Denis Johnson - Fiskadoro

“Miz Chicago,” Towanda said, very worried, “Belinda got a dureza in she left tit. Look like a dureza of the kill-me.”

Ms. Chicago was delighted. She knew all about medicine. “Dureza de vientre, dureza de teta,” she reminded them — a way of saying that if you were a constipated kind of person and hard in the guts, you were bound to find a tumor of the kill-me in your breast one day.

“Who say I dureza de vientre? My reputation all strangle up around here,” Belinda said.

“Reputation ain’t fix the kill-me, girl. You better throw your misery down on your shrine, es the only thing to help it.”

“I never have make a shrine. Es just a lot of foam, that religion.”

Ms. Chicago looked at Belinda out of a face too squashed by the weight of years to show what she was thinking. “Ain’t gone be foam when you lay down all cover up with tumors burning loud as the sun, girl. You gone holler, Kill me! Kill me! ”

“Not today,” Belinda said, but she had to sit down in the doorway.

“Tell me the last thing you lost,” Ms. Chicago said, “or the last thing you found.”

“I lost a dog-tooth here,” Belinda said, pointing at the gap in her mouth.

“That’s it. What you see?”

“Nada. Didn’t see nada.”

Ms. Chicago wiped the sweat from between her breasts with her grey rag. “Think now, girl. Don’t you thought some kind of thought when you lost that tooth?”

“Only just a small one,” Belinda said.

“Tell me,” Ms. Chicago insisted.

“I thought about a big whale eat me up, like my dog-tooth es the last tooth in his mouth.”

“Oh!” Ms. Chicago said with a tone of great respect. “That’s good!”

“That’s good, Belinda!” Towanda said.

“How you know es good?” Belinda said. “You just wanna talk like Miz Chicago talk.”

“Gimme that tooth,” Ms. Chicago said.

“Es gone,” Belinda told her.

“Es gone? Who gone it? Devil gone it?”

“No, Senora, the Devil didn’t gone it — es me. I dig it down in the yard.”

“What you said when you dig it down?”

“Nada.”

“Tell me. What you said?”

“What you said?” Towanda asked her. “You said something? ”

Belinda closed her eyes, tipped her head back, breathed deeply. “I say, ‘Mwe pa gene para sak pale pu mwe,’ ” she admitted.

“Oh, yeah!” Ms. Chicago was overjoyed in her crackly, invisible way.

“Que dice — mwe pa hen-yeh — what es?” Towanda said. She looked scared. She wrung her hands. “Don’t say those thing like that, Belinda.”

“Mean, ‘I got no family to speak for me,’ ” Ms. Chicago said. “Es exact proper wording de la Voodoo. Go find me that tooth, Belinda. Maybe go be a loa para tu.”

“I don’t want no loa,” Belinda said.

“Then why,” Towanda asked her, “you go round say magic on a tooth you lost? Oh sweet Saint Mary — Belinda, you have start it now.”

“Girl, that’s right — you have start it now,” Ms. Chicago agreed. “Go bring me that tooth. Then we drink a little potato-buzz.”

Belinda saw there was no way to stop it. “I be back,” she told Towanda and Ms. Chicago.

As she rounded the corner of Towanda and Leon’s, she found Mike wandering sideways on the path with an open mouth and a faraway look, dribbling urine out from between his legs. She hooked an arm around his belly and lugged him home. “What happen if a puppy bite you face?” she said, trying to remember where she’d buried the tooth. “Then you crawl under a leaf and bleed and nobody gone find you. I gotta dig out that tooth now.”

The place where she’d worked the dirt was damp and easy to spot. She sifted the sand through her fingers and found her dog-tooth. The tooth was dry now, nothing more than a pebble that seemed never to have had anything to do with the gap in her mouth.

“Now I gone leave you by the well.” She dragged Mike along by the hand so that his feet hardly scuffed the dirt. “You have make me be see by alia them skags,” she told him angrily.

The crones at the well all had an exclamation to make or some smug thing to say about her new appearance, and they sounded like a mess of shells being beaten with a spoon, but Belinda was just too tired to let it all loose. She dropped Mike down among three or four other children and left without a word. The muscles in her neck and shoulders were so tight they felt cold by the time she got back across the compound to Ms. Chicago and Towanda with the tooth.

“Radio time come in fifteen minute,” Towanda told her.

“Don’t say nothing,” Ms. Chicago said instantly. “I feel you got the tooth. I taste the power of that tooth — es a loa.”

Towanda said, “Go-head find out who es that loa. Please, Miz Chicago, Belinda got to know.”

“I need two penny,” Ms. Chicago told them.

Towanda dropped the two pennies into the lap of Ms. Chicago’s skirt.

“I told you we go get wine from those penny,” Belinda said.

“Psss, psss,” Towanda said, shushing her.

Ms. Chicago grabbed the pennies in one hand and the tooth in the other. She held them so tightly the veins in her arms puffed up.

In no time at all, Ms. Chicago entered a trance and said, “Es a bomb-pilot Major Colonel Overdoze got the power of Atomic Bomb to work for you, get rid of the kill-me and bring everything back but not the dead. If Fish-man not dead he coming back. Major Colonel fix it. If he dead he not come back. Both way you gone know.” She left the trance, and sat with her arms crossed in front of her chest. “Truth go set you fire make you well.”

“Overdoze?” Belinda said.

“Major Colonel Overdoze,” Ms. Chicago said. “Atomic Bomb pilot.”

“Oh — oh — oh,” Towanda said. “That’s the most power of all.”

“You got a power loa,” Ms. Chicago said. “Most power of all.”

Belinda looked at her feet. “We bringed those penny for wine,” she told Ms. Chicago.

“Now ain’t you glad you dug after this tooth?” Ms. Chicago said. “Truth go set you fire make you well.”

“Why you don’t send Major Colonel for a expedition to Fiskadoro?” Towanda said.

“That’s all turn backward,” Ms. Chicago corrected her. “Loa don’t make no expedition on a dead — Saint Expedit send a dead on the expedition to a living. ”

“Fiskadoro ain’t dead,” Belinda interrupted, “plus also we bringed those two penny for wine, Miz Chicago. Es a mistake about those two penny. Towanda, why you go buy shit with my penny when I didn’t say you go-head buy shit with my penny? Es a mistake. My mouth gone talk about my penny,” she explained to Ms. Chicago. “Es Towanda mouth talking before.”

“You very turbado,” Ms. Chicago said. “I gone give you two penny of wine because of you upset and I too scared of your loa. That’s a power loa.”

“Deal. I gone live with that,” Belinda said.

Ms. Chicago opened the cabinet with a key she kept belted around her belly on a little chain, and took out a two-penny jug of potato wine.

The three of them stood out front where the air might help keep their heads clear. Belinda watched their shadows, made crooked on the corrugated wall of the quonset hut, hanging their tits and passing the jug.

Before long, Belinda said, “My head just ain’t clear. Potato-buzz ain’t make me happy today.”

The radio inside said, “Un programa bilingue de Cubaradio empezara dentro de un minuto. A bilingual broadcast of Cubaradio will begin in just one minute. Por favor invite a sus camaradas a escucharlo. Please invite your comrades to listen.” They passed the green jug. “This potato-buzz burning up inside my stomach,” Belinda told Ms. Chicago and Towanda. “I don’t want no more.”