A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing Read Online Free PDF

bide the loud Do not. Theeverysooften crunchy crunch. And white guilty gums. Poison I know. I’ll die from it. But a little one. Ah a sneaky one and Oh I quail to think of that. You did something you should not have. Chalk’s your downfall. Chalk’s your crime. Day in school I. Didn’t lick the blackboard just my hand. Smacked it palmly on. And sweet chalk powder licky to my tongue. Swoon through lunch know I’ll get caught or Who did that disgusting thing? Where’s the glantóir? Teacher roaring. Who’d dare violate this board? She better confess because I always know. Panic runs lines across my face. I won’t raise my hand. She’ll kill me stone dead. Who did that? Nets not cast wide. The pair of ye, get up.
    They trup foot heavy but will not confess. Did you do it? No teacher. You’re lying. I can tell. Ye little tinker bitches. Itinerants, I know to say. Not in my house will you call people tinker Mammy says. No one’s tinker to you Miss. But our teacher does. Always smelly tinkers. Tinkers sit over there for living in caravans and get more walloped than anyone else. There. Always back to ye she says. Troublemakers. She knows them well. I sweat hands knowing I should tell. That love of chalk. Those smear is me. She crack their foreheads hard to each. Crack. Pulled to by the pony plaits with neat grease ribbons. I’m shame to that. They stand gloss-eyed and rub their heads. That’ll learn you. Get out of my sight she says and they reddy stare over the stone school wall. Looking at bushes with snail trails on. Snails at their noses. Snails in their eyes. No Daddy theirs will say don’t to my child. I know that. No Daddy mine. Go on ye so, and trup them down to snuffle lie sore heads on their desks. Noses dripping in their cuffs. Teacher scrubbing hands on a j-cloth. Don’t touch them little scums. I tuck my white hand in to lick at later on. Later. Alligator. Cat.
     
    Not there, I walked around and around. That house had up hill down dale. Steps and mud. Those wellies red. Umbrella. Wondrous being dry. See fat drops plop and run like a river down for flies. Spiders. That time it was always raining. Summer. Spring. I don’t know though when we were or where. Puddles and puddles very good for sailing peanut barge shells over. Like over and over the sea. Or this is Lough Corrib or this is the Nile. I’d like littler men to sail them but. Your soldiers aren’t mine.
    And sometimes you have schoolbags. A tie. Little sisters are. Yuck. I hate girls in the schoolyard. But still lie belly on the stairs with me. Who zooms quickest? Face first? Feet? Would you ever mind your brother’s head. Boys on bikes are better and I am left boat floating behind. They always ask what’s the scar in your hair? One threw a stone at your birthday that cut your ear. She grabbed him by the jumper. Little fecker don’t you ever do that again or I’ll. Everyone thinks our mother’s a bit and desperate because where’s the man in that house and who will teach those children right from wrong? Up to all sorts and in my day we were la la la. I’d say that’s what they say.
    Strange. Pushed out to the ocean of school. Wave back occasional to her shore. Hi there, Mammy. Never see me more without my secret life again. I spy boy’s urinal. Kill red things on the wall. Snap and broke the elastic waistband of some girl. I’m telling. Her Mam. Mam. Mammy or. You’ll get a thick ear for being noisy. And I never learned times tables. Scaldered to the spot. What’s seven times twelve? Never learned that. Thicko to the front. Face the class. Now for you. Have a smack. Was all that happened for years. And my head is good for secrets. I can bang it on the wall. It takes the nervous out and no one bothers for it at all.
    So. This as well when no one looks. Go n’eírí an bóthar leat while the wind be always at your back. Run up the fields. Blink to the house. Go sun blindness. Turn my arse. Lift to fly. Balloon across the earth. Puff