Part 21 (2/2)

' ”Just wandering around, looking at the breakfast trolleys like she didn't know where she was,” she said. ”Poor old thing! She was eighty if she was a day. Looked like a strong gust of wind would blow her right up into the sky like a kite . . . Martha, you come over here and sit down. You look like the picture of Dorian Gray in that movie.”

' ”What did she look like? Tell me!”

' ”I did tell you - an old woman. They all look about the same to me. The only thing different about this one was the scar on her face. It ran all the way up into her hair. It - ”

'But I didn't hear any more because that was when I did faint.

'They let me go home early and I'd no more than got there than I started feeling like I wanted to spit again, and drink a lot of water, and probably end up in the John like before, sicking my guts out. But for the time being I just sat there by the window, looking out into the street, and gave myself a talking-to.

'What she'd done to me wasn't just hypnosis; by then I knew that. It was more powerful than hypnosis. I still wasn't sure if I believed in any such thing as witchcraft, but she'd done something to me, all right, and whatever it was, I was just going to have to ride with it. I couldn't quit my job, not with a husband that wasn't turning out to be worth salt and a baby most likely on the way. I couldn't even request to be switched to a different floor. A year or two before I could have, but I knew there was talk about making me a.s.sistant Chief Housekeeper for Ten to Twelve, and that meant a raise in pay. More'n that, it meant they'd most likely take me back at the same job after I had the baby.

'My mother had a saying: What can't be cured must be endured. I thought about going back to see that old black mama and asking her to take it off, but I knew somehow she wouldn't - she'd made up her mind it was best for me, what she was doing, and one thing I've learned as I've made my way through this world, Darcy, is that the only time you can never hope to change someone's mind is when they've got it in their head that they're doing you a help.

'I sat there thinking all that and looking out at the street, all the people coming and going, and I kind of dozed off. Couldn't have been for much more than fifteen minutes, but when I woke up again I knew something else. That old woman wanted me to keep on doing what I'd already done twice, and I couldn't do that if Peter Jefferies went back to Birmingham. So she got into the room-service kitchen and put that mushroom on his tray and he ate part of it and it gave him that idea. Turned out to be a whale of a story, too - Boys in the Mist, it was called. It was about just what he told me that day, twin brothers, one of them an American soldier and the other a German one, that meet at the Battle of the Bulge. It turned out to be the biggest seller he ever had.'

She paused and added, 'I read that in his obituary.'

'He stayed another week. Every day when I went in he'd be bent over the desk in the parlor, writing away on one of his yellow pads, still wearing his pajamas. Every day I'd ask him if he wanted me to come back later and he'd tell me to go ahead and make up the bedroom but be quiet about it. Never looking up from his writing while he talked. Every day I went in telling myself that this time I wasn't going to do it, and every day that stuff was there on the sheet, still fresh, and every day every prayer and every promise I'd made myself went flying out the window and I found myself doing it again. It really wasn't like fighting a compulsion, where you argue it back and forth and sweat and s.h.i.+ver; it was more like blinking for a minute and finding out it had already happened. Oh, and every day when I came in he'd be holding his head like it was just killing him. What a pair we were! He had my morning-sickness and I had his night-sweats!'

'What do you mean?' Darcy asked.

'It was at night I'd really brood about what I was doing, and spit and drink water and maybe have to throw up a time or two. Mrs Parker got so concerned that I finally told her I thought I was pregnant but I didn't want my husband to know until I was sure.

'Johnny Rosewall was one self-centered son of a b.i.t.c.h, but I think even he would have known something was wrong with me if he hadn't had fish of his own to fry, the biggest trout in the skillet being the liquor store holdup he and his friends were plannin. Not that I knew about that, of course; I was just glad he was keepin out of my way. It made life at least a little easier.

'Then I let myself into 1163 one morning and Mr Jefferies was gone. He'd packed his bags and headed back to Alabama to work on his book and think about his war. Oh, Darcy, I can't tell you how happy I was! I felt like Lazarus must have when he found out he was going to have a second go at life. It seemed to me that morning like everything might come right after all, like in a story - I would tell Johnny about the baby and he would straighten up, throw out his dope, and get a regular job. He'd be a proper husband to me and a good father to his son - I was already sure it was going to be a boy.

'I went into the bedroom of Mr Jefferies's suite and seen the bedclothes messed up like always, the blankets kicked off the end and the sheet all tangled up in a ball. I walked over there feeling like I was in a dream again and pulled the sheet back. I was thinking, Well, all right, if I have to . . . but it's for the last time.

'Turned out the last time had already happened. There wasn't a trace of him on that sheet. Whatever spell that old bruja woman had put on us, it had run its course. That's good enough, I thought. I'm gonna have the baby, he's gonna have the book, and we're both shut of her magic. I don't care a fig about natural fathers, either, as long as Johnny will be a good dad to the one I've got coming.'

'I told Johnny that same night,' Martha said, then added dryly: 'He didn't cotton onto the idea, as I think you already know.'

Darcy nodded.

'Whopped me with the end of that broomstick about five times and then stood over me where I lay crying in the corner and yelled, 'What are you, crazy? We ain't having no kid I think you stone crazy, woman!' Then he turned around and walked out.

'I laid there for awhile, thinking of the first miscarriage and scared to death the pains would start any minute, and I'd be on my way to having another one. I thought of my momma writing that I ought to get away from him before he put me in the hospital, and of Kissy sending me that Greyhound ticket with GO NOW written on the folder. And when I was sure that I wasn't going to miscarry the baby, I got up to pack a bag and get the h.e.l.l out of there - right away, before he could come back. But I was no more than opening the closet door when I thought of Mama Delorme again. I remembered telling her I was going to leave Johnny, and what she said to me: ”No - he gonna leave you. You gonna see him out, is all. Stick around, woman. There be a little money. You gonna think he hoit the baby but he dint be doin it.”

