anything. She’ll go now and tell on us and before we know it we’ll have the priests of the world banging on the door and disturbing us. There’s the banging on the door already. But it isn’t a priest, it’s Guard Dennehy. He calls up, Hello, hello, is anybody home? Are you there, Mrs. McCourt? Michael knocks on the window and waves at the guard. I give him a good kick for himself and Malachy thumps him on the head and he yells,  I’ll  tell  the  guard.  I’ll  tell  the  guard. They’re  killing  me,  guard. They’re thumping and kicking. He won’t shut up and Guard Dennehy shouts at us to open the door. I call out the window and tell him I can’t open the door because my mother is in bed with a terrible disease. Where’s your father? He’s in England. Well, I’m coming in to talk to your mother. You can’t.You can’t. She has the disease.We all have the disease. It might be the typhoid. It might be the galloping consumption. We’re getting spots already.The baby has a lump. It could kill. He pushes in the door and climbs the stairs to Italy just as Alphie crawls out from under the bed covered with marmalade and dirt. He looks at him and my mother and us, takes off his cap and scratches his head. He says, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, this is a desperate situation. How did your mother get sick like that? I  tell  him  he  shouldn’t  go  near  her  and  when  Malachy  says  we might not be able to go to school for ages the guard says we’ll go to school no matter what, that we’re on the earth to go to school the way he’s on the earth to make sure we go to school. He wants to know if we have any relations and he sends me off to tell Grandma and Aunt Aggie to come to our house. They scream at me and tell me I’m filthy. I try to explain that Mam has the disease and I’m worn out trying to make ends meet, keeping the  home fires burning, getting lemonade for Mam and bread for my brothers. There’s no use telling them about the marmalade for they’ll only scream again. There’s no use telling them about the nastiness of rich people and their maids. They push me all the way back to the lane, barking at me and dis- gracing me on the streets of Limerick. Guard Dennehy is still scratch- ing his poll. He says, Look at this, a disgrace.You wouldn’t see the likes of this in Bombay or the Bowery of New York itself. 240