I don’t know. Minnie says,They’re just wearing rags for diapers. I’ll get some of Maisie’s. Frankie, you take off those rags and throw them out. Malachy  removes  Oliver’s  rag  and  I  struggle  with  Eugene. The safety  pin  is  stuck  and  when  he  wriggles  it  comes  loose, sticks  him in the hip, and starts him screaming for Mam. But Minnie is back with a towel and soap and hot water. I help her wash away the caked shit and she lets me shake talcum powder on the twins’ raw sore skin. She says they’re good little boys and she has a big surprise for them. She goes down the hall and brings back a pot of mashed potatoes for all of us. There  is  plenty  of  salt  and  butter  in  the  potatoes  and  I  wonder if  there’s any chance Minnie could be my mother so that I could eat like  this  all  the  time.  If  I  could  have  Mrs.  Leibowitz  and  Minnie for  mothers  at  the  same  time  I’d  have  no  end  of  soup  and  mashed potatoes. Minnie and Mrs.Leibowitz sit at the table.Mrs.Leibowitz says some- thing has to be done.These children are running wild and where is the father? I hear Minnie whisper he’s out for the drink.Mrs.Leibowitz says terrible, terrible, the way the Irish drink. Minnie says her Dan doesn’t drink.Never touches the stuff and Dan told her that when the baby died that poor man, Malachy McCourt, went mad all over Flatbush Avenue and Atlantic Avenue, that he was thrown out of all the bars around the Long Island Railroad Station, that the cops would have thrown him in jail if it was anything else but the death of that lovely little baby. Here he has four lovely little boys, says Minnie, but it’s no comfort to him. That little girl brought out something in him.You know he didn’t even drink after she was born and that was a miracle. Mrs. Leibowitz wants to know where Mam’s cousins are, the big women with the quiet husbands. Minnie will find them and tell them the children are neglected, running wild, sore arses and everything. Two days later Dad returns from his cigarette hunt.It’s the middle of the night but he gets Malachy and me out of the bed. He has the smell of the drink on him. He has us stand at attention in the kitchen.We are soldiers. He tells us we must promise to die for Ireland. We will, Dad, we will. All together we sing Kevin Barry, 39