Genevieve

by Eric Jerome Dickey

  “I know. I’m sorry. Doing what I have to in order to cope. If I had done this before we left the hotel, if I had got my head right, then maybe I never would’ve broken down in Odenville.”

  Again she puts her hand on my erection, strokes, keeps it from fading to flaccidity.

  She asks, “What were you saying?”

  “I’m more concerned with emotional security and you’re interested in financial security.”

  Her mouth covers my lingam; her warmth nurtures me close to orgasm, then backs away. The electrical sensation leaves me in a sweet pain, heart racing, gripping the sheets, toes curling.

  She inhales her joint, asks, “What is sex to you, honestly?”

  “What is… what is it to you?”

  “Don’t answer a question with a question.”

  “Make me come, Genevieve.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  “Not yet.”

  “Please?”

  “Do like you tell me to do, ride it.”

  I reach for her and she backs away. I go after her and she moves away more.

  I settle where I am, on my back, penis pointing toward a heaven I may never see. I take deep breaths. Feel the tingles moving up my spine. I breathe. I breathe.

  I ask, “What’s on your mind? What are you thinking about right now?”

  “When we met. What I know. What you know. Th thoughts.”

  “What?”

  “Your mother was killed. Mine was murdered. Your father was gone. My father was gone in his own way. You’d been abused as a child. A pedophile had had his way with me.”

  “Is this what happened when you ran away? When you… with the truckers?”

  “Use your imagination.”

  “Why don’t you just tell me so we’ll both know?” “Is that what you want to hear? About my exploits as a wayward child? Would that arouse you? Hearing about a girl-child and a pedophile? Would you romanticize that?”

  “I just want to know who I’ve married.”

  “What if… tell me, which would you rather believe? That when I made it to the highway I sold myself to get to Atlanta? That I sold myself for food and shelter for six months?”

  “Is that what happened?”

  “A lot of child prostitution goes on in Atlanta. All up and down Stewart Avenue.”

  I repeat, “Is that what happened?”

  “A lot of little girls are running from graveyards, evil grandmas, and truck-stop tricking.” She said grandmas. Not grandmothers. Her Southern inflection perfect and on point. I don’t push, just wait for her to speak again. Allow the wine and ganja to loosen her tongue.

  “I choose to believe that the day the young brother came through Odenville in that yellow car, I choose to believe that I got in that car. That the brother drove me away from there, that he gave me something to take away my unhappiness, and I got high from Odenville to Morehouse.” Rain falls hard. My erection dwindles. “Maybe I’d pretend he was someone I wanted to be with. Prince. Michael Jackson.” I listen to our silence. “Genevieve?”

  “Yes, my love?”

  “If you had left in that yellow car, would he have had sex with you?”

  “Ass, gas, or cash. Nobody rides for free.”

  A wave of thunder and lightning creates a light show in our room, on our moist faces.

  I ask, “What is sex to you?”

  “When I was younger it was stress. Weight gain. Vaginal issues.”

  “What kind of vaginal issues?”

  She shuts down and asks, “What is it for you?”

  “Question with a question. That’s a no-no.”

  “I’m modifying the rules to fit my needs. Answer.”

  “It can be a drug. It can be intoxicating and addictive. Wonderful with the right person.”

  More thunder. Lightning. She says, “Gravedigger wasn’t a good provider. He spent his money on God knows what. My mother used sex as her commodity. You need something, a man has it, sex gets you a temporary reprieve. When a woman is poor, sometimes sex is all she has to barter with.”

  “Is that what your mother did? Bartered?”

  “Just like her mother before her.”

  “But you’re not like them.”

  “No, I am not like them. Everything I have I achieved on my own.”

  I ask, “What if you’re a woman who has everything? What is sex to you then?”

  “Then sex is just… sex.”

  She licks my erection, the head, around its edges, breathes hot breath on my flesh.

  My desire to pursue that line of conversation dissipates, ambushed by the possibility of falling into the abyss of dissatisfaction. Her moves are so poetic, my moans becoming haikus.

  Her cellular rings. She keeps her hand on me, stroking me. She puts her burning shrub on the nightstand, uses her other hand to flip open her phone. Strokes me while she talks.

  “Yes. Real estate funds have had a fantastic run, not only in California. I’d advise a core holding that has sector funds. Yes, government bonds are good. The government never defaults on a bond because they just tax us to get their money back. Uh-huh. Well, now you know.”

  I muffle my groan. My wife. So striking and mystifying all at once.