'It was like she was right there, telling me what to look for and what to do. I went into the closet, all right, but it wasn't my own clothes I wanted any more. I started going through his, and I found a couple of things in that same d.a.m.ned sportcoat where I'd found the bottle of White Angel. That coat was his favorite, and I guess it really said everything anyone needed to know about Johnny Rosewall. It was bright satin . . . cheap-looking. I hated it. Wasn't no bottle of dope I found this time. Was a straight-razor in one pocket and a cheap little pistol in the other. I took the gun out and looked at it, and that same feeling came over me that came over me those times in the bedroom of Mr Jefferies's suite - like I was doing something just after I woke up from a heavy sleep.

'I walked into the kitchen with the gun in my hand and set it down on the little bit of counter I had beside the stove. Then I opened the overhead cupboard and felt around in back of the spices and the tea. At first I couldn't find what she'd given me and this awful stiflin panic came over me - I was scared the way you get scared in dreams. Then my hand happened on that plastic box and I drew it down.

'I opened it and took out the mushroom. It was a repulsive thing, too heavy for its size, and warm. It was like holding a lump of flesh that hasn't quite died. That thing I did in Mr Jefferies's bedroom? I tell you right now I'd do it two hundred more times before I'd pick up that mushroom again.

'I held it in my right hand and I picked up that cheap little .32 in my left. And then I squeezed my right hand as hard as I could, and I felt the mushroom squelch in my fist, and it sounded . . . well, I know it's almost impossible to believe . . . but it sounded like it screamed. Do you believe that could be?'

Slowly, Darcy shook her head. She did not, in fact, know if she believed it or iot, but she was absolutely sure of one thing: she did not want to believe it.

'Well, I don't believe it, either. But that's what it sounded like. And one other thing you won't believe, but I do, because I saw it: it bled. That mushroom bled. I saw a little stream of blood come out of my fist and splash onto the gun. But the blood disappeared as soon as it hit the barrel.

'After awhile it stopped. I opened my hand, expecting it would be full of blood, but there was only the mushroom, all wrinkled up, with the shapes of my fingers mashed into it. Wasn't no blood on the mushroom, in my hand, on his gun, nor anywhere. And just as I started to think I'd done nothing but somehow have a dream on my feet, the d.a.m.ned thing twitched in my hand. I looked down at it and for a second or two it didn't look like a mushroom at all - it looked like a little tiny p.e.n.i.s that was still alive. I thought of the blood coming out of my fist when I squeezed it and I thought of her saying ”Any child a woman get, the man shoot it out'n his p.e.c.k.e.r, girl.” It twitched again - I tell you it did - and I screamed and threw it in the trash. Then I heard Johnny coming back up the stairs and I grabbed his gun and ran back into the bedroom with it and put it back into his coat pocket. Then I climbed into bed with all my clothes on, even my shoes, and pulled the blanket up to my chin. He come in and I seen he was bound to make trouble. He had a rug-beater in one hand. I don't know where he got it from, but I knew what he meant to do with it.

' ”Ain't gonna be no baby,” he said. ”You get on over here.”

' ”No,” I told him, ”there ain't going to be a baby. You don't need that thing, either, so put it away. You already took care of the baby, you worthless piece of s.h.i.+t.”

'I knew it was a risk, calling him that, but I thought maybe it would make him believe me, and it did. Instead of beating me up, this big goony stoned grin spread over his face. I tell you, I never hated him so much as I did then.

' ”Gone?” he asked.

' ”Gone,” I said.

' ”Where's the mess?” he asked.

' ”Where do you think?” I said. ”Halfway to the East River by now, most likely.”

'He came over then and tried to kiss me, for Jesus' sake. Kiss me! I turned my face away and he went upside my head, but not hard.

' ”You're gonna see I know best,” he says. ”There'll be time enough for kids later on.”

'Then he went out again. Two nights later him and his friends tried to pull that liquor store job and his gun blew up in his face and killed him.'

'You think you witched that gun, don't you?' Darcy said.

'No,' Martha said calmly. 'She did . . . by way of me, you could say. She saw I wouldn't help myself, and so she made me help myself.'

'But you do think the gun was witched.'

'I don't just think so,' Martha said calmly.

Darcy went into the kitchen for a gla.s.s of water. Her mouth was suddenly very dry.

'That's really the end,' Martha said when she came back. 'Johnny died and I had Pete. Wasn't until I got too pregnant to work that I found out just how many friends I had. If I'd known sooner, I think I would have left Johnny sooner . . . or maybe not. None of us really knows the way the world works, no matter what we think or say.'

'But that's not everything, is it?' Darcy asked.

'Well, there are two more things,' Martha said. 'Little things.' But she didn't look as if they were little, Darcy thought.

'I went back to Mama Delorme's about four months after Pete was born. I didn't want to but I did. I had twenty dollars in an envelope. I couldn't afford it but I knew, somehow, that it belonged to her. It was dark. Stairs seemed even narrower than before, and the higher I climbed the more I could smell her and the smells of her place: burned candles and dried wallpaper and the cinnamony smell of her tea.

'That feeling of doing something in a dream - of being behind a gla.s.s wall - came over me for the last time. I got up to her door and knocked. There was no answer, so I knocked again. There was still no answer, so I knelt down to slip the envelope under the door. And her voice came from right on the other side, as if she was knelt down, too. I was never so scared in my life as I was when that papery old voice came drifting out of the crack under that door - it was like hearing a voice coming out of a grave.

' ”He goan be a fine boy,” she said. ”Goan be just like he father. Like he natural father.”

' ”I brought you something,” I said. I could barely hear my own voice.

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