Florida(35)

The shopkeeper stood three times, there was the kiss of the refrigerator three times, he sloshed back and groaned to the floor opposite her three times. The third time, she was nearly asleep when he leaned over and put his hand on her ankle. He had been holding a beer, and his skin on hers was shockingly cold.

She had feared this for so long, it seemed, that when it was here, it was almost a relief. She felt her anger blaze alive, and she jerked her leg away, but his hand found her ankle again and clamped down to the point of pain, then beyond. She gave an involuntary cry, and he laughed, as if to say that wasn’t even close to the limit of his strength, and she bit her lip until it bled, and he loosened his hand again.

She thought of her mother, at home in Miami, where there was only dry sun outside, the crucifix in the shadows above the bed; she thought of the small tin orixá, the goddess of the sea, calm above the register in the dark. She found herself praying, not knowing if she was praying to her mother or to either of the gods, or a mixture of all three, but in truth it didn’t matter to whom the words were addressed because the act without direction was all she could do.



* * *



—

The shopkeeper removed his hand only to fetch more beer or food from the shelves. He crunched and breathed heavily and smacked his lips, and she remembered how he had tongued the gap between his teeth that day he gazed up at her on her balcony, how pink and pulsing and obscene it was. When he returned, he put his hand on her leg again, each time higher on her calf. The gate rattled with less desperation now; the wind appeared to have died down a little. When he reached her knee, he felt the raw wet mouth of the wound there, and despite herself, she pulled in a hissing breath, and this shook something from him.

He ran his finger over the edges of the wound. Every once in a while, the finger would dart forward and touch inside the cut, and she would gasp, and he would laugh. He began to talk. He was beyond drunk, this was clear, and his tongue was thick and his words were strange, and she was sure she would never have understood his Portuguese even if she spoke the language.

She felt sick with anticipated pain. She clutched herself, waiting, and found her brain transliterating surreally, the long strands of language broken into short strands, swept into a semblance of rhythm. She took comfort in the images that rose in the darkness before her. Bull’s blood zucchini flowerstar, she imagined he said. Cinema collation of strange mad zebras.

She listened. His words thickened. His hand fell back away from her knee, down her calf. Outside, she heard the wind through leaves—there were still trees, then, and the trees still had leaves—and the occasional plink of rain against metal. It could be the eye of the storm, she told herself; and if it was, she would have to bear the intensification of wind again, this man’s heavy presence, and she knew what would happen if she had to wait with him once more through the terrible roar outside. She would not be able to be still enough for him to forget her. But at last, the shopkeeper fell silent and a whistling started up in his nose and she understood that he was asleep.



* * *



—

In tiny increments, she extracted her body from under his hand. She stood from the puddle on the concrete where she was sitting and moved, stiff and cold, toward where she remembered the door to be. She had to put down the beer bottle that she had clutched all night to move a shelf out of the way and lift the lock. In a burst of strength, she ripped the gate up and away from the ground.

The day dazzled with sun. Steam rose from the street, a clean sheet of liquid light covering the cobblestones, a wet skin glittering on the buildings. Gold drops fell from the treelimbs, and a cool gentle wind swept the hair from her face. Her leg was caked with blood, the wound livid, her body racked in the joints. She didn’t care.

Behind her, the shopkeeper shifted to his feet, bottles ringing on the wet floor as he struggled. She turned, ready to shout, but he was gazing beyond her into the outside. The reflection from the street pushed into the dark of the store, made his round and greasy face shine with moving sunlight. He held on to the shelf before him, and she saw his fear, different and subtler than hers, rise from him and move deeper into the shadows of the room. The shopkeeper tilted his head and closed his eyes, and soon he said, Campainhas, and this was a thing she understood, because she also heard the churchbells ringing into the morning. She said, Yes. He looked at her as if surprised to find her there; he had forgotten her; she was merely the postscript to his tempestuous night. She was a mere visitor. She was nothing. Helena reached over to the tin orixá above the cash register and found it to be sharper and lighter than she had imagined it, a thought turned to matter, an idea that fit in the palm of her hand.



* * *



—

For a long while, she stood in the doorway, listening to the bells, happy for them; but they went on and on, and she began to listen for them to stop. Each peal, she was sure, would be the last. The bright sound would dissolve back into the sea-touched wind, and the ordinary noises of Salvador would rise to take the bells’ place, the calling voices, a scooter, a dog barking, a drum; and Helena would be freed to move forward, outward, up. But each note disintegrated and was followed by another and then another, and she felt stuck where she stood, a wild feeling rising in her. Her body grew unbearably tense; her heart began to beat so fast it felt as if it were winged.

And then she saw, plain as the street before her, her mother in her bedroom at home, pale among her pillows. Helena could not tell if she was alive or dead. She was so peaceful, so very still. The Miami sun fingered the edges of the blinds. The birds filled the loquat tree just outside the window, the tree her mother had planted herself before Helena was born, the fruit already rotten, the birds already drunk on the fruit, wildly singing.