Red Ant House

by Ann Cummins

  “Goddamn,” she said, kicking the fly away. She dropped to one knee, putting her right foot on the ground for leverage, pulling, digging under the tooth on the inside, pushing her fingers up into the roof of his mouth, pressing there until she no longer felt the smooth skin. All that she felt was the bone. From the pit of her stomach, a thin animal sound rose. She reached up into this man’s mouth to the place where the gold began, pushed back on his skull with her other hand, pulled, and the sound rose to a wail. The cicadas trilled with her in one last song before the sun set.

  In the low-lying hills that lead into the Cascades, the air smelled of wet hay, animal dung, and smoke. She drove half sleeping, her foot stationary on the pedal, two fingers on the wheel, watching the edge of the blacktop, which curled off into the hills. The hills steamed from the day’s heat. Though she could distinguish little in the dank land, she could feel the grass and crops oozing around her, and now and then her headlights glanced off a black slick that would be a pond on the roadside. Her windshield had begun to catch bugs, their white goo spreading in arcs when she used the wiper, until halfway through the Cascades she noticed that the glass had turned the color of milk, and she stopped to clean it, digging at the masses that had dried. She listened behind her to the land twitching as it cooled. When she drove, she half dreamed about the time passing. Because she did not have a watch, she made her own time, estimating minutes and hours by mileage posts, keeping track of each little town and adding it in, though she was less interested in getting to Medford than in clocking the places where she had been. This was the sort of thing her father was interested in. He would ask her, “Which way’d you come?” and “How long did it take you?” She wondered what he would look like now. Nan said he had lost weight. “Come home and cheer your father up,” Nan had said.

  On the western side of the Cascades, her headlights caught the silver threads of moss hanging from the trees around her. They looked soft and soothing, like silk shawls hanging from the trees, or like her own mother’s hair, which had turned silver in a day, so it seemed. When Ginny and her mother used to do the dishes, her father would come up behind them and lift the hot hair from their necks. “You’re one slick chick,” he always told her mother, and her mother would nudge Ginny. “You know what that makes you? One slick chicken.” Her father would say, “I guess it’s the other way around.”

  Every night he kissed the back of their chicken necks.

  An hour outside Medford it began to drizzle. She cracked the window and put her fingers out, letting them soak in the air. Tonight, she’d sleep in her cousin’s trailer, and the rain would beat against the metal. In the morning she’d drive north. She was going to cheer her father up. She would be the surprise. They would sit at the kitchen table together and drink the whiskey she was bringing. She’d say, “I didn’t know what to get you,” and then they’d get drunk.

  And she’d say, “Pop, I have a secret.”

  He’d say, “What is it?”

  She’d say, “I can’t tell you because then it wouldn’t be a secret anymore.”

  He’d say, “Dad blast it.”

  In this way, she would cheer him up. She could make him grin because she was his own sweet-faced girl.

  Dr. War Is a Voice on the Phone

  Dr. War is a voice on the phone, he says, “Come on, baby, let’s fight.”

  I say, “I don’t mind.”

  He says, “What’s your address?” Then I go out on the curb to wait.

  While I’m waiting I try to imagine what he looks like. I try to imagine from the six times I’ve talked to him on the phone. He says, “How old are you? Are you twelve?” he says. “What do you look like? Like, is your hair long or short,” things like that, he asks me, and, “Do you like to dance?”

  I asked him how he got my number. He says, “It’s a mystery how. Things like that spring up from the earth.”

  The third time he called I almost walked through the sliding glass door to answer. I was out back, and Aunt Tiel’s yelling, “Bring me some orange juice,” or, “Bring me a Bloody Mary.” Tiel got her hair shaved off below the belly. She showed me the naked crack, saying, “Smooth like a baby’s,” but it’s stubbled like a man’s face. She said, “What do you think of that?” I don’t think much of it. Of Tiel, flat on her back with memory loss. She comes home from the hospital, she says, “They took from me what it means to be a woman and threw it in the trash can.” She says, “I don’t remember what it means to be a woman,” and says, “Bring me a Bloody Mary.”

