Eva's Man

by Gayl Jones

  He said about the telephone, “We won’t need this.”

  I said I’d like to have a telephone, I’d never had a telephone before, why couldn’t he keep it in.

  “No, I’ll have them take it out tomorrow,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t wont your lovers calling you.” He didn’t say it like a joke.

  Davis brought home bread and bacon.

  “We’ll have scrambled eggs,” he said coldly. “Here’s a hot plate.

  Here, you make them.”

  I stirred them, saying nothing, watched them harden. “Eva, why won’t you talk?”

  I turned with a smile and handed him his plate. “You meant to tell me, didn’t you?” I asked.

  “Yes, I meant to tell you.” He watched me fix my own plate. He was watching me when I sat down beside him on the bed, the plate hot in my hands.

  “I like to feel the heat against my lap,” I said. I put the fork in my eggs.

  “My mama used to say, ‘Davy, there’s mens that ain’t got no ambition except chasing womens. You got to do more than chase womens.’ You don’t think I’m like that, do you?”

  “Naw, I don’t think that.”

  “I thought you were the kind of woman who’d understand.”

  “I understand.”

  “I thought I could turn to you for something I needed. Not romance,” he said.

  I closed my eyes. I said nothing. The eggs were hot in my mouth. Then I opened my eyes and swallowed the eggs, my tongue still feeling them.

  “Yes, I know how you feel,” I said.

  “Where are you from?” he asked again. He probably thought I would answer this time.

  “Here and thereabouts.”

  “You still won’t answer?”

  “No.”

  “Eva, Eva, Eva.” He grinned. His hand went to my shoulder. When we finished eating, I undressed again. I turned back the sheets.

  He asked me if I’d been hurt in life. He said I looked like a woman who’d been hurt in life. I didn’t answer. He said I didn’t have to answer. He leaned back in his seat. I was on a bus on my way to Wheeling, West Virginia. He was going to Denver. “My father used to carry a jackknife around in his pocket all the time. Guess what it had printed on it?” he asked. “What?”

  “In big gold letters,” the man said. “‘Trust in God.’”

  I asked him why he was going to Denver. He said he was thirty-five years old and liked to run with people who were twenty, twenty-five, but he said, when you’re thirty-five people who are twenty, twenty-five don’t trust you. “I mean they look at you like you don’t belong with them . . . I used to teach school around when I was twenty-six. Taught in a college. I’m thirty-five and ain’t never been married. I can’t see staying with the same woman.” I didn’t ask him what anything had to do with anything. He said, “I mean I’ma go to Denver and when I get through there, I’m goin” out to California, and when I get through there I think I’m going to go down to Mexico.”

  “My father used to carry a jackknife around in his pocket all the time,” I told Davis. “Guess what it had printed on it?” I asked.

  He had to change buses before I did. Before he got off the bus, he gave me a good look. I gave him back the look.

  “You know, sometimes when I meet a woman like you, you know, one I know I’m not going to see again, I wonder if you could’ve been the one.”

  mq I said nothing. He got his bags down. He was a little, attractive man, dressed younger than his age. He had lines all around his eyes.

  “No, what?” Davis asked.

  “In big gold letters, ‘Trust in God’,” I said. I waited for him to laugh. He didn’t laugh at first, then he laughed loud and grabbed me around my waist. I could feel him hard against my ass. He took me before we got into bed.

  When he came out of me he was sweating, but I wasn’t. “Don’t you ever sweat?”

  “No.” I smiled.

  “You made me tired,” he said. I was watching the ceiling. We were in bed now, and sweat had dropped from his forehead into my eyes.

  “You’re too serene,” he said. I said nothing.

  “How do you feel about it, Eva?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  I thought he’d been looking at me, but he hadn’t. He was watching my belly, stroking it again. I smoothed his cheek with my hand. I kissed his neck. He lay down. I put my forehead under his chin inside his neck. He grinned, staring at the ceiling. He put my hand on his dick, swelling.

  “You did this. look what you’ve done. It’s your fault,” he said.

  “It’s not my fault,” I said. “But I’m not sorry.”

  “Want to play again?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  2

  “You see that woman over there,” Alfonso said. “She’d do anything for me. If I asked her to give me five dollars, she’d give it to me.”

  Elvira pulled a scab off her knee. “How’d you do that?”

  “I don’t know. I must’ve scraped my leg up against something and didn’t know it.”

  “You shouldn’t pick at it,” I said. “You care all a sudden?”

  “Yeah, that’s Sweet Man up over the mantelpiece,” Miss Billie said. “Good-looking, ain’t he? For a old man. He don’t look as old as he is, though. It’s a shame the way men keep up, ain’t it? And there I be walking down the street and look like my knees give out. Tha’s why I got all these scars and bruises on my legs. My knees give out, and people think I’m drunk. They don’t believe me when I tell em it’s my knees.”

