Singing My Him Song. Malachy McCourt

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Dedication

       I dedicate this book to

       Siobhan, Malachy, Nina, Conor, and Cormac, my children.

       And to Fiona, Mark, and Adrianna, my grandchildren,

       for filling my heart with joy, pride, and breathless love.

      WILLOWBROOK WARS

      A special dedication to some of the warriors of the Willowbrook Wars. It was a place of horror, brutality, and awful suffering with the Stars and Stripes high above on a flagpole in ignorance of the carnage below. When some parents, with the help of some doctors and other workers and a few legal minds, began a desperate revolution, they were called communist Vietcong terrorists. But that they persisted in the movement proves that all citizens are created equal and have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, even if handicapped, mentally or physically. So, to those who rose up and exposed Willowbrook for the place of despair and death it had become, All Hail! And to the thousands of men, women, and children who suffered and died there, Rest in Peace, and may the atrocities committed there never occur again!

      Time, memory, space, and human fallibility prevent me from mentioning all of the Willowbrook warriors and the names of the victims, but here are just a few: Rosalie Amoroso, Eleanore Ash, Dr. Bill Bronston, Kathy Bronston, Bernard Carabello, Tim Casey, Gene Eisner, Bruce Ennis, Ira Fisher, Jerry Gavin, Willie Mae Goodman, Charlie Haney, Connie Haney, Chris Hansen, Jerry Isaacs, Jane Kurtin, Elizabeth Lee, Marie Marcario, Mark Marcario, Anthony Pinto, Ida Rios, Geraldo Rivera, Murray Schneps, Vicki Schneps, Dr. Mike Wilkins, and many more. Thank you for your dedication to the best of humanity, and for your compassion and humor.

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Part I Behind Bars

       Part II Stages

       Part III How It Works

       Keep Reading

       Acknowledgments

       Also by the Author

       Copyright

       About the Publisher

Epigraph

       For he comes the human child

       To the waters and the wild

       With a fairy hand in hand

       From a world more full of

       Weeping than he can understand

      —W. B. YEATS

Part I

       Behind Bars

      On Sunday afternoons in 1963, the summer I worked in a Hamptons hostelry called the Watermill, myself and assorted staff would adjourn to the beach, armed with a largish cooler chock-full of ice, vodka, and orange juice. One of our number, Dan Cohalan, did a creditable job with the guitar, and, as we knew a reasonable number of songs with choruses, we were able to gather quite a number of children around to join in, and their parents were delighted to have us in loco parentis so they could go off walking, swimming, or having affairs in the dunes.

      What a joy it was to hear forty or fifty silvery six- and seven-year-old voices raised in bawdy song, and sung with as much conviction as if they knew what they were singing:

       Oh, I’ve got a cousin Daniel,

       And he’s got a cocker spaniel,

       If you tickled him in the middle,

       He would lift his leg and piddle.

       Did you ever see,

       Did you ever see,

       Such a funny thing before?

       D’ye know my Auntie Anna,

       And she’s got a grand piana,

       Which she rams, aram, arama,

       ’Til the neighbors say, “God damn her!”

      I taught them the occasional limerick, as well.

       Rosalina, a pretty young lass,

       Had a truly magnificent ass.

       Not rounded and pink,

       As you possibly think,

       It was grey, had long ears, and ate grass.

      I can only assume that the parents never asked to hear the new repertoire the silvery-voiced little ones brought home from their sandy Sunday school.

      Not a few adults joined us, too, as we were the jolliest gathering on that strand. Two very attractive young women, Louise Arnold and Lynn Epstein, plunked themselves down on the sand at Cohalan’s invitation, and soon became regulars. They revealed that they had produced some Off Broadway shows, which sparked my interest. СКАЧАТЬ