our kitchen is a lake and we have to go up to Italy but it’s worse in the  Clohessys’ when you have to go down four flights to the lavatory and slip on shit all the way down. I’d be better off with four goats in a ditch. I drift in and out of sleep but I have to wake up for good when Mrs. Clohessy goes around pulling at her family to get them up. They all went to bed with their clothes on so they don’t have to get dressed and there’s no fighting.They grumble and run out the door to get down- stairs to the backyard lavatory. I have to go too and I run down with Paddy but his sister Peggy is on the bowl and we have to piss against a wall. She says, I’ll tell Ma what ye did, and Paddy says, Shurrup or I’ll push you down into that feckin’ lavatory. She jumps off the lavatory, pulls her drawers up and runs up the stairs crying, I’ll tell, I’ll tell, and when we get back to the room Mrs. Clohessy gives Paddy a belt on the head for what he did to his poor little sister. Paddy says nothing because Mrs. Clohessy is spooning porridge into mugs and jam jars and one bowl and telling us to eat up and go to school. She sits at the table eat- ing her porridge. Her hair is gray black and dirty. It dangles in the bowl and picks up bits of porridge and drops of milk.The children slurp the porridge and complain they didn’t get enough, they’re starving with the  hunger. They have snotty noses and sore eyes and scabby knees. Mr. Clohessy coughs and squirms on the bed and brings up the great gobs of blood and I run out of the room and puke on the stairs where there’s a step missing and there’s a shower of porridge and bits of apple to the floor below where people go back and forth to the lavatory in the yard. Paddy comes down and says, Sure that’s all right. Everywan gets sick an’ shits on them stairs an’ the whole feckin’ place is falling down anyway. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now. If I go back to school I’ll be killed and why should I go back to school or go home to get killed when I can go out the road and live on milk and apples the rest of my life till I go to America. Paddy says, Come on. School is all a cod anyway an’ the masters is all madmen. There’s a knock at the Clohessys’ door and it’s Mam holding my lit- tle brother, Michael, by the hand, and Guard Dennehy, who is in charge of school attendance. Mam sees me and says,What are you doing with one shoe on? and Guard Dennehy says,Ah, now, missus, I think a more important question would be,What are you doing with one shoe off, ha, ha. 166