Mam says we’ll have to have a bit of party the night before I go. They used to have parties in the old days when anyone would go to America, which was so far away the parties were called American wakes because the family never expected to see the departing one again in this life. She says ’tis a great pity Malachy can’t come back from England but we’ll be together in America someday with the help of God and His Blessed Mother. On my days off from work I walk around Limerick and look at all the places we lived, the Windmill Street, Hartstonge Street, Roden Lane, Rosbrien Road, Little Barrington Street, which is really a lane. I stand looking at Theresa Carmody’s house till her mother comes out and says,What do you want? I sit at the graves of Oliver and Eugene in the old St. Patrick’s Burying Ground and cross the road to St. Lawrence’s Cemetery where Theresa is buried.Wherever I go I hear voices of the dead and I wonder if they can follow you across the Atlantic Ocean. I want to get pictures of Limerick stuck in my head in case I never come back. I sit in St. Joseph’s Church and the Redemptorist church and tell myself take a good look because I might never see this again. I walk down Henry Street to say good-bye to St. Francis though I’m sure I’ll be able to talk to him in America. Now there are days I don’t want to go to America. I’d like to go to O’Riordan’s Travel Agency and get back my fifty-five pounds. I could wait till I’m twenty-one and Malachy can go with me so that I’ll know at least one person in New York. I have strange feelings and sometimes when I’m sitting by the fire with Mam and my brothers I feel tears coming and I’m ashamed of myself for being weak.At first Mam laughs and tells me,Your bladder must be near your eye, but then Michael says, We’ll all go to America, Dad will be there, Malachy will be there and we’ll all be together, and she gets the tears herself and we sit there, the four of us, like weeping eejits. Mam says this is the first time we ever had a party and isn’t it a sad thing altogether that you have it when your children are slipping away one by one, Malachy to England, Frank to America. She saves a few shillings from her wages taking care of Mr. Sliney to buy bread, ham, brawn, cheese, lemonade and a few bottles of stout. Uncle Pa Keating brings stout, whiskey and a little sherry for Aunt Aggie’s delicate stom- 356