An Excerpt from ‘Tis by Frank McCourt

The lecturer in English Composition, Mr.Calitri, would like us to write an essay on a single object from our childhood, an object that had significance for us, something domestic, if possible.

            There isn’t an object in my childhood I’d want anyone to know about, I wouldn’t want Mr.Calitri or anyone in the class to know about the slum lavatory we shared with all those families in Roden Lane. I could make up something but I can’t think of anything like the things other students talk about, family car, dad’s old baseball mitt, the sled they had so much fun with, the old icebox, the kitchen table where they did their homework. All I can think of is the bed I shared with my three brothers and even though I’m ashamed of it I have to write about it. If I make up something that’s nice and respectful and don’t write about the bed I’ll be tormented. Besides, Mr.Calitri will be the only one reading it and I’ll be safe.

                                                                                    The Bed

When I was growing up in limerick my mother had to go to the St. Vincent de Paul Society to see if she could get a bed for me and my brothers, Malachy, Michael, and Alphie who was barely walking. The man at the St. Vincent said he could give her a docket to go down to the Irishtown to a place that sold secondhand beds.  My mother asked him couldn’t we get a new bed because you never know what you’re getting with an old one. There could be all kinds of diseases.

            The man said beggars can’t be choosers and my mother shouldn’t be so particular.

            But she wouldn’t give up. She asked if it was possible to at least find out if anyone had died in the bed. Surely that wasn’t asking too much. She wouldn’t want to be lying in her own bed at night thinking about her four small sons sleeping on a mattress that someone had died on, maybe someone that had a fever or consumption.

            The St. Vincent de Paul man said, missus, if you don’t want this bed give me back the docket and ill give it to someone that’s not so particular.

            Mam said, Ah, no, and she came home to get Alphie’s pram so that we could carry the mattress, the spring and the bedstead. The man in the shop in the Irishtown wanted her to take a mattress with hair sticking out and spots and stains all over but my mother said she wouldn’t let a cow sleep on a bed like that, didn’t the man have another mattress right over there in the corner? The man grumbled and said, All right, all right. Bejesus, the charity cases is getting’ very particular these days, and he stayed behind the counter watching us drag the mattress outside.

            We had to push the pram up and down the streets of Limerick three times for the mattress and the different parts of the iron bedstead, the head, the end, the supports and the spring. My mother said she was ashamed of her life and wished she could do this at night. The man said he was sorry for her troubles but he closes at six sharp and wouldn’t stay open if the Holy Family came for a bed.

            It was hard pushing the pram because it had one bockety wheel that wanted to go its own way and it was harder still with Alphie buried under the mattress screaming for his mother.

            My father was there to drag the mattress upstairs and he helped us put the spring and the bedstead together. Of course he wouldn’t help us push the pram two miles from the Irishtown because he’d be ashamed of the spectacle. He was from the North of Ireland and they must have a different way of bringing home the bed.

We had overcoats to put on the bed because the St. Vincent de Paul Society wouldn’t give us the 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 towards me and lets his eyebrows go up as if to say, Do you mind? I don’t know what it say though I’d like to tell him , No, no, please don’t tell the world about 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 him 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 exploring my rich past and he smiles again. I don’t know what he’s talking about. I’m sorry I ever wrote about the 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 ends of the class students nod to me and smile and I wonder if they’re already feeling sorry for me.