Mardi Gras in the Land of Saints and Scholars

Photo: Mary Swander

The waves propelled up and over Margaret’s cottage, then fell down again on the stucco walls, the walls Margaret whitewashed every spring before the Irish summer school began and the ferry brought hundreds of visitors to the island. That winter’s storm took out the pier, flooded the Inishbofin museum, and pitted the road with large potholes.

But the pier was rebuilt and Margaret’s cottage was still standing. When I arrived to teach in the summer school, beautifully knitted pure woolen sweaters hung in Margaret’s doorway. The sale of one sweater a month was cause for great celebration, the money a major boost to Margaret’s household budget, with prayers of thanks offered up to the picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus over the hearth.

A widow with three grown sons and a gaggle of grandchildren on the island, Margaret pasted together a living. Like most rural women worldwide, her ingenuity and entrepreneurship sustained her. She knitted every night by the fire with her sister, sold sweaters, caps, and mittens, ran a BnB in her cottage with two rented rooms, made cakes to sell at the markets, and cleaned and sold the fish and crab her son caught at sea.

A steady stream of people flowed through her front door and out the back, including the postal carrier who left Margaret’s letters on her kitchen table. Sometimes a family member would be sitting at the breakfast table, sometimes another BnB guest, sometimes a neighbor.

“Knock, knock,” a customer called, standing in the central room of the cottage.

“Who’s there?” Margaret hollered back from the kitchen.

“Isabel.”

“Isabel, who?”

“Isabel not working?”

The customer left with a bag filled with mackerel.

I found my way to the backroom where I’d stayed every summer for years, and began unpacking my suitcase. Underwear, jeans, a skirt, tops and sweaters all went into the bureau. I placed my Mardi Gras mask in a drawer all by itself. Right before I was about to leave Iowa for Ireland, I’d remembered the costume party that the school sponsored every year. Oh, heck, what was I going to do for a costume?

I looked up on my wall at home and saw the mask I’d bought at the Cajun Mardi Gras in Louisiana a few years before, a face embroidered on an old piece of window screen, a large nose protruding, tuffs of cottony hair glued to the artwork. The Cajuns spent months making these masks and costumes patterned after medieval French courtiers. Then at 6:00 A.M. in the morning on Fat Tuesday, a beer in hand, they danced from house to house in their village, singing in French and begging for the ingredients of gumbo.

This will do, I thought to myself, grabbing the mask.  Wrong culture, it might not translate, but the Irish will still think it’s great craic. I’ll worry about the rest of the costume when I get to Inishbofin.

On the remote Irish island, the night of the costume party finally arrived, and I got dressed up in a brightly colored skirt, an equally loud blouse, my Cajun Mardi Gras mask, and my bicycle light wrapped around my forehead, flashing red, on and off and on and off again. I stepped out into Margaret’s central room and she broke out in laughter.

On the road to the restaurant, children stopped and pointed, their parents rushing out of their cottages to have a look. People began cheering me on, their applause getting louder the closer I came to the party. Inside, the summer school students received me with great amusement.

“Great costume, Mary, but what are you?”

“I’m a Mardi Gras,” I said to puzzled silence. “I’ll explain it tomorrow in class.”

After a delicious dinner, songs and performances, we all settled into dessert and what we thought would be an evening of jokes and storytelling. Then our director, with a wrinkled forehead, stopped the whole party and told us to go home.

“You need to be at the school on time tomorrow morning. 9:00 sharp,” he said. Normally, we would wander up to the school around 9:30, then finally begin class around 10:00.  “No, tomorrow, you need to be on time,” the director said. “The inspector is coming.”

The inspector!  Glasses were put down. Napkins were folded and placed back on the table. I soon found out that inspectors appeared in schools unexpectedly, there to make certain that everything was in its proper order, that the curriculum was being taught properly. Even the most minor infractions could prompt the inspector to close the whole school.

“Once when I was a child, the inspector arrived in our school.” A woman at my table said. “Our school clock was two minutes slow, and that was it. The school was closed for the rest of the year.”

We all gathered up our belongings and quickly left the restaurant. Back at Margaret’s, I slipped out of my costume and went over my lesson plans for the morning. I knew that the inspector was going to observe my class and I didn’t want to be blamed for shutting down the course.

Thoughts of every authoritarian presence in my academic years ran through my brain--from mother superiors to principals, department chairs, and deans. I couldn’t believe I had all the teaching experience that I did, and I was still worried about this Irish inspector. Very worried. I checked my watch. No, it wasn’t slow. Right on time.

The next morning, Margaret was chatting with a woman at the breakfast table, serving her scrambled eggs and rashers.

“Oh, won’t you go and put on your costume again and show our guest?” Margaret asked.

“Sure, if I have time. I need to be up at the school on time this morning.”

“Go on, now.”

Quickly, I changed into my costume and walked into the central room to peals of laughter. I pranced and danced through the room, my headlight blinking on and off. Then I sat down and began gulping down my breakfast.

“Sorry to be rude, but I’m a little rushed this morning. I need to get to class. The inspector is coming.”

The guest nodded, stirring a bit of sugar in her teacup. She wore a plain white top with a dark skirt, a string of pearls around her neck, two white sandals on her feet. It was pouring rain outside. It had been pouring all week. In a minute, I would be gearing up in a rain suit and waterproof hiking boots.  I passed the guest a plate of toast. She took a piece and spread marmalade on top. In tiny little nibbles, she ate her breakfast. Slowly, she dabbed her mouth with her napkin and gazed out the window toward the sea.

“Are you here on a holiday?” I said, at last.

“Uh, no,” the guest said, hesitancy in her voice.

Margaret came through the door, glancing at the guest, then at me, then back to the guest.

“Tell her,”  Margaret said.

“No, you see, I’m the inspector,” she said.

I almost choked on my sausages.

“And you’re to bring her up to the school, Mary,” Margaret said.

Margaret, of course, had been looped into an islander game of telephone that zigzagged from the ferry skipper to the hotel desk clerk, to the hotel restaurant server, to Margaret, to the director, and back to Margaret.

“How in the world did they know I was coming?” the inspector asked. “I didn’t want them to know.”

And so, we set out on the road to the school, my arm threaded through hers, our lips still turned upward in smiles about my Mardi Gras costume. The inspector wore a little plastic rain bonnet, her brown pocketbook bobbing against her side, her bare toes splashing through the puddles, the rain driving harder and harder straight into our faces, both of us getting drenched with each step up the steep hill.

Listen to Episode #57 from Mary Swander’s Buggyland Podcast: Winter Spirits

This podcast explores spirits, the kind you want to lift in a snowbound winter, and the kind you want to drink year-round. And the kind that come back to haunt you. Host Mary Swander explores the history of two bootlegged whiskeys: poitín in Ireland, and Templeton Rye in Iowa, and her connection to both. Readings from Plain Interests. And John K. Corless singing Noreen Bawn.

Find out more about me, my books and plays, from my website: http://www.maryswander.com

I am happy to be part of the Iowa Writers Collaborative. Join us for the IWC Sunday Round-Up and read other voices and opinions in the illustrative group.