'It never occurred to me then that I hadn't remembered hardly anything at all about going to Mama Delorme's until after I did what I did in Mr Jefferies's bedroom. It did that night, though.

'I got through the day all right. I mean, I didn't cry or scream or carry on or anything like that. My sister Kissy acted worse the time she was drawing water from the old well round dusk and a bat flew up from it and got caught in her hair. There was just that feeling that I was behind a wall of gla.s.s, and I figured if that was all, I could get along with it.

'Then, when I got home, I all at once got thirsty. I was thirstier than ever in my life - it felt like a sandstorm was going on in my throat. I started to drink water. It seemed like I just couldn't drink enough. And I started to spit. I just spit and spit and spit. Then I started to feel sick to my stomach. I ran down to the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror and stuck out my tongue to see if I could see anything there, any sign of what I'd done, and of course I couldn't. I thought, There! Do you feel better now?

'But I didn't. I felt worse. I knelt down in front of the toilet and I did what you did, Darcy, only I did a lot more of it. I vomited until I thought I was going to pa.s.s out. I was crying and begging G.o.d to please forgive me, to let me stop puking before I lost the baby, if I really was quick with one. And then I remembered myself standing there in his bedroom with my fingers in my mouth, not even thinking about what I was doing - I tell you I could see myself doing it, as if I was looking at myself in a movie. And then I vomited again.

'Mrs Parker heard me and came to the door and asked if I was all right. That helped me get hold of myself a little, and by the time Johnny came in that night, I was over the worst of it. He was drunk, spoiling for a fight. When I wouldn't give him one he hit me in the eye anyway and walked out. I was almost glad he hit me, because it gave me something else to think about.

The next day when I went into Mr Jefferies's suite he was sitting in the parlor, still in his pajamas, scribbling away on one of his yellow legal pads. He always travelled with a bunch of them, held together with a big red rubber band, right up until the end. When he came to Le Palais that last time and I didn't see them, I knew he'd made up his mind to die. I wasn't a bit sorry, neither.'

Martha looked toward the living-room window with an expression which held nothing of mercy or forgiveness; it was a cold look, one which reported an utter absence of the heart.

'When I saw he hadn't gone out I was relieved, because it meant I could put off the cleaning. He didn't like the maids around when he was working, you see, and so I figured he might not want housekeeping service until Yvonne came on at three.

'I said, "I'll come back later, Mr Jefferies."

' ''Do it now," he said. "Just keep quiet while you do. I've got a b.i.t.c.h of a headache and a h.e.l.l of an idea. The combination is killing me."

'Any other time he would have told me to come back, I swear it. It seemed like I could almost hear that old black mama laughing.

'I went into the bathroom and started tidying around, taking out the used towels and putting up fresh ones, replacing the soap with a new bar, putting fresh matches out, and all the time I'm thinking, You can't hypnotize someone who doesn't want to be hypnotized, old woman. Whatever it was you put in the tea that day, whatever it was you told me to do or how many times you told me to do it, I'm wise to you - wise to you and shut of you.

'I went into the bedroom and I looked at the bed. I expected it would look to me like a closet does to a kid who's scared of the boogeyman, but I saw it was just a bed. I knew I wasn't going to do anything, and it was a relief. So I stripped it and there was another of those sticky patches, still drying, as if he'd woke up h.o.r.n.y an hour or so before and just took care of himself.

'I seen it and waited to see if I was going to feel anything about it. I didn't. It was just the leftovers of a man with a letter and no mailbox to put it in, like you and I have seen a hundred times before. That old woman was no more a bruja woman than I was. I might be pregnant or I might not be, but if I was, it was Johnny's child. He was the only man I'd ever lain with, and nothin I found on that white man's sheets - or anywhere else, for that matter - was gonna change that.

'It was a cloudy day, but at the second I thought that, the sun came out like G.o.d had put His final amen on the subject. I don't recall ever feeling so relieved. I stood there thanking G.o.d everything was all right, and all the time I was sayin that prayer of grat.i.tude I was scoopin that stuff up off the sheet - all of it I could get, anyway - and stickin it in my mouth and swallowin it down.