  She leans and takes me in her mouth again, the phone up to her ear.

  “I’m in the middle of something. We’ll talk soon.”

  She finishes her call and inhales. I become her ganja. She puffs the magic dragon and colors swirl in my head, makes this room my psychedelic shack.

  My legs strain, my toes curl, all the while I am thinking, don’t chase what used to work.

  My orgasm rises to the point of no return.

  Her tone deepens. “You want my mouth on you, don’t you, my love?”

  I moan.

  I beg her to not stop.

  “You like the way I suck on your wee-wee?”

  Her voice has become Southern and juvenile. I strain to look at her.

  Herbal smoke flows from her nostrils. “You wanna come in my mouth?”

  Again her greasy hair is in pigtails, breasts no more than little bumps, skin filled with pimples, teeth crooked. She is tiny and naked. Nothing more than a naked child.

  I try to get away, but I can’t.

  My release will be explosive.

  I fight it.

  I lose.

  I’m coming.

  She covers my erection with her mouth.

  Feeds on me until I have to beg her to stop.

  Beg her to stop.

  Beg her.

  Stop.

  NINETEEN

  THE TELEPHONE RINGS OVER AND OVER.

  I wake up in the darkness of our hotel room, disoriented. I’m sweating, yet I’m shivering as clouds dissipate around me, the residual from Genevieve getting blown.

  The phone continues to ring.

  I call Genevieve. There is no answer. She is gone.

  She left me senseless.

  Movement is impossible. I am but a shapeless blob of tallow in need of hydration.

  I stare at the phone. It stops ringing.

  Then it rings again.

  I answer.

  “This the research man?”

  “Grandpa Fred?”

  “Yessir. I catch you sleeping?”

  “Yeah.”

  His voice has an echo, sounds hollow. He is on a speakerphone.

  I look at the nightstand. Ashes from my wife’s herbal bush. An empty bottle of wine.

  She is gone. No message. No note. Just gone.

  “You looking for Genevieve?”

  “No, sir. Looking for you, not Jenny Vee.”

  “For me?”

  “I called to apologize.”

  “Apologize?”

  “For the way Jimmy Lee and Velma carried on today. It sho‘ ’nuff upset me the way they carried on today. They get like that time to time, usually on a Friday night when one of them been dranking too much, but I ain’t never seen them get that bad with no liquor
, not in front of folks.”

  “That wasn’t your fault.”

  “Not all Jimmy Lee fault. Velma forgets that God created man first. Not woman.”

  “Well, still no need to apologize for them.”

  “And since I done reflected on it, I need to apologize to you for, what I said ‘bout your hands being soft. I apologize. Would rather issue you this apology man-to-man, face-to-face, and I will again when I see you again, but I had to say this before I closed my eyes tonight.”

  “No offense taken.”

  “Then we coulda shook hands on it.”

  “That’s not necessary.”

  “Just that, if you don’t mind me speaking my mind—”

  “Go right ahead.”

  “You people from California, hard for us folks from Alabama to take you serious.”

  “Why?”

  “ ‘Cause you’re from California.”

  That sums it up.

  People in the land of Winn-Dixie, tent revivals, and river rats see my world as nothing. Amazed and unimpressed by the image we have delivered to their doorsteps. I can only imagine, through their eyes, what we looked like walking toward those trailers. We are the circus. We are wheat grass, tofu, and Botox. We are freeway congestion at sunrise and road rage at sunset.

  We are spawns of Beelzebub riding Rodeo Drive in cars that cost more than a house.

  We are excess.

  We are waste.

  We are shit.

  And this call is his way of flushing the system clean.

  He coughs. He finally coughs. It lasts thirty seconds or more. In between his hacking I hear the sounds of guns and planes, a commentator saying stay tuned to the History Channel.

  Sounds like Grandpa Fred lights a cigarette and inhales.

  He says, “Down here we talk without cussing, at least we try to. Most of us. Jimmy Lee, he spent too much time up in North Memphis. And if we have to cuss, we try to be original about the way we do that. We have a way of cussing without cussing. Good manners don’t cost nothing.”

  I nod. “I understand. I’ll apologize to Bubba Smith.”

  “He worried about his job. All he does outside of that is the volunteer fire department, but he loves driving people around. Loves meeting people and talking to strangers. He harmless.”

  “He has nothing to worry about. Tell Uncle Bubba Smith I said that.”

  That settles the main reason for his call. Looking out for his son’s welfare. Family. Something about him reminds me of a fearsome general whose mere word could subdue his own troops. At the same time, he has a gentle way about him, is a vulnerable man.

