Eva's Man Read online

  He said, “People play tricks like that all the time. They don’t have to be gypsies neither.”

  I asked him if that’s where the word to gyp somebody came from.

  They kept his penis in the icebox, wrapped up like a ham, and then in the courtroom, wrapped up in a silk handkerchief, like a jewel.

  Davis squeezed my ankles. I squeezed the boy’s dick. It was like squeezing a soft milkweed. I reached down and squeezed the back of his neck. The musician made me put my hands down between his legs.

  “Do you think some things are meant to happen?” I asked Davis.

  He said he didn’t know what I meant.

  My great-grandmother kissed the gypsy Medina in the center of her palm.

  I reached down and squeezed Davis” hand.

  When we made love he wiped me off between my legs with his silk handkerchief.

  My great-grandmother looked inside the gypsy’s palm and said she saw time there.

  My great-grandfather said she was crazy.

  I changed my position so I could kiss Davis inside his hand. “Then do you think there are some things we can’t help from

  letting happen?” I asked.

  He laughed hard and put his whole hand on my belly.

  “How did it feel in your mouth?” Elvira asked.

  I didn’t answer.

  “Why didn’t you chew it up and swallow?” I told her not to fuck with me.

  My great-grandfather’s fingertips were stained brown.

  “Shit, woman, what’s a man got to do to make you love him?” my father asked my mother.

  She said it didn’t happen because she didn’t love him. She said she never knew how he was going to love her now. He said, “Act like a whore, I love you like a whore. Shit, woman,” he said, “what’s a man got to do?”

  She said she never knew how he was going to love her now.

  “How did it feel in your mouth?”

  “Don’t fuck with me,” I said.

  She asked me what did she have to do. I told her she didn’t have to do nothing, because whatever she did, the answer would still be the same. She lay on her stomach. Her dress stuck to the crease in her ass. She wanted to know what she had to do.

  “You ought to have them check your kidneys,” the guard said.

  When I walked past her she touched my behind.

  Davis said I had a pretty behind. He was up against me. I could feel him hard.

  “I thought you were asleep,” I said. “No,” he said.

  He put his lips against the back of my neck, his arm around my waist.

  “It don’t take you that long to pee,” Elvira said. “When you tensed up and nervous it does.”

  She started laughing, then she said, “I seen the guard get a feel.”

  Davis turned me around and put his tongue in my mouth.

  “I bet he wasn’t even that good. I bet you just hadn’t had a man in a long time.”

  “How long has it been, Eva?”

  “A long time. A long time . . . I thought you knew already.”

  He went in like he was tearing something besides her flesh.

  “The trouble with you is you don’t feel nothing,” Elvira said.

  “A real long time,” I told him.

  “Has the woman talked yet?”

  “Naw, Captain, she ain’t said a word,” the detective said.

  I was sitting in a chair in the Detective Bureau Office.

  “She looks dangerous, too, doesn’t she?” the detective asked.

  “They all look dangerous.”

  My hair was uncombed. It was turning into snakes. Davis kissed the top of my head.

  4

  Mr. Logan hadn’t been seen in about three days. Floyd Coleman waited until my father came home before he knocked on our door. Mama went to the door, but he asked to speak to Daddy. She told him to come in. He came in a little bit, but he was standing in the door, nervous.

  “What is it?” Daddy asked.

  “You ain’t seen Mr. Logan, have you?” Daddy said, “Naw.”

  “Ain’t nobody seen him,” Floyd Coleman said.

  “Maybe he decided to keep to hisself for a change and stop messing with other people’s business,” Mama said.

  The way she said it made Daddy look at her. She moved away from them and sat down in a chair. I was standing near Daddy. I was fourteen then.

  “We think maybe he’s over there sick, or dead. We scared to go look.”

  “Did you knock on his door?”

  “Yeah, Lawson kind of tapped on his door . . . We scared to go inside. We thought maybe you might go take a look. He might be over there sick or something.”

  Daddy said, “Shit,” and went out the door. I started to go too, but Mama said, “Wait, Eva.” I just stayed standing there. I could see Mr. Lawson.

  In about ten minutes Daddy came back. “We gon take him to the hospital. He been over there sick for three days. Too proud to call anybody.”

  He went to get his coat. I asked if I could go too. Mama said naw, I couldn’t go.

  “Let her go,” Daddy said.

  Mama said, “Naw, because that ain’t no place for no girl.”

  “What, the hospital?” I asked.

  “Naw, in that car with all of them men, and one of em dying.”

  “I didn’t say he was dying,” Daddy said.

  “Well, she caint go,” Mama said.

  Daddy said he didn’t have time to argue. He went out the door real quick.

  “Grown men scared to go see about somebody that’s sick,” Mama said.

  I looked at her. She turned her head away from me and went in the kitchen.

  Mr. Logan was in the hospital a week, and then he died.

  Daddy never did tell us what it was he had.

