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 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?”
