The Girl in the Photograph (13 page)

“We’re landing! Coming in to land!” yelled Max spreading his arms and falling belly-down
on the pillows. “
I saw in a crystal window, upon a proud pedestal!
Eeh, Bunny, this music, I wish I could sing it all, it’s a doll he falls in love
with, a doll in a shop window, a bitch of a doll prettier than Venus herself,
in the
bazaar of illusions, in the kingdom of Fantasy!
” he sang, drowning in laughter.

The red road. I’m happy because the road is red. A dwarf just passed me, I saw him
from the corner of my eye but he’s disappeared. The road is red with sunshine, I walk
in the sun, I’m contented because it’s warm and breezy. Far in the distance I see
the singer, he’s coming toward me with his electric guitar before I see his face I
see the guitar shimmering in the sun it’s as if he had another sun hanging over his
shoulder. A black man, but I like this one. I like all black people, I like everybody
everybody’s nice to me and I’m happy with the sun and the music he’s singing as he
comes down the road and the whole world is singing along with him, a crimson joy so
warm have a good trip! I call and he waves at me smiling. I like him with his electric
guitar that shines so brightly I have to close my eyes he’s a sun! Have a good trip
he says in the middle of the red light of the road and now it’s far off his face his
guitar. The guitar.

“Where am I? What time is it?”

My eyes burn. I rub them and sit up on the rug. What is this? Max’s foot is hanging
over the edge of the bed. I kiss it. My knee is wet. Whiskey? Whiskey, obviously,
how could it be spit. Only if I were a crocodile, I stretch joyfully, ah that road.
To talk. One needs to talk about everything, keep talking all the time, let the confession
run out like one lets out piss. I need to piss, I crawl to the bathroom now I’m a
creeping vine. The stool is too high I have to do it in the bathtub, lift up one leg
like Lulu. The only decent thing I had the only thing that ever loved me c’mere Lulu
I would call. C’mere. And he’d come running and turning himself inside-out from pure
joy. Let’s go for a walk Lulu! Walk. When I saw the beach I remembered him first thing.
Lulu would love to run here on the beach. The ocean. In the ocean I forgot my unforgettable
mother Jorge’s rancid hair pomade under the stocking pulled down to his ears, was
it during the Jorge period? The Dr. Cotton period, the bridge was already wiggling
back and forth in my mouth but the foam would come and cover me and I could laugh
without a past without pretense one wave after another and the bits of cotton drowning
in the froth. In the ocean I was free because I stuck everything in a bag and tied
it shut like Mila did with the kittens and threw it far out where the boats pass,
my mother, the room where the men slept, the roaches, the clothes. But not Lulu, Lulu
I buried
in a white-gold coffin nobody’s going to throw my dog in the garbage come back Lulu.
Come back. I’ll give you a golden bone, come back and lick my hands my face ouch that
hurts. It’s cold I want the rug. Come on Annie come here, up on the rug I call and
I obey. Don’t cry I’ll give you. Don’t cry, come on. The bottle floating on the wave
has a message inside if I just crawl a little farther. I reach out and drink the message
which says. I float and the sun shines coming and going on the sea of green gems,
on each wave so many emeralds. Green stones, a huge mine of jewels all green, I tear
off a piece of ocean and wrap myself in it, shit I’d like to know who has a dress
like mine now. Who. I’m lighted up by a spotlight focused on my womb. I slide away
and the wombdoor takes me to the caverns where I penetrate myself and hide. Careful!
A voice tells me and I duck my head and row bent-over because the ceiling is very
low. I hear the plash plash of water slapping against the walls. The dark cracks.
The bubbles of the shady creatures who stick to the leaves, the biggest one peeks
at me through the undergrowth of thick live hairs. Fins. I raise the oar and hit him
hard but the leeches wrap themselves around my hands and pull me to the deepest bottom
let go! I bite through the threads and keep beating at them until the pain becomes
unbearable. I wake up, drenched in sweat. I stare at my throbbing abdomen, clean my
face on the rug. Did I have to get pregnant? Yes. Fool. Getting pregnant just the
same way. But next year I’ll take off like a jet there’s the difference she turned
into an ant but me. I’ll shed this skin and grow another without the slightest blemish.
I push away the bottle and laugh, all golden inside. After the sea, the milk, and
I-don’t-know-what-all, it won’t matter. I’ll say I was late because that Negro on
the road who was so friendly all of a sudden turned around and grabbed me tearing
my dress, look there at my torn dress. What was there about Dr. Cotton that reminded
me of Negroes? His nails? His nails. Lião gets all worked up over blacks, she has
a passion for them. Soccer fan. She said it was abominable to talk that way and only
didn’t quit speaking to me because she was my friend but if I’d kept on. I understand
dearest I understand but I wonder if you’d marry one and she got hysterical of course
she would and if she didn’t it was because she wanted nothing to do with marriage
but if someday she fell in love with a black man did I think. I did think. I do. Or
I don’t know. You and your whole crowd hate
blacks. Worse than me. Everybody hates them. But they don’t have the courage to say
so and pretend to be so nice. Next year. I’ll open my registration and have a brilliant
academic career I’m very smart. A fashionable house on the beach I’ll entertain, invite
everyone, they can live there I’m not selfish I’ll share it with you all. I want jewels,
everything glittering.

