POORIRMA

Marie Sheppard Williams

Irma was the baby. She may have been borderline retarded, but we did
not admit or allow such designations within the family. So my Aunt Irma was just
Aunt Irma, and she was a charmer: tall, graceful as a poplar, with short brown
finger-waved hairI saw this in old sepia photographs taken during the Roaring
Twentiesa slight hilarious cast in one eye that made her look knowing and sly,
a mouth that quirked down on one side, a simpering sly and knowing voice, and
a thought process that went directly to what she wanted with a certainty of aim
that still astounds me in recall.
Irma was the one of themof uswho knew how to get what she
wanted.
When she was about forty-fivejust when everyone thought she was
past itshe set her sights on a drunken Irish Catholic man named Francis
Aloysius Byrnes from a farm near Elk River, and by God she got him.
I dont know how Irma met Francisat church, perhaps? at a bingo
game? Irma loved bingo. Or did he come into the candy store on West
Broadway where she worked part time? She met him, we can surely say, in one
of the ominously accidental ways that people do meet and marry in this society.
After she was married to Francis, Irma decided that she wanted to adopt
a childGod in His wisdom had made her sterileand Catholic Welfare gave
her Raoul, bright and quirky and delinquent.
*
I have a photograph of Irma that other family membersincluding
Raoultry from time to time to get away from me. It is a picture of her on her
First Communion day. She seems in that picture to be somewhat older than the
average First Communicant. Well, this would have been true of course because
the prerequisite for making your F.C. in those days was that you had attained
the age of reason and could thereby be presumed capable of responsibly
committing a sin. Age seven was formally considered to be the right age: by age
seven you were a responsible thinking organism, not entirely finished, you
understand, but good enough to sin.
It took Irma longer, apparently, to reach this coveted stage. Generation
after generation keens and clamors after that same apple, but Irma was too
simple to understand that the mark of a full human being is to crave knowledge.
Irmaluckycraved nothing that she did not have, or could not easily
get. She was the baby girl. She was what they called sickly. She was dumb.
Because of being sickly, she never went to school, but instead picked up
what literacy she hadnever very extensiveat home with her mother, my
grandmother.
In the photograph, she sits three-quarter-view on an ornate gilded
armchairthe photographers propfar from the solid square horsehair and oak
Volume 21, Number 1

SPRING 2009

phoebe

61

Poorirma
parlor furniture of her real life. Real lifethe designation does not seem to
apply to that picture, in which a little girl, dressed in chaste white cotton eyelet,
bends forward a little, towards the right of the picture, gazes downward forever,
never looks up, will never look up at us. White veiling and lace cascade from her
bent head. A boa of leavesmyrtle? ivy?crowns all and descends along her
arms to the arms of the ornate chair.
Her look is delicate, sensitive, serious, hidden. She is a child that never
wastoo good for this world is what they would say if such a child were real,
were incarnate.
So obviously the camera does after all, in spite of the myth, lie: since
Irma was quite real and not very good.
However did the photographer do it? I mean, that picture is something
else, a work of high art, a knockout. It should belong, or course, to Raoul, but I
will fight hand-to-hand anyone who tries to take it from me.
How do I happen to have it? Why, Irma gave it to me herself. I think she
knew that I had to have it. She was the kind who would know such things.
She was also the kind who, for sheer random mischief, would keep from
someone something that she knew that person had to have. Essentially I am
saying that she was cruel: there was that capability in her. In all the rest of us
too: thus why not in her? She was as I said, dumb, but not so dumb as to rule
out cruelty and all the rest of the major human attributes.
But in the case of the photograph, she declared one day that it was to be
mine. Raoul never entirely forgave me, never ceased to feel that he should have
it. As of course he should. He is perfectly right.
I do not however give it up, even though I feel considerable guilt about it.
I believe that the mark of an arrived adult is to be able to carry around a fairly
large load of guilt without falling over.
I carry this guilt easily and I keep the picture.
*
Why did Irma give Joan her First Communion picture? says my Aunt
Anna. Why did you, Irma?
Oh, well, she wanted it, says Irma.
Wanted it, says Anna: but why would she want it?
Oh, well, my mother sticks in, Joan was always fond of Irma. When Joan
was a child. Certainly you remember that.
Joan was crazy about me, says Irma. Simpers.
But she isnt any more, says Anna. She wouldnt give you the time of
day now.
Oh thats not true, says my mother.
Oh that is true, says Anna. Isnt it, Joan. (Yes, folks, believe it or not, I
am sitting right there, I am privy to this whole conversation.)
Well, I think Id give her the time of day, Aunt Anna, I say.
62

