The Girl in the Photograph

by Lygia Fagundes Telles

  “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 aw
ay 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?

  “Quick Max, I want a drink,” she asked clenching her hands into fists.

  “Where’s your glass? Hanh? But what’s this, you don’t need to cry, why are you crying? Don’t, love, or I’ll start to cry too.”

  She wiped her face on the sheet. Twined together they rolled as one body among the covers. The glass rolled and fell almost soundlessly onto the rug.

  “This depression,” she said disentangling herself. She propped herself up on her elbows to drink. “And that Dr. Hachibe? The ass.”

  It wasn’t yenom he wanted, it was really money. Bastard. Group analysis. Just imagine, how could I be open with those lousy pricks? she thought rolling her hair around her finger. Either they complain about their sex life all the time or hash over their doubts, shall I become a queer? Shan’t I? What the hell, who cares?

  She rolled herself up, closed her hands and hid them against her breasts. Very easy to attribute everything to one’s childhood, he had wide shoulders this one here. How shitty, that Dr. Batista went on a trip and that crazy doctor had to take his place, he’s worse off than I am. What was he called that fetus? He looked like a fetus. A long name but short legs. Legs and all the rest. A sorry excuse for a man. Shit I got worse with him. A crazy.

  “He didn’t charge but then how could he?” she asked massaging the back of her neck. “After him I started treatment with an old man, so old he was falling apart and the whole time he talked about his wife who had terminal cancer and was going to die. What did I have to do with that? I went there to relax a little and I had to listen to the old man in love with his wife who was dying of cancer. I felt sorry but at the same time I got mad as hell because even for that he charged. Childhood. In reality everything becomes simpler when you discover way back there some aunt that wanted to poke her fingers in your eyes. With me they wanted to poke other things in other places but didn’t I get out all by myself? So. They all stayed there in the cellar. Only me.”

  She stretched out on her stomach. She was taking things, right. But who could stand anything without some trips and a shrink to talk to?

  “Who?” she asked staring fixedly at the pillow. “Even those flowers with the broken stems. Didn’t even they need wire? So. Life is hard to put up with. Bending under from problems. But next year, my sweetie, a new life. Do you hear me love? A new life.”

  Married to money she wouldn’t need any more help, shit, analysis. No more problems in sight. Free. She would go back and open her canceled registration, she would be a brilliant student. The books she would read. The discoveries about herself. About others.

  “Even those things that we … I grew rich from the experience, didn’t I? A bourgeoise intellectual. Very chic. And that terrorist, still so underdeveloped. Worthless talk, my sweetie. Freedom is security. If I feel secure, I am free.”

  She drank from Max’s glass. He was sleeping with an affable expression, his hand raised in the gesture of one who invites some visitor to come closer. With a bag of gold, you could be cured easily. Or could you? Even if she went through one or two crises, what would it matter if they took place inside a Jaguar? The hard thing was to fall apart in a public bus. And Lorena saying that it was some minor French authoress who wrote that. Why minor? Not at all. Shit, you can’t be minor if you discover something like that. I agree, it’s not very original. But it’s like the story of the egg that nobody could make stand on end, very easy very easy, but nobody thought of it until after Galileo. Wasn’t it Galileo?

  She shook her friend.

  “Max, answer me, isn’t it better to trip out in a fancy car than in a bus on its way to the outskirts? The hoods pistol-whipping us to death inside?”

  So. In December I’ll get myself sewed up and in January. Waldo will make the dress. I want white. Medieval style, pearls, a string of white pearls. Enormous ones.

  “Max, what time is it? Your watch, where’s your watch?”

  “I bought a Swiss one that has a little movie theater, I press one button and get my horoscope, press another one and get my bank balance and the day I’m going to be betrayed, neat, hanh? What a watch! The trips, Bunny! The red button is for a five hour dose, the blue one gives you a day-long trip with transfers included, I get off the train and onto another one. And the black button, eeeh, what a button. What fear! The crazy woman in white comes with a black armband, she comes in mourning, the old bag.”

  “Who did you sell it to, answer me, Max!”

  “To my grandpa.”

