no more bread and we’re hungry, the four of us.We can get no more credit at O’Connell’s shop.We can’t go near Grandma, either. She yells at us all the time because Dad is from the North and he never sends money home from England where he is working in a munitions factory. Grandma says we could starve to death for all he cares.That would teach Mam a lesson for marrying a man from the North with sallow skin, an odd manner and a look of the Presbyterian about him. Still, I’ll have to try Kathleen O’Connell once more. I’ll tell her my mother is sick above in the bed, my brothers are starving and we’ll all be dead for the want of bread. I put on my shoes and run quickly through the streets of Limerick to keep myself warm against the February frost.You can look in peo- ple’s windows and see how cozy it is in their kitchens with fires glow- ing or ranges black and hot everything bright in the electric light cups and saucers on the tables with plates of sliced bread pounds of butter jars of jam smells of fried eggs and rashers coming through the windows enough to make the water run in your mouth and families sitting there digging in all smiling the mother crisp and clean in her apron everyone washed and the Sacred Heart of Jesus looking down on them from the wall suffering and sad but still happy with all that food and light and good Catholics at their breakfast. I try to find music in my own head but all I can find is my mother moaning for lemonade. Lemonade. There’s  a  van  pulling  away  from  South’s  pub  leaving crates of beer and lemonade outside and there isn’t a soul on the street. In a second I have two bottles of lemonade up under my jersey and I saunter away trying to look innocent. There’s a bread van outside Kathleen O’Connell’s shop.The back door is open on shelves of steaming newly baked bread.The van driver is inside the shop having tea and a bun with Kathleen and it’s no trou- ble for me to help myself to a loaf of bread. It’s wrong to steal from Kathleen with the way she’s always good to us but if I go in and ask her for bread she’ll be annoyed and tell me I’m ruining her morning cup of tea, which she’d like to have in peace ease and comfort thank you. It’s easier to stick the bread up under my jersey with the lemonade and promise to tell everything in confession. My brothers are back in bed playing games under the overcoats but they jump when they see the bread.We tear at the loaf because we’re too hungry to slice it and we make tea from this morning’s leaves.When 236