under the toes so that the hole in the back is hidden in the shoe. On rainy days the stockings are soggy and we have to hang them before the fire at night and hope they’ll dry by morning.Then they’re hard with dirt cake and we’re afraid to pull them on our feet for fear they’ll fall on the floor in bits before our eyes.We might be lucky enough to get our stockings on but then we have to block the holes in our shoes and I fight with my brother, Malachy, over any scrap of cardboard or paper in the house. Michael is only six and he has to wait for anything left over unless  Mam  threatens  us  from  the  bed  that  we’re  to  help  our  small brother. She says, If ye don’t fix yeer brother’s shoes an’ I have to get out of this bed there will be wigs on the green.You’d have to feel sorry for Michael because he’s too old to play with Alphie and too young to play with us and he can’t fight with anyone for the same reasons. The rest of the dressing is easy, the shirt I wore to bed is the shirt I wear to school. I wear it day in day out. It’s the shirt for football, for climbing walls,for robbings orchards.I go to Mass and the Confraternity in that shirt and people sniff the air and move away.If Mam gets a docket for a new one at the St.Vincent de Paul the old shirt is promoted to towel and hangs damp on the chair for months or Mam might use bits of it to patch other shirts.She might even cut it up and let Alphie wear it a while before it winds up on the floor pushed against the bottom of the door to block the rain from the lane. We go to school through lanes and back streets so that we won’t meet the respectable boys who go to the Christian Brothers’School or the rich ones who go to the Jesuit school,Crescent College.The Christian Broth- ers’ boys wear tweed jackets, warm woolen sweaters, shirts, ties and shiny new boots.We know they’re the ones who will get jobs in the civil ser- vice and help the people who run the world.The Crescent College boys wear blazers and school scarves tossed around their necks and over their shoulders to show they’re cock o’ the walk.They have long hair which falls across their foreheads and over their eyes so that they can toss their quiffs like Englishmen.We know they’re the ones who will go to univer- sity, take over the family business, run the government, run the world. We’ll be the messenger boys on bicycles who deliver their groceries or we’ll go to England to work on the building sites. Our sisters will mind their children and scrub their floors unless they go off to England,too.We know that.We’re ashamed of the way we look and if boys from the rich schools pass remarks we’ll get into a fight and wind up with bloody noses or torn clothes. Our masters will have no patience with us and our fights 272