Billy because I want to get a bar of chocolate to go with my Cleeves
toffee and Im having a great time till theres a terrible pain in my jaw
and its a tooth out of my gum stuck in my toffee and the pain is killing
me. Still, I cant waste the toffee so I pull out the tooth and put it in my
pocket and chew the toffee on the other side of my mouth blood and
all. Theres pain on one side and delicious toffee on the other and I
remember what my uncle Pa Keating would say,There are times when
you wouldnt know whether to shit or go blind.
I have to go home now and worry because you cant go through
the world short a tooth without your mother knowing. Mothers know
everything and shes always looking into our mouths to see if theres any
class of disease. Shes there by the fire and Dad is there and theyre ask-
ing me the same old questions, the dance and the name of the dance.
I tell them I learned The Walls of Cork and I dance around the
kitchen trying to hum a made-up tune and dying with the pain of my
tooth. Mam says, Walls o Cork, my eye, theres no such dance, and
Dad says, Come over here. Stand there before me.Tell us the truth, Did
you go to your dancing classes today?
I cant tell a lie anymore because my gum is killing me and theres
blood in my mouth. Besides, I know they know everything and thats
what theyre telling me now. Some snake of a boy from the dancing
school saw me going to the Lyric Cinema and told and Mrs. OCon-
nor sent a note to say she hadnt seen me in ages and was I all right
because I had great promise and could follow in the footsteps of the
great Cyril Benson.
Dad doesnt care about my tooth or anything. He says Im going
to confession and drags me over to the Redemptorist church because
its Saturday and confessions go on all day. He tells me Im a bad boy,
hes ashamed of me that I went to the pictures instead of learning
Irelands national dances, the jig, the reel, the dances that men and
women fought and died for down those sad centuries. He says theres
many a young man that was hanged and now moldering in a lime pit
that would be glad to rise up and dance the Irish dance.
The priest is old and I have to yell my sins at him and he tells me
Im a hooligan for going to the pictures instead of my dancing lessons
although he thinks himself that dancing is a dangerous thing almost as
bad as the films, that it stirs up thoughts sinful in themselves, but even
if dancing is an abomination I sinned by taking my mothers sixpence
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