“We’ll let him stay,” Emong said with patronizing finality. “He’ll see blood. Let him see blood. It will be good for him. Don’t you see that soon he’ll
see blood coming from himself?”
Tato laughed. “This Easter, ha, Domeng? The other boys will come to Emong this Easter for the rites.” Tato laughed again, but did not sound funny. He sounded lewd and rude. Domeng
felt blood rushing to his head, and remembered his embarrassment before his mother and the laughter of his father, so he turned around but did not move away.
“He’ll stay”
Emong was kind, for Domeng knew that this elder man would know what a young man felt about the ceremony at puberty: blade upon flesh, then drops of blood: a little rite undergone by every boy
this part of the world, when he had to feel and ignore pain, and fe
