Maggie's Breakfast (6 page)

As I stood in front of my Guardian Angel she reached back to her desk and handed me a small box. “Open it,” she said with a glowing light in her eyes.

I fumbled with the box but managed to open it without much trouble. Inside the box was a pair of new brown shoes. I almost passed out from the smell of the new leather.

“Wear them with your suit when you make your Communion,” the nun said. “Tie the laces tight so they won’t fall off your feet.”

I was so fixated on Sister Charlotte I wasn’t able to concentrate on what she was saying to me. I felt trapped in a cage of pure love. My skin was boiling and I felt as if my hair was on
fire. I could hardly breathe. I was convinced I was committing sin.

A week after I made my Communion I went to Confession and told the priest that I wanted Sister Charlotte to be my mother. The priest told me I had a mother and I shouldn’t be thinking of
having another one. I told the priest that I was always wishing I could see Sister Charlotte in a dress instead of the black habit she wore. And I wondered if she painted her legs brown like my
oldest sister Mary did before she left home and got married. I told the priest that I had a dream when I imagined Sister Charlotte wearing almost no clothes at all. For the act of committing sin by
“thought” the priest told me to say the rosary every day for two weeks as well as six Acts of Contrition.

Sister Charlotte was the nicest person I ever met. The more I got to know her the more I believed she was a real saint who should have been living up in heaven. She told me she prayed for me and
hoped that I would find everything I ever wanted out of life. She said she prayed that I would even find my lost sandal. “Gabriel, you will find your sandal. You will have new sandals with
silver buckles on them as well.”

I had fantasies of kissing her but I knew that was a serious sin. Nuns didn’t kiss or be kissed. But I think I was the only boy in her class that she held hands with. Every day she’d
look into my eyes and smile and say nice things to me. In the back of my mind I kept telling her I loved her and that I wanted to see her every day for the rest of my life.

Sister Charlotte was talking about how a star in the sky guided the Three Wise Men to Bethlehem when another nun came rushing into the class and whispered in her ear. The two nuns then walked to
the classroom door and opened it wide.

“Everybody go home and quickly!” they said.

The room emptied in a hurry. I didn’t know what was going on and most of us in the class started to cry. One boy who wasn’t crying said the Devil had escaped from hell and he was
being chased all around Dublin by Catholic angels. That bit of information made us feel better. We knew no devil could beat up God’s angels and when the Devil was caught he would be sent back
down to hell and Dublin would again be safe for us to sit in school or do anything we wanted. Then in a fit of panic Sister Charlotte started to herd us out of the convent. When we got to the
school gate another nun yelled out, “Infestation!” The boy who said the Devil had escaped from hell said “infestation” meant mortal sin. There was no escape from that unless
you went to Confession and confessed all your sins and really meant it. I was trying to think of how many mortal sins I had committed when another nun called out to the Mother Superior of the
convent: “Lice! Lice!” The Mother Superior blessed herself in a hurry. Lice weren’t mortal sins. They were bugs with legs growing everywhere that crawled on your head and in your
hair. The dogs and cats and the birds in the trees had lice. Mice had lice. Somebody said the cause of the lice was eating the dead rabbits the dogs dropped on the street.

When I got home my sisters and brothers were sitting outside on the kerb. They had been told the same thing in their schools. My sisters and brothers and all the boys and girls on the street had
lice in their hair. A man came by and left a big bottle of Lysol outside our hall door. He was from some government agency and he said there was a state of emergency in Dublin because of the lice.
The government handed out fine-toothed combs and paper with drawings of the lice on them. I think they drew the picture of the lice so the mothers wouldn’t confuse them with mice or rats or
stray kittens or anything else that was on the loose in Dublin. All the mothers in Dublin had a big combing job every night after dinner. My mother searched our hair for lice then crushed them with
her thumbnail. Crack and splatter! Poor head! Poor mothers! Poor lice! Poor Dublin!

