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take her orders. Everyone does. He goes out. He seems glad to leave. While he is gone, I get some eggshells out of the garbage and take them to feed to my dead snake in the bathtub. I stir the mess with the long fishing-stick till my father comes back.
    I watch from behind the bathroom door as she snaps open the paper. “I knew it!” my mother screams. “See? It’s Marty Goldstone! There it is. It’s Marty’s name, right there!” My mother screams louder. She throws the newspaper in the air and it flutters down heavily, like a pelican with a pouch full of fish. “Missing in action! Missing in action!” She gags right there, on the bed. She sobs and talks as she gags. I push open the bathroom door in case she needs to use the sink. “This is insane! Who made war? Who needs it? What is it FOR?”
    My father knocks on his own head. “Marty, my cute kid cousin,” he says. “That cute kid who used to drink sarsaparilla soda all the time.”
    Is my father crying ? Does my father have tears in his eyes? Does he? That is scarier than anything I have ever seen.
    â€œWhere will this end?” my mother shouts. She screams it at my father, as if he knows but won’t tell her.
    He goes and sits on her flowered bed and puts his arm around her. Then he sees me and motions me to jump into his lap. The three of us hug each other hard. We are suffering, it’s true, but it is wonderful to hold onto one another so tight.

    Bad things often give you good feelings, but no one is allowed to say this. Bad things force you to be excited, to push yourself out in a new way, to get busy, then get tired, then be happy to rest, too tired to be afraid. There is so much happening, there is no time to turn on the radio, or to get me wafer cookies. My parents don’t even remember that I need them.
    I go over my bad list. The soldier who pointed his gun at us. My snake, who fell apart in the bathtub, whose head fell right off and crumbled to mush. The butter in the mashed potatoes. My Jewish star left buried in them. The soldiers knocking my mother down. Marty Goldstone, who disappeared in the war.
    Even more bad things had to go on the list after my mother called Gilda in Brooklyn. My grandmother had a bad fall. Mr. Carp, one of the ladies’ husbands, died of a heart attack right in the fish market. And the biggest bad thing: my father has to rush back to Brooklyn right away or be drafted into the army.
    Talk, talk, talk. My mother and father talk and I listen, sitting on the floor, peeling the layers off baby coconuts very fast. I have a huge collection of these small green coconuts with yellow-pointed tips. I gather them whenever we go out. We have big ones, too, full-sized, grownup coconuts with hairy heads and little holes for eyes, nose and mouth. My father collects the big ones and takes me out in the alley behind the hotel to crack them. He smashes them down on the ground, over and over. He hammers on them, he pries them open with a screwdriver. His face gets red and he grunts as he tears the shells off. It’s hard to believe these soft little green ones that I love turn into those huge, tough, hairy coconuts that he collects. I suppose it happens if they hang on the tree long enough.
    When he finally gets one open, we’re supposed to drink the coconut milk. He pretends it’s delicious, but it tastes thin and warm and hairy to me. The coconut meat is a wonderful white color, but it’s hard to chew. And it has a scaly brown skin. My father says it’s good for you, it makes you strong.
    Once, in the alley, a piece of coconut got stuck in my throat and I choked. He got it out of me by turning me upside down and banging me on the back, but we never told my mother. He reminded me, “If we tell her, there’ll be no end to it.”
    That seems to be an important difference between them—she never lets things go, she pulls them back when they’ve