with me, which was worse. Now I have to wait in the lobby of the spirit house.
The room is big, bigger than my father’s workshop, and they’ve rigged up a makeshift lobby there. The plank partitions reach only halfway to the ceiling and let all the sounds through. It’s scary when the people in the room fall silent, and the hoarse voice of the priest takes on a sinister tone as he appeases the spirit that’s going to appear. Even crouching under the bench and covering my ears and pinching my eyes shut won’t help — sleep won’t come. I can hear the ghost screaming, just like a real ghost. I sneak a look to make sure it doesn’t slip out of the room and catch me hiding there. Shadows of figures play across the walls. My mother says that the shadows of the dead hang over the living until their spirit has been avenged. Which makes me think of the dead bodies in the park across the street. They know I looked at them, and now they’re watching me, thinking thoughts of revenge. Suddenly the people start singing again, dancing and knocking over their chairs. As the women wail and keen, the priest calls on other spirits. This can go on for a long time, since every woman has paid for the ghost of her choice to appear, but sometimes other ghosts turn up without warning, out of the blue.
The spirits have funny voices, like the groans men make when they mount the girls in the park. Like a cough stuck in your throat. It can’t be easy to be a ghost. It must hurt plenty. You can tell by the way they yell and scream. My mother says it’s important to talk to them, they know all kinds of things we don’t, they can help us if we help them by praying and doing other things that spirits do. My father thinks that’s all stuff for foolish women and ignorant niggers. She doesn’t like it when he talks about the spirits like that. That’s why he’s in the shit he’s in and our life is so miserable, she tells him. I don’t understand. We’re not as poor as tramps, but there’s obviously something not right in our house.
Crouching under the bench, I figure I can do without help from the spirits. Better they keep their distance. I promise to pray for them if they’ll leave me alone. They’re evil and I know it, slippery, shadowy, scary figures trying to catch me unawares. But the women seem to love those seances. They stream out happy and excited, and itching for a pee.
I get so scared at the spirit house that, when it’s over, I’m worn out and I sleep soundly the whole night. But I know I’ll return because the place draws me. As soon as the women leave me alone, I crawl under the bench for another session.
Sometimes my father reassures me by imitating the noises spirits make. I shouldn’t believe my book with the pictures of hell, they’re only images made to scare people. Dark pictures full of mountains, caves, water and fire, full of ghosts and demons scrambling all over like ants. He knows how much I like that book, even if I shouldn’t on account of the people aren’t wearing any clothes. He hid it the day my brother tore out the ogre page. But sometimes he lets me look at it. The shadows in the pictures remind me of the ones on the wall in the spirit house. It’s dark, and they’re suffering. My mother thinks the pictures are photos of hell. She’s afraid of the book. Not my father. He likes looking at the drawings even if he doesn’t believe what’s written on the pages. He says it’s all the priests’ doing, to exploit the women and make them go to mass.
Father is always making fun of my mother, but he doesn’t try to stop her from doing the macumba stuff. She prepares the little bundles when he’s not there, because he doesn’t like to waste. She and the fat black lady wrap up food, a bottle of cachaça, cigars and little cakes she’s had blessed at another spirit house. Then she drops off her bundle at a street corner in town, adding to the pile that the poor leave for the spirits.
My mother says they’re offerings that ask for something specific, messages, people call them. If the spirits are pleased with the gift, they’ll make the wish come true. People shouldn’t expect anything from a bunch of spirits drunk on cachaça, Father says. Besides, the women never ask for anything good, all they want is to hurt one another. My mother gets angry because she knows my father fishes out the bottles of cachaça from the bundles, and cigars, too, especially if they’re the kind he likes to smoke. I’ve seen him do it on our Sunday walks and nothing bad happened to him. Only you shouldn’t touch the food or the little cakes because women poison them or put dirty stuff inside them. It’s true.
Once I heard my mother ask the black lady to find her a placenta to send a special message in the name of one of her girlfriends. I don’t exactly know what a placenta is, but from listening to them talk, I figured it was something disgusting, a kind of octopus or intestine. The black lady’s neighbour caught a placenta and got very sick; she was all skin and bones from loss of blood. They say that anyone who kicks a macumba bundle will die within the year. Father doesn’t agree with that either. They say that just to keep people from practising their penalty kicks with messages, he says. Our country suffers from soccer fever, and it’s hard to resist a well-placed bundle.
My parents disagree about almost everything. But people respect my father’s opinion, while my mother has to wait for the black ladies to know what to do. My father knows how to repair all kinds of things: radios, toasters, heated cushions for women with tummy-aches, lamps, floor polishers, even lighted halos for the statues of saints. He also knows how to give shots if you’re sick. The women in the building use his services. That way they don’t have to show their behinds to the drugstore clerk who’s a hapless half-wit.
Once he took me to see a Portuguese woman because her husband wasn’t home, and it wouldn’t be right for him to be going there by himself. The woman lived a little further down the street. Her apartment overlooked a damp inner courtyard filled with bird cages. The verdigris of the stucco blended with the moss crawling between the paving stones and flowerpots. Under the pale yellow light filtering down from the glass roof, the place looked like a forest. But it smelled of boiled vegetables and toilets. The Portuguese woman was pretty, but she was nervous because she didn’t want my father to see her behind. She wanted him to give her the shot through her fluffy panties. He lost his temper, and she quickly obeyed. With a stern look on his face, he sterilized the needle by heating it without so much as a glance at her housecoat, which was gaping wide open. As precise as a watch, he snapped open the ampoule, filled the syringe, squeezed a few drops into the air and soaked a cotton wad in ether. The woman leaned over the table like she was going to get spanked, nearly lying down. She pulled down her panties and exposed her enormous ass. It was whiter than her half-spread legs, separated by a black, velvety slit. He rubbed her buttocks looking for a solid spot, and pow! Right in the meat. She grunted like a ghost. Some more rubbing, then he gave her another smack on the other cheek. Instead of crying, the Portuguese woman broke into laughter, as if she were happy, turning in his direction with her black hair on her white belly. She slowly pulled up her panties with her eyes averted and thanked him. It hadn’t hurt a bit, his shots were just fine. I was surprised she didn’t cry, especially after that good whack, but that’s how women are. She even wanted more shots after that. Now he goes there by himself because he knows her. The woman doesn’t look sick at all, even if my mother says she’s syphilitic.
Tuberculosis is the worst. Three of my mother’s brothers died of tuberculosis. She keeps repeating it to show she’s an expert. Since I cough a lot, she thinks I’m weak in the lungs, too. The more I cough, the angrier she gets. At night my coughing is terrible. It keeps everyone from sleeping and reminds her that it’s contagious. Her brothers used to cough at night, too. When I don’t cough, I stay awake anyway because I feel like I’m suffocating, and that’s when I think about ghosts. Sometimes she shakes me awake to give me coffee with butter to calm my cough, or herbal tea especially for the lungs that she buys in the herb shops her girlfriends tell her about. She loves herbal brews of all kinds, for the liver, the bowels, the head, to ward off worms, bad blood or the influence of the spirits. Even if it tastes awful, there’s no use making a fuss because she’s armed with her whip like a real witch, to protect us against the curse of the netherworld.
Because of my tuberculosis, I get a lot of special things, double doses of macerated leaves, dried fish skins and other things so disgusting that sometimes
