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children’s chair and hit the back of my head on a cast-iron radiator with a Tootsie Pop in my mouth. The impact knocked three teeth out of my mouth and left a fourth dangling by a little strand of tissue. A few years later, Rahm suffered a terrible hand injury. My friend Georgie announced that he had learned some dirty jokes and was eager to share them. We were in the vestibule of his building next door, and he and I decided to dash outside to exclude Rahm from hearing the jokes. Rahm rushed to follow us, and the huge oaken door slammed on his hand.
    He was screaming in pain, two fingers crushed and spurting blood. I took him home as fast as I could and there my mother wrapped his injured left hand. In the cab en route to nearby Edgewater Hospital, she struggled and sometimes failed to stay composed. The hand surgeon who unwrapped Rahm’s hand found the two fingertips dangling from shreds of skin. He stitched them back together as well as he could, although to this day they look a little lumpy, as if the tips were hastily pasted on.
    I still have a sense of guilt about this episode. Even after all this time some part of me feels I failed in my duties as a big brother. But this would not be the last time Rahm suffered a serious hand injury.Hands seem to be our family’s Achilles’ heel. Years later Rahm would cut his finger on his right hand at Arby’s and require amputation. And one Sunday on the way to friends’ house for brunch I was caught between my brothers in the backseat of my father’s Pontiac Grand Prix as Ari and Rahm wrestled over an opened can of mixed nuts. Suddenly the tips of two fingers on Ari’s hand were sliced almost completely off by the sharp rim. Blood spurted on all three of us. Possessed, my father drove straight to Mount Sinai Hospital emergency room, where he made a perfect repair himself.
    Fortunately, despite constant and intense physical play, deep wounds and broken bones requiring hospital trips were the exception, not the rule, for our day-to-day lives. Our more common mishaps were minor ones, which nevertheless led to howls of complaint. When my mother ran out of patience with our whining, her frustration turned to anger. We would be so lost in whatever frantic game we had concocted that we failed to notice the growing tension and her outburst would surprise us.
    Every kid who has ever pushed his mother past the breaking point knows the shocked feeling that comes when you hear her voice reach that certain decibel level and feel the slap of her open hand on your behind or cheek. Tall and strong, my mother could make herself into a physically imposing presence, especially in the eyes of someone who is four feet tall. The leverage supplied by her rather long arms meant that her swats were delivered with a surprising amount of power.
    Worse than the physical punishment were the long silences that followed. Time passes slowly for children. My mother could seethe for hours, sometimes even for days, after breaking. The mix of feelings we experienced when this was going on—guilt, confusion, anxiety, loss—was excruciating. Our mother’s dark mood cast a pall over the entire household. Worst of all, we felt powerless to affect it. No apology, dandelion bouquet, or handmade card would make her smile if she wasn’t ready and willing.
    Years later my mother would tell us that for every time she lost hertemper or retreated in silence, there were a hundred moments when she was afraid we would push her over the edge and she managed to keep her cool. Of those times when she whacked us or gave us the silent treatment, she would say she was protecting us from something worse. “You boys would drive anyone crazy,” she would say. “Believe me.”
    As adults we were able to imagine some of the pressure she felt, especially in the period when she had three hyperactive preschool kids and one judgmental mother-in-law, all jammed into a three-bedroom apartment. Savta could not have been much help. She