For thirty-five years, Bubby's entire knowledge of the universe has stopped at the walls of an inner-city, two-room slum. He knows only the existence of himself and his mother and spends each day playing with cockroaches and a feral cat all the while believing (as his mother has told him) that Jesus is watching his every move. Then one day his father comes home, starting a sequence of events that leads Bubby to kill his cat, his father, and his mother. Bubby then ventures outside, and suddenly life becomes very complicated.