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omewhere along the way, my normally laid-back brother started to sprout
worries. I can’t say exactly when or why this began, but Craig—the boy who
could high-five and what-up his way around the neighborhood, who blithely
catnapped anytime he had ten free minutes, regardless of his surroundings—grew
more fretful and vigilant at home, convinced that catastrophe was creeping our
way. In the evenings at our apartment, he rehearsed for every outcome,
immersing himself in hypotheticals the rest of us found bizarre. Worried he’d lose
his sight, he took to wearing a blindfold around the house, learning to navigate
our living room and kitchen by feel. Worried he might go deaf, he began
teaching himself sign language. There was also apparently the threat of
amputation, prompting Craig to fumble his way through various meals and
homework sessions with his right arm tied behind his back. Because you never
did know.

Craig’s biggest fear, however, was also probably the most realistic, and that
was fire. House fires were a regular occurrence in Chicago, in part due to
slumlords who let their buildings slide into disrepair and were all too happy to
reap the insurance benefits when a fire tore through, and in part because home
smoke detectors were a relatively new development and still expensive for
working-class people to afford. Either way, inside our tight city grid, fire was
almost a fact of life, a random but persistent snatcher of homes and hearts. My
grandfather Southside had moved to our neighborhood after a fire destroyed his
old house on the West Side, though luckily nobody’d been hurt. (According to
my mother, Southside stood on the curb outside the burning house, shouting for
the firefighters to direct their hoses away from his precious jazz albums.) More