IGMS Issue 2 (31 page)

For days, for weeks Bonito didn't understand. And then one day he did. By then he was in school, and on the playground a boy was telling jokes, and it involved a man doing something bad with a woman that wasn't his wife, and in the middle of the joke it dawned on Bonito that this was what Father had been doing with some other woman that wasn't Mother. The reaction of the boys to the joke was obvious. Men were supposed to laugh at this. Men were supposed to think it was funny to find a clever way to lie to your wife and do strange things with strange women. By the end of the joke
both
women were deceived. The boys laughed as if it were a triumph. As if there were a war between men and women, both lying to each other.

That's not how Mother is, thought Bonito. She doesn't lie to Father. When a man comes to her and flirts with her, she sends him away. That's what happened with that man who liked her flatbread.

The final piece fell into place when they were visiting Grandma again -- briefly, this time -- and Grandma looked at him and sighed and said, "You'll just grow up to be another
man
." As if
hombre
were a dirty word. "There's no honor among men."

But I won't grow up like Father. I won't break Mother's heart.

But how could he know that? It wouldn't be Mother's heart, anyway, it would be the woman he eventually married; and how could he know that he wasn't
just
like his father?

Without honor.

It changed everything. It poisoned everything.

And when they came to him only a few day before his seventh birthday, and took out the monitor, and asked him if he'd like to go to Battle School, he said yes.