My own mother couldn’t help being who she was—her childhood had been truly ghastly. Her family lived in poverty in New York City’s Bronx district, at that time a Jewish ghetto. Her mother told her every day as she left for school, “If you aren’t a good girl today, you’ll come home and find me with my head in the oven, the way I found my mother.” My mother was naturally bitter, terrified, desperate. She told me that she “lived to hate,” and she took pride in her taste for revenge and malice. She was incapable of providing consistent love, but she did love me and sometimes, sporadically, felt
...more
