Eva's Man Read online

  I thought it was a toy knife, Mama said.

  When my father asked Alfonso where he’d been, he said he’d gone down to the liquor store because it was cheaper there, and he was going to sneak it in. He told me to wait for him, he said. He didn’t count on Moses or anybody bothering me. When he got back, they already had me down to the police station. He didn’t know where I was till somebody told him.

  Daddy said it all didn’t sound like Eva.

  Mama said I wasn’t a bad girl. She said she didn’t know it was a real knife Freddy gave me—if she’d known it was a real knife she would have taken it away from me.

  Nobody knew why I knifed him because I didn’t say. Alfonso said Moses must’ve done something to me, but they gave me this test, and couldn’t find that he’d done anything. They took him down to the medical center and bandaged him up and then sent him home. They said I shouldn’t have been carrying a concealed deadly weapon, and Moses Tripp told them that if he hadn’t put his hand in the way, I would have gone straight for his heart.

  Charlotte took my finger and put it in her mouth. She said she was showing me what the little girl did. I pulled my finger out.

  Elvira put up her finger. She said she wanted me to show her how I did it.

  I told her that wasn’t what she wanted. “He grabbed at me down between my legs.”

  9

  My breath in spite of the sausage and cabbage and beer had a good taste, he said.

  I belched. “Excuse me.”

  “That’s all right.”

  “You’re like a lost woman,” he said. “Who were you lost from?” I didn’t tell him.

  “Were you ever married, Eva?”

  “No.” I wouldn’t tell him that. “Who gave you your first fucking?” I still didn’t answer.

  “You keep all your secrets, don’t you?”

  I made a fist, squeezing my fingers in my palms. He took my fist apart.

  “Why won’t you talk to me, Eva?”

  “There’s nothing to say.”

  “Well, since you won’t talk to me, I’ll talk to you. let’s see . . . No, it makes me feel crazy.”

  “Tell me about the horses.”

  “Most people don’t like the way they smell. My wife didn’t like the way I smelled when I came back from the horses.”

  “Is your wife the one you wanted to send the money to?”

  “What money?”

  “You said when you sent money home you didn’t like to send just a little bit.”

  “Naw, I meant my mama.”

  “Aw.”

  He held me around the waist, but I kept my back to him. I could feel his breath on my neck. Hot and dark and close.

  “You know, the horse business is a funny business,” he was saying. “There’s a lot of money in it, but the only people that makes the money is those that owns the horses and the big bookies, not the little ones, the big ones. The rest of us, we don’t get nothing. We train them, we rub them down, we stay with them when they sick, but we don’t get nothing. You know, I saw this movie star down to the farm once, what’s his name, Dale Robertson. You know, the one plays in The Tales of Wells Fargo?”

  I nodded.

  “He had this beautiful woman with him. Yeah, a lot of movie stars go in the horse business. They like to come see the races, and then they buy theyselves a couple of race horses, you know. You be down to Keeneland or down to the Derby you see a lots of movie stars. Yeah, it’s the big men that gets all the money. The rest of us we don’t get a thing. You know what I mean?”

  I nodded again. “Say something.”

  “Yes, I understand.”

  He turned me toward him, and went in me.

  10

  I didn’t talk about my husband. He was the part of my life I didn’t talk about. James Hunn was fifty-two when I married him. I was eighteen. I married him out of tenderness. Not in a moment of tenderness, not like when you let a man sleep with you in a moment of tenderness. It was like a whole series of tendernesses. He kept coming to see me when I was in the reformatory, and then those three months when I was in jail. He was the only one I would talk to in all that time. Him and the girl they put in the cell with me. I would talk to her. My parents would come to see me, but everything was strained, and near the end they didn’t come to see me so much as in the beginning, because we would just sit there most of the time and not say nothing. They told me that Alfonso and Jean were still going at it, and that Otis couldn’t be talked into making his own life, because he still felt that they were his “mission”. Daddy said Otis was just as crazy as them and that the three of them belonged together. Mama said she was glad they were out of Kansas City anyway so they wouldn’t drive Miss Calley mad. And then when they got ready to leave, Mama kissed me and Daddy just looked at me hard.

  The first time I saw James Hunn was after the cops arrested me—the first time, I mean, for what I did to Moses Tripp. I was sitting in the Detective Bureau Office. When they found out how old I was they sent me down to Juvenile, but at first they had me sitting down there. When he came in his hair wasn’t combed, he was dirty and had a white patch over his left eye. He sat down beside me and said, “How do.”

  I didn’t say anything. The secretary asked if she could help him. He got up and went to the desk.

  “Yeah, they sent me down here to give my statement. I was in a automobile accident.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Hunn. James Hunn. They call me Hawk.”

  She told him to have a seat. He sat back down next to me. “This girl’s over here scared of me,” he said.

  The secretary said nothing.

  “I seen her jump when I come in. You didn’t jump, but she did.”

