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I know who my mother and father are, I just don’t know which is which. Both were transitioning at the time. They were thrown into jail on unrelated charges. The crimes, real, alleged, or imagined, were serious. No next of kin or acquaintances admitted knowing them. The authorities had no choice but to let me suckle a while (if mother could give suck), give me a hyphenated name, then send me to an orphanage.

All institutions have their procedures: the authorities administered a DNA test before they assigned me a crib. The results showed my genome is an exact representation of the percentage of all the races and ethnicities in the U.S. if we count the undocumented, which, of course, we don’t. Rather than represent all that’s great in America, I was a persona non grata.

This helped me since it was a state-funded poorly run facility. The only white people there were those who ran the place. They only entered our miserable grounds for photo ops.

When I was fourteen, they told me it was time to get a part time job. They needed all the meager wages they could gather to stay above water. I wore my shit pants to the placement interview, not that I or anyone else shit in them, maybe an occasional squirt when scooting to and fro, the pants were just falling apart. If I wore good pants, I would have gotten a white-collar job, I’m smart enough, I’m writing this ain’t I? I just didn’t want to sit and stare at a screen all day.

Further proof of my intelligence: they started me off as a gravedigger, a plum job. Only the rich are buried nowadays, the rest are either cremated or thrown into what woods remain to be eaten by what animals remain. I became more of a mason than a digger, mausoleums are the rage these days.

I was proud of my work, it sure beat enduring the gibes and taunts the minders and inmates subjected me to in the orphanage. The cemetery was a high-class operation: the best places always use the cheapest labor. One day we buried a rich industrialist, the kind that appears in the entertainment news shows. We pulled out all the stops, built a true exemplar, the mausoleum of mausolea.

After the funeral one of his daughters asked who built her father’s last palace. The foreman pointed to me. She didn’t believe him. On your father’s instructions, he said, for the deceased was also a first-class architect.

In my country, England, she said, we grieve by debasing ourselves. She led me to her sports car, drove us to a cheap motel on the outskirts of town. Leave those shit pants outside the door, please, she said upon our arrival. There are limits to debasement. So began my initiation to love.

She turned the TV on, we ate some chips, she didn’t call them crisps, then we performed the act. How was it? I asked when we were through.

Awful.

I’m sorry.

Don’t be. It’s what I wanted.

We lolled awhile.

When the sun shone through the blinds into our eyes, she took a shower. I made myself as decent as I could, opened the door to retrieve my pants. They were gone.

She pulled a spare skirt out of her purse when I told her. Wear this, she said.

I looked at the bulge in my underpants. But I

Oh, come on. You have the legs for it. What are you, twelve?

After a year and a half on the job I still didn’t have peach fuzz on my cheeks. We got in her car, no shower for me, the heiress had to attend a memorial. It would look awful if I’m late, she told me once she started the engine. My birth mother doesn’t have much money. My father provided me with a small allowance that his new wife can’t touch. She, my evil stepmother who hates me, now controls all the rest of the wealth in the family. I have to do all I can to get on her good side – that or forever rely on the kindness of rich playboys. We came to the edge of a large municipal park little more than a mile from the orphanage. This is where you get off, kiddo. I’d take you all the way home but there’s no way I could navigate those mazy one-way city streets and still get there on time. I stepped out. She blew me an air kiss and sped off.

Though it was dark, I had plenty of time to beat the orphanage’s curfew. I took a diagonal path across the park. About thirty yards before the dry fountain that sits in the center of the concrete circle at the midpoint of the park, I felt a strong hand on my shoulder. I turned, recognized the hair, cheekbones, and jawline of a star visiting athlete I’d seen an hour or so before on TV. He led me to the street, hailed a cab, took me to his hotel in the swanky part of town.

