Frank McCourt 'Tis: a Memoir

Down near Court Street and Atlantic Avenue I remembered some- 
thing she had told me months ago while we sat waiting for Thanks- 
giving dinner. Isn’t it remarkable, she said, the way things turn out 
in people’s lives? 

What do you mean? 

Well, I was sitting in my apartment and I was feeling lonesome 
so I went up and sat on one of those benches they have in the grassy 
island in the middle of Broadway and this woman came along, a 
shopping bag woman, one of the homeless ones, all tattered and greasy, 
rootin’ around in the garbage can till she found a newspaper and sat 
beside me reading it till she asked me if she could borrow my glasses 
because she could only read the headlines with the sight she had and 
when she talked I noticed she had an Irish accent so I asked her where 
she came from and she told me Donegal a long time ago and wasn't 
it lovely to be sitting on a bench in the middle of Broadway with 
people noticing things and asking where you came from. She asked 

if I could spare a few pennies for soup and I said instead she could 
come with me to the Associated supermarket and we’d get some 
groceries and have a proper meal. Oh, she couldn't do that, she said, 
but I told her that’s what I was going to do anyway. She wouldn’t 
come inside the store. She said they wouldn’t want the likes of her. 
I got bread and butter and rashers and eggs and when we got home 
I told her she could go in and have a nice shower and she was delighted 
with herself though there wasn’t much I could do about her clothes 
or the bags she carried. We had our dinner and watched television 
till she started falling asleep on me and I told her lie down there on 
the bed but she wouldn’t. God knows the bed is big enough for four 
but she laid down on the floor with a shopping bag under her head 
and when I woke up in the morning she was gone and I missed her. 

I know it wasn’t the dinner wine that had me against the wall in 
a fit of remorse. It was the thought of my mother being so lonesome 
she had to sit on a street bench, so lonesome she missed the company 
of a homeless shopping bag woman. Even in the bad days in Limerick 
she always had an open hand and an open door and why couldn’t I 
be like that to her? Frank McCourt