  He asks, “How Jenny Vee doing?”

  “She was upset, but she’s okay.”

  “We didn’t run y’all away, did we? She coming tomorrow?”

  “I think so. She said she was.”

  “She done had it rough. But His eye was on the sparrow.”

  “Yes. She done had it rough.”

  “Willie Esther gone now, so she don’t have to fret over those things no more.”

  “Genevieve told me that she ran away when she was a teenager.”

  Just like Kenya did before, with the mention of Genevieve running away from here, Grandpa Fred falls silent. I can hear it, a wall made of concrete being constructed between us.

  He asks, “Can we have honest words between us?”

  “Sure.”

  “I don’t like talking about certain thangs over the phone.” He whispers. “The gub’ment.”

  “I understand.”

  “And I likes to be careful what I say. Just like one snowflake can shut down Alabama, one wrong word or mistaken phrase can shut down what we’re trying to build between us.”

  “Speak your mind.”

  “Would’ve liked to have talked to you today, but so much was going on.”

  “Well, if you want to talk face-to-face, I’ll be with Genevieve tomorrow.”

  “Hurt my heart today, things she reminded me I said. All in jest, mind you. Yessir, that sho‘ nuff got me to thanking and wondering. Don’t want her to remember me as one of the people who did her wrong.”

  He coughs. A minute goes by this time before I hear him inhale his cigarette.

  He asks, “What you know about cancer?”

  “What you need to know?”

  “Been coughing up blood from time to time.”

  “You need to get to a doctor.”

  “And one of my testicles, it done swoll up.”

  “How big?”

  “Size of… size of…”

  “A mountain oyster.”

  “I reckon.”

  “You need to get to the doctor, Grandpa Fred.”

  He coughs.

  “They cain’t do nothing for me. When it’s your time, it’s your time. Death don’t give a rat’s ass about—”

  He coughs.

  He says, “Jimmy Lee was over at the church, upset and crying when we got over there.”

  “And Velma? She okay?”

  “She always had a mouth on her. No real home training. That wild horse don’t like the reins Jimmy Lee puts around her neck. Yessir, he went out and got the wildest one he could.”

  He coughs. I wait.

  “He sho‘ hate he lost his dignity in front of Jenny Vee like that. But Velma didn’t make it no better. She go up to Jimmy Lee job at Birmingham Steel acting like that. Now he was messing with some other gal down there, but that ain’t the way a woman should act. Now, I ain’t saying Jimmy Lee was right, but Velma came between Jimmy Lee and his last wife, so she knew how he was. And she ain’t no better, done had her share of men from what I hear.”

  I rub my hands together in impatience. He goes on, “Him seeing Jenny Vee didn’t help him much.”

  “Because… what?”

  “She done done well for herself. He probably looks at her and thanks less of himself. He always done had a temper, never could pay attention in school, repeated a couple of grades.”

  “Maybe he needs some help.”

  “He talked to some folks but that didn’t turn out too good.”

  Again, that cough.

  When he gets back in control he asks, “Personal question for you son, if it’s okay.”

  I suck my lips in and massage my goatee. I resist releasing a sound of irritation.

  I say, “Sure. We’re family. Might have a few questions of my own.”

  “About Jenny Vee.”

  “Yessir. About Jenny Vee.”

  He coughs and pauses, measures whether or not what he wants to ask for is worth what he wants to give in exchange. I suck my jaw anticipating a Herculean task as a favor.

  He asks, “Can you get ahold of some of that Viagra?”

  “Viagra?”

  “Bubba asked me to find out. He’s scared to talk to you, being he’s working for you. Said you get upset too quick for his taste. He wanted me to ask. I said I would. Jenny Vee being a doctor and you being into all kinds of medicine. He says him and his wife, well certain thangs a man has to do to keep his stallions from breaking out the gate and roaming in other pastures.”

  We pause.

  I say, “Grandpa Fred.”

  “Yessir.”

  “The Viagra is for you, isn’t it?”

  He pauses.

  “Reckon so. Would be nice to feel like… like my old self. Might not do nothing, but I hear tell from a fellow over at this place I go to play bingo on Sunday nights… well, they say it helps with your blood circulation. Might be mighty nice to… to… get my blood circulating like it used to and be a man once again before all is said and done. Been ten years since I plowed a field.”

  I smile but I don’t laugh.

  He says, “Get something like that around here, er’body will know.”