The Plot Against America

by Philip Roth

Never would she seem more remarkable to me than she did that night, and not merely for the abandon with which she was accepting and making phone calls to and from Kentucky. There was more, much more. There was, to begin with, Alvin’s assault on my father the week before. There was my father’s explosive response. There was the wreckage of our living room. There was my father’s broken teeth and broken ribs, the stitches in his face and the brace on his neck. There was the shootout on Chancellor Avenue. There was our certainty that it was a pogrom. There were the sirens all night long. There was the screaming and the shouting in the streets all night long. There was our hiding in the Cucuzzas’ foyer, the loaded pistol in my father’s lap, the loaded pistol in Mr. Cucuzza’s fist—and that was just the week before. There was also the month before, the year before, and the year before that—all those blows, insults, and surprises intent on weakening and frightening the Jews that still hadn’t managed to shatter my mother’s strength.