  I have dark hair, if you’re interested. Some people think it’s thick. I rub it in the grass out back. I wonder what Dr. War will think of that. He said, “Did you ever let a boy kiss you, and did you take your shirt off for him?” When my uncle said, “Let’s cut the rug, Dina,” and we held our two hands under my chin, I took my fingers and unbuttoned my top button while we were dancing. I did this. I danced with my button undone. He didn’t notice.

  I’m sitting here on the curb waiting for my ride. He says, “What are you wearing right now? Like, are you wearing a dress or shorts, and what color?” I don’t tell him everything. The length of this skirt, I didn’t say, just the color, red. The number on this house I didn’t tell, just the street. Let him find me. Let him open his eyes and look. He could be any one of these passing by, slowing down and passing by.

  I have come outside from my uncle’s house while bald Tiel talks to the TV and my uncle snores in his chair. I have rubbed my head on the grass, and electrified hair flies from my face. I don’t know who Dr. War is. He just called me on the phone. He could be any one of these.

  The Hypnotist’s Trailer

  A woman, Josephine, read an ad in the local advertiser one day: ADDICTION THERAPIST, CAN CURE ANYTHING, HYPNOTISM; PSYCHIC MASSAGE. Josephine smoked; she’d tried to stop. She drank a little bit, too, maybe a little more than she should. She decided to give the hypnotist a try. She took her daughter along for moral support.

  The hypnotist lived and worked in a trailer on a paved lot at the base of Stone Mountain. He was a hairy man but his teeth were straight and his fingernails clipped. His place was sparsely furnished—a rattan couch, a tweedy chair. No little vases, no magazines. “No distractions, no regrets,” the man said, waving Josephine and her daughter to their seats. Then he said it again, looking deeply into Josephine’s eyes. “No distractions, no regrets.” His voice was soothing, and the couch was soft. In no time at all, Josephine slipped into a deep hypnotic trance.

  “Let’s skip the preliminaries and get right down to it,” the hypnotist said. “Do you believe in God?”

  “Yes,” Josephine said.

  “What does he look like?”

  This confused her.

  “Does he have a beard?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “I have a beard.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “He has long hair and brown eyes, too.”

  Josephine supposed he did.

  In short order, the hypnotist convinced her that she was in the presence of God.

  “Do you believe that God can deliver you from your sins? Will you put your trust in the Lord?”

  She did. She would.

  “Give me a token of your trust, then.”

  “Token?”

  “Something you value. Your purse, perhaps.”

  The daughter—Irene was her name—laughed, and a shadow crossed the hypnotist’s face. He glanced at the girl. She was pretty in a trashy way. Her face was white with makeup, and her eyes were lined in green. She wore her hair in that half-shaved, half-dyed style he hated. She was a skinny thing, though. He liked skinny things, and he felt a sudden urge to involve her.

  “Your daughter was right to laugh,” he said. “A purse is just a thing.”

  Josephine smiled at the girl; Irene rolled her eyes.

  “Give me something you truly value,” the hypnotist said. He winked at the girl. “Give me your daughter.”

  Irene laughed. “Yeah
, Mom. Give me to him.”

  “My daughter?” Josephine frowned. Since reaching puberty, Irene had become a difficult child. Josephine looked at the hypnotist, who was stroking his beard, eyeing the girl. To her surprise, the man’s face began to change—to lose its rough and flabby cheeks and nose, to smooth and tighten into somebody she knew. She blinked and there he was, the juvenile detention officer who had, in recent years, begun to haunt her porch and frequent her dreams.

  Suddenly she threw her arms around Irene. “You can’t have her!” she hissed.

  The hypnotist raised his eyebrows, then looked at his feet.

  “It’s all my fault she’s bad,” Josephine whispered.

  “I can see that,” he whispered back.

  Irene slipped out of her mother’s grasp. She liked being noticed but was growing a little bored. She began looking around, kicking her foot, generally fidgeting. The hypnotist frowned. Boredom was not good. Boredom broke the mood. He ran his tongue over his teeth, leaned forward, smiled at Josephine, and said, “Give me your bellybutton.” Irene stopped kicking.