  “I’m used to seeing people all patched up and things,” she said. “The reason I can’t take your statement now is they got the door closed.” She pointed to the door of the back room. She told him that whenever that door was closed she didn’t bother them. She told him that when she first started working there, once the door was closed and she just opened it and started on in there without knocking or nothing, and there was a man in there with his pants down. “Yeah, I’m used to seeing things worse than that patch over your eye. I mean, people bleeding and things.”

  The two detectives who had brought me in came out of the back room, and the secretary took Mr. Hunn in there to take his statement. One of the detectives sat at the desk, watching me, and the other one leaned against the filing cabinets. They looked like they were waiting for something.

  When James Hunn came out of the back room, he looked at the detectives, and then he looked at me.

  “What you do?” he asked when he got near me. I said nothing.

  “I don’t blame you for being scared of me. I know I look like the devil.”

  “You better be careful who you messing with, Hawk,” one of the detectives said, laughing.

  “What she do?”

  “Stabbed a man who was messing with her.”

  James Hunn looked at me again. “Well, she’s still scared of me, though.”

  “Yeah, Hawk, we know you tough,” the detective said, laughing.

  The other detective just stood by looking disgusted.

  I didn’t look at Hawk—after we were married I always called him James. I could feel him looking at me.

  “Hawk, we know you tough,” the detective repeated.

  “You hurt somebody or somebody hurt you?” Hawk asked. “I just told you she stabbed a man.”

  “I know what you told me,” Hawk said. “I want to hear what she tell me.” He was still looking at me. “You scared of me, ain’t you, honey?”

  The detective who was looking disgusted said, “Shit.”

  “Hawk, you through, ain’t you?” the other detective asked. “Yeah, I’m going. Y’all take it easy.” He looked at me. “You

  take it easy, you hear?”

  I nodded but said nothing.

  “Yeah, you get over being scared of James
Hunn,” he said. He went out. The detective who was looking disgusted said,

  “Shit.”

  A woman came in with a little girl. The little girl was tall for her age and she stood beside the woman calmly. The little girl looked at me questioningly. The woman was angry and nervous and she told the detective that they had her other children down at the Davis Home and that she wanted her other children. The detective told her that she had to go down to Juvenile, straight down the hall.

  When they found out I was only seventeen, they sent me down to Juvenile, and then out to the girls” reformatory.

  “What’s St. Vitus dance?”

  The girl had short brownish-red hair, and her complexion was kind of brownish-red too.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “The girl next door told me she had St. Vitus dance. I asked her what in the hell was that. She don’t even know. They give you a pregnancy test?”

  I nodded.

  “You wasn’t, though, was you? Naw. Everybody that come in here, they give them a pregnancy test. You don’t have to tell me what you did because I know already. You was easy on him, though. If that old tetter-head nigger had come after me, he wouldn’t have no ass or no dick left.”

  “I didn’t say he came after me.”

  “Well, I can tell by looking at you, sweetheart, you didn’t go after him.”

  I said nothing. She started laughing. She told me her name was Joanne Riley. “You be all right,” she said.

  We became friends. We were friends until two girls got in a fight over her, and the superintendent moved her to another section.

  When James Hunn first came to see me, he had his hair combed, and was cleaned up and the patch was off his eye. He looked handsome. He said he thought he was going to lose it. But there wasn’t nothing but a little scar on it.

  “You still scared of me, ain’t you?” I said I wasn’t scared.

  “Yes you are.”

  We said nothing.

  “You surprised to see me, ain’t you?” I said, “Yes.”

  “They didn’t wont to let me in here to see you, since I’m not kin to you or nothing. But I got a woman I used to go with that works here, that spoke up for me. They was looking at me like they thought I was some kind of creature, or something.”

  I laughed. “Well, they was.”

  “You look nice.”

  He said, “Thank you.” Then he said, “You look pretty when you open up. You look just like a flower.”

  I said nothing. I hadn’t even combed my hair that morning.

  I got into those moods and I wouldn’t comb my hair.

  We sat there saying nothing for I don’t know how long. We’d look at each other and smile sometime, and then he got up and told me to take it easy, and he said, “Don’t think I’m not coming back, I be back.”

  I nodded but said nothing. When I got back to my cell, I took my shoes off and lay down on the bed.

  He came to see me the three months I was in the reformatory and the three months I was in jail. He would talk about all kinds of things. He would mostly tell me stories about people. He told me about this man who owned this store and these people wanted to take the store so they could tear it down and make a branch of the State Mental Hospital there, but in order to get it they had to prove the man was insane. They ended up proving the man was insane, but in a few years ended up moving him back out there on the same ground where his store had been. He said that was a true story. Then he told me where when he was in the army these whores in France would come over to you and tell you right out loud where everybody could hear what it was they could do for you. like come over to you and ask you right out loud if you wanted a suck job. He said the first time one asked him he was so embarrassed he just turned around and walked right out of the place. Then he excused himself—he said he had a lot of other army stories, but he was forgetting who he was talking to. I told him to tell me another one. He said okay he’d just tell me one more. He said the first time he heard about sodomy was when these men got together and put this mule in this tent and then lined up. I started laughing. He looked surprised that I thought it was funny and then he started laughing.

