"How'd you do that?" asked my little sister Rosa.

     "Yeah, I chimed in, "how, Uncle Tanoots?"

     "You got Gilda to say her first word! It's even better than last week," said Rosa, " when you made it rain by doing the Sicilian raindance!" The old man laughed. It was the one thing Papa's old uncle did best. Since that first day he had come to us from somewhere in Sicily, we had been taken in by him. He was funny, hilariously funny, something Papa never was in those early days. And he took time out to talk to us as if we were grownups. "You do you home-a-work?"

     "Not yet, Uncle Tanoots. We'll do it later," Rosa said.

     "Why you think they call it home-a-work?" he asked. We had an idea, but we knew his idea was better. "Becausa now you home, you go do you work!" but he said it goodnaturedly, not in a scolding way. Almost as if the word "homework" sounded humorous to him and he was testing it out on us. Soon enough he'd transform the tight,stern look on his face to loose, convulsive laughter. To Uncle Tanoots everything was funny.

     Right now he was crouching down on the linoleum kitchen floor, watching Gilda try hard to bark or growl or make some canine sound, but all that would slide off her slobbering black tongue was the thin, mechanical voice of a baby calling its mother. "Mamma, Mamma, Mamma," said Gilda, bewildered by the alien human sound coming from her mouth. Those sad pathetic eyes played first on Rosa, then on me. Do something! Help your faithful dog Gilda. I got this big problem. I don't bark; I talk. Your great-uncle is ruining me!

     My sister and I sat at the kitchen table, our schoolbooks all neatly covered in tan Acme shopping bags, sprawled over Mamma's linen tablecloth. It was homework time, but we couldn't bring ourselves to work; this was much too good to miss. What would Gilda say next? Would Uncle Tanoots teach her how to recite the Hail Mary in Sicilian or sing O Solo Mio"? But "Mamma, Mamma, Mamma" was all Gilda would say.

     "A miracle!" Rosa said, her eyes looking up at the white, paint-peeling heaven that was our kitchen ceiling.

     Uncle Tanoots shook his head, his smile as wide as the Strait of Messina. "'at'sa no miracle!" he said, then laughed some more. "When you wasa in school, Rosa, I giva the dog you littla doll for play. Buta the stupida dog she eata the doll! She eata inside-a the doll where littla recorda player say 'Mamma.' Mamma mia!" said Uncle Tanoots, "where you gonna find more stupida dog?"

     Finally, he knelt down in front of the frightened Gilda, reached out and embraced her tightly around her quivering shoulders until the dog's face and his were muzzle to nose. Then Uncle Tanoots said some words in Sicilian--a prayer or a curse? With all his strength, his face turning the colors of the American flag, Uncle Tanoots squeezed Gilda tighter and tighter. All the while Gilda struggled, straining to break loose from this kneeling old lunatic. She wanted nothing in the world except to be left alone and speechless. But the old man would not release her; he doubled his efforts, said more prayers or curses, pulled the frantic dog even closer to his chest.

     "Looks like he's trying to give Gilda a kiss," observed Rosa.

     I thought about how Papa said his old uncle was a nutcase. Something about loose wires in his head; how years ago, when he was a young man, he flirted with a pretty girl from his village, and her six brothers had come looking for him with lead pipes in the middle of the night. When they finally left poor Uncle Tanoots, his head looked like a huge busted tomato, blood everywhere. Nobody figured he'd survive. But he pulled through. He lived but all his dreams died. He would never go to medical school in Palermo. He'd never marry, never have children. Thanks to those Monochello brothers who played his head like an ugly drum, he would never become the healer, the miracle worker, he had always dreamed he'd be.

     "He wants to come here?" asked my mother when the letter arrived from Sicily. "Here? To our home? Here?" she asked again.

     Then she chuckled. "You must be joking, right?" she asked my father while Rosa and I pinned our ears against the outside of their bedroom door. "We're getting a divorce, remember, Tony?"

     I looked at Rosa; Rosa looked at me. Our faces asked the same question Mamma had asked Papa: You must be joking, right?

     We heard the sound of the closet door slam. It was probably Papa; he did that when he was angry. He'd yell for awhile then walk away. After too much silence he said at last, "What's to joke? My uncle's all alone now that my mother's gone. For a few months he lives here. He needs--"

     "That's the trouble with you!" my mother interrupted. It's always somebody in your family needs. What about your kids? Rosa and Paulie? Forget about me. Aren't they family? What about them?"

     But Papa was not one to feed into Mamma's anger. True to form he called it quits and kept quiet; he let her go on ranting about all the wasted years she had spent with him. "What about your promises to be caring and loving?" she harped. "What about a little goddamn consideration?" It was the only time Rosa and I ever heard Mamma swear.

