Angela's ashes door Frank McCourt

Title: Angela’s Ashes Author: Frank McCourt Summary: New York – Angela Sheehan meets Malachy McCourt at a party given by Dan MacAdorey. He marries Angela Sheehan because of the MacNamara sisters (on the feast of St. Joseph – a bitter day in March). In August Francis was born ( Frank). A year later another child was born – Malachy Gerard. Then the twins are born, Oliver & Eugene. Dad hasn’t got a job – he drinks all the time. Then he does get a job but after a while he drinks the wages. There’s a new baby, Margaret. Dad stops drinking, he’s very happy, Angela too. But Margaret dies after seven weeks. They sell the body for food. Malachy & Angela are very unhappy. Minnie MacAdorey and Mrs. Leibowitz take a bit care of the children and give them some food. The MacNamara sisters come and they see that it can’t go one like this. They send a letter to Angela’s mother. They have to go back to their native land. They go on a ship. County Antrim – Grandpa is very happy with them, grandma isn’t. So they’re going to Dublin. They turn to Mr. Charles Heggarty for money but he can’t help them. They run into some policemen. They can spend the night there and get some food. They go and see the statue of Cuchulain. They go to Limerick, where Grandma meets them. She’s not pleased with them. They can’t stay there so they go and look for somewhere else to stay  a furnished room on Windmill Street. Grandma paid the rent for two weeks and gave them some things. Fleas in the bed, not a good room. Mam loses her child (she was pregnant again). Dad goes to the Labour Exchange for the dole. The next day mam takes Frankie and Malachy to the St. Vincent de Paul Society. They get a docket for food and coal. Then Oliver gets sick, they take them to hospital but he dies. Frank and Malachy go to Grandma. Eugene likes Pa Keating very much. Dad drinks all the dole money again. Then mam wants to move because everything in Windmill Street reminds her of Oliver. They move to Hartstonge Street. Frank and Malachy go to school, Leamy’s National School. The masters hit you all the time with a stick when you do something wrong. Six months after Oliver went, Eugene died too. Mam says she can’t spend another minute in that room on Hartstonge Street. She sees Eugene there all the hime. They move to Roden Lane, the house at the end of the lane, where there is a lavatory (for the whole lane). There’s no furniture so mam goes to St. Vincent de Paul Society to see if there’s any chance of getting furniture. They get two beds, one sideboard with a mirror, a table and two chairs. Dad goes to sign for the dole again. They get sixteen shillings, way too less. Two weeks before Christmas, the kitchen etc are all wet. They should stay upstairs and call it Italy there. They have a pig’s head for Christmas. They have to go search for coal on Dock Road. They get another baby, Michael. Brought by the angel on the seventh step. Frank tells everything to that angel. Before Easter they move back downstairs. Dad gets his first job at the cement factory and mam is happy. But Dad drinks the wages again and he loses the job. Frank has to prepare for his First Communion. They learn everything about it in school. One night Mikey Molloy tells Frank and Malachy a story about Cuchulain. On how Emer became Cuchulain’s wife. (‘dirty’ story) The day before First Communion they have to go to St. Joseph’s Church for First Confession. Frank tells about the things he did and about the story, it seems it’s not so bad after all. First Communion is the happiest day of your life because of the Collection (you can go at houses and collect some money) and James Cagney at the Lyric Cinema (when you have enough money you can go and see a film). Frank is almost late that day, his hair won’t lie down and he throws up his First Communion breakfast. He has to into the confession box again because of his Grandma. She doesn’t know what to do with the throwing up in her backyard. After all it’s too late for The Collection. He ran into Mikey Molloy and he does go to see a film. Grandma won’t talk to Mam anymore because of what I did with God in her backyard. Mam is friendly with Bridey who lives next door with her mother and father. They gossip a lot. Uncle Pat brings a man home, Bill Galvin. Every morning Grandma cooks Bill’s dinner and takes it to him at the lime kiln. Then Frankie has to do it, for sixpence. But he eats the dinner on the way there and then he doesn’t get any money for a fortnight. Mam and Dad get false teeth and one night the boys try them on but Malachy can’t get them out and he almost chokes on it. Frankie has to go to Mrs. O’Connor’s Irish dancing classes. He doesn’t want to become like Cyril Benson. Billy Campbell convinces him not to go to dancing class. They go to the cinema instead. At home Frank makes up a dance he learned. One day he buys a toffee but because it’s stuck he has to tell his parents what he did. He has to go to the confession box again. Question Quigley tells him