Chapter 1 The Goyim and the Jews First of all, I didn't call them goyim. My parents and grandparents called them goyim. I knew what the word meant; I knew hundreds of Yiddish words, maybe a thousand. I just never used them because they sounded too. Jewish. Yiddish was the language old Jews spoke when they didn't want young Jews to understand what they were saying. So I didn't call the goyim anything, even though our building was full of them. Mostly they were Catholics, like the Coogans, who lived on the first floor.

At first there were five Coogans: James Sr., Mary, Stephanie, James Jr., and Christopher. Then when I was five, Gary was born, and soon after that, Mary, whom my mother called "the shikse," was pregnant again. It began to seem as if she were popping out a new kid as often as their dog, Queenie, was popping out a litter, which was just about every year. "Why does Mary have so many babies?" I asked my mother, who had only me. "Because they're Catholic," she said, which, as far as she was concerned, explained everything I needed to know about Catholics in general and the Coogans in particular--like why they hung over every bed in their apartment a bloody, agonized Jesus on a cross that horrified me every time I went to visit them and eat their goyim food slathered in goyim condiments; or why James Jr., Stephanie, and Christopher went to Holy Innocents, rather than PS 249, where they learned that the Jews killed Christ (though they didn't seem to hold me personally responsible); or why Mary washed out James Jr.

's and Christopher's mouths with soap every time they took the Lord's name in vain, a punishment my mother held over my head like the Sword of Damocles, should she ever hear a "dirty word" spout from my lips. But she never inflicted this cruelty upon me, not because she never heard me say "fuck" or "shit," and not even after our next-door neighbor Mrs. McAllister told her that I was standing in front of the house shouting "Fuck!" at the top of my lungs. She never did it because that was physical child abuse, and enlightened Jews trafficked only in the emotional kind. And though my mother never stopped me from hanging around with the Coogans, or any other goyim, for that matter, she preferred I spend my time in the company of Jews--except for Jeffrey Abromovitz, who lived in the building next door. My mother must have known that Abromovitz, though he possessed only a vague awareness of what a vagina was, had taken it upon himself .