to me if I’m killing myself catching consumption from her mouth I’m riding to heaven I’m falling off a cliff and if this is a sin I don’t give a fiddler’s fart. We take our ease on the sofa a while till she says, Don’t you have more telegrams to deliver? and when we sit up she gives a little cry, Oh, I’m bleeding. What’s up with you? I think it’s because it’s the first time. I tell her, Wait a minute. I bring the bottle from the kitchen and splash the iodine on her injury. She leaps from the sofa, dances around the parlor like a wild one and runs into the kitchen to douse herself with water.After she dries herself she says, Lord, you’re very innocent. You’re not supposed to be pouring iodine on girls like that. I thought you were cut. For weeks after that I deliver the telegram. Sometimes we have the excitement on the sofa but there are other days she has the cough and you can see the weakness on her. She never tells me she has the weak- ness. She never tells me she has the consumption.The boys at the post office say I must have been having a great time with the shilling tip and Theresa Carmody. I never tell them I stopped taking the shilling tip. I never tell them about the green sofa and the excitement. I never tell them of the pain that comes when she opens the door and I can see the weakness on her and all I want to do then is make tea for her and sit with my arms around her on the green sofa. One Saturday I’m told to deliver the telegram to Theresa’s mother at her job in Woolworth’s. I try to be casual. Mrs. Carmody, I always deliver the telegram to your, I think your daughter,Theresa? Yes, she’s in the hospital. Is she in the sanatorium? I said she’s in the hospital. She’s like everyone else in Limerick, ashamed of the TB, and she doesn’t give me a shilling or any kind of tip. I cycle out to the sanato- rium to see Theresa.They say you have to be a relation and you have to be adult. I tell them I’m her cousin and I’ll be fifteen in August.They tell me go away. I cycle to the Franciscan church to pray for Theresa. St. Francis, would you please talk to God.Tell Him it wasn’t Theresa’s fault. I could have refused that telegram Saturday after Saturday.Tell God Theresa  was  not  responsible  for  the  excitement  on  the  sofa  because 324