There's a cold sun coming through the window and I'm sure it must be warmer outside and wouldn't my brothers be surprised if they woke and found me there with more bread and jam. They'd gobble everything and then go on about my sins and the hanging.
Mam is still asleep though her face is red and there's a strangling sound when she snores.
I have to be careful going through the street because it's a school day and if Guard Dennehy sees me he'll drag me off to school and Mr. O'Halloran will knock me all over the classroom. The guard is in charge of school attendance and he loves chasing you on his bicycle and dragging you off to school by the ear.
There's a box sitting outside the door of one of the big houses on Barrington Street. I pretend to knock on the door so that I can see what's in the box, a bottle of milk, a loaf of bread, cheese, tomatoes and, oh, God, a jar of marmalade. I can't shove all that under my jersey. Oh, God. Should I take the whole box? The people passing by pay me no attention. I might as well take the whole box. My mother would say you might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. I lift the box and try to look like a messenger boy making a delivery and no one says a word.
Malachy and Michael are beside themselves when they see what's in the box and they're soon gobbling thick cuts of bread slathered with golden marmalade. Alphie has the marmalade all over his face and hair and a good bit on his legs and belly. We wash down the food with cold tea because we have no fire to heat it.
Mam mumbles again for lemonade and I give her half the second bottle to keep her quiet. She calls for more and I mix it with water to stretch it because I can't be spending my life running around lifting lemonade from pubs. We're having a fine time of it till Mam begins to rave in the bed about her lovely little daughter taken from her and her twin boys gone before they were three and why couldn't God take the rich for a change and is there any lemonade in the house? Michael wants to know if Mam will die and Malachy tells him you can't die till a priest comes. Then Michael wonders if we'll ever have a fire and hot tea again because he's freezing in the bed even with the overcoats left over from olden times. Malachy says we should go from house to house asking for turf and coal and wood and we could use Alphie's pram to carry the load. We should take Alphie with us because he's small and he smiles and people will see him and feel sorry for him and us. We try to wash all the dirt and lint and feathers and sticky marmalade but when we touch him with water he howls. Michael says he'll only get dirty again in the pram so what's the use of washing him. Michael is small but he's always saying remarkable things like that.
We push the pram out to the rich avenues and roads but when we knock on the doors the maids tell us go away or they'll call the proper authorities and it's a disgrace to be dragging a baby around in a wreck of a pram that smells to the heavens a filthy contraption that you wouldn't use to haul a pig to the slaughterhouse and this is a Catholic country where babies should be cherished and kept alive to hand down the faith from generation to generation. Malachy tells one maid to kiss his arse and she gives him such a clout the tears leap to his eyes and he says he'll never in his life ask the rich for anything again. He says there's no use asking anymore, that we should go around the backs of the houses and climb over the walls and take what we want. Michael can ring the front doorbells to keep the maids busy and Malachy and I can throw coal and turf over the walls and fill the pram all around Alphie.
We collect that way from three houses but then Malachy throws a piece of coal over a wall and hits Alphie and he starts screaming and we have to run forgetting Michael, still ringing doorbells and getting abuse from maids. Malachy says we should take the pram home first and then go back for Michael. We can't stop now with Alphie bawling and people giving us dirty looks and telling us we're a disgrace to our mother and Ireland in general.
When we're back home it takes a while to dig Alphie out from under the load of coal and turf and he won't stop screaming till I give him bread and marmalade. I'm afraid Mam will leap from her bed but she only mumbles on about Dad and drink and babies dead.
Malachy is back with Michael, with stories of his adventures ringing doorbells. One rich woman answered the door herself and invited him into the kitchen for cake and milk and bread and jam. She asked him all about his family and he told her his father had a big job in England but his mother is in the bed with a desperate disease and calling for lemonade morning noon and night. The rich woman wanted to know who was taking care of us and Michael bragged we were taking care of ourselves, that there was no shortage of bread and marmalade. The rich woman wrote down Michael's name and address and told him be a good boy and go home to his brothers and his mother in the bed.
