from "Boys Like That" (Things We Found During the Autopsy)

Boys like that start out with an eighteen percent chance of survival. They are born in the evening, arriving in bodies that are too small for their skin. Runny foods are spooned into their mouths because it is the right thing to do. Hard young aunts and uncles look at boys like that, cross their arms, and wait for them to die. When they don't die, it is not considered a miracle because the doctor will say that sometimes things like this happen, sometimes boys like that live. For many years afterwards, when people think of boys like that, they will think of leaks in the ceiling that can never be fixed, persistent blooms of black mould and old people that take a very long time to die.

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Boys like that are ugly babies. They smile at everyone and offer wilted flowers to tables and plastic chairs. Nobody picks them up unless it is an absolute emergency. In this way, boys like that learn to love hairballs, shoes, floor rags and the spaces under a table or chair. They eat anything that drops to the floor and sustain their first major injury to their fingers or knees when a dog or an old person is watching. At the doctor's office, boys like that try to kiss everything but nobody thinks it's cute.

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For the first five years of their lives, boys like that dress like girls. They wear shiny blouses with puffed sleeves and skirts with gold borders that sit prettily on their feet. Strings of jasmine hang across their heads, attracting small bees that only the boys can see. Thick smears of kajal make them look bewildered even though they have already understood the ant, the streaming of sunlight, and the technology of anger as contained in the heel and hand. Boys like that are given cricket bats and small rubber balls by visitors who wonder why they haven't got them already. Boys like that hold these things indifferently, forgetting them under chairs or beside trees. Boys like that don't speak for a long time because no one speaks to them. When they say their first word, they say it under their breath so no one can hear it. They do this on purpose.

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Boys like that have one aunt or uncle who dies at thirty. They meet when the aunt/uncle is already dying from something that makes their breath smell like kerosene. This could be due to drug addiction, diseases of the blood or liver, excessive spirituality, tuberculosis, boredom, multiple attacks of typhoid or unrequited love. The aunt/uncle plays pranks that leave lifelong scars on the arms of boys like that. They show them pictures of men holding their penises like it is a heavy secret and women pinching nipples that look dry and tired. The aunt/uncle takes boys like that for walks in unsafe places and makes them read long before they are ready. During summer vacations, boys like that read about God, breasts, coming down from LSD, the sexual molestation of twelve-year-old white girls, Kashmiri pot, Kamala Das, the Tandoori murders, autism, bisexuality, cowboys, Americans eating, Americans praying, Americans fucking, Americans shooting people, people shooting Americans, English breakfasts, ghosts, computers and demons. Boys like that become fluent in English in the wrong way, so that people treat them either with suspicion or as wayward Christians. When the aunt/uncle finally dies, boys like that don't go for the funeral.