'It was like I was standing outside myself and watching again. And a part of me was saying, You're crazy to be doing that, girl, but you're even crazier to be doing it with him right there in the next room; he could get up any second and come in here to use the bathroom and see you. Rugs as thick as they are in this place, you'd never hear him coming. And that would be the end of your job at Le Palais - or any other big hotel in New York, most likely. A girl caught doing a thing like what you're doing would never work in this city again as a chambermaid, at least not in any half-decent hotel.

'But it didn't make any difference. I went on until I was done - or until some part of me was satisfied - and then I just stood there a minute, looking down at the sheet. I couldn't hear nothing at all from the other room, and it came to me that he was right behind me, standing in the doorway. I knew just what the expression on his face'd be. Used to be a travelling show that came to Babylon every August when I was a girl, and they had a man with it - I guess he was a man - that geeked out behind the tent-show. He'd be down a hole and some fella would give a spiel about how he was the missing link and then throw a live chicken down. The geek'd bite the head off it. Once my oldest brother - Bradford, who died in a car accident in Biloxi -said he wanted to go and see the geek. My dad said he was sorry to hear it, but he didn't outright forbid Brad, because Brad was nineteen and almost a man. He went, and me and Kissy meant to ask him what it was like when he came back, but when we saw the expression on his face we never did. That's the expression I thought I'd see on Jefferies's face when I turned around and saw him in the doorway. Do you see what I'm sayin?'

Darcy nodded.

'I knew he was there, too - I just knew it. Finally I mustered up enough courage to turn around, thinking I'd beg him not to tell the Chief Housekeeper - beg him on my knees, if I had to - and he wasn't there. It had just been my guilty heart all along. I walked to the door and looked out and seen he was still in the parlor, writing on his yellow pad faster than ever. So I went ahead and changed the bed and freshened the room just like always, but that feeling that I was behind a gla.s.s wall was back, stronger than ever.

'I took care of the soiled towels and bed-linen like you're supposed to -out to the hall through the bedroom door. First thing I learned when I came to work at the hotel is you don't ever take dirty linen through the sitting room of a suite. Then I came back in to where he was. I meant to tell him I'd do the parlor later, when he wasn't working. But when I saw the way he was acting, I was so surprised that I stopped right there in the doorway, looking at him.

'He was walking around the room so fast that his yellow silk pajamas were whipping around his legs. He had his hands in his hair and he was twirling it every which way. He looked like one of those brainy mathematicians in the old Sat.u.r.day Evening Post cartoons. His eyes were all wild, like he'd had a bad shock. First thing I thought was that he'd seen what I did after all and it had, you know, made him feel so sick it'd driven him half-crazy.

'Turned out it didn't have nothing to do with me at all . . . at least he didn't think so. That was the only time he talked to me, other than to ask me if I'd get some more stationery or another pillow or change the setting on the air-conditioner. He talked to me because he had to. Something had happened to him - something very big - and he had to talk to somebody or go crazy, I guess.

' "My head is splitting," he said.

' "I'm sorry to hear that, Mr Jefferies," I said. "I can get you some aspirin - "

' "No," he said. "That's not it. It's this idea. It's like I went fishing for trout and hooked a marlin instead. I write books for a living, you see. Fiction."

' "Yes, sir, Mr Jefferies," I said, "I have read two of them and thought they were fine."

' "Did you," he said, looking at me as if maybe I'd gone crazy. "Well, that's very kind of you to say, anyway. I woke up this morning and I had an idea."

'Yes, sir, I was thinking to myself, you had an idea, all right, one so hot and so fresh it just kinda spilled out all over the sheet. But it ain't there no more, so you don't have to worry. And I almost laughed out loud. Only, Darcy, I don't think he would have noticed if I had.

' "I ordered up some breakfast," he said, and pointed at the room-service trolley by the door, "and as I ate it I thought about this little idea. I thought it might make a short story. There's this magazine, you know . . . The New Yorker . . . well, never mind." He wasn't going to explain The New Yorker magazine to a pickaninny like me, you know.'

Darcy grinned.

