What Can I Do When Everything's On Fire?: A Novel (11 page)

—Judite

the gulls were leaving the bridge beams heading for Alto do Galo in hopes that flotsam in the river, they tell me my son is in the hospital and I say

—I don’t know who he is

they say that my husband

—Your husband never gave you anything, right?

Cristina during recess at school

—Are you really going to marry Carlos, Judite?

and the other teachers laughing, not listening to them, cleaning the blackboard vigorously, they tell me my son is in the hospital and I don’t remember my son, I remember the old man hoeing weeds, the blade didn’t cut me because I wasn’t there, I remember the chicken coop with the remains of a roost and a rake in the corner, it’s possible, I can’t swear to it, but maybe there’d been a cradle there, it was a long time ago

twenty years, twenty-five years?

a car with wooden wheels, someone I told to wait at the gate and then the social worker and the man with the cane on the front steps, and then all by myself, I locked myself in so I wouldn’t hear them going away, the dwarf from Snow White

—Now, Judite?

it was my husband who’d bought it at Christmas, the owner of the café visited me that afternoon

his wife was setting the tables watching us, I refused the pint

—Not today

the gulls had come back to the bridge beams from Alto do Galo, Carlos was waving good-bye from the edge of the neighborhood and his lips were getting away, never the lips, the cheek, on one occasion the ear and drawing back in panic

—Seriously are you keeping company with Carlos?

he was thinking about my father, Jehovah, sin

—I’m sorry Judite

I got the idea that the man at the boardinghouse was making fun of me when he gave us the key, if only I could have stained the sheet with the blood of the Lamb the same as in the chicken coop when my mouth got covered, I’m not going to holler take it easy, nobody’s going to catch us and he

—Your husband never gave you anything, right?

I was me and I was him, I was both of us and Cristina, Elizabete and Márcia threw roses and rice at us as we came out of the church, the school supervisor puzzled

—You’re going to marry that fellow?

because he combed his hair better, dressed better, we could sketch his movements in pencil, his cautious little feet didn’t hurt, get mad at me Carlos, don’t let me leave, don’t pretend you don’t know they’re waiting in the bushes for me, stay with me today, the owner of the café in the doorway not caring about you

—Let’s go to Trafaria, Judite

he looked back and nobody, you weren’t even at the window

—Don’t you want to ask me anything aren’t you interested in me?

you were twisting your fingers, knotting them, turning them around, your throat was too full of words to be able to speak, your son my son

—I don’t know who my son is

pounding on the wardrobe

I’m not lying if I swear that I don’t know who he is, I fed my son in sin with the flesh and blood of the Lamb, father, my body changed because of him and I don’t know him, I brought him with me and a stranger, I let them take him away from me because I never had him, when the social worker, acting as though she didn’t see the bottle or the clothes strewn about or the unwashed dishes or my hair without pearls impossible to comb and graying now, or one of the pups after throwing a pine cone against the window, I’m not like the others Dona Judite I can pay, not saying anything, imagining the police, going away, the social worker warning me, don’t think for a second that I didn’t hear, that I’m not going to put it in the report that I’m not onto your life, but we can’t call in the judge, we can’t

possumus

arrest you, the social worker wasn’t getting involved in anything who can say why about the sicknesses these people give us

—Please fill out the form ma’am

the form about the son I don’t know who he is, they telephoned me from the hospital

—Your son

and his voice

—It’s my mother it’s my mother

under the voice that was telling me

—Your son

I said very quickly to the stranger

—I want to talk to my mother, mister orderly, let me talk to my mother

—You have the wrong number I’ve already explained more than a thousand times that you have the wrong number I’m sorry

leaving the receiver off so they wouldn’t call me, I said to the social worker and the man with the cane on the front step

—Take the child he doesn’t belong to me with his pounding on the wardrobe and smashing a car with wooden wheels

and luckily the horses were trotting toward the woods and preventing me from hearing what was said, the wind or maybe the Gypsy’s whip filled the house, at the age of sixteen I’d broken my calf bone, it healed poorly and the stretcher-bearer from the Temple had to break it again, my father held me by the arms, a Jehovah’s Witness squeezed me around the waist

—Quiet down, Jesus suffered more from Satan

and because I expected so much pain I didn’t find any pain, I found a white space hanging above all of you in which I was floating serenely, I saw my father singing a hymn while the hammer was searching for the bone, a whack on the shinbone and no pain, an enormous distance, Judite getting agitated, falling silent, the sound of the joints in the pieces coming together and missing again, I saw her expression, a smile

not a smile

her expression

—No

and now her features asleep, the hammer

—I think I was wrong

and it was all right, I’m not me, it isn’t Judite because Judite is forty-four and has graying hair, not chestnut, uncombed, without a ribbon

Judite

—Dona Judite

—It’s time to settle our accounts, girl

—I’ve got the money here Dona Judite

—I brought a bottle from the store don’t drink it all at one time don’t fall down on me now

Judite, without a job, without a husband, without a son, sits down in the backyard not thinking about anything, not feeling anything, not looking at anything, just herself and the city in the distance, the yellow clouds on the water side and blue on the pine-grove side, night that doesn’t arrive and morning that won’t come, I was wrong about the bone, it happened, just one more tap, be patient, even today if I’m tired

and I’m tired, a tired mare of the Gypsies that the one with the pistol kills in the pine grove

