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Remembering the Mick From Morrisania

Lasher Lane

    “They put that stone on top of you to make sure you stay down,” was what I always remember my grandfather Joe saying whenever the subject of headstones or cemeteries came up. The man, who had never seemed to mind the disparaging slang he directed towards himself whenever he’d greet acquaintances with a firm handshake and a genuine smile as “the Mick from Morrisania,” had finally surrendered after surviving sixty-nine years and thirteen heart attacks. Yes, thirteen. He was a medical marvel, and when it was asked of my grandmother that his heart be donated to science, she did so, although with some reservation.
    My mom yelled at us to keep quiet and stay still as we sat in the funeral home, my brother and I in our extremely uncomfortable suits and ties, and her green hair coincidentally complementing the large spray of green carnations by the casket, my grandfather’s favorite.
    Being so young and at my first wake, I found the whole process a little creepy when I learned the term “wake” was originally used to mean a waiting period in case the dead might wake up. If my brother Will and I had to leave the room for any reason like to use the funeral home’s restroom, find the water fountain or whatever, before we’d enter again, we’d be sure to check the morbid, perfectly angled, tiny mirrors, or “loved one locators,” that were set outside the doorway transom corners of each viewing room, framing only the facial area of the deceased, to see if my grandfather might have decided to open his eyes while we were gone. And if that wasn’t creepy enough, with the New York gravediggers’ strike that July, the funeral home had to hold him over longer than they had expected, and after a three day wake turned into four, according to the undertaker, my grandfather’s stitched lips were starting to separate, giving them no choice but to close the coffin lid. I took this man’s word for it without having to look. Surely I would miss my grandfather, we all would, but I didn’t want to remember him that way: dead and literally coming apart. I’d rather have remembered him the way he was when he was alive.
    Always a jokester, he swore he’d come back as a fly and “bug” us. I remember that summer he died, there was a certain fly that followed us from room to room, never leaving us alone, constantly in our face, never seeming to want to be released outside, so we all started calling it “Joe.” It wasn’t until late fall when the weather turned cold that it would finally disappear.
    Even though I was only seven when he passed away, how could I ever forget him when during those first years of my life he and my grandmother would leave the South Bronx every weekend to be with us in our small town across the river. In summer, he’d sit under the giant black ash in our front yard, escaping the heat, while I’d watch him exist on his sparse daily supply of whisky, cigars and nitroglycerin, popping the tabs as often, it seemed, as my younger brother, Will and I could pull our Candy Buttons off paper.
    He’d bring those “hand-rolled” cigars on weekends to share with my other grandfather who lived next door to us. Being the same age, they had a lot in common. For one, they were both in the Great War. As they sat together smoking and drinking in the yard, Will and I would listen to them as they recounted their experiences about a place they called No Mans-Land, a place full of suffocating mud and mustard gas. They also each had wives that were two decades younger than themselves, and they both loved boats, which worked out well since my other grandfather owned the marina across from our house. The two couples, my German grandparents and my Irish grandmother and Italian grandmother became fast friends, spending summer nights reminiscing by singing old songs like “Wait ‘til the Sun Shines Nellie” and “In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree.” They were songs that were strange to my ears, nothing like what Elvis or Buddy Holly were singing. The other three were tone-deaf, but my Irish grandfather had once been in a barbershop quartet. The birds would always become silent when the singing started. I don’t know if it was the singing that scared them, or the birds simply became silent because they were amazed at the lack of harmonies they were hearing.
    Eventually though, my grandparents would be forced to move into our furnished basement full-time when my retired grandfather, his heart damaged from diptheria he’d most likely gotten from sleeping with corpses when he was young and homeless, had become too ill and senile to be left alone in their Bronx apartment. My grandmother would keep her New York accounting job with the A & P, which she’d always much rather refer to as the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company. Even the move across the river didn’t stop her. She’d commute daily on buses and trains, while my mom would keep an eye on my grandfather during the day.