After the lice infestation and when everybody was back in school, still smelling of Lysol, Sister Charlotte called me to the head of the class and handed me six shiny new pennies. The six
pennies Sister Charlotte gave me was the most money I had ever had in my life. She also presented me with a birthday cake. It was my very first present ever and the closest I had ever been to
anything that had cream on top of it.
Happy Birthday
was written on top of the cake. Sister Charlotte held me by the hand and told me to smile and be happy about everything. With great
difficulty and shyness I managed to lift my chin and look in her eyes. I thought I was going to die when I made eye contact with her. Angels and Heaven and happiness were floating all about me. I
didn’t want to stop looking. Her face was the sun shining through on a cold rainy day. I didn’t know who I was any more so I started to cry.

Sister Charlotte wiped away the tears that were falling from my eyes with her fingers. She smiled at me and told me it was not a bad thing if I cried my eyes out in front of her. When she said
that I stopped crying. She then walked me back to my seat and sat me down. The other boys in the class were watching with looks of serious confusion on their faces. I sat in silence and felt
numb.

Sister Charlotte came back to me with the cake in a box tied with a red ribbon. “Open this when you go home, Gabriel, and share it with your family. Your mother will be happy, I’m
sure of it! And a big happy birthday to you, Gabriel!”

Sister Charlotte turned to the class and asked the other boys to sing “Happy Birthday” to me. The classroom thundered with the sound. When the school bell rang she asked me to stay
in my seat. She then walked up to me and wished me a happy birthday again. As I picked up my cake and was about to walk out of the classroom, she took my hand in hers.

“Gabriel,” she said and went silent for a moment or two. She looked down at my two feet as if to make sure I was wearing the shoes she gave me. She then looked in my eyes again.

I was consumed by shyness, fear and confusion. Since I first met her I believed she was my Guardian Angel with white wings growing out of her shoulders. Her magical presence made everything in
my life bright and clear.

Almost at the exact moment when I felt I didn’t exist at all, she whispered, “Gabriel, in a few months you’ll be transferring to Saint Michael’s Christian Brothers
School. The brothers are fine teachers. They’ll help prepare you for the day when you’ll be going out in the world looking for a job.”

The thought of me ever having a job was as far away as my entering Heaven. I’d have to be dead first to get there. My father and loads of other men were always looking for jobs.

“You’ll soon be gone from the convent here. You know that, don’t you?”

I was so shy I could only nod my head. Sister Charlotte continued to talk. What she had to say came close to erasing me from the page of life that my name was written on.

“I’m to leave the convent soon.”

I stood, feeling half paralysed.

Sister Charlotte continued. “I’m going away to Africa to join my fellow sisters there. My order has encouraged me to go and I’ve accepted. I won’t be in class when you
come here next week. I wasn’t going to tell you or the class and I didn’t, until now.” Then she leaned towards me and kissed me on the forehead.

* * *

Angelo Fusco’s fish and chip shop was a place where my oldest brother Nicholas and I often got a bit of extra food when we were hungry. Nicholas was only twelve but he
acted as if he was as old as my father. Because I was so small Nicholas would tell me to lie down and hide on the floor under the long wooden stalls in the fish and chip shop. Angelo would bring
the fish and chips to the customers in the booth. Often the customers, a lot of them men who had been working overtime at the foundry, were so exhausted they would fall asleep before they had a
chance to finish what they paid for. When they started snoring Nicholas would signal to me that Mr. Fusco was back behind the counter. It was a chance for me to reach up to the plates and swipe
whatever part of the fish and chips hadn’t been eaten. A portion of uneaten fish was the prize of the night. Nicholas and I would swallow what was left of the vinegar in the bottles to wash
down the chips.

Sometimes Angelo Fusco would spot us in the booth and whip us with a wet cloth soaked in flour batter. When he connected, the wet flour ended up in our hair, our ears and our eyes. It stuck to
our faces and by the time we got home the batter would have hardened and we’d have to face my mother’s anger as well as her wet dishcloth.

Nicholas had courage. The way he took chances and ignored danger drew me to him. He wasn’t afraid of anything or anybody and he made sure I got part of everything he had. He was a bit
loose and wild. He caused my mother all kinds of problems. He skipped school and robbed apples from rich people’s orchards. Not attending Mass or going to Confession was another thing.
Sometimes he stayed out all night and slept in abandoned cowsheds. I loved him with all my heart. He ignored or didn’t see where he lived and never complained about anything. He was always
jumping on the back of horse-drawn carts and committing daredevil acts and he was always there to protect me from my brother Michael who was older than me but younger than Nicholas. As boys we ran
and scrambled about the neighbourhood like young pups. I followed Nicholas and Michael everywhere. When I fell behind, Nicholas always slowed down enough for me to keep up with them. It so endeared
him to me I always looked forward to the next day when we could run all over the place even though we had no place to go.

