ONCE, I WAS PLAYING with a piece of sharp metal and cut myself on the hand, deep. I started to worry about tetanus, or what my mother called lockjaw. I remembered her explaining that as the infection got worse, your jaws locked shut and you starved to death; she’d read that in a novel by Flaubert. But I thought she would be mad about the piece of metal, so I decided not tell her what had happened. Instead, I walked around with my mouth wide open so at least I’d be able to eat.