Before I leave Mr. Sorola says I should return next day to observe Miss Mudd with her five classes. I’d learn something about procedure. He says half of teaching is procedure and I don’t know what he’s talking about. I don’t know what to make of the smile through the cigarette smoke and I wonder if he’s joking. He pushes my typed program across the desk, three classes of EC, Economic Citizenship, two classes of E4, sophomore English in the fourth term. The top of the program card says, Official Class, PRA, and at the bottom, Building Assignment, School Cafeteria, fifth period. I don’t ask Mr. Sorola what these mean for fear he might think I’m ignorant and change his mind about hiring me.
As I make my way down the hill to the ferry a boy’s voice calls, Mr. McCourt, Mr. McCourt, are you Mr. McCourt?
I am.
Mr. Sorola would like to see you again.
I follow the student up the hill and I know why Mr. Sorola wants to see me again. He has changed his mind. He’s found someone with experience, someone with a grasp of procedure, someone who knows what an official class is. If I don’t get this job I’ll have to start my search again.
Mr. Sorola waits at the front door of the school. He lets his cigarette dangle from his mouth and puts his hand on my shoulder. He says, I have good news for you. The job is opening sooner than we expected. Miss Mudd must have been impressed by you because she decided to leave today. In fact she’s gone, out the back door, and it’s barely noon. So we’re wondering if you can take over tomorrow and then you won’t have to wait till Monday.
But I . . .
Yeah, I know. You’re not ready. That’s okay. We’ll give you some stuff to keep the kids busy till you get the hang of it and I’ll look in from time to time to keep them in line.
He tells me this is my golden opportunity to jump right in and start my teaching career, I’m young, I’ll like the kids, they’ll like me, McKee High School has a hell of a faculty all ready to help and support.
Of course I say yes, I’ll be in tomorrow. It isn’t the teaching job of my dreams but it will have to do since I can’t get anything else. I sit on the Staten Island Ferry thinking of teacher recruiters from suburban high schools at NYU, how they told me I seemed intelligent and enthusiastic but really my accent would be a problem. Oh, they had to admit it was charming, reminded them of that nice Barry Fitzgerald in Going My Way but but but. They said they had high standards of speech in their schools and it wouldn’t be possible to make an exception in my case since the brogue was infectious and what would parents say if their kids came home sounding like Barry Fitzgerald or Maureen O’Hara?
I wanted to work in one of their suburban schools, Long Island, Westchester, where the boys and girls were bright, cheerful, smiling, attentive, their pens poised as I discoursed on Beowulf, The Canterbury Tales, the Cavalier Poets, the Metaphysicals. I’d be admired and once the boys and girls had passed my classes their parents would surely invite me to dinner at the finest houses. Young mothers would come to see me about their children and who could tell what might happen when husbands were absent, the men in gray flannel suits, and I trolled the suburbs for lonely wives.
I’ll have to forget the suburbs. I have here on my lap the book that will help me through my first day of teaching, Your World and You, and I flip the pages through a short history of the United States from an economic point of view, chapters on American government, the banking system, how to read the stock market pages, how to open a savings account, how to keep household accounts, how to get loans and mortgages.
At the end of each chapter there are questions of fact and questions for discussion. What caused the stock market crash of 1929? How can this be avoided in future? If you wanted to save money and gain interest would you a) keep it in a glass jar b) invest in the Japanese stock market c) keep it under your mattress d) put it in a savings bank account.
There are suggested activities, with insertions penciled in by a former student. Call a family meeting and discuss your family finances with Dad and Mom. Show them from your study of this book how they might improve their bookkeeping. (Insertion, Don’t be surprised if they beat you up.) Take a tour of the New York Stock Exchange with your class. (They’ll be glad to get out of school for a day.) Think of a product your community might need and start a small company to supply it. (Try Spanish fly.) Write to the Federal Reserve Board and tell them what you think of them. (Tell them leave a little for the rest of us.) Interview a number of people who remember the crash of 1929 and write a one-thousand-word report. (Ask them why they didn’t commit suicide.) Write a story in which you explain the gold standard to a ten-year-old child. (It’ll help him sleep.) Write a report on what it cost to build the Brooklyn Bridge and what it might cost now. Be specific. (Or else.)