' "But by the time I'd finished breakfast," he went on, "it began to seem more like a novelette. And then . . . as I started to rough out some ideas . . . " He gave out this shrill little laugh. "I don't think I've had an idea this good in ten years. Maybe never. Do you think it would be possible for twin brothers - fraternal, not identical - to end up fighting on opposite sides during World War II?"

' "Well, maybe not in the Pacific,"I said. Another time I don't think I would have had nerve enough to speak to him at all, Darcy - I would have just stood there and gawped. But I still felt like I was under gla.s.s, or like I'd had a shot of novocaine at the dentist's and it hadn't quite worn off yet.

'He laughed like it was the funniest thing he'd ever heard and said, "Ha-ha! No, not there, it couldn't happen there, but it might be possible in the ETO. And they could come face-to-face during the Battle of the Bulge."

' "Well, maybe - " I started, but by then he was walking fast around the parlor again, running his hands through his hair and making it look wilder and wilder.

' "I know it sounds like Orpheum Circuit melodrama," he said, "some silly piece of claptrap like Under Two Flags or Armadale, but the concept of twins . . . and it could be explained rationally . . . I see just how . . . " He whirled on me. "Would it have dramatic impact?"

' "Yes, sir," I said. "Everyone likes stories about brothers that don't know they're brothers."

' "Sure they do," he said. "And I'll tell you something else - " Then he stopped and I saw the queerest expression come over his face. It was queer, but I could read it letter-perfect. It was like he was waking up to doing something foolish, like a man suddenly realizing he's spread his face with shaving cream and then taken his electric razor to it. He was talking to a n.i.g.g.e.r hotel maid about what was maybe the best idea he'd ever had - a n.i.g.g.e.r hotel maid whose idea of a really good story was probably The Edge of Night. He'd forgot me saying I'd read two of his books - '

'Or thought it was just flattery to get a bigger tip,' Darcy murmured.

'Yeah, that'd fit his concept of human nature like a glove, all right. Anyway, that expression said he'd just realized who he was talking to, that was all.

' "I think I'm going to extend my stay," he said. "Tell them at the desk, would you?" He spun around to start walking again and his leg whanged against the room-service cart. "And get this f.u.c.king thing out of here, all right?"

''Would you want me to come back later and - " I started.

' "Yes, yes, yes," he says, "come back later and do whatever you like, but for now just be my good little sweetheart and make everything all gone . . . including yourself."

'I did just that, and I was never so relieved in my life as when the parlor door shut behind me. I wheeled the room-service trolley over to the side of the corridor. He'd had juice and scrambled eggs and bacon. I started to walk away and then I seen there was a mushroom on his plate, too, pushed aside with the last of the eggs and a little bit of bacon. I looked at it and it was like a light went on in my head. I remembered the mushroom she'd given me - old Mama Delorme - in the little plastic box. Remembered it for the first time since that day. I remembered finding it in my dress pocket, and where I'd put it. The one on his plate looked just the same - wrinkled and sort of dried up, like it might be a toadstool instead of a mushroom, and one that would make you powerful sick.'

She looked at Darcy steadily.

'He'd eaten part of it, too. More than half, I'd say.'

'Mr Buckley was on the desk that day and I told him Mr Jefferies was thinking of extending his stay. Mr Buckley said he didn't think that would present a problem even though Mr Jefferies had been planning to check out that very afternoon.

'Then I went down to the room-service kitchen and talked with Bedelia Aaronson - you must remember Bedelia - and asked her if she'd seen anyone out of the ordinary around that morning. Bedelia asked who I meant and I said I didn't really know. She said 'Why you asking, Marty?' and I told her I'd rather not say. She said there hadn't been n.o.body, not even the man from the food service who was always trying to date up the short-order girl.

'I started away and she said, "Unless you mean the old Negro lady."

'I turned back and asked what old Negro lady that was.

' "Well," Bedelia said, "I imagine she came in off the street, looking for the John. Happens once or twice a day. Negroes sometimes won't ask the way because they're afraid the hotel people will kick them out even if they're well-dressed . . . which, as I'm sure you know, they often do. Anyway, this poor old soul wandered down here . . . " She stopped and got a look at me. "Are you all right, Martha? You look like you're going to faint!"

' "I'm not going to faint," I said. "What was she doing?"

' "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 shiver; 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.