XI
Mam warns us,Ye are to keep yeer paws out of that trunk for theres
nothing in there thats of the slightest interest or any of yeer business.
All she has in that trunk is a lot of papers, certificates of birth and
baptism, her Irish passport, Dads English passport from Belfast, our
American passports and her bright red flapper dress with spangles and
black frills she brought all the way from America. She wants to keep
that dress forever to remind herself she was young and dancing.
I dont care what she has in the trunk till I start a football team with
Billy Campbell and Malachy. We cant afford uniforms or boots and
Billy says, How will the world know who we are? We dont even have
a name.
I remember the red dress and a name comes to me,The Red Hearts
of Limerick. Mam never opens the trunk so what does it matter if I cut
off a piece of the dress to make seven red hearts we can stick on our
chests? What you dont know wont bother you, she always says herself.
The dress is buried under the papers. I look at my passport picture
when I was small and I can see why they call me Jap.Theres a paper
that says Marriage Certificate, that Malachy McCourt and Angela
Sheehan were joined in Holy Matrimony on the twenty-eighth of
March, 1930. How could that be? I was born on the nineteenth of
August and Billy Campbell told me the father and mother have to be
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