Dear Miss Hope, I am thirteen years old with black hair and some-
thing terrible is happening and I cant tell anyone not even my mother.
Im bleeding every few weeks you know where and Im afraid Ill be
found out. Miss Agnes Tripple, Little Biddle-on-the-Twiddle, Devon.
Dear Agnes,You are to be congratulated.You are now a woman and
you can get your hair permed because you are having your monthlies.
Do not fear your monthlies for all Englishwomen have them.They are
a gift of God to purify us so that we can have stronger children for the
empire, soldiers to keep the Irish in their place. In some parts of the
world a woman with a monthly is unclean but we British cherish our
women with the monthlies, oh we do indeed.
In the springtime theres a new messenger boy and Im back in the
office. Peter and Eamon drift off to England. Peter is fed up with Lim-
erick, no girls, and youre driven to yourself, wank wank wank, thats all
we ever do in Limerick.There are new boys. Im senior boy and the job
is easier because Im fast and when Mr. McCaffrey is out in the van and
my work is done I read the English, Irish, American magazines and
papers. Day and night I dream of America.
Malachy goes to England to work in a rich Catholic boys boarding
school and he walks around cheerful and smiling as if hes the equal of
any boy in the school and everyone knows when you work in an Eng-
lish boarding school youre supposed to hang your head and shuffle like
a proper Irish servant.They fire him for his ways and Malachy tells them
they can kiss his royal Irish arse and they say thats the kind of foul lan-
guage and behavior youd expect. He gets a job in the gas works in
Coventry shoveling coal into the furnaces like Uncle Pa Keating, shov-
eling coal and waiting for the day he can go to America after me.
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