excerpt
Smiling from one side of his mouth to the other George
placed the plate on their table.
“Are you on duty this morning, Mary?” George asked her.
“No, not today,” she answered.
“Why don’t you go to the personnel eating room?” George
wondered aloud.
“I don’t like eating there, besides I never craved the full
breakfast…”
“I see,” George added and left them alone; he knew they
liked that.
Sister Helen and Father Peter appeared guiding the kids
in for their porridge. They all followed their lines and took their
seats, boys in one side of the eating area and girls on the other.
The livingness of the kids waked up the place and suddenly
everything seemed to make some sense, the tables, the benches,
the kitchen counters were the food was placed, the walls which
tuned their ears to grab whispers and soft words spoken between
the little savages against the stern voices of their two supervisors
who kept on saying, “quiet, quiet, take your food and sit down”
while they paced from one side of the hallway to the other perusing
both sides, make sure no one of these kids did anything that
they would disapprove.
Suddenly in all quietness a upheaval that broke the utter
silence, Marcus, who else would do such a thing, as he was horsing
around in his place he pushed the boy next to him with the
result of some porridge spilled on the table. The boy started
making a commotion, Father Peter rushed to their area and
ordered Marcus to get up take his bowl with his porridge and
step on the hallway, which the youth did, as always but soon as
he stepped in the open area between the two rows of benches a
hard slap from the hand of the priest struck the back of his neck;
Manolis Aligizakis 