Catherine sits with her mouth slightly open. She says nothing.

“I don’t suppose you want one, though, do you?” asks Gillette.

“It’s too complicated,” Catherine says.

“Oh, yes, I wish it could be simple and easy. Some women, though, make it look simple and easy. They say that acupuncture can relieve the pain too. I don’t believe in drugs. But Cathy, if there hadn’t been hypnosis, I don’t know what I would have done. But Amanda’s a joy.”

“Amanda?”

“That’s Tatum’s name, her real name.” She glances at me. “She just wants me to call her Tatum, you know. But her name’s Amanda, because she’s worth being loved. Her nickname’s Sister. But she wants me to call her Tatum, like the little girl in the movies.” She calls out. “Come here, darling. Where’s my darling?”

Tatum comes running and climbs into her lap.

“What have you been doing, playing in the mud? You’re so untidy, you’re a little root hog.” She kisses Tatum on the jaw, making blubbery noises. “You’re my angel, though, aren’t you, baby? You’re my little sweet angel.”

Book II Who Was the
Last One to
Call You Darling?

25

I can’t remember exactly what the name of the disease was, but I think he called it hairy nevus or hairy nervous. Ebony printed this article once about a woman whose skin started turning white in patches until she was all white. I like to clip such articles. I used to like to clip those weird stories from the Police Gazette. Catherine and I felt we’d been fated to meet since we’d both been childhood fans of that magazine. Perhaps it’s turned into the National Inquirer. The Police Gazette’s strange tales, though, always seemed more well-bred.

Anyway, instead of turning all white, this Brazilian only turned white from the waist down, as if the disease were equipped with some kind of reasoning or radar and knew exactly where it wanted to go. There was even a fine line like an equator around his waist.

“Most women are surprised or frightened,” he says, after he has taken his trousers off, and I see his white legs and feet and his equator belly. “But you, you must have seen something like this before, or heard of it?”

“No, you’re the first.”

“And you’re not afraid of me? Every other woman has been. One woman took one look at me and ran.”

I stay put. He takes his drawers off. He touches my breasts with his black hands. I stare at his white feet. Finally, I stare at his privates. He kisses my nipples. He cannot believe I am neither surprised nor afraid of him. “Surprise and fear are the same,” he says. He opens my legs and enters me.

“I can’t believe this,” he says.

“Believe it.”

He kisses my mouth; he nibbles my tongue and lips. When he gets to the crocodile skin on my back, he touches it as if it were familiar territory.

“You’re a tender, mysterious woman and I’m an alien in my own country. We belong to each other.”