Maggie's Breakfast (5 page)

From the front room I heard a loud noise. It sounded as if Mr. Murphy had thrown the wooden bench at Danny.

Danny let out a scream. “
Don’t hit me! Don’t hit me!
”

There was a loud grunt from Mr. Murphy as if he had missed hitting Danny with the wooden bench. “What in the name of Christ are ya up to? Why didn’t ya open up for me? Why?
You’re a right git, ya scruffy little bollocks! Get home with yourself!”

The door slammed. All was quiet again. They were both gone.

I was terrified of what my mother would say about my hair when I got home. I planned on telling her that I’d been praying all evening and had said more prayers in one hour than I had in a
week. I wanted to tell her I said the Act of Contrition and the Our Father so many times I could sing them backwards.

After about fifteen minutes I climbed out of the container and walked into the front room. I tried to open the front door but it was locked. I then went into the back room, climbed to the small
ventilator window, crawled out sideways and fell into the back alley.

* * *

“Sacred Heart of Jesus, what happened to you?”

My ears had two red streaks of blood dripping down the sides of my neck and face. My head looked even worse. My mother’s face appeared to turn purple when she saw me. She quickly grabbed
my hand, led me to the big mirror that was hanging over the picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. I stared at the plaster statue and for a moment wondered if it had real blood dripping from its
heart. For a very short time I was dreaming that Danny Murphy hadn’t really operated on my head and the greasy snippets of hair that were pasted to every part of my body weren’t really
there at all.

My dream was cut short when I felt my mother’s hand on the back of my neck.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph, you’re unrecognisable!” She was having convulsions and hit me again and again on the back of my head.

A big bang went off in my left ear. Her hand felt like a shovel.

“You bloody git! You’ll make a holy show of me if you show up for school looking like that! You’ll be thrown out!”

She walloped my left ear with her other hand and I heard a bell ring. Its gong seemed to last forever but then all went silent.

A week or so later my ear was still paining me. My mother then took me to Saint Vincent’s hospital and had a doctor look at it. After putting a small light beam into my ear he told my
mother I should cut down on salt and stop eating eggs altogether. It was easy to give up the eggs because I only had one every second Sunday.

* * *

On Friday mornings the Sisters of Mercy from nearby Goldenbridge Convent went around the neighbourhood in a horse and cart with a big barrel of hot mashed potatoes and parts
from a slaughtered pig. Where they got the pig carcasses from I never knew and I didn’t want to know either. The smell of hot potatoes from the barrel on the horse-drawn wagon signalled to
families like mine that it was time to eat. I approached the nuns’ wagon with my can which had a smiling cow’s face on the outside label. Fresh milk was expensive and rationed at the
time. Condensed milk was donated by the Saint Vincent de Paul Society. With my family, the condensed milk lasted for about two days. After that the can was discarded, but the remnants of the
condensed milk inside the can remained and tasted like sweet glue. I stood in line with other children but by the time the wagon got close to my house the barrel of mashed potatoes was almost
depleted. Exercising her last charitable impulse of the day the nun scraped the bottom of the barrel and filled my can with crusty burnt mashed potatoes. It was just the way I liked them.