     "Uncle Tanoots," Rosa pleaded, "let go of my dog! You're killing him!"

     "Nonch' you worry, Rosa," said Uncle Tanoots through the few teeth he had left to clench. Through the spaces in his mouth, words whistled like tiny birds. "You joosta watch now," he said, and with that the "Mamma" contraption popped out of Gilda's mouth and sailed across the kitchen. Now Gilda was Gilda again. She tried out a bark. When it worked, she began barking in earnest. Nonstop. Loud and filled with relief, wounded pride, and downright anger.

     When Uncle Tanoots raised his arm to show the dog he was still in charge, Gilda gave herself away by flinching, tucking her tail between her legs, then skulking off to the living room.

     "When I wasa in Sicily, one time I heal four sicka pigs. They no wanna eat. They lie down ina the mud for die. The farmer he calla me. 'Doctor,' he say, 'You save-a my pigs?' Everbody know me in San Cataldo. I wasa the good doctor; Signor Miracle Man!"

     Before Gaetano "Tanuzzu" Mendola--that was his real name--came to our home on Chalkstone Road, Rosa and I were miserable. We were like spectators at a ping pong match: first Mamma would scream at Papa, then Papa would scream back, then Mamma would scream--it went on that way until Papa would narrow his eyes to razor-thin slits, wave his hand to signal the fight was over and then walk away. All the while Gilda would bark at the two of them like she does at strangers outside who come too close to our house. It was not a happy life for us kids. We knew the day would come when their threats of divorce would stop being threats. We lived in fear that the fighting would never stop--No, worse! that the fighting would suddenly stop and the two of them would walk away from each other like two insulted enemies back to back, pacing ten steps for a duel, or like two gunslingers tired of threats, making final plans to shoot in all out.

     In our misery Rosa believed Uncle Tanoots was really an angel sent from God to make all of us laugh again. To her he wasn't crazy at all. But she was only eight years old. What did she know! Me? At first, I figured he was a weird kind of babysitter--crazy, but not dangerous. He did funny things, even when it seemed he didn't intend them to be funny. In his head of loose wires he meant well: the world was in need of repair. He would say that over and over again as if we weren't listening the first twenty times.

     "Why you fight?" he would hammer away at Mamma and Papa. "You calla this love? Nonch' you know millionsa poor people ina the world they starving withouta love? Anda you two throw love ina the garbage!"

     Rosa and I would laugh. He sounded funny. The things he said were funny, but once I heard Mamma say to Papa, "Uncle Tanoots is a wise old man." And once I saw our parents go a whole day without so much as one unkind word to each other.

     "Whata we need?" Uncle Tanoots said, out of the blue again, as usual. "Whata we need?" he repeated.

     "About what?" asked Rosa, who always bit the bait of the old man's out-loud thinking.

     Uncle Tanoots smiled, placed a loving hand on Rosa's little shoulder. "Whata we need?" he asked, as if the question was Rosa's, not his. Rosa nodded. "Vera little," he said. Then he walked away and sat in Papa's favorite chair.

     Rosa followed him. "Tell me," she begged, tugging on the old man's arm.

     Uncle Tanoots played hard to get. He pretended to read the Italian newspaper Papa brought home to him every night. But Rosa was not one to ignore. By now she was climbing on the chair. "Tell me! Tell me what we need!"

     Across the room Mamma raised her head from the novel she was reading, and Papa, sitting next to her for a change, raised his head,too. Not to be left out, I raised mine from the Superman comic in my hands.

     "A family," said Uncle Tanoots. At first it sounded as though he were out on the limb of another tangent, some new message coming through the loose wires tangled up in his head. "It's alla you need in this life. "Family is ever'thing. You know why?" he asked Rosa.

     "You know why?" he asked Papa.

     "You know why?" he asked Mamma.

     "You know why?" he finally asked me.

     We all shrugged our shoulders. The way things were going in our family, who were we to even guess why family was everything!

     Uncle Tanoots leaned back in Papa's chair till it creaked. He folded the newspaper twice and put it behind his head like a pillow. "You want a miracle?" he asked us. "You want Uncle Tanoots to go run and dance-a in the yard so tomorrow she rain? You wanta hear magic words? I shoulda snapa my fingers? You want a miracle?"

     Then he stood and walked slowly towards Papa and Mamma. When he got to the couch where they sat, he leaned over, rested a bony hand on each of their heads like a man postured for a miracle.

     "Family," he said, eyes closed, voice trembling on the shaky edge of tears. "Family isa you miracle! Then he looked at them both and asked, "Will you believa? Before it'sa too late, will you believa?"