The ferry sails by Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty and I’m so worried about Economic Citizenship I don’t even think of the millions who landed here and the ones who were sent back with the bad eyes and the weak chests. I don’t know how I’ll be able to stand before these American teenagers and talk to them about the branches of government and preach the virtues of saving when I owe money everywhere myself. And with the ferry sliding into its slip and the day that’s facing me tomorrow why shouldn’t I treat myself to a few beers at the Bean Pot bar and after those few beers why shouldn’t I take a train to the White Horse Tavern in Greenwich Village to chat with Paddy and Tom Clancy and listen to them sing in the back room? When I call Mike to tell her the good news about the new job she wants to know where I am and gives me a lecture on the stupidity of staying out drinking beer the night before the most important day of my life and I’d better get my ass home if I know what’s good for me. Sometimes she talks like her grandmother who always tells you what to do with your ass. Get your ass in here. Get your ass out of that bed.
Mike is right but she graduated from high school and she’ll know what to say to her classes when she starts teaching and even though I have a college degree I don’t know what I’m going to say to Miss Mudd’s classes. Should I be Robert Donat in Goodbye, Mr. Chips or Glenn Ford in The Blackboard Jungle? Should I swagger into the classroom like James Cagney or march in like an Irish schoolmaster with a stick, a strap and a roar? If a student sends a paper airplane zooming at me should I shove my face into his and tell him try that one more time, kid, and you’re in trouble? What am I to do with the ones looking out the window calling to their friends across the yard? If they’re like some of the students in The Blackboard Jungle they’ll be tough and they’ll ignore me and the rest of the class will despise me.
Paddy Clancy leaves his singing in the back room of the White Horse and tells me he wouldn’t be in my shoes for anything. Everyone knows what the high schools in this country are like, that’s right, blackboard jungles. With my college degree why didn’t I become a lawyer or a businessman or something where I could make some money? He knows a few teachers around the Village and they’re getting out of it the first opportunity.
He’s right, too. Everybody is right and I’m too muddled with all the beer in my body to worry anymore. I go to my apartment and fall into bed with all my clothes on and even though I’m worn out with the long day and the beer I can’t sleep. I keep getting up to read chapters of Your World and You, testing myself with questions of fact, imagining what I’m going to say about the stock market, the differences between stocks and bonds, the three branches of government, the recession of this year, the depression of that year, and I might as well get up, go out, and fill myself with coffee to keep me going the rest of the day.
At dawn I sit in a coffee shop on Hudson Street with longshoremen, truck drivers, warehousemen, checkers. Why shouldn’t I live like them? They work their eight hours a day, read the Daily News, follow baseball, have a few beers, go home to their wives, raise their kids. They’re paid better than teachers and they don’t have to worry about Your World and You and sex-crazed teenagers who don’t want to be in your class. In twenty years workingmen can retire and sit in the Florida sun, waiting for lunch and dinner. I could call McKee Vocational and Technical High School and tell them, Forget it, I want an easier life. I could tell Mr. Sorola they’re looking for a checker at the Baker and Williams Warehouse, a job I could easily get with my college degree, and all I’d have to do the rest of my life is stand on the platform with manifests on a clipboard checking what comes and what goes.
Then I think of what Mike Small would say if I told her, No, I didn’t go to McKee High School today. I took a job as checker with Baker and Williams. She’d have a tantrum. She’d say, All that work in college to be a goddam checker down at the docks? She might throw me out of the house and return to the arms of Bob the football player and I’d be alone in the world, forced to go to Irish dances and take home girls reserving their bodies for the wedding night.
