The Girl in the Photograph. Lygia Fagundes Telles

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?

      “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