The women from the Islands thought that was a wonderful story and looked at each other wondering who wrote it and when Ray said he didn’t believe in Jesus they told him shut up, what did he know hanging around subway platforms? They worked, took care of their families, went to school and this was a wonderful country where you could do what you liked even if you were black like the night and if he didn’t like it he could go back to Africa if he could ever find it without getting hassled by the police.
I told the women they were heroes. I told the Puerto Rican man he was a hero and I told Ray if he ever grew up he could be a hero, too. They looked at me, puzzled. They didn’t believe me and you could guess what was running through their minds, that they were doing only what they were supposed to do, getting an education, and why was this teacher calling them heroes?
My Stuyvesant students were not satisfied. Why was I telling them stories of women from the Islands and Puerto Ricans and Greeks when the world was going to hell?
Because the women from the Islands believe in education. You can demonstrate and shake your fists, burn your draft cards and block the traffic with your bodies, but what do you know in the end? For the ladies from the Islands there is one relevance, education. That is all they know. That is all I know. That is all I need to know.
Still, there was a confusion and a darkness in my head and I had to understand what I was doing in this classroom or get out. If I had to stand before those five classes I couldn’t let days dribble by in the routine of high school grammar, spelling, vocabulary, digging for the deeper meaning in poetry, bits of literature doled out for the multiple choice tests that would follow so that universities can be supplied with the best and the brightest. I had to begin enjoying the act of teaching and the only way I could do that was to start over, teach what I loved and to hell with the curriculum.
The year Maggie was born I told Alberta something my mother used to say, that a child gains her vision at six weeks and if that was true we should take her to Ireland so that her first image would be of moody Irish skies, a passing shower with the sun shining through.
Paddy and Mary Clancy invited us to stay on their farm in Carrick-on-Suir but newspapers were saying Belfast was in flames, a nightmare city, and I was anxious to see my father. I traveled north with Paddy Clancy and Kevin Sullivan and the night we arrived we walked the streets of Catholic Belfast. The women were out banging on the pavements with the lids of garbage cans, warning their men of approaching army patrols. They were suspicious of us till they recognized Paddy of the famous Clancy Brothers and we passed on without trouble.
Next day Paddy and Kevin stayed in the hotel while I went to my Uncle Gerard’s house so that he could take me to my father in Andersonstown. When my father opened his door he nodded at Uncle Gerard and looked through me. Uncle said, This is your son.
My father said, Is it little Malachy?
No. I’m your son Frank.
Uncle Gerard said, It’s a sad thing when your own father doesn’t know you.
My own father said, Come in. Sit down. Will you have a cup of tea?
He offered the tea but showed no signs of making it in his little kitchen till a woman came from next door and did it. Uncle Gerard whispered, See that. He never lifts a finger. He doesn’t have to with the way the ladies of Andersonstown wait on him hand and foot. They tempt him daily with soup and dainty things.
My father smoked his pipe but never touched his mug of tea. He was busy asking about my mother and three brothers. Och, your brother Alphie came to see me. Quiet lad your brother Alphie. Och, aye. Quiet lad. And you’re all well in America? Attending to your religious duties? Och, you have to be good to your mother and attend to your religious duties.
I wanted to laugh. Jesus, is this man preaching? I wanted to say, Dad, have you no memory?
No, what’s the use. I’d be better off leaving my father to his demons though you could see from the peaceful way he had with his pipe and his mug of tea that the demons wouldn’t cross his threshold. Uncle Gerard said we ought to leave before darkness fell on Belfast and I wondered how I should say good-bye to my father. Shake his hand? Embrace him?
I shook his hand because that’s all we ever did except for one time when I was in hospital with typhoid and he kissed my forehead. Now he drops my hand, reminds me once more to be a good boy, to obey my mother and remember the power of the daily rosary.
When we returned to his house I told my uncle I’d like to walk through the Protestant area, the Shankill Road. He shook his head. Quiet man. I said, Why not?
Because they’ll know.
What will they know?
They’ll know you’re a Catholic.
How will they know?
Och, they’ll know.
His wife agreed. She said, They have ways.
Do you mean to say you could spot a Protestant if he walked down this street?
We could.
How?
And my uncle smiled. Och, years of practice.
While we had another cup of tea there was shooting down Leeson Street. A woman screamed and when I went to the window Uncle Gerard said, Och, get your head away from the window. One little movement and the soldiers are so nervous they’ll spray it.
The woman screamed again and I had to open the door. She had a child in her arms and another one clinging to her skirt and she was being forced back by a soldier pushing his slanted rifle. She begged him to let her cross Leeson Street to her other children. I thought I’d help by carrying the child clinging to her but when I went to pick her up the woman dashed around the soldier and across the street. The soldier swung on me and put his rifle barrel against my forehead. Get inside, Paddy, or I’ll blow your fawking head off.
My uncle and his wife, Lottie, told me that was a foolish thing I did and it helped no one. They said that whether you were Catholic or Protestant there was a way of handling things in Belfast that outsiders would never understand.
Still, on my way back to the hotel in a Catholic taxi, I dreamed I could easily roam Belfast with an avenging flamethrower. I’d aim it at that bastard in his red beret and reduce him to cinders. I’d pay back the Brits for the eight hundred years of tyranny. Oh, by Jesus, I’d do my bit with a fifty-caliber machine gun. I would, indeed, and I was ready to sing “Roddy McCorley goes to die on the bridge of Toome today,” till I remembered that that was my father’s song and decided instead I’d have a nice quiet pint with Paddy and Kevin in the bar of our Belfast hotel and before I went to sleep that night I’d call Alberta so that she could hold the phone to Maggie and I’d carry my daughter’s gurgle into my dreams.
Mam flew over and stayed with us awhile at our rented flat in Dublin. Alberta went shopping on Grafton Street and Mam strolled with me to St. Stephen’s Green with Maggie in her pram. We sat by the water and threw crumbs to ducks and sparrows. Mam said it was lovely to be in this place in Dublin in the latter end of August the way you could feel autumn coming in with the odd leaf drifting before you and the light changing on the lake. We looked at children wrestling in the grass and Mam said it would be lovely to stay here a few years and see Maggie grow up with an Irish accent, not that she had anything against the American accent, but wasn’t it a pure pleasure to listen to these children and she could see Maggie growing and playing on this very grass.
When I said it would be lovely a shiver went through me and she said someone was walking on my grave. We watched the children play and looked at the light on the water and she said, You don’t want to go back, do you?