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Cette voiture est une simple machine. Elle n’a pas de sexe.”
     “Uh … well we say — no, no. Male and female apply only to living things. This car is just a machine. It has no sex.”
     “Ahhh.”
     “Ohhh.”
     Un moment de réflexion.
     A pregnant pause.
     “Alors il est femelle ou mâle, cet arbre?”
     “So that tree, is it female or male?”
     “Non. Seulement les êtres vivants — et qui bougent.”
     “No. Only things that are alive — and move.”
     “Mais il bouge, l’arbre. Et tous les autres. Regarde.”
     “But it is moving. And all the others, too. Look.”
     “Oui, mais c’est le vent ça. Ils doivent bouger d’eux-mêmes. Vivants, et qui bougent d’eux-mêmes.”
     “Yes, but that’s the wind. They have to move on their own. Things that are alive, and move on their own.”
     “Il est quoi, le vent? Femelle ou mâle?”
     “What’s the wind? Female or male?”
     “Non, non, non. Le vent n’est pas un être vivant.”
     “No, no, no. The wind isn’t a living thing.”
     “Mais il bouge!”
     “But it moves!”
     “Oui, je sais. Mais il est invisible. Pour être mâle ou femelle, une chose doit être vivante, bouger d’elle- même, et être visible.”
     “Yes, I know. But it’s invisible. To be male or female, a thing has to be alive, move on its own, and be visible.”
     “Alors c’est pour ça, les microscopes? Pour voir le sexe des petites choses?”
     “So that’s what microscopes are for? To find out the sex of small things?”
     “Tiens, regarde, une vache.”
     “Oh look, a cow.”
     “Elle est femelle ou mâle, cette vache?”
     “Is that cow female or male?”
     Ma mère regarda. “C’est une vache femelle.”
     My mother looked. “It’s a female cow.”
    She smiled. She’d got it right, she thought.
    Many biology classes later, when I learned that plants do in fact have a sexuality, when I fully understood the terms pistil, stamen and pollen, I discovered with pleasure the slow, charged sexuality of nature. No wonder spring was such a sensuous time. Trees were not hard, irritable things, but discreetly orgasmic beings moaning at a level too deep for our brutish ears. And flowers were quick explosive orgasms, like making love in the shower.
    As for Noah Rabinovitch and the strange mutilatory practices of the Jews, it would be a while yet before I understood that his clipped foreskin complemented something other than my own penis.
    The next day at recess we hid around the corner and I offered right away, happily, to be his wife.
    “Okay,” he said, as casually as if I had just offered him a marble rather than my life. “Here, look what I’ve got,” headded, pulling out of his pocket a brand new Coca-Cola yoyo. “Let’s go play with it.” And he walked off, his disappointed and disgruntled wife in tow.
    My relationship with Noah was nonetheless deeply satisfying. On the outside we appeared and behaved like no more than the best of friends (her word), but on the inside I felt that wonderful, sizzling feeling, the basis of all love: complicity.
    Noah disappeared from my life as suddenly as he had appeared. Prime Minister Levi Eshkol died of a heart attack on February 26, 1969. Golda Meir replaced him. In the long domino-chain of changes that this brought about, a distant, painful one was the recall in the summer of 1970, at the end of grade 1, of diplomat Etan Rabinovitch to Jerusalem after barely a year and a half at his new posting.
    I spent my last year in Costa Rica a widow. For company I had only the beast television, which I watched avidly, expressing my dislike of it by sitting far away, and the boy who had attacked me, this savage on the periphery of my playground.
    Though I was interested in the sex of others, I