Malachy barks at Michael for being such a fool as to tell a rich woman anything. She'll go now and tell on us and before we know it we'll have the priests of the world banging on the door and disturbing us.
There's the banging on the door already. But it isn't a priest, it's Guard Dennehy. He calls up, Hello, hello, is anybody home? Are you there, Mrs. McCourt?
Michael knocks on the window and waves at the guard. I give him a good kick for himself and Malachy thumps him on the head and he yells, I'll tell the guard. I'll tell the guard. They're killing me, guard. They're thumping and kicking.
He won't shut up and Guard Dennehy shouts at us to open the door. I call out the window and tell him I can't open the door because my mother is in bed with a terrible disease.
Where's your father?
He's in England.
Well, I'm coming in to talk to your mother.
You can't. You can't. She has the disease. We all have the disease. It might be the typhoid. It might be the galloping consumption. We're getting spots already. The baby has a lump. It could kill.
He pushes in the door and climbs the stairs to Italy just as Alphie crawls out from under the bed covered with marmalade and dirt. He looks at him and my mother and us, takes off his cap and scratches his head. He says, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, this is a desperate situation. How did your mother get sick like that?
I tell him he shouldn't go near her and when Malachy says we might not be able to go to school for ages the guard says we'll go to school no matter what, that we're on the earth to go to school the way he's on the earth to make sure we go to school. He wants to know if we have any relations and he sends me off to tell Grandma and Aunt Aggie to come to our house.
They scream at me and tell me I'm filthy. I try to explain that Mam has the disease and I'm worn out trying to make ends meet, keeping the home fires burning, getting lemonade for Mam and bread for my brothers. There's no use telling them about the marmalade for they'll only scream again. There's no use telling them about the nastiness of rich people and their maids.
They push me all the way back to the lane, barking at me and disgracing me on the streets of Limerick. Guard Dennehy is still scratching his poll. He says, Look at this, a disgrace. You wouldn't see the likes of this in Bombay or the Bowery of New York itself.
Grandma is wailing at my mother, Mother o' God, Angela, what's up with you in the bed? What did they do to you?
My mother runs her tongue over her dry lips and gasps for more lemonade.
She wants lemonade, says Michael, and we got it for her and bread and marmalade and we're all outlaws now. Frankie was the first outlaw till we went raiding for coal all over Limerick.
Guard Dennehy looks interested and takes Michael downstairs by the hand and in a few minutes we hear him laughing. Aunt Aggie says that's a disgraceful way to behave with my mother sick in the bed. The guard comes back and tells her go for a doctor. He keeps covering his face with his cap whenever he looks at me or my brothers. Desperadoes, he says, desperadoes.
The doctor comes with Aunt Aggie in his motor car and he has to rush my mother to the hospital with her pneumonia. We'd all like to go riding in the doctor's car but Aunt Aggie says, No, ye are all coming to my house till yeer mother comes home from the hospital.
I tell her not to bother. I'm eleven and I can eas
ily look after my brothers. I'd be glad to stay at home from school and make sure everyone is fed and washed. But Grandma screams I will do no such a thing and Aunt Aggie gives me a thump for myself. Guard Dennehy says I'm too young yet to be an outlaw and a father but I have a promising future in both departments.
Get your clothes, says Aunt Aggie, ye are coming to my house till yeer mother is out of the hospital. Jesus above, that baby is a disgrace.
She finds a rag and ties it around Alphie's bottom for fear he might shit all over the pram. Then she looks at us and wants to know why we're standing there with our faces hanging out after she told us get our clothes. I'm afraid she'll hit me or yell at me when I tell her it's all right, we have our clothes, they're on us. She stares at me and shakes her head. Here, she says, put some sugar and water in the child's bottle. She tells me I have to push Alphie through the streets, she can't manage the pram with that bockety wheel that makes it rock back and forth and besides 'tis a disgraceful-looking object she'd be ashamed to put a mangy dog in. She takes the three old coats from our bed and piles them on the pram till you can hardly see Alphie at all.
