The baby Michael has a cold. His head is stuffed and he can barely breathe. Mam worries because it’s Sunday and the Dispensary for the poor is closed. If you go to the doctor’s house and the maid sees you’re from the lower classes she tells you go to the Dispensary where you belong. If you tell her the child is dying in your arms she’ll say the doc- tor is in the country riding his horse. Mam  cries  because  the  baby  is  struggling  to  get  air  through  his mouth. She tries to clear his nostrils with a bit of rolled-up paper but she’s afraid to push it too far up.Dad says,There’s no need for that.You’re not supposed to be pushing things inside a child’s head. It looks like he’s going to kiss the baby. Instead, he has his mouth on the little nose and he’s sucking sucking the bad stuff out of Michael’s head. He spits it into the fire, Michael gives out a loud cry and you can see him drawing the air into his head and kicking his legs and laughing. Mam looks at Dad as if he just came down from heaven and Dad says,That’s what we did in Antrim long before there were doctors riding their horses. Michael entitles us to a few extra shillings on the dole but Mam says it isn’t enough and now she has to go to the St.Vincent de Paul Society for food. One night there is a knock on the door and Mam sends me down to see who it is.There are two men from the St.Vincent de Paul and they want to see my mother and father. I tell them my parents are upstairs in Italy and they say,What? Upstairs where ’tis dry. I’ll tell them. They want to know what that little shed is beside our front door. I tell them it’s the lavatory.They want to know why it isn’t in the back of the house and I tell them it’s the lavatory for the whole lane and it’s a good thing it’s not in the back of our house or we’d have people traips- ing through our kitchen with buckets that would make you sick. They say, Are you sure there’s one lavatory for the whole lane? I am. They say, Mother of God. Mam calls down from Italy.Who’s down there? The men. What men? From the St.Vincent de Paul. They’re careful the way they step into the lake in the kitchen and they make tsk tsk and tut tut noises and they tell one another, Isn’t this 103