The Saint Vincent de Paul Society periodically dropped off a voucher for a pair of new shoes or sandals to every family on Nash Street. Children who went to school barefoot were singled out for
the benefit. My mother decided that it was my turn to take advantage of the shoe voucher because the toes on my feet were withering away with chilblains from walking to school every day barefoot.
Molly went with the voucher to Cleary’s on O’Connell Street for a pair of sandals for me and brought them home in a box but even with the coldest toes in Ireland she wouldn’t let
me wear them right away. She insisted I wait till Sunday and wear the sandals to Mass. After that she said I could do what I liked with them. For the rest of the week I went to school in my bare
feet, thinking about my new sandals that were in a box under my mother’s bed. Saturday night came and I washed my feet and went to bed with such great anticipation of wearing a new pair of
sandals I couldn’t fall asleep. The next morning my mother handed me my new sandals. I was so sleepy I could hardly see them. Instead of shoes or boots with laces, my sandals had buckles,
silver buckles that took only a second to fasten. The sandals were the first new thing I had ever owned and were a perfect fit. When I put them on my feet I thought I had died, gone to heaven and
sprouted wings. In a hurry to feel the sandals on my feet I ran out the door and headed for Mass. On my way to the church I kept looking down at my feet. It felt so good I thought I was in a bus or
riding a bicycle. Inside the church I kept gazing downwards at my feet. While I was doing that a person behind me slapped me on the head and told me to look up at the altar and pay attention. As
soon as Mass ended I was determined to form a relationship with the leather items that covered my feet. I ran up towards the canal to test the sandals. I wanted to show them off to anybody
I’d meet. I felt so free I could have jumped over the moon. When I got to the canal I decided to cross over to the other side. As I stepped on the footbridge that allowed one to cross over
the canal, my right foot got caught in the chain that secured the wooden crossing. To free myself I yanked my foot and was quickly separated from the sandal that covered it. It fell into the water
where it went under and drowned. I never saw it again.

When I came home with one sandal my mother threw me out of the house and I sat on the sidewalk and cried till sunset. Monday morning I was back in school in my bare feet.

* * *

I woke up in the middle of the night and my jaw was so swollen I looked like I had a doorknob in my mouth. The next morning, after a night of me screaming in agony, my mother
dragged me by the scruff of the neck to the community dentist.

After we’d sat in a crowded waiting room for about two hours, a man in a white coat with the spots of blood on it came out and looked around. Behind him was a nun praying silently. The man
in the white coat pointed his finger at me, then called to my mother: “He’s next!” He then turned to the nun and whispered something into her ear. The nun began to pray out
loud.

The nun came over to me and asked me if I had made my First Holy Communion. My mother answered for me and said I hadn’t but I would soon. The nun asked my mother if I was baptised. My
mother said I was. The nun then led me and my mother into a room where the man in the white coat told me to step into the dentist’s chair. He looked in my mouth.

“Half of them have to come out,” he said.

“Only take the bad ones out, sir,” my mother pleaded.

“Sure most of them are bad,” the dentist said.

The nun blessed herself as if on cue.

The dentist then took another look at my decaying teeth. “I assume he’s been baptised?” He smiled and squinted towards the nun who nodded while kissing the rosary beads she was
holding. “I’m afraid I’ll have to put him to sleep,” he added.

“Ah Jesus, can’t you help him without puttin’ the gas-bag on him, sir?” my mother begged.

“I’ll give it a try, missus,” the dentist replied.

He then put a pair of pliers into my mouth, got a grip on one of the teeth in the back that had a big black hole in it and began to pull. The dentist continued to pull and pull. I was spitting
blood like a loose water tap and crying even louder. I screamed so loud I almost swallowed the pliers and the hand of the dentist as well. The tooth would not come out.

The dentist then looked again at my mother and the nun. “I was afraid of this,” he said. He then reached for a rubber bag that was on the shelf behind him. The bag looked like a
recently extracted cow’s liver and smelled as bad. “Take a deep breath,” the man with the bloodstains on his white coat said to me. Before I could inhale anything he slammed the
slippery-looking cow’s liver flat on my face as if he was slamming an insect with the heel of his shoe. I could hear the nun praying louder as I screamed, pushed and attempted to resist being
knocked out by the rubbery bag that was smothering me. In seconds I was gone, way gone. Where I sailed to I don’t know. When I came to the nun was still praying and I had fewer teeth in my
mouth than ever before.

* * *

Receiving your First Communion showed everybody in the church that you were in a State of Grace and if you died a second after you received Communion you’d go directly up
to Heaven because your soul was clean and white. At the age of seven, receiving Holy Communion gave you the right to walk to the altar and receive the sacrament with grown-ups. Many families walked
up to the altar and received Communion together. First, of course, you had to make your First Confession and confess all your sins to the priest.