I’m ashamed of myself that I’m going to my first day of teaching in this condition, hung over from the White Horse Tavern, jumping out of my skin from seven cups of coffee this morning, my eyes like two piss holes in the snow, two days of black hair sprouting on my face, my tongue furry from lack of a toothbrush, my heart banging in my chest from fatigue and fear of dozens of American adolescents. I’m sorry I ever left Limerick. I could be back there with a pensionable job in the post office, postman respected by one and all, married to a nice girl named Maura, raising two children, confessing my sins every Saturday, in a state of grace every Sunday, a pillar of the community, a credit to my mother, dying in the bosom of Mother Church, mourned by a large circle of friends and relations.
There’s a longshoreman at a table in the diner telling his friend how his son is graduating from St. John’s University in June, how he worked his ass off all these years to send the kid to college and he’s the luckiest man in the world because his son appreciates what he’s doing for him. Graduation Day he’ll give himself a pat on the back for surviving a war and sending a son to college, a son who wants to be a teacher. His mother is so proud of him because she always wanted to be a teacher herself but never had the chance and this is the next best thing. Graduation Day they’ll be the proudest parents in the world and that’s what it’s all about, right?
If this longshoreman and Horace down at Port Warehouses knew what I was thinking they’d have no patience with me. They’d tell me how lucky I am to have a college degree and a chance to teach.
The school secretary tells me see Miss Seested who tells me see Mr. Sorola who tells me see the chairman of the Academic Department who says I have to check in with the school secretary to get my time card and why were they sending me to him in the first place?
The school secretary says, Oh, back already? and shows me how to dip my time card into the time clock, how to place it in my slot on the In side and how to move it to the Out side. She says that if I have to leave the building for any reason whatsoever, even during my lunch period, I’m to sign out and back in with her because you never know when you might be needed, never know when there might be an emergency and you can’t have teachers wandering in and out, back and forth at will. She tells me see Miss Seested who looks surprised. Oh, you’re back, she says, and gives me a red Delaney book, the attendance book for my classes. She says, Of course you know how to use this, and I pretend I do for fear of being thought stupid. She sends me back to the school secretary for my homeroom attendance book and I have to lie to the secretary, too, and tell her I know how to use it. She says if I have any problems ask the kids. They know more than the teachers.
I’m trembling from the hangover and the coffee and the fear of what lies ahead of me, five classes, a homeroom, a Building Assignment, and I wish I were on the ferry to Manhattan where I could sit at a desk in a bank and make decisions about loans.
Students jostle me in the hallway. They push and scuffle and laugh. Don’t they know I’m a teacher? Can’t they see under my arm two attendance books and Your World and You? The schoolmasters in Limerick would never tolerate this carry-on. They’d march up and down the halls with sticks and if you didn’t walk properly you’d get that stick across the backs of your legs so you would.
And what am I supposed to do with this class, the first in my whole teaching career, students of Economic Citizenship, pelting each other with chalk, erasers, bologna sandwiches? When I walk in and place my books on the teacher’s desk they’ll surely stop throwing things. But they don’t. They ignore me and I don’t know what to do till the words come out of my mouth, the first words I ever utter as a teacher, Stop throwing sandwiches. They look at me as if to say, Who’s this guy?
The bell signals the start of the class and the students slide into their seats. They whisper to each other, they look at me, laugh, whisper again and I’m sorry I ever set foot on Staten Island. They turn to look at the blackboard along the side of the room where someone has printed in a large scrawl, Miss Mudd Is Gone. The Old Bag Reetired, and when they see me looking at it they whisper and laugh again. I open my copy of Your World and You as if to start a lesson till a girl raises her hand.
Yes?
Teacher, ain’tcha gonna take the attendance?
Oh, yes, I am.
That’s my job, teacher.
When she sways up the aisle to my desk the boys make woo woo sounds and, Whaddya doin’ the rest of my life, Daniela? She comes behind my desk, faces the class, and when she leans over to open the Delaney book it’s easy to see her blouse is too small and that starts the woo woo all over again.
