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suffering. In contrast to her religious tolerance, she would yield not an inch in principles of decency and courtesy; she washed out her children’s mouths with soap if they used profanity, and she curtailed their food if they did not hold their fork properly. All other punishments were the father’s responsibility; she merely identified the offense. One day she caught Gregory stealing a pencil from a store and informed her husband, who made the boy return it with apologies and then, before Nora’s impassive gaze, burned the palm of his hand over a blazing match. For a week Gregory had an open sore. He soon forgot the reason for the lesson and the person who had inflicted it; all that stayed in his mind was his rage against his mother. Many decades later, when he was at peace with his memory of her, he could be quietly grateful to her for the three major gifts she had given him: love for music, tolerance, and a sense of honor.
    The heat is unrelenting, the ground is parched; it has not rained since the beginning of time, and the world seems to be covered with a fine reddish powder. A harsh light distorts the outlines of things; the horizon is lost in a haze of dust. It is one of those nameless towns like so many others: one long street, a café, a solitary filling station, a jail, the same wretched shops and wood houses, and a schoolhouse with a sun-faded flag drooping overhead. Dust and more dust. My parents have gone to the general store to buy the week’s supplies; Olga has been left to look after Judy and me. No one is in the street; the shutters are closed: people are waiting for it to cool down before they return to life. My sister and Olga are drowsing on a bench on the porch of the store, dazed by the heat; they have given up brushing away the annoying flies and are letting them crawl over their faces. The unexpected smell of burnt sugar floats on the air. Large blue-and-green lizards lie motionless in the sun, but when I try to catch them they dart away and hide beneath the houses. I am barefoot, and the earth is hot on the soles of my feet. I am playing with Oliver; I throw him a worn rag ball, he fetches it, I throw it again, and in this game I wander away from the store. I turn a corner and find myself in a narrow alley, partly shaded by the unpainted eaves of the houses. I see two men. One is heavyset, with bright pink skin; the other has yellow hair. They are wearing work overalls; they are sweating, their shirts and hair are soaking wet. The fat one has cornered a young black girl; she must be no more than ten or twelve. He is holding her off the ground in the crook of one arm, and he has clamped his free hand over her mouth. She kicks once or twice and then falls limp; her eyes are red from her effort to breathe through the hand that is suffocating her. The second man has his back to me and is struggling with his overalls. Both are very serious, focused, tense, panting. Silence. I hear the men’s puffing and the beating of my own heart. Oliver has disappeared, along with the houses; there is nothing but the threesome suspended in the dust, moving in slow motion, and me, paralyzed in my tracks. The man with the yellow hair spits twice in his hand, moves closer to the girl, and parts her legs, two dark toothpicks, dangling limply. Now I can’t see the girl; she is crushed between the heavy bodies of the rapists. I want to run; I am terrified, but I also want to watch. I know that something fundamental and forbidden is happening, I am a participant in a violent secret. I can’t breathe, I try to call my father, I open my mouth but nothing comes out; I swallow fire, a scream fills me inside, I am choking. I must do something, it is in my hands, the right action will save us both, the black girl and me; I am dying but I can’t think of anything to do, I can’t move a muscle, I have turned to stone. At that instant I hear my name in the distance—Greg, Greg!—and Olga