* * *

At the age of ten, with a red ribbon pinned on my lapel, I received the Holy Sacrament of Confirmation. The red ribbon meant I was officially a soldier in God’s army. I
was told that when I made my Confirmation I’d be strong and able to tackle the world on my own. Even though you could go straight to Heaven after you received your First Communion,
Confirmation was even more important. It meant you were strong enough to be a soldier for your faith. You could go into battle and do away with anybody who wasn’t a Catholic. Being
‘confirmed’ meant you accepted the full responsibilities of being a Catholic. If you committed sin after Confirmation you couldn’t blame your mother or father or anybody else. You
couldn’t blame the schoolmaster or the priest or any of your neighbours. Anybody who stole anything from you or hit you with a stick or a stone couldn’t be blamed either. You
couldn’t blame any other kind of thing either. Even if you were starving to death or dying of the cold or had an incurable disease or if everybody belonging to you died, you couldn’t
blame it. If everybody you knew died in a fire and if the whole town and country burned down, you couldn’t blame it. If the world fell into Australia, you couldn’t blame that either. It
was as if you were given a full driver’s licence. Confirmation was an important promotion. You were stronger to fight any battle with the Devil and you knew the difference between Hell, Limbo
and Purgatory. I had to be aware of committing sin in thought, word, deed or action. I could keep my little soul white or I could make it dark. Sins meant spots on it. If you had too many spots on
it and if the white part of it was black it would not be a good soul. It didn’t take long for a few of the boys and girls on the street to get into arguments as to whose soul had the most
black spots on it. Or whose soul was the whitest.

Around this time I felt myself getting into trouble when the discussion turned to the subject of girls. My mind began to act like an alarm clock. Every time I looked at a young girl I began to
think I was committing sin and my soul was losing its whiteness. It was a good thing I was baptised before I knew I was born or alive. I think not to be baptised was worse than not having made your
Communion and Confirmation put together. If you died before you were baptised you were dropped off in Limbo. Only babies who weren’t baptised and people who were born mad went to Limbo. A
person born mad wouldn’t know if he was baptised or not so when he died he was sent directly down to Limbo. I never heard of anybody getting a second chance in Limbo. The babies that went
there didn’t have mothers or fathers to take care of them. The priest or the bishops or even the Pope couldn’t reach that far down to save them. The only comfort the babies in Limbo got
were the prayers that were offered for them when people said the rosary or went to Mass. My mother sometimes offered up the rosary for the Limbo babies. She also prayed for the souls that were
suffering the flames of Purgatory, waiting to get out and go to Heaven. My mother had personal knowledge that some of her relatives were in Purgatory. Two of her uncles who went away from Ireland
when she was a child never came back. She believed that they’d committed serious sins that kept them from returning. Purgatory was supposed to be as hot as Hell but you had a chance of
getting out of it if enough people said enough prayers for you. If you committed a not-too-serious sin, you had to wait in Purgatory until it was forgiven or erased by God or an angel.

When I thought back to my Confirmation Day I wanted to make it all over again in case I had made a mistake the first time.

* * *

Few people in my neighbourhood really knew the difference between a ‘Christian Brother’ and a ‘priest’. A Christian Brother was only a half-priest it was
thought and they had a mission that was different from a priest’s. John O Gods they were called. I didn’t know what the ‘John’ or the ‘O’ meant. The priests were
to save our souls. The Christian Brothers were out to save our minds. At the Christian Brothers’ school, smartness was to be beaten into you and sins were to be beaten out of you. My mother
often praised the Christian Brothers. “They’re fine men who devote half of their time to God and the other half to teaching the youngsters.” Sister Charlotte also told me the
brothers at Saint Michael’s were good teachers and fine men. I couldn’t imagine her ever saying anything that was not true, but others who had experienced the brothers had different
tales to tell. “Most of them would frighten the flies off a dead crow” and “They’ll teach ya if they have to kill ya.”