Afterward, being six and full of belief in my own infallibility, I announced that I wouldn’t make that sort of mistake when it was time for my bar mitzvah. He didn’t laugh at me like a lot of boys would. I remember him, balanced on his crutches, looking with pain at our father. That distress, on what was a happy day, is the part of my memory that is still so strong and so much my brother. He sat down and patted the sofa beside him, then explained that girls don’t get to have a bar mitzvah. It’s different now, but that’s the way the world worked in the thirties. I cried. And he held me. That’s
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