and cheese, smokes her Wild Woodbine. She goes to the door to see if Dad is com- ing down the lane and she talks about the paydays when we searched for him all over Brooklyn. She says, Some day we'll all go back to America and we'll have a nice warm place to live and a lavatory down the hall like the one in Classon Avenue and not this filthy thing outside our door.

The women are coming home from the cinemas, laughing, and the men, singing, from the pubs. Mam says there's no use waiting up any longer. If Dad stays in the pubs till closing time there will be nothing left from his wages and we might as well go to bed. She lies in her bed with Michael in her arms. It's quiet in the lane and I can hear her cry- ing even though she pulls an old coat over her face and I can hear in the distance, my father.

I know it's my father because he's the only one in Limerick who sings that song from the North, Roddy McCorley goes to die on the bridge of Toome today. He comes round the corner at the top of the lane and starts Kevin Barry. He sings a verse, stops, holds on to a wall, cries over Kevin Barry.People stick their heads out windows and doors and tell him, For Jasus' sake, put a sock in it. Some of us have to get up in the morn- ing for work. Go home and sing your feckin' patriotic songs.

He stands in the middle of the lane and tells the world to step out- side, he's ready to fight, ready to fight and die for Ireland, which is more than he can say for the men of Limerick, who are known the

110 length and breadth of the world for collaborating with the perfidious Saxons.

He's pushing in our door and singing,

And if, when all a vigil keep,

The West's asleep, the West's asleep!

Alas! and well my Erin weep,

That Connacht lies in slumber deep,

But hark! a voice like thunder spake

`The West's awake! the West's awake!

Sing, Oh, hurrah, let England quake,

We'll watch till death for Erin's sake!'

He calls from the bottom of the stairs, Angela, Angela, is there a drop of tea in this house?

She doesn't answer and he calls again, Francis, Malachy, come down here, boys. I have the Friday Penny for you.

I want to go down and get the Friday Penny but Mam is sobbing with the coat over her mouth and Malachy says, I don't want his old Friday Penny. He can keep it.

Dad is stumbling up the stairs, making a speech about how we all have to die for Ireland. He lights a match and touches it to the candle by Mam's bed. He holds the candle over his head and marches around the room, singing,

See who comes over the red-blossomed heather,

Their green banners kissing the pure mountain air,

Heads erect, eyes to front, stepping proudly together,

Sure freedom sits throned on each proud spirit there.

Michael wakes and lets out a loud cry, the Hannons are banging on the wall next door, Mam is telling Dad he's a disgrace and why doesn't he get out of the house altogether.

He stands in the middle of the floor with the candle over his head. He pulls a penny from his pocket and waves it to Malachy and me.Your Friday Penny, boys, he says. I want you to jump out of that bed and line up here like two soldiers and promise to die for Ireland and I'll give the two of you the Friday Penny.

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Malachy sits up in the bed. I don't want it, he says.

Dad stands for a minute, swaying, and puts the penny back in his pocket. He turns toward Mam and she says,You're not sleeping in this bed tonight. He makes his way downstairs with the candle, sleeps on a chair, misses work in the morning, loses the job at the cement factory, and we're back on the dole again.

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IV The master says it's time to prepare for First Confession and First Communion, to know and remember all the questions and answers in the catechism, to become good Catholics, to know the difference between right and wrong, to die for the Faith if called on.

The master says we're each to bring threepence for the First Com- munion catechism with the green cover. The catechism has all the questions and answers we have to know by heart before we can receive First Communion. Older boys in the fifth class have the thick Confirmation catechism with the red cover and that costs sixpence. I'd love to be big and important and parade around with the red Confir- mation catechism but I don't think I'll live that long the way I'm expected to die for this or that. I want to ask why there are so many big people who haven't died for Ireland or the Faith but I know if you ask a question like that you get you the thump on the head or you're told go out and play.

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. . . It's very handy to have Mikey Molloy living around the corner from me. He's eleven, he has fits and behind his back we call him Molloy the Fit. People in the lane say the fit is an affliction and now I know what afflic- tion means.Mikey knows everything because he has visions in his fits and he reads books. He's the expert in the lane on Girls' Bodies and Dirty Things in General and he promises,I'll tell you everything,Frankie,when you're eleven like me and you're not so thick and ignorant.

If he earns a little money he hands it over to his mother, who loves her Mikey. He is her world, her heart's blood, her pulse, and if anything ever happened to him they might as well stick her in the lunatic asylum and throw away the key.