    It was 1957. Sputnik was launched and the Space Race began. Eisenhower was president, and American families were measuring themselves up against the Nelsons and the Cleavers. My mom had put on a lot of weight during that year, caring for my grandfather and also mebecause of my serious accident. She didn’t seem to want to bother getting dressed anymore, and spent morning, noon and night in what she called “dusters” with snaps for buttons. It was a Mother’s Day she’d never forget when I set off for my friend’s house just around the corner with my metal pail and shovel. I was forbidden to cross the street, and it wouldn’t have been necessary to do so in order to reach my friend’s house since he lived on the same side. I’d gone back and forth that way almost every day, but that day was different. A German Shepherd was coming towards me on that side of the street, the same dog who had bitten my friend badly on the neck just the week before when she’d attempted to deliver Girl Scout cookies. This dog had somehow gotten out of the yard. I dashed into the road and in front of a car that was going pretty fast. The driver, a district attorney, left me there and when confronted by police later would say he thought he’d hit an animal. A neighbor had witnessed the whole thing from her window. She’d seen the car, then saw me being thrown a half-block into the air, landing on my head and on the metal pail, which would slice almost completely through my six year-old thighbone. It was only when my dad saw Fritz, our dog, in a move most unusual for him, scale the front gate, and he found where the dog had ran off to that my parents would know what had happened. How else would they have known since there were no screeching brakes? The driver never stopped, never even slowed down. As Fritz sat faithfully by my side in the pool of blood that was leaking rapidly from my head, I remember being really relieved to hear the ambulance sirens but trying really hard to fight sleep, as the paramedics yelled at me all the way to the hospital to stay awake.
    My head injury was so severe that the doctor’s orders were I had to remain lying down for almost a full year, even while eating, then gradually getting to a sitting position and using a wheelchair because I wasn’t allowed to walk. My mother found that trying to keep a six year-old still was not an easy task, neither was the newly-added burden of attending to my grandfather’s needs who’d become like a child himself. All those months recovering, I’d watch from my vantage point on the couch, as she would go through her same daily routine of caring for me and him, which in the mornings included setting out his favorite cereal, Sugar Pops, while she’d turn the small black and white TV that she’d strategically placed above the refrigerator to hopefully hold his attention and prevent him from slipping out the front door while she wasn’t looking so she could also attend to me, help my brother Will get ready for school, and make sure the dog wasn’t eating any of our furniture. It eventually got so bad with my grandfather trying to escape at all hours, even during the middle of the night, that my father had to reverse all the doorknobs, and we had to use keys, locking ourselves in, that we kept hidden from him whenever we needed to go out. Then when he could no longer escape, he began getting into bed with my parents at night, saying that there was a short, fat guy in his bed who wouldn’t stop snoring. That short, fat guy was my grandmother. It had been many years since she’d resembled the flapper-dressing, Louise Brooks look-alike he’d married. Countless nights I’d hear my parents gently guiding him back to his own bed, my grandmother snoring loudly, oblivious to it all.
    Housebound, while my grandmother and father went off to work, the highlight of my mom’s day quickly became centered around when the dark, handsome young doctor, in an expensive-looking suit, carrying his giant black bag and wearing his stethoscope like an accessory, would make housecalls to check on my grandfather and me. After examining us both, he’d stand in the kitchen, striking a male model-like pose while he made small talk with my mother, smoked a cigarette, and drank coffee. She’d suddenly become all giddy. I’d never seen her act that way with my dad. And then there were the two bakery trucks that would deliver, one to the front door and one to the back. Friends would stop by for coffee and some of that cake, but mostly to check on all of us. And as soon as they’d leave, she’d clear the teacups and cake plates from the table, and then she’d cry quietly by the sink, trying to hide her misery from them, and she thought from me, but I knew she felt trapped with no car, little money and nothing to look forward to but caring for us. How could she not, after coming from such an active life in the city, working as a secretary, dining and dancing with friends at clubs like the Paramount and the Apollo to such a small, off-the-map town, its only social offerings being countless old man bars, card parties where hick wives sat with their pretentious cigarette holders, mimicking Hollywood actresses on TV in a world so far removed from their own, or talent shows at the American Legion put on by men dressing up as women, which she thought to herself that they seemed to enjoy a little too much. Even more reason to cry was that most American women were being led to believe that Gentlemen did really prefer blondes, and in her attempt to look like Marilyn, something went wrong with the dye process again and this time, instead of platinum, my mom’s hair had turned pink. If that wasn’t enough, the diet pills her friend gave her didn’t seem to be erasing the effects of all those countless bakery products the way she’d hoped.