She smiles because she knows what the psychology books told us at NYU, that a fifteen-year-old girl is years ahead of a boy that age and if they want to shower her with woo woos it means nothing. She whispers to me she’s already going out with a senior, a football player up at Curtis High School, where all the kids are smart, not a bunch of auto mechanic grease monkeys like the ones in this class. The boys know this, too, and that’s why they pretend to clutch their hearts and faint when she calls out their names from the Delaney cards. She takes her time with the attendance book and I’m a fool standing off to the side, waiting. I know she’s teasing the boys and I wonder if she’s toying with me, too, showing her control of the class with a well-filled blouse and keeping me from whatever I might want to do with Economic Citizenship. When she calls the name of someone who was absent yesterday she demands a parent’s note and if the absentee doesn’t have it she reprimands him and writes N on the card. She reminds the class that five Ns could get you an F on your report card and turns to me, Isn’t that right, teacher?
I don’t know what to say. I nod. I blush.
Another girl calls out, Hey, teach, you cute, and I blush harder than ever. The boys roar and slap the desks with their open palms and the girls smile at each other. They say, You crazy, Yvonne, to the one who called me cute, and she tells them, But he is, he’s really cute, and I wonder if the redness will ever leave my face, if I’ll ever be able to stand here and talk about Economic Citizenship, if I’ll be forever at the mercy of Daniela and Yvonne.
Daniela says she’s finished with the attendance and now she needs the pass to go to the bathroom. She takes a piece of wood from a drawer and wiggles her way out the door to another woo woo chorus and one boy calling to another, Joey, stand up, Joey, let’s see how much you love her, let’s see you stand, Joey, and Joey blushes so hard there’s a wave of laughter and giggling across the room.
We’re halfway through the period and I haven’t said a word about Economic Citizenship. I try to be a teacher, a schoolmaster. I pick up Your World and You and tell them, Okay, open your book to chapter, ah, what chapter were you up to?
We weren’t up to no chapter.
You mean you weren’t up to any chapter? Any chapter.
No, I mean we weren’t up to no chapter. Miss Mudd didn’t teach us nothing.
Miss Mudd didn’t teach you anything. Anything.
Hey, teacher, why you repeating everything I’m sayin’? Nothing, anything. Miss Mudd never bothered us like that. Miss Mudd was nice.
They nod and murmur, Yeah, Miss Mudd was nice, and I feel I have to compete with her even if they drove her into retirement.
A hand is up.
Yes?
Teacher, you Scotch or somethin’?
No. Irish.
Oh, yeah? Irish like to drink, eh? All that whiskey, eh? You gonna be here Paddy’s Day?
I’ll be here on St. Patrick’s Day.
You not gonna be drunk an’ throwin’ up at the parade like all the Irish?
I said I’ll be here. All right, open your books.
A hand.
What books, teacher?
This book, Your World and You.
We ain’t got that book, teacher.
We don’t have that book.
There you go again repeatin’ everything we say.
We have to speak proper English.
Teacher, this ain’t no English class. This is Ecanawmic Cizzenship. We supposed to be learnin’ about money an’ all an’ you ain’t teachin’ us about money.
Daniela returns just as another hand is raised. Teacher, what’s your name? Daniela returns the pass to the desk and tells the class. His name is McCoy. I just found out in the bathroom an’ he ain’t married.
I print my name on the blackboard, Mr. McCourt.
A girl in the back of the room calls out, Mister, you got a girlfriend?
They laugh again. I blush again. They nudge each other. The girls say, Isn’t he cute? and I take refuge in Your World and You.
Open your books. Chapter One. We’ll start at the beginning. “A Brief History of the United States of America.”
Mr. McCoy.
McCourt. McCourt.
Okay, yeah, we know all that about Columbus an’ everything. We get that in history class with Mr. Bogard. He’ll be mad if you teach history an’ he’s gettin’ paid to teach it an’ that’s not your job.
I have to teach what’s in the book.
Miss Mudd didn’t teach what’s in the book. She didn’t give a shit, excuse me, Mr. McCoy.
McCourt.
Yeah.