We sat on the sofa. He poured us drinks from the minibar in his room, watched a highlight film of himself on his tablet. After a few drinks he stood me up, ripped off my skirt, and turned me around. When he saw my man parts he pushed me against a wall, reared back, and swung at me. Limber from the alcohol, I ducked. His hand hit mahogany, part of a door jamb. He writhed, screamed about tomorrow’s game. I wrapped some ice in a towel, wrapped the towel around his hand. He pushed me aside, went to the bathroom to look for who knows what. I covered myself in another towel, grabbed a wad of cash I saw on a dresser, ran to the elevator. People barely noticed me. Apparently, they’d seen stranger sights. Downstairs the concierge hailed me a cab. I arrived at the orphanage two minutes before curfew with more than enough money to replace my missing clothes.

The guard at the front desk was eating pork rinds. The star athlete was on the TV screen. His hand and wrist were wrapped in proper bandages. Things move fast in these parts. Do me a favor and lock the door, the guard said. I’m watching this. I complied. You eat yet? he asked once the door was secured.

No.

Too bad, he said. The dining room closed hours ago. What are you doing in that funny get up?

It’s a long story.

You better give me some money if you don’t want me to tell the rector.

I pulled a twenty out of my cash roll, the going price for shit pants around here, gave him the rest.

He counted his money, tried to place a bet on his phone on tomorrow’s game. Damn, the odds changed already, I heard him say as I snuck back to my room.

The next morning, a Sunday, the rector called me to his office. As you know this is an evangelical orphanage, he began. If our wards don’t exhibit exemplary behavior, we could lose our government funding. He turned the volume up on the TV.

The heiress was on. As an Englishwoman, as a Catholic, I feel for them, she said. Everyone has a cross to bear. I hope they find their way.

The rector turned the TV off, played a security tape showing me in bath towel and T-Shirt, locking the front door, walking past the guard to the hall. The police found a shit skirt in the athlete’s room, he said. Someone knocked on the door. Ah, here they are.

They saluted the rector, cuffed me, and led me out. If they don’t throw you in jail, the rector called after me, you’d better find lodgings. You’re expelled.

We can tell you where the least dangerous shelters for perverts like you are, the good cop said.

Ten minutes later I stood before the examining sergeant. Since I’m an exact representation of the real America, I knew he reviled me. He dismissed the policemen who brought me there, told the guards what cell to throw me in.

My cellmates were eating some insipid gruel. You eat yet? one of them asked without looking up.

No, I said.

Too bad. Dinner isn’t till six. This is our Sunday brunch.

One of the workers at the graveyard came for me at ten to six, took me to a different sergeant.

The offended party decided not to press charges, he said. There’s nothing we can book you on. This kind gentleman’s organization has offered to employ you part-time till you’re old enough to work full-time.

On the ride to the cemetery, the worker explained the terms of my indenture in between pauses to listen to the game on the radio. I’d be a free man at thirty, maybe twenty-five if I performed exceptionally well. I agreed to let him cosign the papers for me first thing in the morning. The game ended just as we pulled into the cemetery parking lot. The substitute for my suitor, the man who would rape me, scored the winning points.

My first new duty was to monitor the fish. The cemetery keeps an aquarium in the reception room of the main building. Management doesn’t want visitors to see fish floating on top of the water. The man who stocked the aquarium often brought fish that couldn’t adapt or that would fight with tankmates. After cleaning the aquarium, disposing the dead, and noting how many replacements were needed, I was encouraged to study for my GED even though college was out of the question.

That June, my online courses on hiatus for the summer, one of the workers took me to the woods where those who aren’t cremated or buried are tossed. We stood on a platform upwind from the stench. I saw all kinds of naked bodies in all kinds of orientations piled on each other. It was impossible to determine their ages or genders. He handed me the binoculars. Maggots and other like animals in transitional states swarmed over them. The turkey buzzards come at dusk when no one’s around, he said.

I returned the binoculars. We descended the platform, headed to the garage where I’ll learn to operate the vehicle that transports the bodies.