Friday Penny.

I sat up from bed and rubbed my eyes sleepily rolling over and hearing my parents talking in hushed voice, I looked over to the right and saw Malachy beside me still sleeping soundly the small sound of his snoring covered by his arm. I walked over the cold wooden floors to my parents and asked them what was happening, mother looked between me and my father and he nodded to her, she took me by the hand and told me that father had gotten a job at the Limerick cement factory and he was starting today. An overwhelming sense of joy invaded me; a smile spread across my face as my mother wrapped her arms around me and hugged me as tightly as she could. This was the big break we were waiting for, this was the chance we needed. Father could now prove himself worthy and work every day making us more than sixteen shillings a week to survive on, I turned to him and saw that he too was proud. He was proud of himself for finally accomplishing something. He was really for work and by the patches of bloody paper on his chin I could tell he had shaven, maybe he had turned around. I ran to the end of the room and woke up Malachy telling him the good news; it took him a few minutes to process it because he too smiled finally realizing what this meant. That whole morning Malachy, mother and I jumped around the house praying, singing and yelling about how happy we were, mother held Michael as she sang her favourite songs and we joined in at the chorus. I couldn’t wait for tonight, father promised me and Malachy that we would bring us to see a movie, our very first movie. I couldn’t wait to see what a cinema looked like, I had heard from some that it’s a gigantic room with screens as big as apartment buildings and that live orchestras played but others said that you would sit on wooden chairs and watch a boring movie but I’d rather stick with the more extravagant story. It was nearing the end of the day and father would be home any moment, Malachy and I had already tied our boots up and had out jackets and hats on neither of us could stop grinning at each other. A half an hour passes and Malachy and I are growing tired from standing in our boots we start to slouch and finally sit down, when it finally turns six o’clock mother throws her dish towel on the counter and yells curses into the air, she yells that she can’t believe he would do this to them after all they’ve been through after all the promises he made to them today. I didn’t understand what Ma meant at the beginning until I finally caught on, she meant that father wasn’t coming. I couldn’t believe it either, he promised. Malachy and I lost our grins and untied our boots, we tossed them into the corner and went to go comfort mother. She quickly fell asleep with exhausting her breathing becoming more heavy and steady with left her sleep, Malachy and I stayed up until father came home crashing through the doorway, he smelt of alcohol and was holding on to everything he could reach, he came up to me and Malachy and offered up the “Friday Penny” we rejected it and watched mother wake up and send father downstairs, her voice was stern and steady and she was going to back down. With a swift motion she stepped forward and father coward downstairs, the next morning father sleeps in missing work and losing his job, and we all start right back where we were.