side or I’ll give you a good clitther on the gob. She won’t come into Aunt Aggie’s flat. She can’t stand the sight of us one more minute. She’s fed up with the whole McCourt clan from the days when she had to send six fares to bring us all back from America, dishing out more  money  for  funerals  for  dead  children,  giving  us  food  every time our father drank the dole or the wages, helping Angela carry on while that blaguard from the North drinks his wages all over England. Oh, she’s fed up, so she is, and off she goes across Henry Street with her black shawl pulled up around her white head, limping along in her black high-laced boots. When you’re eleven and your brothers are ten, five and one, you don’t know what to do when you go to someone’s house even if she’s your mother’s sister.You’re told to leave the pram in the hall and bring the baby into the kitchen but if it’s not your house you don’t know what to do once you get into the kitchen for fear the aunt will yell at you or hit you on the skull. She takes off her coat and takes it to the bedroom and you stand with the baby in your arms waiting to be told. If you take one step forward or one step to the side she might come out and say where are you going and you don’t know what to answer because you don’t know yourself. If you say anything to your brothers she might say who do you think you’re talking to in my kitchen? We have to stand and be quiet and that’s hard when there’s a tinkling sound from the bed- room and we know she’s on the chamber pot peeing away. I don’t want to look at Malachy. If I do I’ll smile and he’ll smile and Michael will smile and there’s danger we’ll start laughing and if we do we won’t be able to stop for days at the picture in our heads of Aunt Aggie’s big white bum perched on a flowery little chamber pot. I’m able to control myself. I won’t laugh. Malachy and Michael won’t laugh and it’s easy to see we’re all proud of ourselves for not laughing and getting into trou- ble with Aunt Aggie till Alphie in my arms smiles and says Goo goo and that sets us off.The three of us burst out laughing and Alphie grins with his dirty face and says Goo goo again till we’re helpless and Aunt Aggie roars out of the room pulling her dress down and gives me a thump on the head that sends me against the wall baby and all. She hits Malachy too and she tries to hit Michael but he runs to the other side of her round table and she can’t get at him. Come over here, she says, and I’ll wipe that grin off your puss, but Michael keeps running around the table and she’s too fat to catch him. I’ll get you later, she says, I’ll warm your arse, and you, Lord Muck, she says to me, put that child down on 242