Summary

In “Chick-A-Chee!” (73), an unnamed narrator, the child of immigrants, recalls their childhood. The narrator and their brother were often left alone in their apartment because both parents worked long hours. The narrator's father showed them where he kept an axe in the apartment and instructed them on how to use it if an intruder tried to enter. One day, when the narrator's father was home, a man banged on their door and yelled “Open the door! I've got a knife!” (77). Eventually, the man went away, and when the narrator went to school the next morning, there was blood on their front door.

While driving through a nicer neighborhood nearby, the narrator noticed that there were pumpkins on a lot of the doorsteps. Soon after, their father made the siblings' costumes and explained that on one particular night, they could...