he has to go to Redemptorist Church. All the boys go there. He can’t be an altar boy. He’s in the fourth class with Mr. O’Neill. He peels an apple every day. One day, Fintan gets the apple as a reward. He gives a piece to Quigley, Clohessy and McCourt. They go at each other’s homes at noon but one day, Clohessy and Frank are late for school. But at school they found out. Paddy and Frank go to Paddy’s house and stay there ‘till his mother comes looking for him. Paddy’s father used to dance with Angela. He’s very sick now and that doesn’t make Angela much happier. Dad keeps losing his jobs and keeps drinking the dole money. A friend of Frank’s, Mickey, always gets a week off from school when someone dies in his family. Now he’s worried because his sister is about to die in the school holidays. He asks his friends to pray and then they could come to the wake. After all they couldn’t come and they hated Mickey. Grandma thinks Frank should work to earn some money. He helps Uncle Pat with handing out some papers. He gets to know Mr. Timoney and he can read to him for a sixpence. Now he earns a shilling a week and mam’s very delighted. But then Uncle Pat Sheehan doesn’t want Frank anymore, he’s too expensive. And Mr. Timoney was carted off to the City Home. So Frank lost his two jobs. One day in July there’s a new baby. It’s a boy but when he’s only a few days old he nearly chokes and dies. Dad saves him. He’s named Alphonsus Joseph (Alphie). Dad drinks the money that was sent for the baby. In school Frank gets prepared to go to St. Joseph’s Church for his Confirmation. On that day he can go for another Collection. But in school Quasimodo asks for a shilling and then we get to see his naked sisters. But Mikey falls out of the tree and they get caught. After all they still get to go to church for their Confirmation. But on that day Frank’s nose starts bleeding and he feels dizzy. He doesn’t feel like eating at all. The doctor’s on a holiday and the other doctor’s say there’s nothing wrong. But he keeps on bleeding and when Dr. Troy comes and Frank has to go to the Fever Hospital. He has typhoid fever. In hospital he gets to know Patricia Madigan. She has diphtheria. They talk to each other, though it’s not allowed. She tells him a poem but then the nurse finds out and Frank is put upstairs in a large room with twenty empty beds. He can’t talk to anyone anymore. Two days later Patricia dies in the lavatory. Frank feels very sorry. Seamus, the man who cleans the floor, tells him the rest of the poem. After fourteen weeks Frank gets to go home. Then he realizes his dad hasn’t got a job though his mother brought him chocolate bars, which they normally couldn’t afford. Frank still has to stay in bed for a while but in October he wants to go back to school. But the new headmaster thinks Frank should go back to fifth class, because he missed two months of school. He has to sit in the same class as Malachy then and Frank isn’t happy at all. But when he has to write a composition, it’s so good he can go back to sixth class. The lavatory at their house keeps smelling so bad that Mam thinks they could die of it. They get a dog, Lucky and he kills all the rats in the house. Frank can go and have his Christmas dinner in the Fever Hospital but he has to eat alone and his mam thinks that’s not a way to treat a kid. Then Finn, the horse that lives next door, gets sick and he has to be killed. Michael screams and can’t bear it. But he’s killed anyway. Mam says she’s had enough children and doesn’t want any more. Dad says he’ll go to England for a job. But he doesn’t send any money, the other fathers do. Frank gets an eye infection and he has to go to the City Home Hospital. After a month he can go home again. Because they haven’t got any money, mam has to go to the Dispensary again. At first they don’t want to give a thing because mam still has a husband in England but after a while they do get some food. Mam gets sick and Frank goes to steal some lemonade and food to keep everyone happy. Frank tries to take care of everyone in the house. They go and collect from houses and at one house there’s a rich woman who asks a lot of questions about them. Because she thinks they can’t go on like that, she calls a Guard. So Guard Dennehy comes banging on the door. After a while he gets in the house and sees it can’t go on like that. Mam has pneumonia and has to go to the Hospital. The children have to stay with Aunt Aggie. They aren’t treated in a good way at all. After a while, Dad shows up again and they can come home. After two days mam comes home. But dad can’t stay and has to go back to England. Once he sends them money but after that he sends them nothing. So mam has to start begging. They haven’t got any money. Frank and his friends start a soccer team (The Red Hearts of Limerick), on their first match Frank scores. He gets to know a little bit more about how he got to this world. Frank gets another job with Mr. Hannon. They have to deliver bags of coal. Because of his bad