Grandma comes with us and barks at me all the way from Roden Lane to Aunt Aggie's flat in Windmill Street. Can't you push that pram properly? Jesus, you're going to kill that child. Stop goin' from side to side or I'll give you a good clitther on the gob. She won't come into Aunt Aggie's flat. She can't stand the sight of us one more minute. She's fed up with the whole McCourt clan from the days when she had to send six fares to bring us all back from America, dishing out more money for funerals for dead children, giving us food every time our father drank the dole or the wages, helping Angela carry on while that blaguard from the North drinks his wages all over England. Oh, she's fed up, so she is, and off she goes across Henry Street with her black shawl pulled up around her white head, limping along in her black high-laced boots.
When you're eleven and your brothers are ten, five and one, you don't know what to do when you go to someone's house even if she's your mother's sister. You're told to leave the pram in the hall and bring the baby into the kitchen but if it's not your house you don't know what to do once you get into the kitchen for fear the aunt will yell at you or hit you on the skull. She takes off her coat and takes it to the bedroom and you stand with the baby in your arms waiting to be told. If you take one step forward or one step to the side she might come out and say where are you going and you don't know what to answer because you don't know yourself. If you say anything to your brothers she might say who do you think you're talking to in my kitchen? We have to stand and be quiet and that's hard when there's a tinkling sound from the bedroom and we know she's on the chamber pot peeing away. I don't want to look at Malachy. If I do I'll smile and he'll smile and Michael will smile and there's danger we'll start laughing and if we do we won't be able to stop for days at the picture in our heads of Aunt Aggie's big white bum perched on a flowery little chamber pot. I'm able to control myself. I won't laugh. Malachy and Michael won't laugh and it's easy to see we're all proud of ourselves for not laughing and getting into trouble with Aunt Aggie till Alphie in my arms smiles and says Goo goo and that sets us off. The three of us burst out laughing and Alphie grins with his dirty face and says Goo goo again till we're helpless and Aunt Aggie roars out of the room pulling her dress down and gives me a thump on the head that sends me against the wall baby and all. She hits Malachy too and she tries to hit Michael but he runs to the other side of her round table and she can't get at him. Come over here, she says, and I'll wipe that grin off your puss, but Michael keeps running around the table and she's too fat to catch him. I'll get you later, she says, I'll warm your arse, and you, Lord Muck, she says to me, put that child down on the floor over there by the range. She puts the old coats from the pram on the floor and Alphie lies there with his sugary water and says Goo goo and smiles. She tells us take off every scrap of our clothes, get out to the tap in the backyard and scrub every inch of our bodies. We are not to come back into this house till we're spotless. I want to tell her it's the middle of February, it's freezing outside, we could all die, but I know if I open my mouth I might die right here on the kitchen floor.
We're out in the yard naked dousing ourselves with icy water from the tap. She opens the kitchen window and throws out a scrub brush and a big bar of brown soap like the one they used on Finn the Horse. She orders us to scrub each other's backs and don't stop till she tells us. Michael says his hands and feet are falling off with the cold but she doesn't care. She keeps telling us we're still dirty and if she has to come out to scrub us we'll rue the day. Another rue. I scrub myself harder. We all scrub till we're pink and our jaws chatter. It's not enough for Aunt Aggie. She comes out with a bucket and sloshes cold water all over us. Now, she says, get inside and dry yeerselves. We stand in the little shed next to her kitchen drying ourselves with one towel. We stand and shiver and wait because you can't go marching into her kitchen till she tells you. We hear her inside starting the fire, rattling the poker in the range, then yelling at us, Are ye goin' to stand in there all day? Come in here and put on yeer clothes.
