Back where?
New York.
How do you know that?
I don’t have to lift the lid to know what’s in the pot.
The porter at the Shelbourne Hotel said it would be no bother at all to keep an eye on Maggie’s pram against the railings outside while we sat in the lounge, a sherry for Mam, a pint for me, a bottle of milk for Maggie on Mam’s lap. Two women at the next table said Maggie was a dote, a right dote she was, oh gorgeous, and wasn’t she the spittin’ image of Mam herself. Ah, no, said Mam, I’m only the grandmother.
The women were drinking sherry like my mother but the three men were lowering pints and you could see from their tweed caps, red faces and great red hands they were farmers. One, with a dark green cap, called to my mother, The little child might be a lovely child, missus, but you’re not so bad yourself.
Mam laughed and called back to him, Ah, sure, you’re not so bad either.
Begod, missus, if you were a little older I’d run away with you.
Well, said Mam, if you were a little younger I’d go.
People all around the lounge were laughing and Mam threw her head back and laughed herself and you could see from the shine in her eyes she was having the time of her life. She laughed till Maggie whimpered and Mam said the child had to be changed and we’d have to go. The man with the dark green cap put on a begging act. Yerra, don’t go, missus. Your future is with me. I’m a rich widow man with a farm o’ land.
Money isn’t everything, said Mam.
But I have a tractor, missus. We could ride together and how would that suit you?
It stirs me, said Mam, but I’m still a married woman and when I put on the widow’s weeds you’ll be the first to know.
Fair enough, missus. I live in the third house on the left as you enter the southwest coast of Ireland, a grand place called Kerry.
I heard of it, said Mam. ’Tis known for sheep.
And powerful rams, missus, powerful.
You’re never short of an answer, are you?
Come to Kerry with me, missus, and we’ll walk the hills wordless.
Alberta was already at the flat making lamb stew and when Kevin Sullivan dropped in with Ben Kiely, the writer, there was enough for everyone and we drank wine and sang because there isn’t a song in the world Ben doesn’t know. Mam told the story of our time in the Shelbourne Hotel. Lord above, she said, that man had a way with him and if it wasn’t for Maggie needing to be changed and wiped I’d be on my way to Kerry.
In the nineteen seventies Mam was in her sixties. The emphysema that came from years of smoking left her so breathless she dreaded leaving her apartment anymore and the more she stayed at home the heavier she grew. For a while she came to Brooklyn to take care of Maggie on weekends but that stopped when she could no longer climb the subway stairs. I accused her of not wanting to see her granddaughter.
I do want to see her but ’tis hard for me to get around anymore.
Why don’t you lose weight?
’Tis hard for an elderly woman to lose weight and anyway why should I?
Don’t you want to have some kind of life where you’re not sitting in your apartment all day looking out the window?
I had my life, didn’t I, and what use was it? I just want to be left alone.
There were attacks which left her gasping and when she visited Michael in San Francisco he had to rush her to the hospital. We told her she was ruining our lives the way she always got sick on holidays, Christmas, New Year’s Eve, Easter. She shrugged and laughed and said, Pity about ye now.
No matter how her health was, no matter how breathless, she climbed the hill to the Broadway bingo hall till she fell one night and broke her hip. After the operation she was sent to an upstate convalescent home and then stayed with me at a summer bungalow in Breezy Point at the tip of the Rockaway Peninsula. Every morning she slept late and when she woke sat slumped on the side of her bed, staring out the window at a wall. After a while she’d drag herself into the kitchen for breakfast and when I barked at her for eating too much bread and butter, that she’d be the size of a house, she barked back at me, For the love o’ Jesus, leave me alone. The bread and butter is the only comfort I have.
52
When Henry Wozniak taught Creative Writing and English and American Literature he wore a shirt, a tie and a sports jacket every day. He was faculty adviser to the Stuyvesant High School literary magazine, Caliper, and to the students’ General Organization, and he was active in the union, the United Federation of Teachers.
He changed. On the first day of school in September 1973, he roared up Fifteenth Street on a Harley-Davidson motorbike and parked it outside the school. Students said, Hi, Mr. Wozniak, though they hardly recognized him with his shaved head, his earring, his black leather jacket, black collarless shirt, worn jeans so tight they didn’t need the wide belt with the large buckle, the bunch of keys that dangled from that belt, his black leather boots with the elevated heels.
He said Hi back to the students but he didn’t linger and smile the way he used to when he didn’t mind if students called him The Woz. Now he was reserved with them and with teachers at the time clock. He told the English Department chairman, Roger Goodman, he wanted regular En-glish classes, that he would even take freshmen and sophomores and drill them in grammar, spelling, vocabulary. He told the principal he was withdrawing from all nonteaching activities.
Because of Henry I became the Creative Writing teacher. You can do it, said Roger Goodman, and he bought me a beer and a hamburger at the Gashouse Bar around the corner to fortify me. You can handle it, he said. After all, hadn’t I written pieces for the Village Voice and other papers and wasn’t I planning to write more?
All right, Roger, but what the hell is Creative Writing and how do you teach it?
Ask Henry, said Roger, he did it before you.
I found Henry in the library and asked him how you teach creative writing.
Disneyland, he said.
What?
Take a trip to Disneyland. Every teacher should do it.
Why?
It’s an enlarging experience. In the meantime, remember one little nursery rhyme and take it as your mantra,
Little BoPeep has lost her sheep,
And cannot tell where to find them;
Leave them alone, and they’ll come home,
Wagging their tails behind them.
That was all I got from Henry and, except for an occasional hallway Hi, we never talked again.
I write my name on the board and think of Mr. Sorola’s remark that fifty percent of teaching is procedure and if so how should I proceed? This class is an elective and that means they’re here because they asked for it and if I ask them to write something there should be no whining.
I have to give myself breathing room. I write on the board, Funeral Pyres, two hundred words, do now.
What? Funeral pyres? What kinda topic is that to write about? What’s a funeral pyre anyway?
You know what a funeral is, don’t you? You know what a pyre is. You’ve seen pictures of women in India climbing on their husbands’ funeral pyres, haven’t you? It’s called suttee, a new word for your vocabulary.
A girl calls out, That’s disgusting, that’s really disgusting.
What?
Women killing themselves just because their husbands are dead. That really sucks.
It’s what they believe. Maybe it shows their love.
How could it show their love when the man is dead? Don’t these women have any self-respect?
Of course they do and they show it by committing suttee.
Mr. Wozniak would never tell us to write stuff like this.
Mr. Wozniak isn’t here, so write your two hundred words.