When the car almost hit me in front of our house—a red Parisienne, lots of chrome, braking inches from my cringing ten-year-old body—I thought my mother would be sympathetic, take me in her arms, comfort me. Instead, after hearing the horn blast and shriek of tires, she dashed out to the porch wielding a wooden spoon, blue eyes blazing, her rage as palpable as an electric storm. She grabbed me by the hair and led me up the porch steps into the house, where she beat me with the wooden spoon until it splintered, then took off her sandal and pummeled me with it.

Despite my mother’s reaction, I don’t recall sustaining any serious injuries, unless one categorizes confusion as an injury. I thought she was crazy. She had broken many wooden spoons over my head during my childhood and slapped me about with all manner of shoe. And how wisely she chose her instruments of punishment: things that would smart, and possibly bruise, but that broke no skin or bones. Needless to say, from that day on I always looked twice before crossing the street, if not three or four times. I never did get hit by a car.

Let me be clear: I was not a model son or a picture of good behavior. I think at times I drove my mother to the brink of nervous collapse. Like when I set fire to the garage. I hadn’t intended to torch it; playing with matches, I accidentally lit some spilled kerosene by a workbench. Anyway, the fire trucks arrived before the garage burned down. And my mother let my father handle the punishment for that: a quick and violent slap across the face that split my lip and left a scalding handprint. My mother kept clear of me during my subsequent sobbing fit.

I started believing that, although my mother loved me, she was crazy, cruel, and didn’t really have my back. I recall, after getting walloped in the head by Sister Rosemary at St. Lawrence Elementary—a sadistic old crone who despised immigrant children—for some trifling indiscretion, that rather than filing a child abuse report, my mother believed I had probably deserved the punishment and that if I just kept my mouth shut and behaved, Sister Rosemary would leave me alone.

This crushed me. I was having enough trouble learning the language and was weary of fending off bullies and bearing incessant taunts of wop and dego and so forth, let alone dealing with a thuggish old nun. I felt I was alone and had to fight my battles alone.

One evening my friend Patty Sullivan and I were messing around in the shared alleyway behind Mrs. Cole’s ugly stucco house. Neighborhood kids claimed that Mrs. Cole, a middle-aged widow, was a cat torturer and maybe even a witch. I never believed any of that, but during my entire childhood, despite living a few doors down, she never acknowledged me or anyone in my family.

I don’t know what we were doing—what do ten-year-olds ever get up to worth recalling? But out of nowhere, Mrs. Cole appeared brandishing a wooden cane. She said nothing and her face, the color of turning ricotta, remained strangely calm as she swung the cane and narrowly missed my head. She raised it again and I started running, but she whacked me in the back of the legs hard enough to trip me up. She swung again and caught me across the forearms as I tried to protect my head. Patty had skipped off down the alley but came back a few seconds later screaming his head off.

“Leave him alone, you stupid old bag! Don’t touch him! I’m calling the cops!”

Mrs. Cole’s expression remained blank, almost serene as she took a last swat at me—clipping my right elbow—and disappeared behind her garage.

Patty approached, eyes bugged open. “You okay?” he asked.

“My legs,” I said. “She caught me good.”

He helped me up. My legs and forearms ached from the blows.

“That crazy bitch,” Patty said. “We gotta call the cops.”

I remember breaking down at that point and sobbing as we went around to my house. Hearing commotion at the front door, my mother entered the hall, scowling.

“What did you do now?” she asked.

“He didn’t do anything,” Patty said. “Mrs. Cole hit him for no reason.”

“She hit you?”

Afraid my mother would side with Mrs. Cole and throw me a slap for good measure, I said nothing.

“She hit him with a cane,” Patty said.

“Show me,” my mother said.

I pulled down my pants and turned to her. I heard her swear under her breath in Sicilian. I still thought she was going to hit me. Then I showed her the purpling welts on my forearms and something in the air changed. Her blue eyes lit up. Her upper lip trembled. She told me to wait right there. Moments later she returned wearing a black sweater and a red kerchief in her hair.

“Come with me,” she said, crossing her arms.

Patty and I followed her, but she ordered him to go home.

“Tell your mother to call the police,” she said.

Reluctantly, Patty stopped at his house while we continued to Mrs. Cole’s. My mother banged on her front door with her fist.

“Open up!” she shouted. “Open the door!”

I was shaking. I had no idea what was going to happen.

When Mrs. Cole opened the door my mother screamed, “Never touch my son again! You understand? Never again!”

Before Mrs. Cole could respond, my mother drew back her hand and slapped her across the jaw with such force she decked her in the doorway. The air seemed to crackle.

I started weeping uncontrollably.

One look at my mother’s wild face had filled me with such intense emotion I thought my heart would burst.

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SALVATORE DIFALCO is the author of two story collections, Black Rabbit (Anvil Press) and The Mountie At Niagara Falls (Anvil Press). He currently lives in Toronto, Canada.