Poorirma
But its basically true that you dont like her the way you used to, Joan,
says Anna.
Well, I say: I was a child. People change. They dont stay children
forever. Irma was like another child to me when I was a child: of course I thought
she was wonderful, what could be more fun than being a child and having a
grown-up child for your aunt?
I have always been a child, Irma says, and smiles her crooked, crazy
smile.
So what happened? says Anna.
I grew up, I say. And Irma stayed the same. Irma didnt grow up. Thats
all. It isnt that I dont like her any more.
It isnt that she doesnt like me any more, says Irma, and smirks.
Still, says Anna: I still want to know why you gave her the picture.
Oh, says Irma: she wanted it so much.
Raoul wants it too, says Anna. Its Raouls right. To have that picture.
Oh, Raoul doesnt want it so much, says Irma: not so much.
Well, why did you want it, Joan? says Anna.
God, Anna, I dont know, I say. I guess because it is so beautiful. Its
one of the most beautiful photos Ive ever seen. . . .
And so sad: I could have said that too.
See? said Irma. She wanted it.
That doesnt make it right, says Anna.
*
When I say that Irma knew how to get what she wantedthat she was
the only sister among the five who knew how to do thisI do not mean to imply
that she had a wonderful life or anything like that. She did not have a wonderful
life. She had all in all I guess quite a terrible life. At any rate, she certainly got a
lot of sympathy for her lot. Everybody was sorry for Irma.
Poor Irma, that was practically her name: Poorirma.
Except for my mother: I dont know why everyone is so sorry for Irma, my
mother says.
Why poor Irma? she says.
Irma gets everything she wants. Says my mother, Elizabeth.
Irma did get everything she wanted.
The problem was that Irma was not very bright, in the ordinary sense,
and some of the things she wanted were good for her and some were not. Some
of the things she wanted were also not good for other people: Raoul, for
example. However, she got them anyway.
*
One day when Irma was quite old, maybe sixty-fivemy God, is that
quite old? next year I will be seventy-sevenanyway, when she was pretty old, I
63

Poorirma
came over to her house one day: the last house she lived in, the one on North
Dupont in Minneapolis.
I didnt come to see her. I came to see my mother, who lived with Irma
the last few years of Irmas life.
Who trimmed the lilacs? I said that day.
The lilacs in Irmas back yard had grown riotously for a few years past,
and one day Irma said they should be trimmed, and she kept saying it all that
spring and summer and all that fall, and still they were not trimmed, nothing ever
happened.
That day, though, they were trimmed. Beautifully.
So: Who trimmed the lilacs, I said.
Oh, the men from the Park Board did, Irma said.
Oh, sure, I said: Come on, who did you get to do it, did Raoul do it?
No, said Irma: the men from the Park Board.
We werethe three of us, my mother and Irma and mesitting around
the table in the kitchen by that time. I appealed to my mother: Come on, tell me,
I said. Who trimmed them?
Its true, said my mother: the men from the Park Board did it. My mother
looked sour.
But for heavens sake, I said. The men from the Park Board dont come
into peoples yards and trim lilacs, I said. I mean, they didnt trim anybody elses
lilacs, did they?
Only mine, said Irma. And smiled: her awful crooked slippery smile, one
step I have sometimes thought from an idiots.
Well for Gods sake, I said. How in the world did you get them to do it?
I asked them to, said Irma.
Its true, said my mother. Irma just asked them to.
Well, did you call them up or what, I said.
No, I didnt call them, said Irma. They were out there with their truck
cutting down a tree and I went out and asked them if they would trim my lilacs.
While they were at it.
While they were at it, I said.
Yes, she said.
I began to laugh. Well. I laughed until I choked so that Irma had to get
me a glass of water and my mother looked quite cross and Irma pounded me on
the back.
Honestly, Joan, my mother said. You dont have to laugh that hard. You
always did laugh too hard, even when you were a child, you were always choking
because you laughed too hard.
I do have to laugh that hard, dont I, Aunt Irma? I said. And laughed
some more. And choked and drank.
Irma laughed too.
I guess you do, she said. I guess you do have to laugh that hard.
64

