Miguel was not the best student, but he had made friends easily once he hit several home runs in gym class. Norman and Greg Kessler, twins and the most popular kids in school, chose him for their team and for their friend. Norman and Greg helped him with his English, defended him against would-be attackers, and told him when they saw his father naked.

Mr. Mitchell had driven past them on the highway, stripped bare from the waist down. From the window of their mother’s minivan, Norman and Greg could see a woman leaning over the gearshift. It’s true, said the twins. Miguel made them swear on the Bible, on a stack of Red Sox cards, and finally on their grandfather’s grave, which they did, bikes thrown aside in the grass and sweaty hands pressed on the polished marble of his years. At dinner that night the boy watched his father eating. The angle of his jaw clenched and turned.

Miguel felt a memory push past hot dogs, past English, past Hostess cupcakes and his collection of Spiderman comic books. He was five years old and asked his mother where his father was. She was making coffee—squeezing the grounds through a sieve made out of cloth and wire. He’d collected eggs from their chickens for breakfast. He was holding them in his hands and they were still warm. His mother took one from him. This is the world and we are here, she said, and pointed to the bottom half of the egg. Your father is there. She ran her finger up along the edge and tapped the point with a dark red nail. Then she cracked the yolk in a pan and threw the rest of the egg in the garbage. He retrieved it later and pushed his fingertips back and forth across the slippery inner membrane until the shell came apart into pieces.

Miguel picked up the doormat and shook it to get the dust off. It seemed like something Mrs. Mitchell might be fond of. That morning he had kept watch through the bathroom keyhole. She was out of sight, but he could sense her worry.

In Caracas he had gone through the trash regularly, looking for things to play with and at times for something to eat. Ever since he heard about his father being naked on the highway, he had been remembering more about his life there, and even reverting to some of his old habits, as if the non sequitur of his father’s nudity had tenderly shaken him awake. He lay in bed at night and looked into the eyes of the papier-mâché head for guidance. He had two lives now, two countries and two mothers. Soon he would find another life without his father, and another, when he went away to college, and another life, and another, and another, and another, each of them a thin, fragile casing echoing the hum of what had gone before.