What Can I Do When Everything's On Fire?: A Novel (57 page)

—Look, Paulo

(the plate in my idea of her that’s spinning horizontally, it doesn’t slow down, it doesn’t fall) taking me by the hand and by the shadow of my hand at the same time, I drew it back and the white hand was alive, my mother said

—A great faggot, gentlemen and catching the

—A great faggot and suddenly falling silent no, not falling silent, hugging me against her, running away from the gentian

—I’m sorry as though the gentian

(her plate, a tear) was some illness, a poison, the medicines that are kept on upper shelves, the bottle of lye, the roach poison with the skull on its label, my mother going out into the yard with the fish shears and cutting off its branches, leaves, pulling it up by the roots, insulting it

—Faggot the clusters clinging together in the air, rising and falling, a flurry of petals that landed on her shoulders, my mother shaking them off

—Faggot noticing me on the steps, tossing away the shears, hugging me again

(her plate must have fallen off the bamboo pole because my cheek was wet) the waves of the incoming tide got stronger in the afternoon, reaching the refrigerator, the dwarf, the liquid with the skull, my mother looked at the liquid with the skull, she left me on the walk and brought up a stool, stopped, trotted over to the bed where the pillow was over her head hiding her, my mother with no head and even with no head

—Faggot, faggot

my mother, two ankles on the mattress, shoes coming off by themselves

—Faggot

still pounding, asking her about the mimosas, lifting the pillow

—Do you want the mimosas, mother?

but at Bico da Areia there were only woods, the pine trees, reeds down by the bridge, I’ll go get some reeds for you

—Would you like some reeds, mother?

the shadows on the Tagus were calming down with night, my father was at work, the two of us were all alone, talking about reeds, about my drawing the hopscotch, five squares in front, a pair of horizontal squares after that, a half circle over the horizontal squares

—What’s that?

not understanding at first, understanding afterward, and two eyes, the face, all of her in the wardrobe mirror, smoothing her dress, disappearing from the wardrobe mirror and I was in her arms, what seemed to be a smile

what was a smile

(her plate, like a tear, intact on the pole, horizontal, secure, spinning happily)

what was a smile

—It’s all right, Paulo

and even though it was almost night and it was hard for us to see each other, even though the Gypsies, the mares, the threats of dusk were outlining the cistern in the back of the yard, she was drawing the lines of the hopscotch with the fish shears in spite of the stump of the peach tree that we’d cut down years before, that ditch with wasps that held out all through summer, five squares in front, a pair of horizontal squares, the half circle over the horizontal squares, where we turned back after a leap, tossing the piece of tile to the farthest square in order to pick who’d start, I hope I miss and she hits, I hope she starts, my tile is off, hers is next to the cistern

—You start, Paulo

putting your feet together at the starting line

—It has to be with your feet together

so I put my feet together, I think I made a mistake with the marks but I certainly didn’t make a mistake

didn’t I make a mistake?

because my mother clapped, I turned around with a perfect jump, I picked up the piece of tile without touching the ground with my fingers, I’d beaten her, an owl flew up from where the Gypsies were over our roof and disappeared into the café, you couldn’t hear the river, you couldn’t hear the mares, one of the pups might be calling its buddies from the bridge or maybe it wasn’t one of the pups maybe it was the mimosas

the reeds

I didn’t say reeds, I said maybe it was the mimosas

I’m sure the mimosas were coming down out of the mountains, greeting

—Judite

and my mother’s plate was secure, the only plate that was spinning, not my father’s, not Mr. Couceiro’s, not Dona Helena’s, not the maid’s from the dining room

most especially not the maid’s from the dining room

Gabriela

my mother’s plate all alone in the center of the stage, gleaming, calm, with no need for bamboo and the whole world around, has now fallen, was in the darkness.

—Helena

the alligators went off annoyed, dragging themselves along, disappearing into the mud in the floor below, the eyes of the pots and pans, spying on me from their hooks, stopped threatening me, the sounds of the firewood in the stove stopped turning into the sounds of the sea on some invisible beach, a cove of echoes where the cliffs of the furniture were quivering, the furniture too said

—Helena

my mother was indifferent to the alligators and the cliffs, adding a touch of oil, and the jaws were coming back, spreading over the floor, my father turned on the light in the living room and the apartment

quivered

hiding the cove and the sea in the silverware drawer, if I opened the drawer there was nothing but forks and knives, when my daughter was alive or Paulo was little, they’d go up to the cupboard but I held back from warning them, worried about them

—Careful of the waves

even though an aneurysm has taken my mother away now, the fluorescent light has stopped the animals from coming and the laundry room has given the apartment the look of a place where people live, a sideboard, the newspaper