Poorirma

*
People always seemed to me to be more or less standing in line to do
things for Irma. There was for exampleafter Francis died, this was, and Raoul
had left, when she was living alonea man next door (I never knew him by a
name, when she talked about him it was always just as the man next door, as in
The Man Next Door cut the lawn yesterday, or The Man Next Door fixed the back
window, Joan). Anyway, the man next door routinely did all her yard work and
handyman stuff.
Once when she broke her wrist, my father absolutely tore over to her
house to be, so to speak, and for the duration, her Right Arm. My mother was a
tiny bit pissed about that, but what could she say?after all, Irma was her own
baby sister. In a way it could be said that my father was doing it for her,
Elizabeth, my mother.
Even more remarkable was the performance of a friendit was always
very vague how Irma had met this friend. She just turned up precisely when she
was needed, as though she had been sent by God, which perhaps she wasa
friend named Marybeth, who came to the house often and did a lot of work for
Irma, did really heavy, really hard work inside the house (while The Man Next
Door was toiling away outside): washing clothes, washing walls, cleaning rugs,
etc. And she also cooked. For Irma. Yes. There are people in the world like
Marybeth. And they always find an Irma, who happily accepts all labor, all gifts,
as a right.
I always thought that there was some Basic Trust thing going on: that
Irma somehow managed to believe, in spite of much evidence to the contrary if
only she had looked around her, that the universe was benevolent; and that
belief was a magic lamp which, rubbed, set up sequences of events that
demonstratedfor Irmathat the universe was indeed her friend.
Irma, I thought, was onto something.
*
And the thing is, Irma knew exactly what she was doing. I feel sure of
this. She was not the innocent that people thought she was. I somehow feel
very, very sure that she knew what coups she pulled off. I feel sure that she
knew also that what she did along those lines other people could not do. And I
think she derived great personal satisfaction from this knowledge. So all in all, I
guess you could say that she lived a fairly satisfactory life. In that way, at least.
*
She decided, as I have told you, at age forty, to marry Francis. Within a
year, she was married. Francis ever afterward looked like a man who never
knew what hit him. In one way, Irmas decision to marry Francis was a bad
decision. Marrying Francis was a bad thing for her to want, because Francis was
65

Poorirma
a drunk and he beat her up from time to time when he was under, as they say,
the influence.
In another way it was good that she got what she wanted, which was to
be married and not have to work. People do not do well when they dont get
what they want; sometimes they dont do well even if they do get what they want,
but the not-getting is worse. Irma quit work at the candy store right after she was
married.
She stayed home and took care of my Grandma, and Francis took care
of both of them. My Uncle LukeAnnas husbandgot Francis a job at Grant
Battery, and Francis made good money. And since he only drank beer, and beer
was cheap, he didnt drink all of the money up. Quite a lot of it came to Irma.
*
Irma wanted a child and apparently could not have one of her own, and
so she applied to Catholic Welfare and they gave her Raoul, slight and dark,
Spanish looking, handsome, intelligent, musical, and delinquent. He was in
reform school three years after she got him.
Christ: what could Catholic Welfare have been thinking of?
Well, what could the men from the Park Board have been thinking of?
*
I wanted my father to dieFrancis, I mean, not my real father, Raoul
said to me after Irmas funeralshaken enough to talk for once.
He was drunk all the time and he hit my mother and he hit me. I could
hardly wait to be big enough to hit him back, but he didnt live long enough, I was
thirteen when he died and I wanted him to die, I wished him dead, I prayed for
him to die, and he did die, said Raoul, and I thought Id killed him.
What a terrible thing, Raoul, I said: how terrible for you. . .to think that. . .
*
I remember Franciss funeral like it happened yesterday. It was what I
think of as a typical Catholic funeral: maybe it wouldnt be so today, but this all
happened a long time ago. These days the Catholic church has changed so
much that its gotten almost as boring as the Lutherans.
First there was a wake, at which people who knew Francis or Irma or
indeed any other member of the familyeither familycame, knelt for a
strickenapparentlyminute by the open casket: Francis lying there with his
wire-rimmed spectacles on his face, looking peaceful as never in life. And then
they (the mourners, I mean, the bereaved) proceeded to have what certainly
appeared to be a marvelous time.
They got off the kneeling bench by the casket, crossed themselves
soberly, came down a step to the level of the waiting rows of chairs filled with
other family members and friends; got introduced all around; said things like: My,
66