***

    My mom actually knew the moment my grandfather had died. His last weeks were spent in a New York hospital, and while my grandmother and father had to be at work, my mom would take buses and trains every day to visit. In the end, he didn’t even recognize her or us and didn’t know who he was or where he was. He became violent and uncontrollable, having to be tied to the bed. One Sunday, my father suggested a much needed respite, so we went to the Jersey shore to spend a day on the boardwalk. Before we even got there, my mom told my dad that she had the feeling there was something wrong and to quickly find a payphone. She had the strongest urge that he died, and when she got my grandmother on the line, she found out she was right.
    Now with my grandfather gone and myself finally being able to return to school, my mom could return to some sort of life, hopefully one that didn’t include dusters and crying. But we soon found my grandmother would be the one crying. Every day when she’d come home from work, she’d ask to be left alone and then retreat to her basement apartment, put on her Perry Como and Frank Sinatra records, and start sobbing loudly and dramatically. I guess being a hundred percent Italian, she couldn’t help grieving like one, too. That was the difference between her and my mom; my mom was half-Irish, and that part of her, like most Irish who’d rather suffer in silence and not show their pain or grief, made her cry more quietly.
    “There she goes again!” my mom would say when we’d hear the wailing coming from below. One day, Will and I went downstairs to see if she was okay because we heard the music playing but no crying. We found her sitting on her bed methodically packing up my grandfather’s clothes and going through a pile of old photos he’d kept in a shoebox. She’d been holding onto his things for almost a year. As I sat down with Will squeezing between us, she put the shoebox on my lap, smiling as she wiped her eyes with a tissue.
    I untied the pile and started to go through them. The first one was of two little boys who stared out at me from the photo and looked about the same age as me but were disheveled, dirty and scared. I recognized the younger one as my grandfather. This wasn’t the grandfather I knew. Though easily excitable, he was always confident, well-dressed, and constantly obsessed with his appearance. He never went without a haircut and manicure, and he was always polishing his shoes. He had used wrinkle cream long before men considered beauty products. Some would even compare him to Diamond Jim Brady because he always dressed so well, although I’m sure my grandfather never owned a diamond-studded umbrella like Jim, but he’d forever jingle the little change he had in his pockets so at least people might think he was wealthy.
    My grandmother told Will and me that the photo was of him and his older brother James when they’d just come to America with their parents. He never mentioned he had a brother, or that Will and I had an uncle. They’d come from Waterford on a ship, barely surviving three months huddled in the filthy conditions of steerage. They settled in the splendid and awe-inspiring South Bronx section known as Morrisania, named for Gouveneur Morris and Lewis Morris, who had signed the Declaration of Independence. She went on to explain that even though she didn’t know him until they were both adults, they’d grown up in the same place, and they’d each witnessed the Bronx growing with them. First, its lush Bathgate Woods, rural farmlands and quaint cottages, one of which Edgar Allan Poe would take his TB-stricken wifeto breathe the clean “country air.” Then later on, the completion of the new subway connectingthe Bronx to Manhattan, the Grand Concourse modeled after the Champs-Elysses, the Hub withits vaudeville theaters, movie palaces and shops, Fordham Road’s tree-lined avenues where the largest collection of elaborately ornamental Art Deco and Moderne styles of architecture couldbe found in one place, and finally, the $ 4 million Loew’s Paradise, its dark blue ceilingembedded with lightbulbs, resembling a star-filled night sky, while a cloud machine pumped continous simulated clouds across it. Now I understood why he never referred to himself as the “Mick from Waterford.” He had tremendous pride in his little section of America. What New Yorker didn’t?
    He’d be constantly amazed at what that entertaining borough of the city had to offer but would soon learn that everything that glittered wasn’t gold, that this sentiment of generosity and manufactured amenities offered were not meant for the Irish, especially the Irish Catholic; a sentiment that seemed to be masked behind a veil of American patriotism, making the Irish immigrants the recipients of burned churches, tauntings, and prejudice equating them to animals with signs that read, “No dogs or Irish need apply.”
    When he learned the motto of the Bronx was “Ne cede malis,” or “Do not give in to evil,” my grandfather wondered what exactly was meant by that, considering the hatred and lack of respect Irish Catholics had been shown since they’d set foot in America. He was puzzled as he thought back to his first welcoming sight of the Statue of Liberty in the harbor. Even more puzzling were his own kind who spoke Gaelic: the “runners” who were nothing but con-artists and ran onto the ships as soon as they had docked at Ellis Island and grabbed the bags of the newcomers who were themselves too confused, sick and weak from their long journey to know they were being swindled. The runners would promise them shelter in filthy, crowded rooms for four times more than if they’d rented from a non-Irishman. My grandfather and his family were lucky to have been forewarned, though, and found their own tenement on the waterfront, and although it was crowded, it was close to the docks where Joe’s dad would find work.
    My grandmother said that Joe’s brother, James, was happy sitting in school all day and taking directions. He had dreams of growing up to be a New York City policeman. Joe didn’t like to take direction from anyone.Without his parent’s knowledge, he eventually stopped going to school, and the days when he should have been there, he wandered the neighborhood instead, ducking into alleys and stores whenever he’d see a policeman that might question why he wasn’t in class. He’d ride the street cars or go down to the bath houses and feed the goats, or to Indian Lake to climb the rocks. Sometimes he’d go down to the Bronx Iron Foundry and watch them fashion lions and dragons out of metal.
    My grandmother continued with her story, telling us that things were going pretty well with his father’s job and his mother’s paid sewing work at home when his father died suddenly in a dock accident, and within a month of this happening his mother died of pneumonia. Then things would get even worse for Joe when his older brother, James had fulfilled his dream, becoming a policeman for the city and informed my grandfather that he was getting married. Joe could no longer live with him and his new wife in the house that they once shared as a brothers. So at fifteen Joe became one of the many child vagrants roaming the city streets, sharing the contentsof trash cans with rats, and sleeping under stairwells, even in a hearse when allowed. I decided my uncle James was probably a person better not knowing. My grandmother went on to explain that my grandfather became a bootblack, another word for a shoeshiner, learning the trade from other Irish orphans, some much younger than himself. But the older ones taught him the art of pickpocketing, which on most days paid much better than shoeshining. While he shined other’s shoes, though, his own were stuffed with found pieces of paper to keep the rain and snow from seeping into the holes in the bottom. Getting caught pickpocketing was what had him placed in the Catholic Home for Boys, a menacing mansion with its secret miseries kept well-hidden in its endless maze of hallways and rooms. His gloomy new home quickly became one he shared with orphans, the poor, and juvenile criminals, the latter of which he would be considered.
    He’d always remind me and my brother that we didn’t know how easy we had it, and I was guessing he was comparing our childhood to his, and the years he spent with the Brothers at the Home, the same Irish Catholic Brothers that ran the Industrial schools in Ireland, where the parents had no idea the harm their children were enduring until decades later when reports of widespread physical and sexual abuse would finally surface. He’d elaborate about being spit on, punched or whipped on a regular basis or being forced to take very cold or very hot showers. He’d witness some younger boys being hung by their clothes from hooks while beaten. Not him, though; they’d know better than to hang him from any hook because he’d fight back, he’d tell us.
    But I always surmised something much worse must have happened, some unspeakable act, because I can remember one weekend when he and my grandmother were visiting us in our small town, attending Mass with us, and the priest was walking down the aisle, saw my grandfather coming in the opposite direction and pointed at him to genuflect. My grandfather stared at him, gritting his teeth with obvious contempt, while he said loud enough for everyone to hear, “I don’t get on my knees for anyone, let alone a priest” which made me wonder years later what could have caused such a blatant act of disgust and disrespect, especially in front of the entire small town’s congregation. Surprisingly, the priest had no answer for that, and to this day I can still see the priest’s face as I looked up at him in fear, waiting for him to yell, as I held on tight to my grandfather’s hand, myself frozen from fear in a half-genuflect, while he quickly brushed past my grandfather and me in silence, like a puppy with his tail between his legs.