And when the bell rings and they rush from the room Daniela comes to my desk and tells me not to worry, don’t lissena to these kids, they’re all so stoopid, she’s taking the commercial course to be a legal secretary, and who knows she might be a lawyer herself some day, she’ll take care of the attendance and everything. She tells me, Don’t take no shit from nobody, Mr. McCoy, excuse the language.
There are thirty-five girls in the next class, all dressed in white with buttons down the front from neck to hem. Most have the same hairstyle, the beehive. They ignore me. They set up little boxes on their desks and peer into mirrors. They pluck their eyebrows, they dab at their cheeks with powder puffs, they apply lipstick and pull their lips back between their teeth, they file their nails and blow at the nail dust. I open the Delaney book to call their names and they look surprised. Oh, you the substitute? Where’s Miss Mudd?
She has retired.
Oh, you gonna be our regular teacher?
Yes.
I ask them what shop they’re in, what they’re studying.
Cosmetology.
What’s that?
Beauty Culture. And what’s your name, teacher?
I point to my name on the board. Mr. McCourt.
Oh, yeah. Yvonne said you was cute.
I let this pass. If I attempt to correct every grammatical error in these classes I’ll never get to Economic Citizenship and, worse, if I’m asked to explain the rules of grammar I’m bound to show my ignorance. I will put up with no distractions. I will begin with Chapter One from Your World and You, “A Brief History of the United States.” I flip the pages from Columbus to the Pilgrims to the War of Independence, the War of 1812, the Civil War, and there’s a hand and a voice in the back of the room.
Yes?
Mr. McCourt, why you telling us this stuff?
I’m telling you this because you can’t understand Economic Citizenship unless you have a grasp of the history of your country.
Mr. McCourt, this is an English class. I mean you’re the teacher an’ you don’t even know what class you’re teaching.
They pluck their eyebrows, they file their nails, they shake their beehives, they pity me. They tell me my hair is a mess and it’s easy to see I never had a manicure in my life.
Why don’tcha come up to Beauty Culture Shop an’ we’ll do you?
They smile and nudge each other and my face is on fire again and they say that’s cute, too. Aw, gee, lookit him. He’s shy.
I have to take control. I have to be the teacher. After all, I was once a corporal in the United States Army. I told men what to do and if they didn’t do it I’d have their ass because they were in direct defiance of military regulations and subject to court-martial. I will simply tell these girls what to do.
Put everything away and open your books.
What books?
Whatever books you have for English.
All we got is this Giants in the Earth and that’s the most boring book in the world. And the whole class chants, Uh, huh, boring, boring, boring.
They tell me it’s about some family from Europe out there on the prairie and everyone is depressed and talking about suicide and no one in the class can finish this book because it makes you want to commit suicide yourself. Why can’t they read a nice romance where you don’t have all these Europe people all gloomy on the prairie? Or why couldn’t they watch movies? They could watch James Dean, oh, gawd, James Dean, can’t believe he’s dead, they could watch him and talk about him. Oh, they could watch James Dean forever.
When the Beauty Culture girls leave there is homeroom, an eight-minute period when I have to take care of the clerical work for thirty-three students from Printing Shop. They swarm in, all boys, and they’re helpful. They tell me what has to be done and not to worry. I am to take attendance, send a list of absentees to Miss Seested, collect absentee excuse notes supposedly written by parents and doctors, distribute transportation passes for bus, train, ferry. One boy brings the contents of Miss Mudd’s mailbox in the office. There are notes and letters from various officials in and out of the school, notes summoning wayward students for counseling, requests and demands for lists and forms and second and third reminders. Miss Mudd seems to have ignored everything in her mailbox for weeks and my head feels heavy with the thought of the work she’s left me.
The boys tell me I don’t have to take attendance every day but once I start I can’t stop. Most are Italian and taking the attendance is light opera: Adinolfi, Buscaglia, Cacciamani, DiFazio, Esposito, Gagliardo, Miceli.