—Kill me

me begging

—Kill me

the pistol next to the left eye

—Please kill me I don’t want my husband to find me in this state I don’t want his hurt I don’t want his pain I don’t want

—Do you need anything?

kill me, even today the leg catches me when I walk, when I was young wearing an insole and with a little care people didn’t notice, didn’t know, Carlos, for example, never caught on to it, never knew, maybe on an incline or going down stairs I would lean to the right and I’d distract him by talking, noticing changes in the weather, even when the sky was clear, by a change in my leg, not really discomfort, a gurgling in the tendons

—It’s going to rain

and right away movement in the marigolds, the gentian drooping, the alarm of the herons as they sobbed in the woods

I don’t like herons if I had the courage

my father died here, my mother went back to the village, my husband was in Lisbon working as an entertainer

he’s not an entertainer he’s

Bico da Areia was too humble for a singer, discomfort in the leg and no cloud at the moment, my mother’s eyes snuffed out on a living face, hands that searched for me in the small parlor

—Daughter

perfecting the air, the body that she remembers and had lost

—I’m not like that anymore it’s been ages mother

none of us is like that it’s been ages and I wonder what we are now, for example, I had a son and I don’t have a son, for example, I’m so slim, so healthy and so deformed, for example, there was a boardinghouse and there isn’t a boardinghouse, for example, I was a teacher and I’m not a teacher, for example, hug me Carlos, don’t be shy, hug me, for example, I’m incapable, at night the vine would sigh on the window frame, it doesn’t sigh today, the social worker checking the form, underlining, erasing

—I need your husband’s profession ma’am

the bone was broken a third time and I said that’s all right even though they were pushing me down against the floor

—No

I don’t want my husband to find me like this, he’d make fun of me, he’d laugh, the supervisor disguising his surprise, I can’t believe you’re going to marry that fellow Judite and I said you don’t understand do you, you don’t know what suffering and shame are do you, you don’t understand that Carlos needs me, the women’s clothes in a locked suitcase under the bed, photographs, letters, I was smashing the car with wooden wheels, pounding on the wardrobe, crying with hunger, refusing to eat

—What have you got hidden away there, Carlos?

smoothing the quilt rumpling the quilt, smoothing the quilt rumpling the quilt, the first pine cone on the roof, don’t hold me down, don’t break my bone, don’t hurt me, my husband

—Nothing of any importance

rumpling the quilt

—Really nothing

smoothing the quilt

—Nothing

looking at me with the eyes of the cemetery guard who was watching me among the flowers with a piece of apple in my pocket

after we buried my father I stayed by the grave listening to the laurels, I remember a hoopoe swaying on an angel, medallions with tarnished profiles, I was sure that the nails of the dead grew under the ground and my doubts

—Who takes care of them?

you could catch sight of Trafaria and the sea or maybe the mouth of the river through a break in the poplars, the sandbars at ebb tide, the city where my husband

—I need your husband’s profession ma’am

was famous and sang, who are you sleeping with, where are you sleeping, how are you sleeping Carlos, the laurels weren’t talking to anyone anymore except me

—I have the money Dona Judite

I thought about leaving him a pint on the tombstone

—The blood of the Lamb, father

the hanged man’s necktie came to mind, waking up with his pulling the sheet off me

an albatross with his gullet wide open

me covering myself with the blanket

—Father

the albatrosses of Bugio, Praia da Rainha, and Fonte da Telha continuing on up to the huts

beyond the man with the cane and the social worker an old woman in mourning, the callus on the bone telling me it’s going to rain and the lamp lighted at three in the afternoon, a melancholy eternity turning the curtain pale, what will forty-four years be like, Carlos, writing forty-two on the form and the social worker dusting off the chair and settling her behind, feeling the seat

—Forty-two?

your suitcase is still under the bed and as long as the suitcase stays there I promise I won’t make a fuss stay with me Carlos, the one who wasn’t my son in the car with them, I could swear my husband was at the bus stop, his little hand waving but no, a branch, at night on that path there were always nighthawks, owls, the echo of the waves, not from the water side, from the pine-grove side

arriving at Fonte da Telha they told me to go down a ramp tripping over tiles in the dark

—
Watch out, fellow

every step squashed some living thing as it twisted, one of the cops with a lantern even though the lantern wasn’t lighting to show the way, to light up the walls of shacks, a woman behind a peephole, alleys where last week Rui and I, a plastic arm on a stake pointing to the beach and after that a house with no chimney, the dune, the mastiff with a bow barking at the corpse on the bath towel, the headlights of the Jeep focused on the towel, the unlighted cigarette in his hand and Rui jolly as he always was when he came to get me at Anjos

—
What did you steal from my father today Rui?

not seeing me but merry, the lemon, the syringe like the ones we used, but no heroin, empty, the pants and the shoes nobody had stolen, nothing but the smell of water, not the smell of death and the whisper

—
Paulo

every so often Dona Helena was in the kitchen and he would be peeking at the pictures, the trays, at Noémia Couceiro Marques fading away in the molding

already faded away in the molding