“Jewels!” I cry shaking Max, who looks at me but goes back to sleep. “Max, I’m going
to marry a scaly man but I’ll never abandon you, you hear me Max? I can marry a thousand
scaly guys but I’ll never abandon you, never, never!”

“Go to sleep,” he says and his spittle runs like a thread of honey into his beard.
I kiss his hand, his chest. I kiss the little gold medallion all tangled up in its
chain, what saint was it? The medallion, his neck. But I won’t leave you. Wherever
I go I’ll take you with me and protect you. Protect you. I’ll buy a beautiful house
shit you can keep it. We’ll do a rehabilitation treatment with milk, we’ll take care
of ourselves, no problem. When the scaly one gets to be a bore I’ll divorce him. Half
the factories and free free. I fall down on the rug and cry out in pain what did I
hit my back on?

“You gave me aspirin, Max. I think it was aspirin, I’m completely sober, look.”

Now he has the hiccups. Maybe his feet are cold I cover his feet he has statues’ feet
with the toenails cut straight across like statues have. If he were thrown naked in
the middle of all my mother’s bums he would stand out so sharply. He could pull a
stocking over his head and use hair pomade and he wouldn’t ever get rancid, ever.
But to hide my mark—! The eschatological mark, Lião talks so much about eschatology
there was a play we went to see and she was thrilled. She says it’s a vision of the
end of the world, eschatology, I don’t know. Their world, mine’s another one. I work
so hard to make the mark disappear but do you think it. Only on the stage on the stage
it’s real neat for the guy to teach the ragpicker girl how to speak like a noblewoman,
that guy in the tweed suit what was his name. All lies. As long as you don’t have
a bag of gold, good pronunciation makes no difference because Loreninha comes along
and discovers. Damn her. An insect.

“Next year, Max. Next year we stop, hear? You’re going to drink only milk. Enough.
Believe in me, Max, never again, you hear? Max say you believe me for God’s sake!”

“Ow, Bunny, that hurts.”

“Say never again, come on, say
never again!
”

“Never again, never — hic!” he said, his whole body twitching with an especially strong
spasm.

I press my mouth against his and blow until the hiccups pass. He struggles and then
relaxes smiling at me or at someone in back of me I think he’s seeing his mother now
he makes that face when he sees his mother. I start to cry but I’m not sad what I
am is stimulated like that roach that swam across the soup pot bubbling like a volcano
and made it to the other side in one piece, it made it, didn’t it? I’ll make it to
the other side too, and I’ll even come back to get you. We’ll have money my love and
you’ll give up this dangerous dirty work I’m so scared they’ll catch you Max. What
if they catch you. Lião said they’re really tightening up their security I’m afraid.

“Wake up, Max, I’m scared, I don’t want you to take risks any more, and stop selling
to little kids. Help me, Mother Alix, I don’t want things this way any more, I don’t,
you hear Max? Let’s start over again, we’ll practice sports, sports hour, come on,
let’s go,” I order grabbing his ankles. “Move those legs, let’s swim a little, look
there, the Japanese boy timing you. Let’s pedal, quick, one-two, one-two, harder!
One-two!”

