Later, Dad goes to the Labour Exchange for the dole.There is no hope of a laboring man with a North of Ireland accent getting a job in Limerick. When he returns, he tells Mam we’ll be getting nineteen shillings a week. She says that’s just enough for all of us to starve on. Nineteen shillings for six of us? That’s less than four dollars in American money and how are we supposed to live on that? What are we to do when we have to pay rent in a fortnight? If the rent for this room is five shillings a week we’ll have fourteen shillings for food and clothes and coal to boil the water for the tea. Dad shakes his head, sips his tea from a jam jar, stares out the win- dow  and  whistles “The  Boys  of  Wexford.” Malachy  and  Oliver  clap their hands and dance around the room and Dad doesn’t know whether to whistle or smile because you can’t do both and he can’t help himself. He has to stop and smile and pat Oliver’s head and then go back to the whistling. Mam smiles, too, but it’s a very quick smile and when she looks into the ashes you can see the worry where the corners of her mouth turn down. Next day she tells Dad to mind the twins and takes Malachy and me with her to the St.Vincent de Paul Society.We stand in a queue with women  wearing  black  shawls. They  ask  our  names  and  smile  when we talk.They say, Lord above, would you listen to the little Yankees, and they  wonder  why  Mam  in  her  American  coat  would  be  looking for  charity since there’s hardly enough for the poor people of Lim- erick  without Yanks  coming  over  and  taking  the  bread  out  of  their mouths. Mam tells them a cousin gave her that coat in Brooklyn, that her husband has no work, that she has other children at home, twin boys. The women sniff and pull their shawls about them, they have their own troubles. Mam tells them she had to leave America because she couldn’t stand it after her baby girl died. The women sniff again but now it’s because Mam is crying. Some say they lost little ones, too, and there’s nothing worse in the world,you could live as long as Methuselem’s wife but you never get over it. No man can ever know what it is to be a mother  that  has  lost  a  child,  not  if  the  man  lived  longer  than  two Methuselems. They all have a good cry till a red-haired woman passes a little box around.The women pick something from the box between their fin- 63