—Put on your glasses and thumb through me

Noémia’s picture with the vase beside it

—I’m still here, didn’t you know?

so difficult to make out behind the glass sometimes, at other times so easy, especially on Sunday mornings, when we get back from visiting the cemetery, my husband is sitting on the fence around the grave and I wipe her name clean, not sad, not talking, because the years have turned our marriage into a hope for that vague, unimportant time when the clock in the living room would stop. Or maybe it did stop in April when Paulo left us with no explanation

when I went into his room I didn’t find his things, I told my husband and my husband raised his cane a little and that was that

from then on, it showed a perpetual twenty-after-five, the way it remained for months and at twelve-after-seven at the time when the doctor looked up at us over Noémia’s bed

we hadn’t bought the cane yet, so my husband raised his eyebrows and I just understood

and both times I was pleased that my mother was in the kitchen stirring the soup, tasting it from the big spoon with the tip of her tongue. Although she wasn’t with us anymore, we did what we had to do in a way she would have approved of; in Noémia’s case, my husband took care of the church, the priest, and the funeral with a calmness and without any useless exaggerations, I told my old friend who was coming down the street for a discreet visit, and the three of us went along with her on little paths that were freckled with sunlight where widows sat on little canvas stools and stretched out their legs in the August heat after they’d polished the medallions on the stones. It’s possible that the other tenants had noticed that the bicycle was missing from the yard, the silence of our radio might have told them. For weeks I had the notion that the alligators were dragging themselves along on the tiles again, the invisible beach and the cove with its echoes, but I’d turn on the fluorescent light, and night would disappear immediately, the knives and forks would move about in the drawer, gathering together to calm us down

—There aren’t any waves here

the overhang defended us from the church sparrows, my husband, in the easy chair where my father used to work on his stamps, was obeying the newspaper and slowly thumbing through it

—I’m reading, can’t you see?

while he peeked over the pages, not at the buildings across the way but at a piece of sky that remained between rooftops, reminding us of the pieces of cloth left over after the curtains had stopped growing old in the chest in hopes that they could be used in some future that will never come. A piece of sky that my husband was living and reliving as he thought

—What’s the use of my wanting that?

until he ended up letting it fade away, picking up dust and charcoal from chimneys, the evening breeze brushed his fingers and forgot, just the way the apartment was forgetting Noémia, because it kept running into fewer toys in corners, fewer dresses on clothes racks, fewer multiplication tables that the sea by the invisible beach was taking away with itself, I mentioned that to my husband who’d bought his cane by then, my husband lifted the cane a bit and, immediately, the jaws of the alligators swallowed up memory and nostalgia, the evening breeze touched us both and forgot about us, maybe in the neighborhood they thought we were dead, and I think we would have died if it hadn’t been for the memory of my mother stirring the soup in the kitchen and adding a touch of oil

—Pass me the cruet, Helena

worried about my father’s diabetes while he was anchored in his easy chair and changing stamps in his album, I remember one from the Belgian Congo with a rhinoceros and one from Mexico with a snake not as terrifying as the eyes of the pots and pans that were spying on me from their hooks

—God help you if we ever get our hands on you, Helena

coming from the chicken broth in the teacup and the pale fingernails, from the kisses that smelled of sweet violets

—See you tomorrow, Leninha

whose perfume had turned their purple into a condensation of fruit preserves, Noémia laid her bicycle against the laundry tub, I happened to touch the bell by mistake and there was a rusty tinkle, a protest

—What’s that?

rudeness from my daughter who was always obedient, docile, doing her homework from school on the dining-room table, nothing but erasers, elbows, and her nose in a book, Paulo, him, yes

—What’s that?

and my husband’s cane rose up and went back down onto the floor

Paulo, who refused to go into the kitchen, pointing at the tiles

—I’m afraid of the alligators, I don’t want to

and, as a matter of fact, there were waiting jaws, a cove with echoes, muddy, dark waves just like the ones at Bico da Areia where we’d gone to pick him up, you passed through a pine grove and there were some ramshackle houses, herons, boys with their pockets bulging with pine cones, horses whinnying deep in the woods and, most of all, the water

—Run away from us, Helena

and in the water were great scaly jaws dragging along, waiting for me, my husband waited for us by the gate looking for a piece of sky over the rooftops of Lisbon, a kitchen where my mother wasn’t stirring the soup

—Mother

a wardrobe where the edge of a blonde wig could be seen, a woman with a bottle in her hand was pointing to the wig

—Carlos

the wig disappeared from the mirror

—I’m terribly sorry for not receiving you properly

a vine asked me, showing its leaves

—I’m a gentian, isn’t that right?