I kiss his feet and use them to dry my tears that won’t stop falling. I started out
crying softly and now I’m sobbing at the top of my lungs I hate to cry because it
ruins my face which has to be in order, I bet everything on it, right? But now I have
to cry, there’s a wind but I howl louder,
oooooh!
I roll over in the clouds and swing down on a piece of dental floss that turns into
a seesaw, there’s a girl made of white porcelain on the other end when I go up she
goes down. Dressed like springtime, what garden has she been visiting? She takes flowers
from the basket in her lap and they have wire supporting their heads no, not those
flowers! Not these, I say and she begins to sing:
I went walking along the bridge / It shook before my eyes / Sister the water’s made
of poison / He who drinks it dies
. But I won’t drink it, not me, I already know, not me! I yell and she goes dancing
off to meet her sisters who come down the lawn hand in hand. They’re so white and
airy in their china dresses, one saying I am Summer. Another in a hood saying. The
music is made up of Lorena’s bells and speaks of the joys of each season ah, I want
these statues in my garden. “We are the four Sisters, the four Seasons of the year!”
Now the hooded one is close by me and she takes off her hood. She smiles. Her four
front teeth are missing. I hide my face in the sheets but I hear the laughter of the
big toothless ant with its slit for a mouth. If I could. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t
matter at all, says the dwarf who passes by, winking at me. I pull his beard and we
roll over and over blissfully happy oh how I love you. I grab the cigarette from his
hand and rise like the smoke inside the conical lampshade. Happiness is this it’s
to prepare yourself, calculating things step by step. And afterwards throw your crutches
in the trash can. A good word, to structure.

“We’ll play tennis, Max love. I always wanted to learn, remember?”

“I’m hungry,” he moaned, eyes closed. “Boy, am I hungry.”

She drew up her legs and rested her chin on her knees, flicking ashes on the sheet.
“I want to learn to ride, too. Jumpers, I love those red coats, too much. Foxhunting,
are there still foxes?” Spectacular, the control over the horse. A control of nerves.
She extended a trembling hand. A detoxication treatment in a chic clinic, Lião pronounced
it
detoshication
. Ana Clara chuckled. She’d take both of them to the beach house, actually she liked
those two dummies a lot. Yes, she did. She held out the other hand with the cigarette.
A good treatment and no more problem. In reality, what tremor could stand up to a
Porsche in the garage? A Renoir in the drawing room? Eh? Were there still any Renoirs
for sale?

“Max, are there any Renoirs for sale?”

She’d put an ad. Wild about ads. She laughed. Half for a joke, half to snub people.
“Shock the bastards. ‘
South American millionairess wishes to buy Renoir painting, preferably of the demoiselles
such-and-such with honey-blond hair gathering flowers in the country
.’ ” Bathers with pink heels, did feet exist with heels like that? Lorena says he
painted the French middle class but if middle-class meant those velvets and flowers
then that’s the class for me.

“We didn’t come to get up-tight, hanh?” he said drawing a circle with one finger in
the air. “See color on reverse. Where’s she going, the nut?”

Ana Clara opened her legs and ran her hands over her naked body. When they reached
her abdomen she rolled them into fists and pounded herself furiously, eyes fixed on
her pubis.
More expense, more problems. She let her hands fall in a last weak blow. To get pregnant
by a guy who’s broke. And now he’s sleeping like an angel. Well, he won’t be asleep
for long.

“Max, wake up, I want to talk. I want to talk!”

“Be careful, Duchinha, the green ones are poisonous. She flies on the wind, so wild
…”

When he was a little boy he used to go pick mushrooms with his sister but where? Where
could there be so many mushrooms. Frogs’ umbrellas. The building site was so humid
they used to sprout from between the piles of lime-covered brick. The vines and weeds.
And the white mushrooms remember? It was fun to shred them up in your fingers sink
your nails into those velvety domes that let you tear them apart without resistance.
And to step on the red ants but not on the roaches. They would crunch under your feet
and the silent pasty insides would squirt out as if from a used-up tube. They were
broad-chested and could swim well in a brisk crawl vupt vupt. But they shivered with
fear when hunted. The white bald heads of the mushrooms would shiver too. Only the
big snub-nosed ant was arrogant, its mouth a slit torn from ear to ear. It was leering
leering with its big distended mouth the bastard. Thinking she could come back again,
so treacherous. Sometimes it was only the size of a marble. And then suddenly in the
black glass a face would start to appear, it would grow incredibly fast beneath the
black turned-up nostrils.