Now we’re in a movie again, a safety movie, in slow motion: I am standing paralyzed by what I’ve done, there’s a rush and roar from the direction of the living room, my father rising from the couch, he’s coming down the hall, I’m afraid he’s going to spank me, I remember the last time, the humiliation of it, him pulling my pants down on the porch and whaling me, his red face filled up with blood and rage, striking at me because what have I done? Now I’ve done something plain and sharply lit like the big shards of glass on the floor, and I’ve backed up into the corner of the room, away from the breakage and away from the door he’s about to come through, and as he does the movie gets even slower. He’s a blur in pajama bottoms and white strap undershirt. He’s running, one leg raised high in the air, high as my head, he’s saying something, but the film’s going so slow I can’t understand it, something like, “What the hell have you done?” but the word What hangs in the air, oily, dark, and long. And I see that he’s barefoot: his feet and ankles are pink and white, those are the colors of him, milky rosewater skin exposed beneath the blue pajama trousers, his foot’s in the air and he’s moving forward, he wants to see what I have broken and is about to step down hard in front of the bureau where the glass is, the biggest piece gleaming there with a diamond drop of light on its sharpest point like the glitter on the rainbow treasure gone cold and perverse.

I want to say, Stop, I want to say, There’s glass there, don’t! I have all the time in the world, as the film goes sputtering in the loops and sprockets of the old elementary school projector; I have minutes to say, Daddy, don’t step on the glass. But nothing comes out of my mouth; I’m fixed there, forever, a boy who tried to be a model.

And then he screams. End of film, crackle, sputter, and then slap of the last bit of celluloid against the reel: somebody turn it off.

Now, here’s my father on the couch, foot in a bowl of water my mother’s brought, a big tin basin. Strangely I am not being punished, not even yelled at; I seem to have disappeared, my mother and father entirely occupied with the wound. The water in the basin turns pink, then deepens, a bowl of hellish rosé, and a pale piece of skin floats on the surface: pink and white.