  I pound his chest but he bites my neck. Not my neck! I try to say but I’m laughing so much I can’t talk all I can do is clap my hand over his mouth, and then he bites my hand. My hand is OK, but you can’t bite my neck because the scaly one will see it right away what’s that mark? He asks about everything, wants to know everything while he keeps eating the crust of the bread, sickening peeled that way. “I’ll have dinner at Nona’s house and then we can go out to Zuza’s afterward.” As if I would get really excited about the idea. Taking his fiancée to a joint like that. Why didn’t he invite me to have dinner at Nona’s house, why? Bastard. Always flaunting his family in my face.

  “I don’t have any family,” I said. “They all died in an airplane crash. An international flight. They were coming back from Scotland where they had gone to spend Christmas with my uncles.” Ah, your uncles live in Scotland? They used to. They all died when one night that lake monster rose up and swallowed my uncles and cousins and their house and all. A Scottish monster, Lorena knows its name, she knows all about these monsters. Rotten chic, to be swallowed by a monster in a Scottish lake. “There was no one left no one, no one, no one,” I repeat and drink out of the glass Max hands me. I drink it all down. To the bitter end, wasn’t that a movie? Where did I run across that title?

  “I want to buy an island, Bunny. You know it isn’t hard to buy an island? There’s gobs of islands around.”

  And he has enough family to fill up a ship. The hell with them. The hell with them because the corset is melting there was a bitch of a corset closing off my lungs. Now I can breathe, live. Shit it’s good to live. Who said that. I’m beautiful brilliant I’m going to be on ten magazine covers. Super-important magazines. Success. Leave the lousy others behind howling with envy. Miss nha-nha is right one needs to breathe deeply all the time and then you feel fine. He could have invited me the bastard. That Nona with her little leather house slippers. All the grandchildren dying to show off how rich they are and her. She could have invited me. Aren’t I his fiancée? It doesn’t matter next year stop. It’s close.

  “Dragon-fly wings in green sauce, hanh? Fabulous that restaurant. Lightning-bug sauce blinking off and on, flick, flick! Hanh?”

  I turn into a Roman matron. Respect I want respect. That’s what Mother Alix doesn’t understand. A saint. I’ll do everything you say my saint. A sainted grandmother. Lots of milk very good lots of milk and that medicine and I beat my breast never again, never again! We’ll see about it tomorrow. If you love me.

  “The saints are transparent just like water. There used to be lots of tubes of water, all different colors. At that chemical lab where I worked. I used to clean and the little old Jew who liked me would come up and give me an apron to put on and let me play with the tubes. He would explain to me about the colors blue red green. The water would change colors. The smell. I still remember the smell but this was a smell I liked because it had nothing to do with people. The little glass tubes changing color just like us. Look, love, I drink them and I turn into a rainbow, blue, yello
w, ay! Don’t touch me or I’ll spill. I used to know a song, how did it go?”

  “She taught me to dance. Madame Lamas. Mama wanted us to learn to dance because of this or because of that, Madame Lamas, that’s it, my little sister and I learned everything. Fun, hanh? All day long there were little parties, a crowd of little girls and parties. We used to dance like crazy, Madame Lamas taught me, La Madame Lamas. Good manners, oh, what a nice boy, you should have seen it.”

  “I love you, love.” I can howl with pleasure but no. Never mind.

  “I saw in a crystal window … upon a proud pedestal … how does that go? I have a passion for that song, I get hysterical, here, come on, sing, in a crystal window, a charming doll …”

  She doesn’t understand because she is a saint. In reality I grow clean here with him. Cleansed from all those things, cleansed. Don’t you see how happy I am? Not even when I had analysis with that Turkish guy, what was his name? It doesn’t matter. I lied about everything. Good for me. Good night and we’ll tell the truth. We don’t at all. Dirty stories about rotten teeth I don’t want I don’t want.

  “You’re handsome, love. The handsomest man I ever saw.”

  “I am beautiful,” he said hanging onto the bureau. He hesitated: “That music, do you hear? An angel playing. I can’t listen to it because I start to cry like a fool, my eyes are already watering…”

  “You’re just like Michelangelo’s David.”

  “Where did you see Michelangelo’s David, where?” he asked, laughing. He grabbed the bottle from the floor. “Where, where?”