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Mikey's father, Peter, is a great champion. He wins bets in the pubs by drinking more pints than anyone. All he has to do is go out to the jakes, stick his finger down his throat and bring it all up so that he can start another round. Peter is such a champion he can stand in the jakes and throw up without using his finger.He's such a champion they could chop off his fingers and he'd carry on regardless.He wins all that money but doesn't bring it home. Sometimes he's like my father and drinks the dole itself and that's why Nora Molloy is often carted off to the lunatic asylum demented with worry over her hungry famishing family. She knows as long as you're in the asylum you're safe from the world and its torments, there's nothing you can do, you're protected, and what's the use of worrying. It's well known that all the lunatics in the asylum have to be dragged in but she's the only one that has to be dragged out, back to her five children and the champion of all pint drinkers.

The children stuff themselves with so much bread people in the lane say they're looking like loaves. Still the bread goes stale and Mikey is so bothered by the waste he talks to a rich woman with a cookbook and she tells him make bread pudding. He boils the hard bread in water and sour milk and throws in a cup of sugar and his brother loves it even if that's all they have the fortnight their mother is in the lunatic asylum.

My father says, Do they take her away because she's gone mad bak- ing bread or does she go mad baking bread because they're taking her away?

Nora comes home calm as if she had been at the seaside. She always says,Where's Mikey? Is he alive? She worries over Mikey because he's

115 not a proper Catholic and if he had a fit and died who knows where he might wind up in the next life. He's not a proper Catholic because he could never receive his First Communion for fear of getting anything on his tongue that might cause a fit and choke him.The master tried over and over with bits of the Limerick Leader but Mikey kept spitting them out till the master got into a state and sent him to the priest, who wrote to the bishop, who said, Don't bother me, handle it yourself.The master sent a note home saying Mikey was to practice receiving Com- munion with his father or mother but even they couldn't get him to swallow a piece of the Limerick Leader in the shape of a wafer.They even tried a piece of bread shaped like the wafer with bread and jam and it was no use.The priest tells Mrs. Molloy not to worry. God moves in mysterious ways His wonders to perform and surely He has a special purpose for Mikey, fits and all. She says, Isn't it remarkable he can swally all kinds of sweets and buns but if he has to swally the body of Our Lord he goes into a fit? Isn't that remarkable? She worries Mikey might have the fit and die and go to hell if he has any class of a sin on his soul though everyone knows he's an angel out of heaven. Mikey tells her God is not going to afflict you with the fit and then boot you into hell on top of it.What kind of a God would do a thing like that?

Are you sure, Mikey?

I am. I read it in a book.

He sits under the lamppost at the top of the lane and laughs over his First Communion day, which was all a cod. He couldn't swallow the wafer but did that stop his mother from parading him around Limerick in his little black suit for The Collection? She said to Mikey,Well, I'm not lying so I'm not. I'm only saying to the neighbors, Here's Mikey in his First Communion suit.That's all I'm saying,mind you.Here's Mikey. If they think you swallied your First Communion who am I to contra- dict them and disappoint them? Mikey's father said, Don't worry, Cyclops.You have loads of time. Jesus didn't become a proper Catholic till he took the bread and wine at the Last Supper and He was thirty- three years of age.Nora Molloy said,Will you stop calling him Cyclops? He has two eyes in his head and he's not a Greek. But Mikey's father, champion of all pint drinkers, is like my uncle Pa Keating, he doesn't give a fiddler's fart what the world says and that's the way I'd like to be myself.

Mikey tells me the best thing about First Communion is The Col-

116 lection.Your mother has to get you a new suit somehow so she can show you off to the neighbors and relations and they give you sweets and money and you can go to the Lyric Cinema to see Charlie Chaplin.

What about James Cagney?

Never mind James Cagney. Lots of blather. Charlie Chaplin is your only man.But you have to be with your mother on The Collection.The grown-up people of Limerick are not going to be handing out money to every little Tom Dick and Mick with a First Communion suit that doesn't have his mother with him.

Mikey got over five shillings on his First Communion day and ate so many sweets and buns he threw up in the Lyric Cinema and Frank Goggin, the ticket man, kicked him out. He says he didn't care because he had money left over and went to the Savoy Cinema the same day for a pirate film and ate Cadbury chocolate and drank lemonade till his stomach stuck out a mile. He can't wait for Confirmation day because you're older, there's another collection and that brings more money than First Communion. He'll go to the cinema the rest of his life, sit next to girls from lanes and do dirty things like an expert. He loves his mother but he'll never get married for fear he might have a wife in and out of the lunatic asylum.What's the use of getting married when you can sit in cinemas and do dirty things with girls from lanes who don't care what they do because they already did it with their brothers. If you don't get married you won't have any children at home bawling for tea and bread and gasping with the fit and looking in every direction with their eyes.When he's older he'll go to the pub like his father,drink pints galore, stick the finger down the throat to bring it all up, drink more pints, win the bets and bring the money home to his mother to keep her from going demented. He says he's not a proper Catholic which means he's doomed so he can do anything he bloody well likes.