I’m supposed to lead the class in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and singing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” I barely know them but that doesn’t matter. The boys stand, place their hands on their hearts and recite their own version of the Pledge, I pledge allegiance to the flag of Staten Island, and to one-night stands, one girl under me, invisible to all, with love and kisses for me only me.
When they sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” some hum along with “You ain’t nothin’ but a hounddog.”
There’s a note from the Academic Chairman requesting I go to his office next period, the third, my prep period when I’m supposed to plan my lessons. He tells me I should have a lesson plan for every class and there is a standard form for lesson plans, I should insist all students keep notebooks that are clean and neat, I should make sure their textbooks are covered, points off if they don’t, I should check to see that windows are open six inches from the top, I should send a student around the room at the end of every period to collect litter, I should stand at the door to greet classes entering and again leaving, I should print clearly on the blackboard the title and aim of every lesson, I should never ask a question requiring a yes or no answer, I shouldn’t allow unnecessary noise in the room, I should require all students to stay in their seats unless they raise their hands for the bathroom pass, I should insist on boys removing their hats, I should make it clear that no student is allowed to speak without first raising his hand. I should make sure all students stay till the end of the period, that they’re not to be allowed out of the room at the warning bell which, for my information, rings five minutes before the end of the period. If my students are caught in the hallways before the end of the period I’ll have to answer to the principal himself. Any questions?
The chairman says there will be midterm exams in two weeks and my teaching should focus on the areas that will be covered in the exams. Students in English should have mastered spelling and vocabulary lists, one hundred of each which they are supposed to have in their notebooks and if they don’t, points off, and be prepared to write essays on two novels. Economic Citizenship students should be more than halfway through Your World and You.
The bell rings for the fifth period, my Building Assignment, the school cafeteria. The chairman tells me that’s an easy assignment. I’ll be up there with Jake Homer, the teacher the kids fear most.
I climb the stairs to the cafeteria, my head throbbing, my mouth dry and I wish I could sail away with Miss Mudd. Instead I’m pushed and jostled by students on the staircase and stopped by a teacher who demands to see my pass. He’s short and broad and his bald head sits, neckless, on his shoulders. He glares at me through thick glasses and his chin is a challenging jut. I tell him I’m a teacher and he won’t believe me. He wants to see my program card. Oh, he says, I’m sorry. You’re McCourt. I’m Jake Homer. We’ll be in the cafeteria together. I follow him upstairs and along the hallway to the students’ cafeteria. There are two lines waiting to be served in the kitchen, a boys and a girls. Jake tells me that’s one of the big problems, keeping the boys and girls separated. He says they’re animals at this age, especially the boys, and it’s not their fault. It’s nature. If he had his way he’d have the girls in a separate cafeteria altogether. The boys are always strutting and showing off and if two like the same girl there’s bound to be a fight. He tells me if there is a fight don’t interfere right away. Let the little bastards go at it and get it out of their systems. It’s worse in the warm weather, May, June, when the girls take off their sweaters and the boys go tit crazy. The girls know what they’re doing and the boys are like lap dogs, panting. Our job is to keep them separated and if a boy wants to visit the girls’ section he has to come over here for permission. Otherwise you’ll have two hundred kids going at it in broad daylight. We also have to patrol the cafeteria and make sure the kids take their trays and garbage back to the kitchen, make sure they clean the area around their tables.
Jake asks if I’d ever been in the army and when I tell him yes he says, Bet you didn’t know you’d be pulling this kind of shit detail when you decided to become a teacher. Bet you didn’t know you’d be a cafeteria guard, a garbage supervisor, a psychologist, a baby-sitter, eh? Tells you what they think of teachers in this country that you have to spend hours of your life looking at these kids eating like pigs and telling them clean up afterward. Doctors and lawyers don’t run around telling people clean up. You won’t find teachers in Europe stuck with this kind of crap. Over there a high school teacher is treated like a professor.
A boy carrying his tray to the kitchen doesn’t notice that an ice cream wrapper has fallen from his tray. On the way back to his table Jake calls him over.
Kid, pick up that ice cream wrapper.
