What Can I Do When Everything's On Fire?: A Novel (27 page)

on the linoleum and the landlady out of the distant shadows, made larger by her emphysema

—This is a proper residence I lock the door at eleven o’clock, miss through the window Almada, the statue in profile, maybe if my mother hung out the wash in profile she’d stop being my mother, me an orphan

—Mother

until the profile turned and my mother again, if she fell asleep she wasn’t her either, something like my mother who was taking her place that is, a defect in the eyebrow that wasn’t there when she was awake, her shoulder poured out onto the sheet

the only part of her that stayed alive

getting smaller and larger, where did you go mother, where are you, in the yard, in the shack, I asked the thing

—Is the shoulder you?

the shoulder linked to an elbow, the elbow holding back the light, the defect in the eyebrow disappearing, eyelids that rose up, saw me, everything in motion between forehead and chin, lips that were chewing on the remnants of phrases from the remnant of a dream, not really phrases, echoes of people and me happy

—It’s you

my mother and I, my son and I since my father and my husband were intruders, only shirts to be ironed and shoes under the bed or propped up against the stove just like the principal and the cemetery caretaker were intruders too, the electrician, the pups, the man in the coffee shop after class got up from the table with his cup almost falling off the saucer

—May I, miss?

how could it have been like that

—Don’t leave Juditinha

or

—Are you the one called Judite?

what does it matter because no man, my God, most of all no man, me free, the other body with them having nothing to do with me, me and the mimosas in the cemetery, in Almada, in Bico da Areia, my son thinks that with my husband I

—Carlos

me

—Why Carlos?

and with my husband I was all alone too, watching him smoothing and rumpling the quilt, cleaning off the makeup, hiding the women’s things, defending himself from what I wasn’t accusing him of, sorry for what I was grateful for while not listening to him

why should I listen to him?

I’d throw the pebble onto the first square and the laurels bowing, you did it, onto the second square

—We’re so proud of you, Juditinha

on the fifth square the piece on a line, I looked around and nobody, I fixed it with the tip of my shoe and the laurels pretended not to see

—We didn’t see

the same way that my colleagues pretended not to see in the coffee shop swallowing their giggles as soon as the cup began to shake, the spoon, the lump of sugar, and the knot in his tie, what I remember about him isn’t his voice

all the smells, all the voices of my childhood with me

isn’t his age, isn’t his wristwatch

no, I remember the wrist watch

it’s the knot in his tie

—May I, miss?

the wristwatch and the knot in his tie, if my husband

—Who’s the father of your child?

I answer him no man, thank God, no man, I’m free, the father of my child is a second hand quivering all it wants from tick to tick and a knot in a tie that’s blue and green I think, blue or green I think, the laurels scolding

—Juditinha

they’ve been scolding me for twenty years

—Juditinha

I was sorry for the second hand, rearranging the location of the pebble, drawing my hand away from the necktie, that is from

—There’s nobody with me, shut up all of you

the man from the coffee shop in Bico da Areia while I helped him with the coffee cup he didn’t have, nothing was trembling except him and the pups who were growling on the beach, a pine cone on the window frame and the second hand afraid

—May I, miss?

smelling the marigolds that my husband planted reaching out toward the night, the wristwatch that hesitated as it met the caretaker at the cemetery or the principal at the school or my husband with me and me alone all the same, the body that wasn’t mine sleeping in the mirror, a defect in the eyebrow that hadn’t awakened, the shoulder spreading out on the sheet

the only part of me that was still alive

getting smaller, larger, where did you go Judite, where are you, in the yard, in the shack, I was searching in the yard, I was searching in the shack, I was asking the shoulder

—Is the shoulder me?

becoming aware that the necktie had left me, that the shoulder linked up with an elbow, the elbow holding back the light, the defect in the eyebrow disappearing, eyelids that were opening up, seeing me, everything in motion between forehead and chin, not really phrases, echoes of people and me happy

—I’m me

Rui’s aunt on the phone, they get pregnant like animals, you know, they don’t know each other’s name, they don’t suffer at all, they live in hovels and think they’re houses, they sit on the floor twiddling their fingers or play on tombstones where a girl drew some lines in chalk and the caretaker telling her in the light of the laurels

—Don’t leave, wait a bit

she to the caretaker

me to the necktie when he approached again in the coffee shop and sat down at my table

—I don’t need you anymore

me to the caretaker

—Do you want to play with me mister?

and one Saturday afternoon at the time when the horses were coming back from the beach, my husband bracing the gentian with a piece of wire

—A child?

distributing the bunches along the wall so that the sun, disappearing into the kitchen to fill the watering can and the sound of the faucet inside there, coming out of the kitchen, looking at the branches, helping the smallest one get some light, my husband shaking off the dirt

—A child?

with no rage, no insults, his hair gave me the feeling that it was lighter, dyed

—Did you dye your hair Carlos?

his fingernails shining

—Did you paint your nails Carlos?

but that was in the mirror and in the mirror the other woman, the grownup, the one who has nothing to do with me or doesn’t worry about the mimosas, that smell that takes me back to a time of pictures that, after my mother’s death, stopped recognizing me out of their frames the way I stopped recognizing them in spite of their names in pencil

Octávio Juliana, cousin Sequeira, if they could only imagine where I’m living now

