Or if I had a stamp I could write to Joe Louis and say, Dear Joe, Is there any chance you could tell me where you got your powerful shoulders even though you were poor? I have to look decent for my job so I take off all my clothes and stand naked in the backyard washing them under the tap with a bar of carbolic soap. I hang them on Grandma’s clothesline, shirt, gansey, pants, stockings, and pray to God it won’t rain, pray they’ll be dry for tomor- row, which is the start of my life. I can’t go anywhere in my pelt so I stay in bed all day reading old newspapers, getting excited with the girls in the News of the World and thanking God for the drying sun.The Abbot comes home at five and makes tea downstairs and even though I’m hungry I know he’ll grum- ble if I ask him for anything. He knows the one thing that worries me is he might go to Aunt Aggie and complain I’m staying in Grandma’s house and sleeping in her bed and if Aunt Aggie hears that she’ll come over and throw me into the street. He hides the bread when he’s finished and I can never find it.You would think that one who was never dropped on his head would be able to find the hidden bread of one who was dropped on his head. Then I realize if the bread is not in the house he must take it with him in the pocket of the overcoat he wears winter and summer.The minute I hear him clumping from the kitchen to the backyard lavatory I run downstairs, pull the loaf from the pocket, cut off a thick slice, back into the pocket, up the stairs and into bed. He can never say a word, never accuse me.You’d have to be a thief of the worst class to steal one slice of bread and no one would ever believe him, not even Aunt Aggie. Besides, she’d bark at him and say,What are you doing anyway going around with a loaf of bread in your pocket? That’s no place for a loaf of bread. I chew the bread slowly. One mouthful every fifteen minutes will make it last and if I wash it down with water the bread will swell in my belly and give me the full feeling. I  look  out  the  back  window  to  make  sure  the  evening  sun  is drying  my  clothes.  Other  backyards  have  lines  with  clothes  that  are bright and colorful and dance in the wind. Mine hang from the line like dead dogs. The sun is bright but it’s cold and damp in the house and I wish I had something to wear in the bed. I have no other clothes and if I touch anything of The Abbot’s he’ll surely run to Aunt Aggie. All I can find 306