The boy is defiant. I didn’t drop that.
Kid, I didn’t ask you that. I said pick it up.
I don’t have to pick it up. I know my rights.
Come here, kid. I’ll tell you your rights.
It is suddenly quiet in the cafeteria. With everyone looking on, Jake grabs the skin over the boy’s left shoulder blade and twists it clockwise. Kid, he says, you have five rights. Number one, you shut up. Number two, you do what you’re told, and the other three don’t count.
As Jake twists the skin the boy tries not to grimace, tries to look good, till Jake twists so hard the boy’s knees buckle and he cries, All right, all right, Mr. Homer, all right. I’ll pick up the paper.
Jake releases him. Okay, kid. I can see you’re a reasonable kid.
The boy slouches back to his seat. He’s ashamed and I know he needn’t be. When a master in Leamy’s National School in Limerick tormented a boy like that we were always against the master and I can feel that’s how it is here the way students, boys and girls, glare at Jake and me. It makes me wonder if I’ll ever be as hard as an Irish schoolmaster or as tough as Jake Homer. The psychology teachers at NYU never told us what we should do in such cases and that’s because university professors never have to supervise students in high school cafeterias. And what will happen if Jake is ever absent and I’m the only teacher here trying to keep two hundred students under control? Surely if I tell a girl pick up a piece of paper and she refuses I can’t twist the skin of her shoulder blade till her knees tremble. No, I’ll have to wait till I’m old and tough like Jake, though even he surely wouldn’t twist the skin of a girl’s shoulder blade. He’s more polite with the girls, calls them dear, and would they mind helping keep this place clean. They say, Yes, Mr. Homer, and he waddles away smiling.
He stands by me near the kitchen and tells me, You gotta come down on the little bastards like a ton of bricks. Then he says to a boy standing before us, Yes, son?
Mr. Homer, I gotta give you back the dollar I owe you.
What was that, son?
Day I didn’t have lunch money last month. You gave me a lend of a buck.
Forget it, son. Get yourself an ice cream.
But, Mr. Homer.
Go on, son. Get yourself a treat.
Thanks, Mr. Homer.
Okay, kid.
He tells me, That’s a nice kid. You wouldn’t believe what a hard time he has, still comes to school. His father tortured, nearly killed by a Mussolini gang in Italy. Jesus, you wouldn’t believe the hard times they have, these kids’ families, and this is the richest country in the world. Count your blessings, McCourt. Mind if I call you Frank?
Not at all, Mr. Homer.
Call me Jake.
Okay, Jake.
It’s my lunch hour and he directs me to the teachers’ cafeteria on the top floor. Mr. Sorola sees me and introduces me to teachers at different tables, Mr. Rowantree, Printing, Mr. Kriegsman, Health Ed., Mr. Gordon, Machine Shop, Miss Gilfinane, Art, Mr. Garber, Speech, Mr. Bogard, Social Studies, Mr. Maratea, Social Studies.
I take my tray with sandwich and coffee and sit at an empty table but Mr. Bogard comes over, tells me his name is Bob, and invites me to sit with him and the other teachers. I’d like to stay by myself because I don’t know what to say to anyone and as soon as I open my mouth they’ll say, Oh, you’re Irish, and I’ll have to explain how that happened. It’s not as bad as being black. You can always change your accent but you can never change the color of your skin and it must be a nuisance when you’re black and people think they have to talk about black matters just because you’re there with that skin. You can change your accent and people will stop telling you where their parents came from in Ireland but there’s no escape when you’re black.
But I can’t say no to Mr. Bogard after he went to all the trouble of coming to my table and, when I’m settled with my coffee and sandwich, the teachers introduce themselves again with first names. Jack Kriegsman says, Your first day, eh? You sure you want to do this?
Some teachers laugh and shake their heads as if to say they’re sorry they ever got into this. Bob Bogard doesn’t laugh. He leans across the table and says, If there’s any profession more important than teaching I’d like to know what it is. No one seems to know what to say after that till Stanley Garber asks me what subject I teach.