  “What?” Josephine said.

  “Give me your navel.”

  The girl grinned. This she liked.

  “Give it to me,” he whispered.

  The woman looked down. She lifted her shirt, pushed down her skirt, and looked at it. What did he mean, give it to him? Was it like what you did with kids when you pretended to take their noses? She looked at her daughter. Irene nodded. Her daughter was naughty, but she was not evil. It must be like what you did with kids. Josephine laughed. She reached down and grabbed her bellybutton. To her surprise, it came off in her hand. She stared at it, horrified. It was flat as a penny, but as she watched the ends began to curl up. She gasped.

  “Good,” the hypnotist said.

  She pushed it against her middle, trying to reattach it. Her ears were ringing. It wouldn’t stay.

  “Only God can put it back,” the hypnotist said. “You see. You didn’t trust after all.”

  “I didn’t,” she wailed. She held the navel in her right hand. Her throat had thickened, and her temples were throbbing. She felt like crying.

  “I will take good care of it because I believe you value it. Do you hear what I’m saying to you, Josephine? I believe you.”

  She looked at him. “You believe me?”

  “I believe you, and I believe in you!” He said this with such conviction that her throat opened and tears came to her eyes. He believed her!

  “Let me see it for a minute,” he said.

  “See it?”

  “Just for a minute.”

  “Why?”

  “To heal it. It’s dying. Look at it.”

  She opened her hand. The navel had curled up into a little ball. It was brown and wrinkled like a rotten apple. Her hand began to shake.

  “Here.” He covered her hand with both of his. “There, there,” he said. “Now I have it. It’s okay.” And he began to stroke it.

  She watched closely. At first, she could see no difference, but then she noticed that the color was changing. Was the color changing? Yes! The color was fading, and the thing was growing. It was, with each stroke, flattening out to its original shape, and it was turning a sort of peach-ish. She smiled. He was fixing it.

  “Now,” he said, “how’s that? Better?”

  “Yes,” she whispered. She held out her hand, but he did not give it back.

  “I want to talk to you about something, Josephine. I want to talk to you about addiction.”

  “Oh,” Josephine said. She sat back in her chair. She knew whatever he was going to say was right. She drank too much. She smoked too much. She laced her fingers over her stomach. Without her navel, she felt a little naked.

  “Addicts don’t have centers. They’ve given up their centers and replaced them with smoke. Did you notice how easily this came off?” She swallowed. “That wouldn’t happen in a healthy person. Every piece of your body is in serious decay because of the way you have abused yourself, and when you abuse yourself, you abuse everyone around you. Your family—” He looked at the girl. She had her elbow on her knee, her chin in her hand; she was absorbed by something outside the window.

  “But in a healthy person, the center is vibrant; it’s elastic. Shall I show you?” He began to wave his hand over the navel. “Watch it,” he whispered. The little thing in the middle of his palm began to throb and fill with color. He touched its edges. He licked his finger and ran it around the rim. He looked at Irene. She was really a very pretty girl. He admired the haughty turn of her head, the regal line of her ear, the curve of her jaw—the awkward neck, the long and turtleish neck that would, when she was older and fatter, lose its sinewy grace but now turned elegantly at the clavicle. He followed the line of her neck under the skimpy halter to the bare and pointed shoulder, down to the rose tattooed on her arm, back up to the shoulder and down along the teenage breast, which curved nicely, not too full, not too flat, there against the thin cotton. He closed his eyes and ran his finger slowly along the lip of the navel. “Look,” he whispered. “Watch me make it grow.”

  Josephine, watching, saw her navel turn a translucent white, the color of a communion host, a shimmering world from a cold and beautiful night—God’s night—and it had grown. When he held it at a certain angle, tilted slightly toward her, she saw the moon and herself reflected in it. It was hers! She laughed.

