Malachy says,Whats boxty?
Dad laughs. Pancakes, son. Pancakes made with potatoes.
Grandpa says,We have eggs. Its Easter Sunday and you can have all
the eggs you can hold.
We have tea and boxty and boiled eggs and we all fall asleep. I wake
up in a bed with Malachy and the twins. My parents are in another bed
over by the window.Where am I? Its getting dark.This is not the ship.
Mam snores hink, Dad snores honk. I get up and poke at Dad. I have to
pee. He says, Use the chamber pot.
What?
Under the bed, son.The chamber pot. It has roses on it and maid-
ens cavorting in the glen. Pee in that, son.
I want to ask him what hes talking about for even if Im bursting I
feel strange peeing into a pot with roses and maidens cavorting, what-
ever they are.We had nothing like this in Classon Avenue where Mrs.
Leibowitz sang in the lavatory while we clutched ourselves in the hall.
Now Malachy has to use the chamber pot but he wants to sit on it.
Dad says, No, you cant do that, son.You have to go outside.When he
says that I have to go, too, to sit. He leads us downstairs and through the
big room where Grandpa is sitting reading by the fire and Grandma is
dozing in her chair. Its dark outside, though the moon is bright enough
for us to see where were going. Dad opens the door of a little house
that has a seat with a hole in it. He shows Malachy and me how to sit
on the hole and how to wipe ourselves with squares of newspaper stuck
on a nail.Then he tells us wait while he goes inside, closes the door and
grunts. The moon is so bright I can look down the field and see the
things called cows and sheep and I wonder why they dont go home.
In the house there are other people in the room with my grand-
parents. Dad says,These are your aunts: Emily, Nora, Maggie,Vera.Your
aunt Eva is in Ballymena with children like you. My aunts are not like
Mrs. Leibowitz and Minnie MacAdorey, they nod their heads but they
dont hug us or smile. Mam comes into the room with the twins and
when Dad tells his sisters,This is Angela and these are the twins, they
just nod again.
Grandma goes to the kitchen and soon we have bread and sausages
and tea.The only one who speaks at the table is Malachy. He points his
spoon at the aunts and asks their names again.When Mam tells him eat
his sausage and be quiet his eyes fill with tears and Aunt Nora reaches
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