from the shed and tells him how Mam is in the hospital and we’re to stay with them till she gets out. He says, Grand, grand, and goes to the shed to wash himself though when he comes back you’d never know he touched himself with water at all he’s that black. He sits at the table and Aunt Aggie gives him his supper, which is fried bread and ham and sliced tomatoes. She tells us get away from the table and stop gawking at him having his tea and tells him to stop giv- ing us bits of ham and tomato. He says,Arrah, for Jaysus sake,Aggie, the children are hungry,and she says,’Tis none of your business.They’re not yours. She tells us go out and play and be home for bed by half-past eight. We know it’s freezing outside and we’d like to stay in by that warm range but it’s easier to be in the streets playing than inside with Aunt Aggie and her nagging. She  calls  me  in  later  and  sends  me  upstairs  to  borrow  a  rubber sheet from a woman who had a child that died. The woman says tell your aunt I’d like that rubber sheet back for the next child.Aunt Aggie says, Twelve  years  ago  that  child  died  and  she  still  keeps  the  rubber sheet. Forty-five she is now and if there’s another child we’ll have to look for a star in the East. Malachy says,What’s that? and she tells him mind his own business, he’s too young. Aunt Aggie places the rubber sheet on her bed and puts Alphie on it between herself and Uncle Pa. She sleeps inside against the wall and Uncle Pa outside because he has to get up in the morning for work.We are to sleep on the floor against the opposite wall with one coat under us and two over. She says if she hears a word out of us during the night she’ll warm our arses and we’re to be up early in the morning because it’s Ash Wednesday and it wouldn’t do us any harm to go to Mass and pray for our poor mother and her pneumonia. The alarm clock shocks us out of our sleep. Aunt Aggie calls from her bed,The three of ye are to get up and go to Mass. Do ye hear me? Up.Wash yeer faces and go to the Jesuits. Her backyard is all frost and ice and our hands sting from the tap water.We throw a little on our faces and dry with the towel that’s still damp  from  yesterday.  Malachy  whispers  our  wash  was  a  lick  and  a promise, that’s what Mam would say. The streets are frosty and icy, too, but the Jesuit church is warm. It must be grand to be a Jesuit, sleeping in a bed with sheets blankets pil- lows and getting up to a nice warm house and a warm church with nothing to do but say Mass hear confessions and yell at people for their 244