Maggie's Breakfast by Gabriel Walsh Read Free Book Online Page B

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