She gives us mugs of tea and cuts of fried bread and we sit at the table eating quietly because you're not supposed to say a word unless she tells you. Michael asks her for a second cut of fried bread and we expect her to knock him off the chair for his cheek but she just grumbles, 'Tis far from two cuts of fried bread ye were brought up, and gives each of us another cut. She tries to feed Alphie bread soaked in tea but he won't eat it till she sprinkles it with sugar and when he's finished he smiles and pees all over her lap and we're delighted. She runs out to the shed to dab at herself with a towel and we're able to grin at each other at the table and tell Alphie he's the champion baby in the world. Uncle Pa Keating comes in the door all black from his job at the gas works. Oh, bejay, he says, what's this?
Michael says, My mother is in the hospital, Uncle Pa.
Is that so? What's up with her?
Pneumonia, says Malachy.
Well, now, that's better than oldmonia.
We don't know what he's laughing at and Aunt Aggie comes in from the shed and tells him how Mam is in the hospital and we're to stay with them till she gets out. He says, Grand, grand, and goes to the shed to wash himself though when he comes back you'd never know he touched himself with water at all he's that black.
He sits at the table and Aunt Aggie gives him his supper, which is fried bread and ham and sliced tomatoes. She tells us get away from the table and stop gawking at him having his tea and tells him to stop giving us bits of ham and tomato. He says, Arrah, for Jaysus sake, Aggie, the children are hungry, and she says, 'Tis none of your business. They're not yours. She tells us go out and play and be home for bed by half-past eight. We know it's freezing outside and we'd like to stay in by that warm range but it's easier to be in the streets playing than inside with Aunt Aggie and her nagging.
She calls me in later and sends me upstairs to borrow a rubber sheet from a woman who had a child that died. The woman says tell your aunt I'd like that rubber sheet back for the next child. Aunt Aggie says, Twelve years ago that child died and she still keeps the rubber sheet. Forty-five she is now and if there's another child we'll have to look for a star in the East. Malachy says, What's that? and she tells him mind his own business, he's too young.
Aunt Aggie places the rubber sheet on her bed and puts Alphie on it between herself and Uncle Pa. She sleeps inside against the wall and Uncle Pa outside because he has to get up in the morning for work. We are to sleep on the floor against the opposite wall with one coat under us and two over. She says if she hears a word out of us during the night she'll warm our arses and we're to be up early in the morning because it's Ash Wednesday and it wouldn't do us any harm to go to Mass and pray for our poor mother and her pneumonia.
The alarm clock shocks us out of our sleep. Aunt Aggie calls from her bed, The three of ye are to get up and go to Mass. Do ye hear me? Up. Wash yeer faces and go to the Jesuit
s.
Her backyard is all frost and ice and our hands sting from the tap water. We throw a little on our faces and dry with the towel that's still damp from yesterday. Malachy whispers our wash was a lick and a promise, that's what Mam would say.
The streets are frosty, and icy, too, but the Jesuit church is warm. It must be grand to be a Jesuit, sleeping in a bed with sheets blankets pillows and getting up to a nice warm house and a warm church with nothing to do but say Mass hear confessions and yell at people for their sins have your meals served up to you and read your Latin office before you go to sleep. I'd like to be a Jesuit some day but there's no hope of that when you grow up in a lane. Jesuits are very particular. They don't like poor people. They like people with motor cars who stick out their little fingers when they pick up their teacups.
The church is crowded with people at seven o'clock Mass getting the ashes on their foreheads. Malachy whispers that Michael shouldn't get the ashes because he won't be making his First Communion till May and it would be a sin. Michael starts to cry, I want the ashes, I want the ashes. An old woman behind us says, What are ye doin' to that lovely child? Malachy explains the lovely child never made his First Communion and he's not in a state of grace. Malachy is getting ready for Confirmation himself, always showing off his knowledge of the catechism, always going on about state of grace. He won't admit I knew all about the state of grace a year ago, so long ago I'm starting to forget it. The old woman says you don't have to be in a state of grace to get a few ashes on your forehead and tells Malachy stop tormenting his poor little brother. She pats Michael on the head and tells him he's a lovely child and go up there and get your ashes. He runs to the altar and when he comes back the woman gives him a penny to go with his ashes.