The Girl in the Photograph (6 page)

“A nice little dose for Bunny and one for me, hanh? You’ll get in gear with this.”

I pull the sheet up to my neck. What does he mean, get in gear. If only I could. Get
in gear get in gear and climb the walls from getting in gear and if only my head would
stop scratch scratch thinking those damn things. Shit, why does my head have to be
my enemy? I only think thoughts that make me suffer. Why does this goddamn head hate
me so much? That’s what no analyst ever explained to me this head business. It only
leaves me in peace when I’m high the bastard. And that dumb ass waiting for me peeling
the crust off his bread with his fingernail until there’s nothing left but the soft
inside part, just like a rat. It’s my head he’s peeling scratch scratch. Bastard.

“I can’t stay very long today love,” I say.

He picks up the empty glasses from the floor, winks his eye and goes to the kitchen
taking the glasses and the ice bucket. He opens the refrigerator. I hug the pillow.
Sleep sleep. Sleep until I crack in two from sleeping without a single dream because
dreams are just another pain in the ass. There are some good ones. Those. Why can’t
I ever sleep as long as I want to? Why is there always somebody poking at me, let’s
have a nice little screw, let’s have some fun screwing? But what do they mean fun.
I love you Max. I love you but I don’t feel a thing with you or with anybody else.
It’s a long time since I’ve felt anything. Locked up. There was another word he liked
to use what was it? This Hachibe. How will I feel anything with that scaly bastard
when I don’t with this one that I love? He’s already sitting there with the bread
in his hand, there’s always one wanting to screw me and another one waiting for me
at some table. I go from bed to table and from table to bed. Blocked now I remember
blocked. “Is it only with me you’re so cold?” he asked. That scaly son of a bitch.
Pretentious dwarf. “It’s because I’m a virgin, dear. You must excuse me but I’m a
virgin and virgins can’t get turned on like—.” Then he looked at me in his indecent
way and laughed. All dental plates. Shit it isn’t just me. Even with money and everything
he didn’t do too well as far as teeth go. Poor childhood poor shoulders poor hair.
I am five feet ten inches tall. A model. A beautiful model. What more do you want?
Bastard. Shit if this head would just leave me alone for awhile. I’d like to have
a pumpkin instead of a head, a great big orange pumpkin. Happy. Toasted pumpkin seeds
with salt are
good for belly worms I can still taste them and that pukey medicine too. I don’t want
the seeds Ma I want the story. And so at midnight the princess turned into a pumpkin.
Who told me that? Not you Ma because you didn’t re-count stories you only re-counted
money. The little face so penniless counting and recounting the money which was never
enough for anything. “It’s not enough,” she would say. It wasn’t enough because she
was a fool who didn’t charge anyone. It’s not enough it’s not enough she would repeat
showing the money that wasn’t enough rolled up in her hand. But give out enough, that
she did. For my taste she gave out all too much. A whole crowd of lousy bastards asking
and her giving out. The most important one was Dr. Cotton.

“Max, you there? You know what my dentist’s name was? Dr. Cotton.”

Max poured whiskey into his glass. He swished it around and the whitish deposit in
the bottom slowly rose.

“Cotton? Dr. Cotton?”

I clutch the glass in my hand. When Lorena shakes her crystal paperweight the snow
rises so lightly. It flutters softly around and then settles on the roof, the fence,
and the little girl with the red cape. Then she shakes it again. “This way I have
snow all year round.” But why snow all year round? Where is there any snow here? She
thinks snow is the most. She’s sickening. I crunch the ice cube between my teeth.

“Sometimes she sleeps with Donald Duck. She’s always squeezing his tummy, quack, quack.
Sickening.”

I push the piece of ice against the roof of my mouth with my tongue. In reality the
sky is way up there without any pain. Hell starts immediately below with its roots.
So many roots twining around each other. Solidarity.

“He was forever changing the cotton in people’s cavities, weeks, months, years went
by and there he was with the little bits of cotton in his tweezers, that’s why he
got to be called Dr. Cotton.”

“But you have good teeth, hanh? Don’t you, Bunny?”

My beautiful. My innocent love.

“Yes.”

“So your Dr. Cotton was good.”

