This is what his father always called him whenever he'd done something bad: "Where were you when this happened, Boy? What did you think you were doing, Boy?"

He took that word inside himself and it became the name for all his bad desires. It was Boy who made him play pranks that weren't funny to anybody Boy who made him cheat on tests when he felt like it in school, even though he always knew the answers and didn't have to cheat. It was Boy who made him stand and watch from the closet when his parents thought he was in bed and he saw them do the dog thing, Father's belly so loose and jiggly, Mother so white and weak and dead while it happened, her breasts flopped out flat to either side like fish. It was the worst thing Boy had ever made him do, to watch that, and to his sur prise Boy didn't like it, no, Boy hated it even worse than he did, to see Father be so bad.

I will never do that, said Boy inside him. It's ugly to kill a woman like that and then make her still be alive afterward so you can do it all again.

From then on when he looked at big women with their breasts and their secrets and their faces that could turn dead looking at a man, Boy went away. Boy didn't want to be part of that game.

But that didn't mean that Boy was gone, no, nor silent neither. Boy was still there, and he got his way sometimes, yes; and he found new things to want. Only Boy wasn't careful. Boy only wanted what he wanted until he got it and then he went back into hiding and left him to take care of everything, to take all the blame for what Boy had done even though he hadn't wanted to do it in the first place.

Now none of his people would let him near their children because of the things Boy had decided he had to do. Damn you Boy! Die and damn you!

But they promised not to tell, says Boy. The children said they wouldn't tell but then they did.