Bramble Lane

Then the gangly neighbor boy—who years later lost his daughter to

the water-heater fire,

who taught the paste-faced boys in Briarwood about masturbation,

using himself as anatomical model

and illustration in hydraulics—turned to me in the woods and said,

“Your father, he took

his big thingie and he put it into your mother’s little thing, and then

you came out. That’s how

they make babies. That’s the big secret. And every man, he can do

that business to any woman he meets.

My father whipped me after he told me. He told me it would help me

remember.”

Later my father tried to tell me the secret that can be told only once,

and you remember,

whether someone beats you or not. That’s the other secret.