  We’d sit in this little room with a table and both sit up to the table. He’d be leaning across the table, and our knees would sometimes touch.

  The strangest thing he told me was a story he started telling me but it wasn’t really a story. It wasn’t an off-color story or anything. He just started saying, “There was a woman who couldn’t love any man and she didn’t even like sex or anything that had anything to do with lovemaking.” That was all he said and then he stopped, and we just sat there.

  “What’s St. Vitus dance?”

  “What?”

  “St. Vitus dance.”

  He said he didn’t know. He told me to take it easy. He left.

  Joanne said she wouldn’t want to have a baby. She said somebody asked her wouldn’t she like to nurse a baby. She said naw, and then she said she told her the only reason she’d consider having a baby was so she would have milk in her tiddies so when her man sucked on her tiddies, she’d have milk coming out. A man sucking milk from his woman. I asked her what did the girl say.

  “She didn’t say nothing at first. She just looked at me disgusted. Then she said it sounded gruesome.”

  James put his hand in my blouse, then he opened my blouse, and sucked my breasts.

  The man called up my mother and asked her how did it feel.

  “She’s my woman,” the girl said. “I don’t wont you messing with her, cause she’s my woman.”

  They moved Joanne into another section.

  Alfonso came to see me. I said nothing to him. He said he heard that I’d gotten to be friends with James Hunn. No, he didn’t put it like that. He said he’d heard I’d gotten close to a man they called Hawk. I said we were friends.

  “You remember that man I told you about, the one that killed this man over a woman.”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s the same man.”

  He tells the story again, of how they got in a fight in a restaurant over this woman. She wasn’t even a good-lookin woman, just a woman. They got in a fight and Hawk lost his temper and killed this man. The woman was gone. They didn’t know where the woman went, but Hawk was put in jail for seven years. They say he still carries the gun he shot the man with.

  I said James Hunn was a good man.

  “I never said he wasn’t. He’s just got a bad temper. He’s a good man with a bad temper. He don’t hurt people he likes, though. He wouldn’t hurt you . . . But he’s not a man to get close to.”

  I said I hadn’t seen him with a bad temper. Alfonso said again that he wasn’t the kind of man a woman should get close to.

  I got close enough to him to marry him when I got out. The trouble didn’t start until we moved down to Frankfort, Kentucky. He said he wanted to put me through school, so I enrolled in Kentucky State. I didn’t see his temper. I didn’t know that anything was wrong with him until we moved in this house and there was a telephone there and he said he was going to take the telephone out. I said I wanted a telephone. But he said naw, I couldn’t have one. I asked him why and he said he didn’t want my lovers calling me. I thought he was joking at first and then I looked at him, and he wasn’t joking. I told him I didn’t have any lovers. He said every woman had lovers. He said he wasn’t going to have a telephone in the house so that my lovers could be calling me up and then meeting me some place. I stayed with him for two years. I can’t explain it. It was like the tenderness was still there, but he didn’t trust any move I made. And then he would come down to the school and pick me up after classes. I didn’t even think of him as an old man until I was at college. He was good to me, though. He would do anything in the world for me. No one believed that he was my husband because he was older than a lot of the teachers there.

  He called the telephone company and told them to take the phone back because he said he didn’t want my love
rs calling me up at all hours of the day and night.

  The house we lived in had four rooms and a bathroom. He said he was too old to have children. He said he didn’t want to be an old man raising children. We would sit in the front room evenings and he would tell me stories, or we would listen to the radio. He was a watchmaker. No, I mean he fixed watches. He could fix any kind of clocks and watches. He said he learned how to fix watches when he was in the army.

  I don’t like to talk about my husband, though. He was fifty-two years old when I knew him. I was eighteen. No, he never once showed me his temper. It was just the thing about the telephone. No, Alfonso said he wouldn’t hurt me because he didn’t hurt the people he liked. Alfonso said he liked me. I spent two years at Kentucky State, and then I went to P. Lorillard to work. I thought he would come after me, but he didn’t. Since then I’ve been going from one tobacco factory to another. You get tired of one place and then you try another. In the summer, though, most of the times you get laid off anyway.

  James put his head inside my blouse, and kissed me between my breasts.

  PART TWO

  1

  “We need bread,” he said.

  “Let me go get it this time.”

  “No.”

  “What’s there about keeping me here?”

  “Where I can find you.”

  “Did you lose her?”

  He didn’t answer. He looked at me hard. I didn’t ask again. “What else do you want from the store?” he demanded.

  I just stood looking at him.

  “What’s the matter, baby, won’t talk?” he asked, smiling. “Nothing,” I said.

  He stopped smiling, turned away and went out.

  James asked me if I liked the house. I said yes. I said it was good to come in the front door and see the front room instead of the kitchen. He said he’d never seen a house where you saw the kitchen first. I said that was where I spent most of my life.