married nine months before theres a sign of a child. Here I am born
into the world in half the time.That means I must be a miracle and I
might grow up to be a saint with people celebrating the feast of St.
Francis of Limerick.
Ill have to ask Mikey Molloy, still the expert on Girls Bodies and
Dirty Things in General.
Billy says if were to be great soccer players we have to practice and
were to meet over in the park.The boys complain when I hand out the
hearts and I tell them if they dont like it they can go home and cut up
their own mothers dresses and blouses.
We have no money for a proper ball so one of the boys brings a
sheeps bladder stuffed with rags.We kick the bladder up and down the
meadow till there are holes and rags start falling out and we get fed up
kicking a bladder thats hardly there anymore. Billy says were to meet
tomorrow morning which is Saturday and go out Ballinacurra to see if
we can challenge rich Crescent College boys to a proper game, seven
a side. He says were to pin our red hearts to our shirts even if theyre
red rags.
Malachy is going home for tea but I cant go because I have to see
Mikey Molloy and find out why I was born in half the time. Mikey is
coming out of his house with his father, Peter. Its Mikeys sixteenth
birthday and his father is taking him to Bowless pub for his first pint.
Nora Molloy is inside screeching after Peter that if they go they can stay
gone, shes done baking bread, shes never going to the lunatic asylum
again, if he brings that child home drunk shell go to Scotland and dis-
appear from the face of the earth.
Peter tells Mikey, Pay no attention to her, Cyclops.The mothers of
Ireland are always enemies of the first pint. My own mother tried to kill
my father with a frying pan when he took me for the first pint.
Mikey asks Peter if I can come with them and have a lemonade.
Peter tells everyone in the pub that Mikey is there for his first pint
and when all the men want to stand Mikey a pint Peter says, Ah, no,
twould be a terrible thing if he had too much and turned against it
entirely.
The pints are drawn and we sit against the wall, the Molloys with
their pints and I with my lemonade.The men wish Mikey all the best
in the life to come and wasnt it a gift from God that he fell off that
spout years ago and never had the fit since and wasnt it a great pity
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