Oh yes. Oh he was great. He would change the cotton while the hole got bigger and
bigger. I grew up in that chair with my teeth rotting and him waiting for them to
rot completely and me
to grow some more so he could do the bridge. A bridge for the mother and another for
the daughter. Bastard. Prick. The two bridges falling down in the order they appeared
on the scene. First Ma’s who went to bed with him first and then. I
went walking across the bridge / It shook before my eyes
/
Sister the water’s made of poison / He who drinks it dies
. Who drinks it dies. She used to sing to put me to sleep but in such a hurry that
I would pretend I was asleep so she’d go away faster. In the movies there was always
a mother singing romantically to her children who hugged their stuffed animals. Grandmothers
used to tell them stories too but where my grandmother might be is something I’d like
to know. I wish I had a grandmother like Mother Alix. To have a grandmother like Mother
Alix is to have a kingdom.

“Can nuns be grandmothers, love? Answer me, can they?”

His back is turned toward me, he’s choosing records. How gorgeous he is naked. Shit
he makes me cry from love he’s so beautiful. A sun. I think I first fell in love with
his teeth, his teeth are perfect, there couldn’t be a more perfect mouth. I love you
Max. I love you but in January my sweet. In January a new life. Get my feet out of
the mud. You were rich once now it’s my turn may I? Next year
stop
. He’s scaly but filthy rich. So.

“This is my body,” he says holding the record up high. He kisses it. “This is my blood.”

“I hate God,” I say turning my face away.

Do I hate God or this music? This music. I hate this music hate it hate it hate it.
Lorena has the same mania. A band of Negroes howling all day long, a hell of a howl.
I hate Negroes. But Dr. Cotton was white. Blue eyes the bastard. That was his nickname
but his real name? Dr. Hachibe said that we expel everything that was terrible and
if that’s the case I’ll never remember his goddamn name. But I remember his nickname.
What good did it do to erase the name if the scratch scratch of the fat she-rats there
in the construction site is still there, day and night scratch scratch in the dark.
“But don’t those fitches let anybody fleep?” yelled Téo who was toothless and pronounced
certain letters with an
F
sound. But he would sleep. Ma too. She used to sleep real well that one. But I would
lie awake thinking scratch scratch. The waiting room with the black woman, a handkerchief
tied around her swollen face. The little basket of artificial flowers covered with
dust. The black woman
and I were the most assiduous patients with our smell of Dr. Lustosa Wax, when it
hurt too much we would take the cotton out and fill up the hole with this wax that
spread through our mouths with the smell of heaven. Dona Inês would talk so much about
heaven heaven. I only experienced it the instant the nerve quit throbbing and went
to sleep, completely waxed over. I went to sleep too. The smell of this wax mixed
with the smell of creosote, they’re the two smells that pull me back into my childhood,
the wax burning in the tooth and the creosote that came from the white can where Dr.
Cotton would throw the used pieces of cotton. Another smell that mingles with them
is the smell of piss. Real piss and not pee-pee, you hear Lorena? Pee-pee actually
smells perfumy when uttered by your buttoned-up, peppermint-scented little mouth.
Sen-Sen. “It refreshes one’s breath so,” she told me with her fresh breath. I chew
gum to hide bad breath my gum is stronger easier ah yes I know it’s not as refined.
Sen-Sen is refined. It’s not by accident that you always have one subtly melting in
your mouth. So pee-pee ends up smelling like Sen-Sen but the construction site smelled
like piss. Somebody who should have used Sen-Sen was Dr. Cotton, he smelled like old
beer. To this day I can’t even look at beer because he would attend me after supper,
the hour reserved for the most miserable patients, and at supper naturally he would
swill down his half-bottle. Son of a bitch.

“I’d like to put the drill on his teeth zzzzzzzzzzzz and drill a deep hole zzzzzzzzz
and cut through his gum and through his jawbone zzzzzzzzzz.”

“Hug me, Bunny, I’m cold, hug me quick because all of a sudden this is the North Pole
with bears and all, I don’t want him to hug me, I want you to! Bunny, it’s great to
be like this with you all friendly, I feel like crying it’s so good. Listen to this
music, listen.”