  The queen bee turned her head a bit and looked at me. We were crossing the street at the same time. She was dark around her eyes, but I couldn’t tell if it was mascara or her eyes. She smiled a bit but didn’t say anything. I was afraid to smile at her. It was summertime. She had on a short-sleeved dress and a silver bracelet on the upper part of her arm. She was as old as my mother. “Does the queen bee have any children?” I asked Mama when I got home.

  “I don’t know. I don’t even know her. Miss Billie was the one that knew her . . . Why do you ask a question like that?”

  “I don’t know. I saw her today. I was just wondering.”

  I wanted to ask how could they make love to her if they knew they were going to die.

  Miss Billie said, “Because they don’t think that anything can touch them.”

  I let the queen bee go across the street first. She smiled at me like people smile at you when they’re afraid you won’t smile back. She had a little waist and big hips.

  “You got the kind of ass that a woman should show off,” Davis said. “You ought to wear those tight skirts with the little ruffles around the hem.”

  I laughed. “I’d look crazy.”

  “Naw you wouldn’t. If a woman got a beautiful behind, she ought to show it off.”

  “Davis, you crazy.”

  “Yeah, I could just sit back and watch you walk,” he said.

  I said he was crazy again. He slid his hand between my thighs.

  “Yeah, we gon both be crazy in a couple more days,” he said.

  “Yeah, I was scared to go in there,” Floyd Coleman said. He was sitting in the kitchen talking to Daddy. “Cause I had a bad experience once. I went into this man’s house to see about him, you know, and he wasn’t even no man no more. Decomposing, you know.”

  “Well, it’s over now,” Daddy said, wanting to change the subject.

  “Yeah, well ever since then I just get scared like that.”

  “Well, it’s over now,” Daddy repeated.

  Miss Billie put her wooden bracelet on my wrist. Then she said, “Let me see your hand.”

  I held my hand out. “Naw, the other way.”

  I showed her my palm.

  �
�Some people think you just got the future in your hand. You got history in it too,” she said.

  When Daddy found out that Miss Billie was going to north Carolina, he said he was glad, because she just wasn’t “right” anyway.

  I was sitting in the park when she came and sit down beside me. I didn’t want her to sit beside me because I was afraid of her.

  “Hi, again,” she said.

  I said “Hi,” but I didn’t say anything else.

  She sat there not saying anything else. I could smell a little bit of perfume, not a lot of perfume like some women wear.

  I didn’t want to sit there with her, and I didn’t want to get up, because I didn’t want her to think I was getting up because she was there, so I stayed sitting there. I stayed sitting there until the man came.

  “What do you want?” she asked. She sounded cold. “You know how I feel about you,” he said.

  The woman looked over at me and then got up quickly. She was walking fast, but he was walking as fast. When they got to the sidewalk, they stood talking. I could see her face but not his. She looked sad. When the man turned, he was frowning. She started to take his arm, but didn’t. She walked away from him quickly. He stood there for a moment, and then walked in the other direction.

  “Why do you let him treat you like that?” Mama asked Jean.

  Me and Mama went to see Jean one afternoon when Alfonso and Otis were at work.

  “I told Otis not to talk to you,” Jean said. “I knew he would, though.”

  “He’s worried about you and Alfonso. He doesn’t understand.”

  “Nobody understands. I don’t understand.”

  They had moved out of the hotel finally and were living in a building a few blocks away from us.

  “You stay with him,” Mama said. “The way Otis talks about it, he’s been beating on you for years.”

  Jean said nothing. She was a heavyset but delicate-looking woman who didn’t straighten her hair. It was somewhere between being wavy and what they called nappy then. She had fixed me and Mama and herself some coffee.

  “It’s none of my business, is it?” Mama said after she’d waited for Jean to speak.

  “Otis coming to you made you feel it was your business,” Jean said. “I don’t mind. It’s just . . .”

  “What?”

  “I did go away once,” she said. “He came and got me. He came and got me and brought me back.”

  Mama frowned. “Otis didn’t tell me that.”

  “Otis didn’t know that,” Jean said.

  “You haven’t tried to go away again?” Mama asked.

  “No,” Jean said. Then, “You want to know something? When he came and got me, I was ready to go back.”

  “You a good woman,” Mama said.

  “Naw, I ain’t good,” Jean said. “I love him a lot.” Mama stood up, saying nothing.

  “You know you can take as much beating away from a man like that as you can with him,” Jean said.

  When we got out in the street, Mama asked, “Did you see all up under her eyes?”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “It ain’t no sense in a man treating a woman like that, is it?” I said, “No ma’am.”

  Alfonso stayed with me in the kitchen. He’d come over one Saturday and ate with us, and then Mama and Daddy had gone in the living room. I said I’d do the dishes. We were sitting at the table and then I started to get up to clear away the dishes. He took my arm a little and I stayed sitting.

  “Because I’m your cousin you’d tell me things you wouldn’t tell other men?” he asked.

  He said it real soft. “I guess so,” I said.

  “Have you, you know, been getting it?”

  I knew what he was talking about. I got up from the table. “I thought you said you’d tell me.”

  “No,” I said. “I mean no to your question.” I took a couple of dishes to the sink. “You a virgin?”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t mind me astin?”

  “Naw.”