***

    Holidays and his birthdays came and went, my grandmother told us, and his brother, James, and his wife hadn’t bothered to visit him even once in the entire three years he’d been in that hellhole. He knew of no other relatives that he could rely on who might live in the Bronx. He’d lost touch with some of the friends he’d made in the orphanage that were either sent to do agriculture work for the many farmers in the borough, or went to live with families who’d adopted them. In his last year at the home, because he’d been known to talk back and fight back, he’d been one of the unfortunate ones who’d been ordered to work on Hart Island. Thinking my grandmother meant “heart,” I thought to myself that an island with a name like that didn’t sound so bad until she said that it was a sad place, mostly a large cemetery for the poor and unclaimed.
    He’d work beside Riker’s inmates. His job was to dig graves for babies and children, but only Catholic ones since they had to be buried separately, away from the rest because in the eyes of God they were more special, one of many things he’d find irked him about the Catholic religion.
    When he was eighteen, he was finally old enough to leave the prison he’d known for a home and join the world again, but he’d never felt so alone. The first thing he did when he left was to go down to Third Avenue and watch the U.S. war planes drop pretend bombs that were really weighted Bronx newspapers. Besides the crowds of onlookers that day, there was a magician named The Great Dunninger that was one of the attractions. The magician’s job was to guess what was in a “mystery chest” from France that was locked and guarded by Navy men, and he also would tell the fortunes of anyone that was willing to hear their future told. My grandmother told us that even though Jean Harlow (an actress with light blonde hair just like Marilyn Monroe’s) was always one of our grandfather’s favorites, this magician had told him that many years from that day, after convincing himself that he’d die a lonely, old bachelor with no family, he’d meet and marry a dark-haired woman much younger than himself. Just when the story was getting interesting, my mom called down to the basement looking for us, reminding us that the Ed Sullivan show was starting, and after that we had to go right to bed since we both had school in the morning.
    That night I fell asleep and dreamed of my grandfather. I was beside him, but I couldn’t tell at first if we were in a war trench or a mass grave. Then he began passing me small pine boxes. The whole time he was passing me boxes, he was singing one of those old songs he used to sing; this time it was “My Wild Irish Rose.” The endless boxes kept coming, so many of them. My job was to stack them on top of each other carefully. I woke from the dream startled, and even though I was fully awake, I could still hear him singing as if he were right there in the room.

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