Poorirma
doesnt he look good, doesnt he look peaceful, doesnt he look natural; and He
looks like hes just asleep, dont he, my goodness, I expected him to sit up when I
was kneeling there. And then they sat around chatting happily with people they
hadnt seen since the last funeral.
Then, of course, there was the actual burial, people crying in the rain, the
snow, etc., etc., prayers and what-have-you, and then the real point of the whole
thing: the party at the house, and, as befits the character of the deceasedit was
a drunken blast, everybody had a ball.
I personallyI was probably about twenty at the timedowned sixteen
glasses of cheap muscatel, absolutely, I was counting them; and the seventeenth
slipped through my fingers and smashed on the floor of the dining room.
Oh, look at Joan, my cousin Dolly saidit must have been DollyI think
Joan is tiddly!
Tiddly!
Oh, I am not, I slurred.
Oh, I was.
It was the first time I ever got drunk in full view of my mother, who was
scandalized, but who decided to overlook the whole incident, since it was after all
in a good cause: sending Francis off.
Irma also drank too much that day. She cried and cried: Francis was a
saint, she said, over and over, to anyone who would listen: Francis was a saint.
Francis was a saint? Oh, my. Once again I laughed and laughed until I
choked and had to be pounded on the back.
*
Irma had a kidney problem during part of her life, for a few weeks or
maybe months. Maybe as long as a year. She went down to General Hospital
Hennepin County Medical Center now, or HCMCin a special van that came for
her from MAOMinneapolis Age and Opportunitytwice a week and she spent
several hours on each of these days hooked up to a dialysis machine.
A dialysis machine! I said when I heard about it. My God. She must be
really sick.
Oh, Irma has always made a lot of fuss over nothing, said my mother.
It cant be nothing, I said, if they put her on a dialysis machine. They
dont put people on dialysis machines for nothing.
She likes it, said my mother. She wants to be on the machine. She eats
all the things shes not supposed to, salt and things, so she can be on the
machine.
Youre kidding, I said. Irma, do you really like dialysis? (Yes, Irma was
in on this conversation. We dont seem to care what anybody overhears in this
family.)
Well, I kind of do, says Irma.
67

Poorirma
Everybody else hates it, I said. Everybody else thinks its painful and
awful.
Well, it is painful and awful, says Irma.
Then how can you say you like it?
Its the doctor, my mother says.
The doctor? I say.
Isnt it the doctor? says my mother, to Irma.
Well, maybe, says Irma. And smiles: her dreadful, slack-jawed, gaptoothed, utterly charming smile.
What has the doctor got to do with it? I say.
Oh, well, the doctor likes me, says Irma. And tosses her head, and
titters. (Yes, titters, definitely.) And smiles her lopsided smile again.
He says Im his favorite girl, she says. And she tilts her head a bit to one
side and casts her eyes down, and for a second I can see the little girl in the
photograph, and I think what a good thing you didnt look up in that picture, Irma:
if the priest had seen the lascivious, voracious, sinful sparkle in your eyes, would
he ever have let you make your First Communion at all? Not a chance.
*
One time Irma got very sick and had to stay in the hospital for about six
weeks.
When she got out, she was terribly weak. It took her a long time to get
any strength back. One Saturday, though, she decided that she would walk the
three blocks to St. Philips church for the four oclock mass. For confession
before the mass.
She would go with my mother.
My mother at that time was just at the beginning of her long series of eye
surgeries. Whatever stage she was in, she couldnt see very well. With bright
sunlight or white snow she couldnt see at all to speak of.
My mother cant go with you, she cant see, I said. For Gods sake, Irma.
I can see, said Irma. I can lead her.
But youre so weak, Irma, I said. How can you manage this?
I can lean on Elizabeth, she said. And laughed. Elizabeth is strong, she
said.
I dont think you should, I said. I think its crazy.
I want to go to church, said Irma. I want to. Dont you want to go to
church, Elizabeth?
Yes, said my mother. I want to go to church.
I want to go to confession, said Irma.
Confession! I said. What have you got to confess, an old lady like you.
Well, she said. Youd be surprised.
So off they went.
68

