I was 10 years old. Even though I was young, I knew my ability to play chess was a gift. It was effortless, so easy. I could see things on the chessboard that other people could not. I could create barriers to protect myself that were invisible to my opponents. And this gift gave me supreme confidence. I knew what my opponents would do, move for move. I knew exactly what point their faces would fall when my seemingly simple and childlike strategy would reveal itself as a devastating and irrevocable course. I loved to win. 

And my mother loved to show me off, like one of my many trophies she polished. She used to discuss my games as if she had devised the strategies. 

I hated the way she tried to take all the credit. And one day I told her so, shouting at her on Stockton Street, in the middle of a crowd of people. I told her she didn't know anything, so she shouldn't show off. Words to that effect. 

That evening and the next day she wouldn't speak to me. She would say stiff words to my father and brothers, as if I had become invisible and she was talking about a rotten fish she had thrown away but which had left behind its bad smell. 

I knew this strategy, the sneaky way to get someone to bounce back in anger and fall into a trap. So I ignored her. I refused to speak and waited for her to come to me. 

After many days had gone by in silence, I sat in my room staring at the sixty-four squares of my chessboard, trying to think of another way. And that's when I decided to quit playing chess. 

Of course I didn't mean to quit forever. At most, just for a few days. And I made a show of it. Instead of practicing in my room every night, as I always did, I marched into the living room and sat down in front of the television set with my brothers, who stared at me, an unwelcome intruder. 

But my mother did not say anything. 

Still I was not worried. But I could see that I would have to make a stronger move. I decided to sacrifice a tournament that was coming up in one week. I would refuse to play in it. And my mother would certainly have to speak to me about this. Because the sponsors and the benevolent associations would start calling her, asking, shouting, pleading to make me play again. 

And then the tournament came and went. And she did not come to me, crying, “Why are you not playing chess?” But I was crying on the inside, because I learned that a boy whom I had easily defeated on two other occasions had won.

I realized my mother knew more tricks than I had thought. But now I was tired of her game. I wanted to start practicing for the next tournament. So I decided to pretend to let her win. I would be the one to speak first.

“I am ready to play chess again,” I announced to her. I had imagined she would smile and then ask me what special thing I wanted to eat.

But instead, she gathered her face into a frown and stared into my eyes, as if she could force some kind of truth out of me.

“Why do you tell me this?” she finally said in sharp tones. “You think it is so easy. One day quit, next day play. Everything for you is this way. So smart, so easy, so fast.”

“I said I'll play,” I whined.

“No!” she shouted, and I almost jumped out of my scalp. “It is not so easy anymore.”