What Can I Do When Everything's On Fire?: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

be seen from the corners of her mouth, when she thought I’d left the smile would disappear, she’d come along leaning herself on the backs of the chairs
    the toaster was taken too, the meat grinder, I stood in front of where they’d been pointing at the hook
    —It wasn’t me
    no
    carnations in the unbroken vase, starflowers
    —It was me, kick me out, it was me
    two tulips
    no, pretended indignation, the open hands of innocence
    —I wasn’t home today, how could it have been me?
    two tulips and some geraniums, don’t answer, please don’t argue with me, Mr. Couceiro knew the names of trees in Latin, he would stroke their trunks and they’d answer him, the huge hook, maybe I could ask the Cape Verdean for the clock back
    —Lend me the clock for a week, I’ll bring it back
    the jackknife opening and closing, the sandal nudging me
    —Are you still there?
    a labyrinth of alleyways and no way out, old walls, small cracked windows, where is the city, there was a statue but what statue what square, at night my father in his wig looking for Rui, the clown in a ball gown and high heels that lifted him up over the cobblestones, I didn’t even exist
    —Rui
    Rui on the muddy ground
    —You shitty fag
    and the clown, my father, cleaning his wound, getting his scarf dirty, he
    did I say kissing him, mother?
    kissing, the pair of them
    sorry
    in the same bed, my father with a kerchief on his head, I don’t even exist, he laid Rui down in the car, fixed the blanket around him, the headlights quivering over the bumps, me in Chelas all by myself
    can’t you see that you’ve scared him, who’s going to calm him down now, the jackknife changing tone, interested
    —That shitty fag is your father?
    in Príncipe Real the pond in darkness, the trees that Mr. Couceiro knows the names of and I don’t, the key in the lock stopping me from getting in, the garbage trucks were collecting boxes under a spotlight
    two
    on the roof too
    yellow, not blue pointing me out and then hiding me, going away and coming back
    and I was going away and coming back
    Dona Aurorinha’s shopping bag with the potatoes, which she, dead in the cemetery, certainly wouldn’t be cooking, suffocating from her bronchitis, the Anjos balcony so clear before I got to the doormat, Dona Helena stumbling about in her insomnia, relieved, content
    —Son
    with me thinking, hating her, I could steal her vacuum cleaner, the bronze inkstand, her in-laws’ wedding rings on a cotton cushion, take the toolbox
    —Can’t you see that I despise you, that you make me sick, that I detest you?
    and the thumbing of the radio rosary program as she accompanied the priest without interrupting her crocheting, praying for me, Mr. Couceiro from the clothes bin where there was a smell of lime
    —Is it the boy, Helena?
    don’t let me hear the cane, God help him if it’s the cane, luckily it’s just his slippers on the floor and the throat-clearing of old people, emptying out the teapot
    burn everything, destroy everything, Dona Helena said
    —Paulo
    not son
    —Paulo
    I’m not her son, never was her son, the key in the lock of my father’s door stopping me from getting in, fake chinchillas on a wire hanger, muslins, fans, Rui and the clown who pay no attention to my presence playing checkers, if Dona Helena dares say
    —Son
    I’ll break the soup tureen right then and there
    —You’re not my mother
    heat at first, followed by cold, followed by an urge to crush myself, I don’t know what dying is like but they’re disentangling me from my body, conversations that get away from me, scarecrows in smocks holding a basin up against my chest
    —Vomit
    while I was a jackdaw incapable of flight, a sick bird, a bundle tied together with a cord of nerves asking for a needle, a lemon, a rubber tube to help the needle, when I was a wet bundle that toppled and fell, Mr. Couceiro’s Japanese or orderlies or doctors pushed me under, shouting into the rice paddy of Timor, the drifting