Poorirma
I advised against it, what else could I do? but when I saw that they were
bound and determined, I walked the three blocks with them. You have to
understand that I didnt have a car at that time. I had given up driving altogether
and was riding the bus.
Remember that youll have to get home on your own, I said. Are you
sure you want to do this?
Were sure.
Bright sun sparkled off the new white snow.
My mothers eyes watered from the brightness of the snow and the sun.
She mopped her eyes with a hankie held in one gloved hand and hung onto
Irmas arm with the other hand.
Irma gave my mother verbal directions. Here, she said, lift your foot up
high right here and kind of swing it across this little drift.
I held Irmas other arm.
She was so weak. She walked very, very slowly, moving her feet just
inches at a time.
About every half-block she stopped to rest.
I really wanted to hit her, I wanted to hit them both, I was so worried
about them. . . .
At about the third rest stop, Irma said to me: I suppose you think were
not being very sensible, Joan.
God, I was so exasperated.
Yes, I said. Thats just what I do think. Thats exactly what I think. I
think youre not being very sensible.
She grinned at me, that watermelon-slice of smile, purely lunatic.
We were sensible last week, she said.
*
Irmas death was a big event in my life: it was the first death Id ever
seen, been present at while it was happening, I mean. The only one yet, for that
matter.
It was so beautiful. I was stunned. I was dazed and dazzled by that
death: it was so, uh, whatever can I say: well, so charming.
Irma lay on her bed in the hospital covered with a light sheet. She had
been ill for a long time, or ailing, what the old ladies used to call ailing; ailing is
when you can walk around a bit, and get dressed sometimes but not always. No
one, not even your doctor, knows whats wrong with you; you are not precisely
sick, but you are not well, either.
Irma ailed for months. My motheras I told you beforemoved in with
her and took some care of her.
Marybethwho was, yes, still around and still slaving, though The Man
Next Door was long gone. I never knew what became of him and no one else
69

Poorirma
seemed to know either, or seemed to care. Once his relevance to Irma was over,
he had no identity in our lives at allMarybeth did, as always, most of the care.
At some point they moved Irmas bed downstairs into the dining room so
she wouldnt have to negotiate stairs in order to use the bathroom. And even
later than that, they put a commode next to the bed so Irma didnt even have to
make it as far as the bathroom.
The commode was the doctors idea. He came to the house a couple of
times a week to look her over.
Yup. The doctor too. Right in there with the Park Board and The Man
Next Door.
I was there once when he came.
Hows my favorite girl? he said. He was so young, lord, he looked about
twenty.
And Irma smiled. And simpered. Oh, she said, oh Doctor Jim,
Im. . .fine. . . .
She waved her hand in the air weakly.
Fine. . .he said. He took her pulse, listened to her heartbeat.
Well, maybe not so fine, he said.
And ordered the commode.
But none of us really believed she would die, you know. Not Irma.
*
One day my mother called me on the phone. (I was living at that time in
a little apartment near the University campus.)
Oh, you have to come, she said.
They took Irma to the hospital. She said. In an ambulance. The
ambulance came and they took her away. . . .
My motherI could hear it over the phonebegan to cry. Just a little.
Oh, Irma! she said. My only baby sister. . . .
Well, she knew Irma would die, of course. That was what going to the
hospital meant to my family. And in an ambulance! My God, that tore it. You
went to the hospital in an ambulance, you were a goner. Even though Irma had
made it safely through the first hospitalization, this time she would surely die:
there were only so many miracles to a family and we had used ours up.
Irma was unconscious when I got to the hospital, and never woke again
in this world. My mother was there, and Raoul and Anna, and Annas children,
Catherines daughters, my daughter Margaret, and we all stood around the bed,
the deathbed scene from the movies, from the novels, and we watched poor Irma
die.
Up to that day I was (like everybody else in this country) afraid of death.
A little. Maybe a lot. But that death was so sweet, so simple and easy, Irma died
like a child falling asleep; and, her mouth closed at last, wore a more sedate
70

Poorirma
smile into Paradise than she ever wore on earth. And her eyes were closed too
when they buried her, so who could notice if their glance was still wanton?
Dr. Jim came to the funeral. Most of our funerals seemed to be held in
snow or rain, as I think I told you before, but when we buried Irma, the sun
sparkled off the gravestones, made them look positively cheerful.
*
Irma has been gone for many years now. I find myself wishingnow
and then, on a bright daythat she was still here so I could tell her Ive come full
circle, I am an old lady now myself and full of lustful longings.
My prized attainment of reason, my apple of sophisticationwhatever it
amounted to, never very greatis absolutely down the tubes, folks. And
somehow, by some miracle, I seem to be pretty much getting what I want these
days: some of the things I want are good for me and some are not, but I do get
them: mostly.
Maybe I can yet learn what Irma seemed to know: that rubbed the right
way, the universe indeed becomes benevolent. Maybe, by another miracle, I
canwe can allbecome, as it says somewhere we must, as little children.

71