Brothers Emanuel: A Memoir of an American Family Read Online Free PDF Page B

became the norm, I led my brothers, Rahm and Ari, on expeditions around the neighborhood. Although I was barely six and my brothers were two and four, I was allowed to lead them to the end of the block, across a street—we were always taught to look both ways—and through an underpass beneath Lake Shore Drive, to a public rock garden where we pretended to assault a fort. More often we played on the sidewalk in front of the building or went to the little fenced-in playground in the middle of our block on Buena. The playground offered sandboxes, swings, and slides and enough grass and shrubbery to make the perfect setting to play war or cowboys and Indians.
    Every kid who happened along could join in. The neighborhoodwas pretty diverse with whites of various ethnicities. There were a few Jews, some Italians, Irish Catholics, and the kids who had come to the North with their parents from Appalachia. On sunny days, we would play until we were summoned inside. When the weather did not allow us to go outside we managed to conduct raids and combat missions indoors.
    Sometimes our pretend fights became real. When Ari was still sleeping in a crib, Rahm and I would climb onto the top level of our bunk bed and jump into it with such force that it rattled the hardware that held it together and bounced Ari off the mattress and into the air. The bunk beds were a definite center of aggression. The difference this time was that, unlike Rahm when he was an infant, Ari loved it when we landed in his crib like airborne troops.
    We also waged an endless series of skirmishes and sneak attacks. We built forts using pillows and blankets arranged on the lower bunk, which then became strategic ground that had to be defended. Usually Ari and Rahm attacked me, throwing pillows and trying to wrestle me onto the floor. If they prevailed, they would take possession of the little bunk bed Masada, reconstruct its fortifications, and defend it from my attacks as a giant, a monster, or a roaring dinosaur.
    Little boys have always been fascinated by fighting and they seem almost biologically driven to act out elaborate mock battles complete with imaginary wounds and melodramatic deaths. Our mother, who was a self-described pacifist, refused to let us have any toy guns, even squirt guns. But there was nothing she could do to prevent us from shaping our fingers into pretend pistols, which we could use to “kill” each other. We did. Many times each day. And at night, when the room was illuminated by one of those little night-lights that plug directly into the wall socket, we prowled in the shadows to make sneak attacks. As a grown man, Rahm would tell me he was never afraid of the dark, or monsters, “but I was scared of the people in the room.” Considering his size, he may well have been wary, if not afraid of, Ari and me, but I remember he held his own during all sorts of combat.
    Our father, who was working hard to establish his practice and make us solidly middle-class, often came home after dinner had beenserved because he had to make house calls, visit patients in the hospital, or handle appointments on Monday and Thursday nights, when the office was open until 9 P.M . Depending on the time, we would mob him in the dining room or he might help with baths and getting us into pajamas so that my mother could give us each our nightly time alone with her. This habit of making sure she spent fifteen or twenty minutes with each of us, either talking or reading to us, was something she started when Rahm was a toddler and it probably went a long way toward making sure we each felt we received the individual attention we needed. As she explained it to me once, “Every child should feel like he’s as special as an only child, for at least a little time every day.”
    Maintaining this routine was not always easy. Our wild play sometimes produced real bruises and bloody wounds that required serious intervention. When I was five, I once missed the seat of a