in the wardrobe is Grandma’s old black woolen dress.You’re not sup- posed to wear your Grandmother’s old dress when she’s dead and you’re a boy but what does it matter if it keeps you warm and you’re in bed under the blankets where no one will ever know. The dress has the smell of old dead grandmother and I worry she might rise from the grave and curse me before the whole family and all assembled. I pray to St. Francis, ask him to keep her in the grave where she belongs, promise him a candle when I start my job, remind him the robe he wore him- self wasn’t too far from a dress and no one ever tormented him over it and fall asleep with the image of his face in my dream. The worst thing in the world is to be sleeping in your dead grand- mother’s bed wearing her black dress when your uncle The Abbot falls on his arse outside South’s pub after a night of drinking pints and peo- ple who can’t mind their own business rush to Aunt Aggie’s house to tell her so that she gets Uncle Pa Keating to help her carry The Abbot home and upstairs to where you’re sleeping and she barks at you,What are you doin’ in this house, in that bed? Get up and put on the kettle for tea for your poor uncle Pat that fell down, and when you don’t move she pulls the blankets and falls backward like one seeing a ghost and yelling Mother o’ God what are you doin’ in me dead mother’s dress? That’s the worst thing of all because it’s hard to explain that you’re getting ready for the big job in your life, that you washed your clothes, they’re drying abroad on the line, and it was so cold you had to wear the only thing you could find in the house, and it’s even harder to talk to Aunt Aggie when The Abbot is groaning in the bed, Me feet is like a fire,put water on me feet,and Uncle Pa Keating is covering his mouth with his hand and collapsing against the wall laughing and telling you that  you  look  gorgeous  and  black  suits  you  and  would  you  ever straighten your hem.You don’t know what to do when Aunt Aggie tells you, Get out of that bed and put the kettle on downstairs for tea for your poor uncle. Should you take off the dress and put on a blanket or should you go as you are? One minute she’s screaming,What are you doin’ in me poor mother’s dress? the next she’s telling you put on that bloody kettle. I tell her I washed my clothes for the big job. What big job? Telegram boy at the post office. She says if the post office is hiring the likes of you they must be in a desperate way altogether, go down and put on that kettle. The next worse thing is to be out in the backyard filling the kettle 307