—What kind of a life do you call that Juditinha?

and on whose graves I laid palms and poured holy water in hopes of winning and I won, I got the idea that the dead were complaining about the game

—It’s not them it’s the wind

not just in the laurels, in the weeds covering the graves, my mother at dinner

—Have you noticed the weeds by your uncles and aunts? and they were annoyed

—Your daughter, niece

although at that moment I was there when the Mulattoes got to Príncipe Real, coming out of one of the establishments with posters of naked girls, which made me stop pretending I was fixing something or other on my collar

a button that had come off, something like that

thinking that I’ll never be that pretty, I got the idea that there were three Mulattoes but no, four, no, five, five Mulattoes in dark glasses at a café table until they turned off the lights and after the lights were turned off for a few minutes there and afterward in the trees in Mr. Couceiro’s Latin who were examining the texture and calling to my son

—Do you know him?

after Mr. Couceiro’s trees the Mulattoes on the bench by the cedar, in the place where

in the place where Soraia’s nephew, she never admitted to being a father and sometimes said my nephew sometimes said

and got to tell me when I interviewed her a year before her death from the illness that kills fags and street women

—My younger brother

waiting for the signal at the window, two tugs on the curtain and the wig in a myopic search, how many times have I told her to get contact lenses

—You can even change the color, girl

and I offered to lend her the money that I knew she didn’t have and she insulted me bumping into the furniture

—I can see perfectly well

Soraia squinting and hazy outlines, two cedar trees instead of one, before the interview she put on her glasses

a pair that did her no good

to get rid of a stain on her belt she asked me in a way that would have moved me if I’d been capable

thank God I’m not

still of being moved, you go along drying up over time and in my case, besides time, there was the cyst in my pancreas and the hospital that had withered my soul

—Don’t say in the paper that I wear glasses, promise

followed by

where was I going?

the Mulattoes conferring under the cedar where in July there was still something left over from the rain, one solitary drop, two solitary drops, several drops that you couldn’t say were solitary because a lot of them were falling from one branch here and one branch there although inevitably and, from pure perfidy, onto the space between collar and neck, they moved over next to the bench keeping a simultaneous watch on Soraia’s building and the annoyance of the drops, ready to move toward the first in order to escape the second which made him do a kind of dance step as soon as a green tear began to take shape on a limb, the second Mulatto

who worked the neighborhood and knew the police

anchored himself some six feet from the door and lighted the cigarette he lights when he wants to give the impression that all he’s doing is lighting a cigarette, the third and the fourth on the corner by the car where the fifth Mulatto with a small white woman next to him was and I was sorry for not having brought the photographer, calculating whether there was time to call the paper and before they got mad at me for being late, tell them right off I need a photog quick, the problem is that the photog would get there complaining and scaring off the Cape Verdeans who would be back God knows when and the story would be lost along with the pat on the back by the editor, and I was in need of some peace and quiet and at the age of sixty-two

-what’s the use

I stayed ready for battle, mingling with the taxi drivers waiting for fares by the statue that paid homage to some famous anonymous person and the kiosk that was all shuttered up, a couple holding a small child passed by arguing about payments on the refrigerator, the usual beggar with his usual bag, lifting the lids of garbage cans one by one with the delicacy of a chef inspecting his courses and my boss, with another pat on the back in front of my colleagues gathered there, you can relax I’m not going to fire you, that bit about the chef I can only call first rate, people will read it and wow, like they’re seeing it before their eyes, where do you get all those ideas, old man, to top it off the beggar was wearing gloves and the boss what did I tell you, what did I tell you, that’s what we call the gift of observation, by next week, without fail, put together a story for me about panhandlers, okay, he pulled out a greasy piece of paper and an empty package, sniffed into a tin can, which he threw over his shoulder, missing the container, the boss stick with it, dammit, pride in penury, the nobility of the unfortunate, all summed up in just one observation, learn something you dummies, one single phrase, he held out his glove waving the greasy paper at the drivers and me, one of the drivers looked at the glove without saying anything until the beggar, covered with more rags than he needed, looked at it too, front and back, with a new curiosity and went off with his hand in the air still studying it, now with one finger now with another, with the joy shown a trophy, he checked it under the streetlight, showed it to the Mulattoes from a distance and vanished forever, the boss was enthusiastic, I don’t know about next week, I’m not going to wait a week, tomorrow without fail I want the panhandlers in the second supplement, the couple with the child passed again in the opposite direction, they interrupted their argument, interested in an old easy chair waiting for the municipal garbage truck, which suggested to me for a moment

or was I the one who suggested to myself, sixty-two years old and with the beginnings of glaucoma

the doctor scratching his nose in a stern tone

—You have the beginnings of glaucoma

as if glaucoma was some childish thing I’d done or that I’d picked it up in passing during the intimacies of a guilty relationship

sixty-two and the prospect of a seeing-eye dog, no matter how competent the dog might be, feeling no weight of the years

the easy chair

I said

which for moments suggested that I get in among the trash containers where the beggar had drawn out the miracle of his hand, the woman left her husband and child to check out the fabric, one of the taxi drivers warned her that just minutes before I’d found a rat making its nest in the cushion and the woman moved away from the chair, let’s go Júlio