He says, I'll tell you more when you grow up, Frankie.You're too young now and you don't know your arse from your elbow. The master, Mr. Benson, is very old. He roars and spits all over us every day.The boys in the front row hope he has no diseases for it's the spit that carries all the diseases and he might be spreading consumption right and left. He tells us we have to know the catechism backwards, forwards and sideways.We have to know the Ten Commandments, the

117 Seven Virtues, Divine and Moral, the Seven Sacraments, the Seven Deadly Sins.We have to know by heart all the prayers, the Hail Mary, the Our Father, the Confiteor, the Apostles' Creed, the Act of Contri- tion, the Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary.We have to know them in Irish and English and if we forget an Irish word and use English he goes into a rage and goes at us with the stick.If he had his way we'd be learn- ing our religion in Latin, the language of the saints who communed intimately with God and His Holy Mother, the language of the early Christians,who huddled in the catacombs and went forth to die on rack and sword, who expired in the foaming jaws of the ravenous lion. Irish is fine for patriots, English for traitors and informers, but it's the Latin that gains us entrance to heaven itself. It's the Latin the martyrs prayed in when the barbarians pulled out their nails and cut their skin off inch by inch. He tells us we're a disgrace to Ireland and her long sad history, that we'd be better off in Africa praying to bush or tree.He tells us we're hopeless, the worst class he ever had for First Communion but as sure as God made little apples he'll make Catholics of us, he'll beat the idler out of us and the Sanctifying Grace into us.

Brendan Quigley raises his hand. We call him Question Quigley because he's always asking questions. He can't help himself. Sir, he says, what's Sanctifying Grace?

The master rolls his eyes to heaven. He's going to kill Quigley. Instead he barks at him, Never mind what's Sanctifying Grace, Quigley. That's none of your business.You're here to learn the catechism and do what you're told.You're not here to be asking questions.There are too many people wandering the world asking questions and that's what has us in the state we're in and if I find any boy in this class asking questions I won't be responsible for what happens. Do you hear me, Quigley?

I do.

I do, sir.

He goes on with his speech,There are boys in this class who will never know the Sanctifying Grace. And why? Because of the greed. I have heard them abroad in the schoolyard talking about First Commu- nion day, the happiest day of your life. Are they talking about receiving the body and blood of Our Lord? Oh, no.Those greedy little blaguards are talking about the money they'll get,The Collection.They'll go from

118 house to house in their little suits like beggars for The Collection.And will they take any of that money and send it to the little black babies in Africa? Will they think of those little pagans doomed forever for lack of baptism and knowledge of the True Faith? Little black babies denied knowledge of the Mystical Body of Christ? Limbo is packed with little black babies flying around and crying for their mothers because they'll never be admitted to the ineffable presence of Our Lord and the glorious company of saints, martyrs, virgins. Oh, no. It's off to the cinemas, our First Communion boys run to wallow in the filth spewed across the world by the devil's henchmen in Hollywood. Isn't that right, McCourt?

'Tis, sir.

Question Quigley raises his hand again.There are looks around the room and we wonder if it's suicide he's after.

What's henchmen, sir?

The master's face goes white, then red. His mouth tightens and opens and spit flies everywhere. He walks to Question and drags him from his seat. He snorts and stutters and his spit flies around the room. He flogs Question across the shoulders, the bottom, the legs. He grabs him by the collar and drags him to the front of the room.

Look at this specimen, he roars.

Question is shaking and crying. I'm sorry, sir.

The master mocks him. I'm sorry, sir.What are you sorry for?

I'm sorry I asked the question. I'll never ask a question again, sir.

The day you do, Quigley, will be the day you wish God would take you to His bosom.What will you wish, Quigley?

That God will take me to His bosom, sir.

Go back to your seat, you omadhaun, you poltroon, you thing from the far dark corner of a bog.

He sits down with the stick before him on the desk. He tells Ques- tion to stop the whimpering and be a man. If he hears a single boy in this class asking foolish questions or talking about The Collection again he'll flog that boy till the blood spurts.

What will I do, boys?

Flog the boy, sir.