  He handed me a couple of dishes and I put them in the sink.

  I got some glasses.

  “How old are you?” he asked. “Seventeen.”

  “And ain’t had the meat? Most girls your age had the meat

  and the gravy.”

  He dried a few of the dishes, and then went in where Mama and Daddy were. When he came back, I was finishing up the dishes. He took the dishtowel from me and dried the last plate.

  “I came to talk to you again,” he said. I stayed standing up at the sink. “You got a boyfriend?” he asked. “Naw.”

  “Your mama said you stay stuck up in the house all the time.” I said nothing.

  “I told her I’d take you around to some of the clubs and introduce you . . . if you want to go.”

  I said, “Okay.”

  “You don’t sound too enthusiastic.”

  “Yeah, I want to go.”

  “Yeah, I’ll take you around to some of the clubs. It ain’t right for no grown woman to stay stuck up in the house all the time . . . Why don’t you go in there and get fixed up and then I’ll take you out.”

  He was still holding the dish. I took it and put it in the cabinet.

  “You too old not to had the meat,” he said.

  “Yeah, you too old not to had the meat,” Alfonso said again.

  We were sitting in one of his “clubs”. It was really a little restaurant called Bud’s.

  “Yeah, you way too old not to had the meat,” he said. I told him I’d get it when I was ready for it.

  “You tougher than you let on, too, I bet,” he said. I said nothing.

  “If you don’t tell them how old you are, I won’t,” he said. “You look older than your age anyway.”

  The waitress came over and he ordered a bourbon for himself and a beer for me.

  “You want to tell them we cousins? I mean, if anybody asks.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “You don’t have to be so sure about it,” he said, lifting his drink. “I’m as sure about it as you are,” I said.

  He drank. I drank my beer.

  The man came over and put his plate of pigfeet down. He didn’t ask if he could join us, he just sat down. He went back up to the counter and got a bottle of beer and came back. Him and Alfonso didn’t say anything to each other, but I could tell they knew each other. He looked like he was in his late fifties.

  “Who’s at you got with you?” the man asked after a while, pointing to me.

  I didn’t notice it at first, but I noticed it then. The thumb on his left hand was missing.

  “My cousin.”

  “Shit. How did something pretty like that get to be your cousin? You his cousin?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Shit.”

  Somebody passed by the table and asked how we were doing. “I ain’t doing, Alfonso’s doing,” the man answered.

  “This is my cousin, man,” Alfonso said.

  “If she’s your cousin, I’m your great-granddaddy and your uncle too.”

  “Man, I ain’t lying.”

  “That Sweet Mama you had in here with you night before last, you said that was your cousin too.”

  “Naw, that wasn’t me.”

  “Naw, it was Riley Mason and I know she wasn’t none of his cousin.”

  Alfonso didn’t say anything. He drank some more of his bourbon. The man sucked on a piece of pigfoot. I kept looking at his thumbless hand. He saw me watching him and I looked away. He put the meat down.

  “Yeah, if you married me, I know I’d go somewhere. I know I’d go places, then.”

  “Shit, you old enough to be her great-granddaddy,” Alfonso said. “You ain’t none of her cousin neither,” the man with the plate of pigfeet said.

  “I done already told you about three times that she’s my cousin. I ain’t gon tell you no more.”

  “If she tell me, I believe her. I ain’t gon believe you. You his cousin?”

  I said, “Yeah.�
�� Alfonso said, “Shit.”

  “Well, you ain’t none of my cousin,” the man said. He sucked on another piece of meat.

  When they found the queen bee, it went all around the neighborhood. The cops didn’t know why she did it, but the people in the neighborhood did.

  “It’s that man’s fault,” Cora Monday was telling Mama one day.

  We met her in the grocery store.

  “If he hadn’t been so persistent, and left her alone. I think she really loved the nigger.”

  “That’s what I told Billie Flynn years ago,” Mama said. “I told her if that woman met somebody she really loved one of these days, no telling what she might do, the kind of history she’s got. Even if he was the man out a hundred that didn’t nothing happen to, who’d want to take the chance. It’s hard being a woman like that.”

  “Wonder what marked her like that?” Cora Monday asked.

  Mama said she didn’t know. Somebody told her she came out trying to bite her own umbilical cord.

  Miss Cora said that wasn’t nothing but superstition.

  “Well, it was three men, wasn’t it? I’m just telling you what Billie Flynn told me.”

  The man she had killed herself on account of left town, and nobody knew where he went.

  Davis came in and I turned. “What are you doing?”

  He went over, pulled me toward him, so I could feel him hard.

  “I’m still on,” I said, kissing him. “I’m still doing it.” He patted my belly, touched my navel.

  “Where were you?” I asked.

  “I had to go down and tell that bastard I can’t pay the rent till Monday.”

  “I could help you pay the rent.”

  “Naw.” He was angry.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I thought you’d be through,” he said, changing the subject, sitting close beside me on the bed, till I could feel his thigh, firm and muscular through his pants.

  “Three days I said.”

  “Christ could rise in three days,” he said, touching his crotch.