So then he said he’d have to pull out the four front teeth because they were too far
gone, what was the point of keeping them if they were so rotten? I started to cry
and he consoled me, smoothing the napkin that he had fastened around my neck with
a little chain. It was better to put in a bridge nobody would be able to tell because
he’d make a perfect bridge like he had for my mother and was going to make for Téo.
I dried my eyes on the napkin feeling the cold chain biting into the back of my neck,
it wasn’t a chain like yours Max. Or Lorena’s with the little
golden heart. That one was dark and it held a napkin that had a spot of blood in one
corner. Old hardened blood. The clasp hurt my neck, especially after he started smoothing
the napkin harder as he repeated about how beautiful the bridge would be. Closer the
smell of beer and closer the little eyes blue as beads behind the dirty lenses of
his glasses. His icy hand and hot breath faster faster the bridge. The bridge. I closed
my mouth but my olfactory memory stayed open. One’s memory has a memorable sense of
smell. My childhood is all made up of smells. The cold smell of cement at the construction
with the warmish funeral smell in the flower shop where I used to work poking wires
in the stems of flowers up to their heads because the broken ones had to hold their
heads high in the baskets and wreaths. The vomit from those men’s drinking sprees
and the sweat and the toilets along with the smell of Dr. Cotton. Shit, all added
up. I learned thousands of things from those smells, and from the anger, so much anger,
everything was hard only she was easy. Her head was just for decoration. With me it’s
going to be different. Dif-fe-rent, I would repeat with the rats that scratch scratch
chewed up my sleep in that roach-filled construction site, dif-fe-rent, dif-fe-rent,
I repeated as the hand pulled the button off my blouse. Where did my button get to
I said and suddenly it became so important, that button that popped off while the
hand searched farther down because my breasts weren’t interesting any more. Why weren’t
they, why? The button I repeated digging my fingernails into the plastic of the chair
and closing my eyes so as not to see the cold cylinder of light winking from one corner
of the ceiling what about the button? No, no it’s not the button I want it’s the bridge
the bridge. The bridge would take me far away from my mother the men roaches bricks
far far away. I’ll be able to laugh again and I’ll get a job during the day and study
at night I’ll be a manicurist because all of a sudden some man might fall in love
with me while I gave him a manicure. His fingernails ripping the elastic of my panties
and ripping the panties off and sticking his roachy-spidery finger into all the holes
he could find there were so many there in the construction remember? The thick-shelled
cockroaches were black and would stoop down just like people to get through the cracks.
They were smart those roaches but I was smarter and as I knew their tricks it was
easy to grab their mother by the wings and open the pan and throw her inside.
Here, eat your soup with the big cockroach I said crying with fear as he shook Ma
by the hair and was about to shake me too, so drunk he couldn’t stand up. I’m hungry
he would yell breaking the furniture and Ma too because supper wasn’t ready and those
two tramps mother and daughter were lying around doing nothing. “The place for a whore
is in the street!” he would yell. In the street and not in the room the engineer had
let him use, just him. The roach opened its wings and started to swim firmly over
the pieces of collard green. The soup was boiling hot and to this day I don’t know
how it managed to swim with such style, an Olympic breaststroke, vupt, vupt, vupt
and it was almost climbing out of the pan with its wings dripping grease when I pushed
it to the bottom again. It grasped the spoon and got up to the surface and clasped
its hands together for the love of God I screamed no no! Why are you screaming that
way little girl. Don’t scream it can’t be hurting that much, just be patient, a little
bit more, quiet. Quiet. The soup is ready! I screamed and the drill motor turned on
because the black woman with the handkerchief was already knocking on the door I didn’t
even see her face but I guessed it was her. There. There, I thought crying from happiness
now he’ll let me go because the Negress knew his wife and he was scared of his wife.
He’ll let me go because the soup is ready with the swollen cockroach under the collard
greens. But he straightened the hair on his forehead and opening the door said very
calmly that he really couldn’t see her because the girl’s treatment was very complicated
and painful as well, hadn’t she heard a scream? She should come back tomorrow because
today he really wouldn’t be able to attend her. He understood ah yes indeed he understood
how much she was suffering because this infection really did hurt but today was impossible.
She should take some of these pills look here you can have this handful free and take
two now. If the pain continues, two more and then two more and so on. I heard the
clasp of her purse snap to put away the handful of envelopes that he took out of the
glass cupboard. Then her steps dying away. The gate opening. I wanted to hear her
steps in the street and only heard his steps behind the chair. He wore rubber-soled
shoes and the rubber would stick to the linoleum as if they were glued. He lowered
the chair. The little chain that held the napkin pinched my neck. The drop of dried
blood in one corner of the cloth. Quiet. Quiet, he repeated as he had done during
the treatment. You’re going to get a bridge. Don’t you want a bridge?