English. Well, not exactly. They have me teaching three classes of Economic Citizenship, and Miss Gilfinane says, Oh, you’re Irish. It’s so nice to hear the brogue here.
She tells me her ancestry and wants to know where I came from, when I came, will I ever go back, and why are the Catholics and Protestants always fighting in the Old Country. Jack Kriegsman says they’re worse than the Jews and the Arabs and Stanley Garber disagrees. Stanley says at least the Irish on both sides have one thing in common, Christianity, and the Jews and the Arabs are as different as day and night. Jack says, Bullshit, and Stanley comes back with a sarcastic, That’s an intelligent comment.
When the bell rings Bob Bogard and Stanley Garber walk me downstairs and Bob tells me he knows the situation in Miss Mudd’s classes, that the kids are wild after weeks where there was no teaching, and if I need help to let him know. I tell him I do need help. I’d like to know what the hell I’m supposed to do with Economic Citizenship classes facing mid-term exams in two weeks who haven’t even looked at the book. How am I supposed to give grades on report cards based on nothing?
Stanley says, Don’t worry. A lot of the report card grades in this school are based on nothing anyway. There are kids here reading on a third grade level and it’s not your fault. They should be in elementary school but they can’t be kept there because they’re six feet tall, too big for the furniture and trouble for the teachers. You’ll see.
He and Bob Bogard look at my program and shake their heads. Three classes at the end of the day. That’s the worst possible program you can get, an impossible one for a new teacher. The kids have had their lunch and they’re all charged up with protein and sugar and they want to be outside horsing around. Sex. That’s all it is, says Stanley. Sex, sex, sex. But that’s what happens when you arrive in the middle of the term and take over for the Miss Mudds of the world.
Good luck, says Stanley.
Let me know if I can help, says Bob.
I grapple with the protein and the sugar and the sex sex sex in periods six, seven and eight but I’m silenced by a hail of questions and objections. Where’s Miss Mudd? She dead? She eloped? Ha ha ha. You our new teacher? You gonna be with us forever and ever? You gotta girlfriend, teacher? No, we don’t have no World and You. Dumb book. Why can’t we talk about movies? I had a teacher in fifth grade talked about movies all the time and they fired her. She was a great teacher. Teacher, don’t forget to take the attendance. Miss Mudd always took the attendance.
Miss Mudd didn’t have to take the attendance because in every class there is a monitor to do it. The monitor is usually a shy girl with a neat notebook and good handwriting. For taking the attendance she gets service credits and that impresses employers when she goes looking for a job in Manhattan.
The sophomore English students break into cheers at the news that Miss Mudd is gone forever. She was mean. She tried to make them read that boring book, Giants in the Earth, and she said when they were finished with that they’d have to read Silas Marner and Louis by the window who reads lots of books told everyone it’s a book about a dirty old man in England and a little girl and that’s the kind of book we shouldn’t be reading in America.
Miss Mudd said they’d have to read Silas Marner because there was a midterm exam coming up and they’d have to write an essay comparing it with Giants in the Earth and the students in eighth-period sophomore English would like to know where does she get off thinking you can compare a book about gloomy people on the prairie with a book about a dirty old man in England?
They cheer again. They tell me, We don’t want to read no dumb books.
You mean you don’t want to read any dumb books.
What?
Oh, nothing. The warning bell rings and they gather up their coats and bags to pile out the door. I have to shout, Sit down. That’s the warning bell.
They look surprised. What’s up, teacher?
You’re not supposed to leave at the warning bell.
Miss Mudd let us leave.
I’m not Miss Mudd.
Miss Mudd was nice. She let us leave. Why you so mean?
They’re out the door and I can’t stop them. Mr. Sorola is in the hallway to tell me my students are not supposed to leave at the warning bell.
I know, Mr. Sorola. I couldn’t stop them.
Well, Mr. McCourt, a little more discipline tomorrow, eh?
Yes, Mr. Sorola.
Is this man serious or is he pulling my leg?