Noémia’s room with the photograph and the vase, the crucifix that gave the impression that it was suffering along with her, the same thin body, the bones showing, the same surprised features that were being eaten away by verdigris, Paulo was in the other bedroom, the one in the rear that had been my parents’ and where the smell of violets persisted and was still turning things purple, night from long ago before there was fluorescent lighting, and inside the sideboard were the beach, the cove, the furniture, my fear, the alligators chewing on a piece of me

—Stir the soup, mommy

Paulo, when we’d take him to Príncipe Real on Saturdays, a long silence, slippers that were annoyed and calling out in the silence

—Soraia

more silence, more slippers, coming out of the well of sleep

—What time is it?

a drape that finally opened, a single hazy eye in a disorder of lashes

—The old couple with the kid, what a bother

objects were quickly hidden, a man’s pants and a woman’s blouse, yawning behind the pants and the blouse was a guy with a mustache who was hitching up his pajamas, my husband was near a pond where there weren’t any alligators dragging along, just some dirty ducks squatting

not moving

on the muddy surface, I had an urge to move that one duck so there’d be three on each side of the fountain, if it had been up to me and I knew people were coming, I’d have shown the courtesy of arranging the ducks, just the same as I’d close the kitchen door so they wouldn’t come up to my mother stirring the soup on the stove or so that the jaws on the tiles wouldn’t gobble them up, the yawn dissolved into a blonde wig that spoke to Paulo

—Come in

and the cane

what did you expect?

rising up a bit, while maybe on an invisible beach, a cove full of echoes, before diabetes reduced him to his stamp collection, I’d go with my father to the home of some single lady cousins who looked to me like a pair of antique dolls masquerading as old women, porcelain faces that mold, not time, had left all wrinkled, the cousins would take the protective felt cover off the piano and then, yes, the waves, notes that came and went without anyone touching the keys, the cousins clapped their hands, gushed over me

—So proper, so grown up

little powder boxes that were transparent swans that sailed along the varnished wood to the rhythm of the music, barking could be heard on the imitation marble stairway that drowned out the little lily voices of the dolls as they asked me my age with ecstatic wonder

—Are you serious?

when the sun went down they probably sat down on the bed, mantillas over their shoulders, and slept with their arms held out, all stiff on the bedcovers, piercing the darkness with their little ceramic eyes, my aged father was suddenly so young, how strange that people existed who were born before you were, father, mentioning deceased people by name and the deceased people were happy

—We’re right here, girls

as the waves grew stronger and cats jumped off the consoles, my daughter died all over again when Paulo left here, for a moment I got the impression that Noémia was doing her schoolwork on the dining-room table, her nose in the book, I said

—Noémia

and nothing but the shadow of the church or the outline of the sideboard, which at certain times

at the end of the day, in January, for example,

looks like a face, my mother asked the soup

—A face?

I couldn’t find his jacket or his clothes, I found a piece of newspaper with some brown stuff I didn’t dare pick up, maybe Paulo

—What’s going on?

if I were to tell the dolls, the lilies of their little voices, alarmed, would say

—Good heavens!

at Príncipe Real there was a lady in a fur stole with crusts of bread for the pigeons

—Nobody lives here, madame, they passed away

that’s not true, a blonde wig lives here and a fellow with a mustache, Paulo introduced the wig while the ducks arranged themselves as they should be, and one of the swans on the piano

—My father, Dona Helena

I was saying that one of the swans on the piano was changing from transparent to opaque, my father, Dona Helena, and dozens of alligator jaws dragging along the floor

not dragging, coming this way

crossing the hallway, walking over to meet me on their slow legs, run away, run, leave the cousins’ little place with boxes of citron and thyme, I was sure that when we weren’t there, the dolls in a corner on the floor wanted us to come back in July, tender, happy

—So proper, so grown up

not hearing

—My father, Dona Helena not shaking his hand, the man’s pants, the woman’s blouse, something he was holding back, excusing himself, and my husband’s cane sinking into the ground

—I didn’t have time to change, please excuse me

clearing papers off the sofa, a plate with some food on it your soup, mother

a fan plucked clean of feathers between the end table and the wall

—Please, please

the guy with the mustache

—A friend

taking money out of a woman’s purse

—I’ll pay you later, Soraia

Paulo’s father getting angry, aware of me, excusing himself

—A friend

turning the dwarf on the refrigerator around, introducing a man in an apron, stopping to reassure myself in front of the mirror

his wife at Bico da Areia didn’t hear us

Dona Judite, I believe

—I used to be pretty, you know

and the vine on the wall didn’t believe her, clouds where if it rained it wasn’t really raining, making things damp with fever, Noémia was staring at us from the sheets