was awakened in the dead of night by strange noises, like the sounds of nocturnal animals in the forest. The sounds came from my father’s room. I pressed my ear to the thin wall that separated my room from his and listened, and though I had never heard such sounds before, I knew that this was lovemaking: the rhythmic knocking of the headboard against the wall, my father’s grunts, a woman’s hitched breath, faster and faster until all at once my father cried out in pain and the woman released a moan of boundless pleasure.
