“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, Delores shook her head. She did not, in fact, know if she believed it or not, 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 a while there were just drops, and then nothing. I opened my hand, expecting it would be full of blood, but there was just that mushroom, all smashed 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 I started to think I’d done nothing but
somehow dreamed it all, and then it twitched in my hand and for just a second there it didn’t look like a
mushroom at all – it looked like a little tiny penis 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 chile a woman get, the man shoot it out’n his pecker,
girl.’ It twitched again – I tell you I saw it do, Delores – and I screamed and threw it in the trash. Then I heard
Johnny coming back up the stairs and I grabbed up his gun and took it back into the bedroom 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 drunk or stoned or both, and that he meant 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, woman,’ he said. ‘You get on over here.’
“‘No,’ I says, ‘there ain’t going to be no baby. Put that thing away. You don’t need it. You already took care of
the baby, you worthless piece of shit.’
“I knew it was a risk, calling him that; it might make him mad enough to come back and land on me again,
but I thought maybe it would make him believe me … and it did. Instead of coming over and 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.
‘It’s gone?’ he said.
“‘It’s gone, all right,’ I said.
‘Where?’ he said.
“‘I got rid of the mess down the hall in the bathroom,’ I said, ‘where do you think?’
“He come over then and he tried to kiss me, for Jesus’s 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?” Delores said.
“No,” Martha said calmly, “I think she did. She just used me. She saw I wouldn’t help myself, and so she
made me help myself.”
“But you think the gun was witched.”
“No,” Martha said again, and then smiled a cold and unsettling smile of absolute surety. “I don’t think it was; I know it was.”
21
“That’s really the end,” Martha said, shrugging. “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, I think I would have left him sooner.”