The Communion wafer that the priest stuck in your mouth was made at the biscuit factory. It was a small round light papery wafer that you had to swallow the second the priest placed it on your
tongue. It was a sin to let it touch your teeth because if you did it meant you took a bite out of God. The Sacrament of Communion was like a passport to Heaven. Receiving it meant you had no sins
or black marks on your soul. You had a white soul and that was the only kind of soul that got you by the guards at Heaven’s gate.

After you received your First Communion you were allowed to walk around the neighbourhood, knock on doors and show people that you were saved from punishment for your sins. When friends,
relatives and neighbours saw you dressed up in your new suit with the white ribbon on your lapel, they gave whatever they could afford and congratulated you on avoiding the fires of Hell or
Purgatory.

My First Holy Communion got off to an odd start. At Goldenbridge Convent which I was attending, Sister Charlotte approached me in the middle of class one day with a big happy smile on her
face.

“Did you get your Communion suit?” she asked me.

I didn’t know what to answer. I knew my mother had gone to the Iveagh Market looking for a suit for me but she hadn’t told me if she’d found one or not.

“After class I want you to stay in your seat. Will you do that?” the nun asked me.

I could never say no to Sister Charlotte. Had she told me to walk backwards on my head, I would have. I would do anything for her but I was afraid to tell her that.

She was so beautiful I couldn’t stop thinking about her even when school was over. I didn’t know why my body was reacting the way it was. All of Sister Charlotte’s prayers and
promises were like Christmas presents. She made me believe that all things and all people were good. Even if I had no shoes on my feet Sister Charlotte convinced me that I didn’t really need
them. “Ah, you’ve such a good pair of feet, Gabriel! It would be a shame to cover them up with shoes or sandals,” she’d say to me. I felt so happy and comfortable in Sister
Charlotte’s presence I forgot about everything else in my life. Sister Charlotte was my Guardian Angel. Guardian Angels were to remind you not to commit a sin when you were tempted. I asked
myself every day in school: What would Sister Charlotte say if she knew I wanted to kiss her?

When the bell rang for the end of school that day, I remained in my seat. After the class had emptied out, a woman who used to cook in the convent kitchen came into the classroom with a big
brown-paper bag.

“It’s all here, Sister. Clean and pressed. Like new,” she said and handed the bag to Sister Charlotte.

“Come up, Gabriel.”

I timidly got up from my seat and walked to the head of the class.

“Congratulations, Gabriel, on making your First Holy Communion this week,” she said.

The woman who’d brought the brown-paper bag in blessed herself and moved her lips as if she was saying a prayer.

Sister Charlotte then took a grey jacket and trousers out of the bag. “I think this will fit you, Gabriel.”

The woman stepped forward. “Stretch out your arms,” she said to me.

I stretched my arms out like the man on the cross. The woman placed my arms into the sleeves. “The jacket fits him,” she said, turning back to Sister Charlotte.

Sister Charlotte smiled. “This suit used to belong to one of my young brothers, Gabriel. He’s a lot older than you and he’s living in England. It’s been hanging in my
room for years. I’ve kept it in mothballs.”

“That’s where I keep me husband,” the woman said.

Sister Charlotte laughed out loud.

The woman measured the trousers to my knees. They too seemed to fit.

Sister Charlotte stepped back and took a look at me.

“I have a confession to make, Gabriel.”

I thought she was going to say she loved me. My blood boiled and my face turned red.

“I’ve tried to fit this suit on boys for the last three years and it didn’t fit any of them. When you first came into my class, you reminded me of my young brother. I prayed
that the day would come when you could wear his suit, and now you’re going to. Your poor mother will be happy about that, won’t she?”

“She will and thanks very much,” I said.

Sister Charlotte then put a white ribbon on the lapel of the jacket. “Wear this on your lapel when you receive your Communion on Friday, Gabriel.”

The ribbon was snow white and brand new. It was to be my badge of honour when I received my First Communion from the priest.

The sister also gave me a new prayer book with a picture of Jesus on the front of it.

“You can say your prayers with this book, Gabriel. Whenever you’re having trouble with everything that goes on around you, open this and read it. Making your First Communion gives
you rights and responsibilities. Your Holy Communion Day is one of the most important days of your life.”