eyes, his mother doesn’t want Frank to deliver coal anymore. He’s blinking all the time now so he can get a stronger eye. He can still keep his job. But his eyes keep getting worse and he can’t work anymore, his mother doesn’t want it. Mr. Hannon has to go to hospital; it’s a case of gangrene. And Frank can’t visit him because it’s not allowed. Dad sends a letter and says he’s coming home two days before Christmas. He says he’s a better man now. Mam and I go to the railway station to meet him. But he doesn’t show up ‘till the next day. He drank all the money. He leaves the same day to London. They haven’t got anything so mam has to beg again. It breaks her heart. Grandma’s next-door neighbour, Mrs. Purcell, has a radio and sometimes Frank goes to sit by the window to listen to it. He can even come in. He loves it. Mam can’t pay the rent for the house anymore, they’re four weeks behind. Suddenly Malachy pulls a loose board off the wall between the two upstairs rooms. They might as well chop it up for the fire now. They start to take more boards from the wall ‘till someday a part of the ceiling comes down and the house almost collapses. They are thrown out of the house. Grandma hasn’t got any place so they have to go to mam’s cousin; Gerard Griffin (Laman). In the beginning Laman doesn’t mind they’re in his house but after a while they have to do all kinds of stuff. Mam even has to sleep with him. The Irish army is looking for boys who are musical and would like to train in the Army School of Music. They accept Malachy and he goes off to Dublin to be a soldier and play the trumpet. The boys from Frank’s class are going on a weekend cycling trip to Killaloe. He wants to borrow Laman’s bicycle. He has to clean his chamber pot to get it. He doesn’t like it at all but Laman says the bike is his anytime. Frank still has to go to the library to get books for Mam and Laman and sometimes he reads a bit himself. In school, the teacher, Mr. O’Halloran says Frank should become a priest; his Mam has to come and see him. He tells Mam that she should take him up to the Christian Brothers, but when they go there, the door is slammed in their faces. Laman comes home drunk and he yells at everyone. Frank didn’t have the time to clean the chamber pot and Laman starts to yell at him too. He can’t have the bike anymore. Frank gets angry and Laman starts hitting him. Frank can’t stay there anymore so he leaves at night. He goes to Uncle Pat and he can stay there. It’s July so school is over forever. He gets a note from mam, she says Laman isn’t angry anymore and he can come home, but he doesn’t want to. He starts wandering around a bit and he goes to the library again. He discovers a book where there are some sexual things in. He starts looking up words in the dictionary and he gets to know a bit more. But then Miss O’Riordan wants to know what he’s doing and he gets caught, he’s kicked out of the library. Grandma is dead and he doesn’t feel comfortable sleeping in her bed with her clothes on. He wants to be a telegram boy at the post office. Frank goes to the post office for a job and he can start on Monday. He has to bring telegrams to people. At the end of the week he gets his first pound. He’s very proud because now he’s a man. Michael, Alphie and Mam stop to go to Laman and bit by bit they’re moving in themselves. The Abbot pays the rent every week. Malachy comes back home because he’s fed up and he doesn’t want to play the trumpet anymore. One day he has to deliver a telegram to the Carmody family. They have a beautiful daughter, Theresa. She’s seventeen but she has the consumption. When he delivers the telegram she asks him in and they have sex on the green sofa. That happens a few times but then Theresa dies and Frank feels very sorry. One day he has to deliver a telegram to the Harrington house. His wife is dead and Mr. Harrington is very angry and confused. Frank doesn’t want to do anything wrong but it turns out different. He’s fired. But then the post office receives a letter from the parish priest. He can continue his job ‘till his sixteenth birthday. Every Saturday morning he keeps going to confession. He has to deliver a telegram to Mrs. Brigid Finucane. He’s asked to write some threatening letters to people who won’t pay. He’s very successful because almost everyone pays at once. Now he earns even more and he’s very delighted about it. Now he can really save some money because he wants to go to America. He can take an exam for the post office but he goes to the Eason’s office, there’s a smart boy wanted. He gets the job. He can drink his first pint because he’s sixteen now. When he gets home he argues with mam and he hits her in the face. They don’t speak to each other anymore. He goes to confession and he’s forgiven for what he’s done. Malachy goes to England. XVIII. He’s got almost the money to go to America. One night he finds Mrs. Finucane dead. He takes the money out of her purse and can go to America. He gets to know a woman, Frieda. He settles there.