  The hypnotist opened his eyes. He looked at the mother, at her slack jaw and gleaming eyes, and he laughed, too. “Look,” he said. He twirled the thing on his finger. “Watch this.” He tossed it in the air, and it began to wobble, to redden, and, when the hypnotist pushed a button under his chair, to smell a little like the perfume counter at Woolworth. The disk was changing from orange to red to pink, undulating, and Josephine began sliding up and down in her chair, and her skirt hiked up. He stared at her thigh. It was a nasty little thigh, plump and unmuscled, just the way he liked them. “Stand up,” he commanded. “Turn around.”

  Irene glanced from the window to see her mother dancing in slow, snaky circles, running her tongue over her lips, rubbing her hands over herself, her mother! A reserved woman. Her mother was from a line of reserved women. Even when she was drunk, her mother would wander around the house tucking things in. But now she began catching her skirt and pulling it up, shimmying up and down, and the man’s tongue was resting between his teeth. His eyes were little beads in his face. “Bend over,” he whispered. Josephine bent at the waist and shook her head between her knees.

  “Mom?” Irene said.

  The hypnotist leaned back in his chair, clasped his hands behind his head, and said, “Well, hello, Josephine.”

  “Hey!” Irene said. The man glanced at the girl. Irene glared stonily at him, and he sneered. He looked her up and down, then looked into her eyes and saw his own reflection, an ugly fat man. He looked closer. Stared into the coal black contempt of a young girl’s eyes and saw himself as she saw him—a flabby-skinned, dim-eyed, feeble-gummed half-man, looked further, then, and saw the man he would become: his lips began to turn inward and his skin to hang like rags from his sharpened cheekbones, his eye sockets to protrude, and his eyes to sink. Irene, caught in his stare, saw his shoulders begin to bow, his chest under his shirt to sink, his hands and lips and head to shake. His aged face was a mesh of tiny broken blood vessels, blue and red, and his eyes were pupilless pools of pain, dank, sludgy bogs oozing tears—yes, the creases below his eyes were wet, and she heard him whisper, though his lips did not move: “When you reach a certain age,” he said, “there’s nothing left but tears.”

  Irene’s young throat constricted, and her heart was moved to pity; she heard a bird call and began to notice a faint odor in the room—a little like the perfume counter at Woolworth.

  The hypnotist glanced out the window at the mountain with its colorless surface and stone-cold center, at this scenic stupor where they’d made him park his trailer, and suddenly an old hatred welled within him.
He had once been famous, but he had offended by revealing little truths, dirty little secrets, and they had exiled him. They had taken from him his best years. His had not been a sleight-of-hand talent. He was no trickster, no two-bit juggler, no smoke-and-mirrors hack. He had studied, he had watched, he had learned the ways of the human heart and mind, had found the secret chambers of fear and delight, and when he performed he stood before his audiences a naked man, but he was with them. He did not perform: He lived! He had been untouchable, and they hated him for it, and so they left him here.

  He looked at Josephine, whose face was beet red, whose eyes were mostly pupil. He curled his lip.

  “Okay, now,” he whispered, and the woman straightened. She smoothed her skirt, perched on the couch, put her fingers to her lips, glanced cautiously at her daughter, who seemed to be listening to something. Josephine shivered.

  “Okay. Now, watch it shrink.” Josephine sat back and watched. The hypnotist took down the moon, which had been hovering over his head, and began to fold it in triangles, each triangle smaller than the last, and when it was the size of his hand, he began to mold it into a glowing sphere. He covered it with his other hand, closed his eyes, opened them, opened his hand, and there was her navel again, a perfect little peach disk, flat as a penny but with the little spiral in the middle. He smiled and held it out to her. She started to reach for it when he opened his fingers. “Oops,” he said. “I dropped it.” He laughed an ugly laugh.

  “You dropped it?” Josephine said.

  “Where’d it go?” he said.

  “You dropped it?” she said again, and there was a tremor, something that could have been fear, or perhaps anger, in her voice.

  “Where is it?” he said.

  Josephine was staring at the floor. “I don’t know,” she said. She dropped to all fours. She began heaving, then hiccupping and sobbing. “Renie, it’s lost.”