censer at Benediction, sitting off to the side with the palms of my hands on  my  knees  all  serious  while  he  gives  his  sermon, everyone  in  St. Joseph’s looking at me and admiring my ways. In a fortnight I have the Mass in my head and it’s time to go to St. Joseph’s to see the sacristan, Stephen Carey, who is in charge of altar boys. Dad polishes my boots. Mam darns my socks and throws an extra coal on the fire to heat up the iron to press my shirt. She boils water to scrub my head, neck, hands and knees and any inch of skin that shows. She scrubs till my skin burns and tells Dad she wouldn’t give it to the world to say her son went on the altar dirty. She wishes I didn’t have scabby knees from running around kicking canisters and falling down pretending I was the greatest footballer in the world. She wishes we had a drop of hair oil in the house but water and spit will keep my hair from sticking up like black straw in a mattress. She warns me speak up when I go to St. Joseph’s and don’t be mumbling in English or Latin. She says, ’Tis a great pity you grew out of your First Communion suit but you have nothing to be ashamed of, you come from good blood, McCourts, Sheehans, or my mother’s family the Guilfoyles that owned acre after acre in County Limerick before the English took it away and gave it to footpads from London. Dad holds my hand going through the streets and people look at us because of the way we’re saying Latin back and forth. He knocks at the sacristy door and tells Stephen Carey,This is my son, Frank, who knows the Latin and is ready to be an altar boy. Stephen Carey looks at him, then me. He says,We don’t have room for him, and closes the door. Dad is still holding my hand and squeezes till it hurts and I want to cry out. He says nothing on the way home. He takes off his cap, sits by the fire and lights a Woodbine. Mam is smoking, too.Well, she says, is he going to be an altar boy? There’s no room for him. Oh. She puffs on her Woodbine. I’ll tell you what it is, she says. ’Tis class distinction. They don’t want boys from lanes on the altar. They don’t want the ones with scabby knees and hair sticking up.Oh,no,they want the nice boys with hair oil and new shoes that have fathers with suits and ties and steady jobs.That’s what it is and ’tis hard to hold on to the Faith with the snobbery that’s in it. Och, aye. Oh, och aye my arse. That’s all you ever say.You could go to the 149