After I filled my glass, I sat next to Mommy Seleng’s bright blue plastic-covered kitchen table to drink; I could hear voices from the porch but couldn’t understand what they were saying. I liked being alone with my thoughts, a quality that felt different from other children in my village, who often spent all their waking hours with people, playing among other kids or helping family with chores, then sleeping with their entire household in the same room. I realized how much I enjoyed getting relief from too much attention and promised myself that I’d spend more time alone inside in future visits to my great-aunt.

Amid the faint human voices, I suddenly heard a low moan from another direction, which sounded like a wounded animal. I thought I imagined it until I heard the sound again and stood up to find where it came from, somewhere near the back of the house. I got to a door to another room I hadn’t realized was there, with windows that looked onto the kitchen, covered by green curtains from inside so I couldn’t peek through them. I reached out my hand to open the door, but the metal knob resisted me. It was locked. I took a step back, then another, and was ready to turn away when I noticed a shadow from inside the room, humanlike but swaying in an odd way as it moved closer, got bigger. It wasn’t long before I spied fingertips on one of the curtain edges, and I wanted to run, but curiosity and fear tied up my feet. An older boy’s face emerged behind those fingertips, a face I recognized because it was mine but dark, mine but with drool coming out of its open mouth, mine but without comprehension in its glazed eyes. The boy I thought was an animal moaned again, louder, and then again, and again. I resisted the urge to scream, ran back to the entrance, and encountered Mommy Seleng in the living room, who rushed to the moaning boy, then my grandmother, who took me in her arms.

“That’s your uncle Amang,” Nanay Coro whispered.