  “Yeah, when you start carrin,” Elvira said.

  “French woman come up to me and ask if I wont a suck job. Ask me right out loud if I wont a suck job. Ask me right out loud where everybody can hear if I wont a suck job. She come up to me and ask me, she didn’t whisper, she ask me right out where everybody could hear, she ask me if I wont a blow job. They use to things like that, though. They don’t act like they do around here. Got theyselves a mule and put the mule in a tent, and then lined up.”

  “You was a little bitta thing, the last time I seen you,” Miss Billie said.

  Freddy Smoot grabbed my arm hard enough to bruise my arm and pulled me up under the stairs. He got real close to me.

  “I’ma put it in you like Mama’s men put it in her.”

  I didn’t try to run. I just stayed with him. He still had my arm. He held my arm and unzipped his pants and took his thing out. Then he kept looking from my eyes to his thing. And then all of a sudden he pushed me away from him, and turned and zipped his pants back up, and went upstairs. I didn’t know what he’d seen in my eyes, because I didn’t know what was there.

  Tyrone said, I put your hand on it because I thought you needed it.

  The scab was still ripe. Blood ran down her legs. She wiped it on the hem of her dress.

  Davis came back into the room. I was sitting in the dark. I must have scared him. He jumped, then got angry. He put the light on.

  “What the hell you doin sittin up in the damn dark. It ain’t natural. You ain’t natural.”

  I had my hands in my hair. “I’m natural,” I said. My voice was real quiet.

  He laughed a little. “Shit, if you was natural, you wouldn’t even be here, woman. You wouldn’t even a let Davis Carter lay a hand on you. Not for free.”

  “What you mean?”

  “Anything you decide I mean, baby.”

  “You don’t know.”

  “I know you can’t leave me alone.” I shook my head. “Naw. It’s you.”

  He looked at me for a moment, almost frowning, then he went out. Before the door closed, I heard him laugh. Hard.

  “Say something, Eva.”

  “There’s nothing.”

  “What can I do?”

  “Try.”

  “What do you want me to do, Davis?”

  “I said try, woman.”

  I looked at him, but he wasn’t looking at me. Then he was looking, but
he wasn’t. I passed my hand through my hair.

  “You might as well do it,” he said. I didn’t ask what he meant.

  3

  “I’m going out,” he said.

  “Bring home some brandy. I feel like that instead of beer.”

  I hadn’t meant to call the place home. He must have noticed it, because he laughed and said he would.

  “I won’t forget the mustard this time,” he said. I nodded. He went out. The door closed hard.

  I went into the janitor’s closet and got the rat poison. I tore a piece of sack and made an envelope and shook some powder in and put it in the pocket of my skirt, then I went back and sat on the bed. Then I sat on the floor, with my back against the bed, my knees drawn up. I felt tense. My thighs felt like they do after a good lay, or going to the doctor and having him jam that cotton stick up your pussy. I held my arms tight around my knees, then I pushed them up between my thighs. I punched my belly, swollen with too much eating in, and being constipated. I’d get nervous with him there, and nothing would come out.

  “What are you doing?” I asked. “Traveling.”

  He asked me what I was doing. “Traveling.”

  Alfonso asked me if I smoked. I said no. He said I didn’t know what kind of smoke he meant. He said they put it in that kind of package to protect themselves. He passed me a Chesterfield King.

  The man without a thumb nodded and smiled at us from the other side of the room.

  Alfonso had a bottle of Bali Hai in a brown paper bag. He said it was cheaper down at the liquor store. He kept it under the table.

  “Bearcat Brown’s got a steel plate in his head,” I heard somebody say.

  I told Alfonso how Medina got kicked by a horse, and the doctor put a steel plate in her head and a dime in her jaw. He said only that she was his grandmother too. He poured some wine in my glass.

  “You just keep coming, don’t you?”

  Finally he took the wine out of the bag and put it up on the table.

  “Yeah, that’s why can’t nobody down him. He’s got that steel plate in his head. They call him the cat. Sometimes they call him the bear.”

  He put his hand in my blouse.

  “I didn’t know your breasts were so big.” He bent his head down.

  “Naw.”

  “A man talks to himself when he’s lonely,” James said. “I go out to restaurants sometimes, but I sit way over in the corner by myself. People see me and think I’m crazy because I just be sitting over there laughing and talking to myself. Or either somebody ask, ‘What’s that nigger talking about?’ and somebody answer, ‘Probably talking some shit.’ A man’s lonely and he laughs and talks to himself. He ain’t crazy, he’s lonely.”

  4

  What would Tyrone have done if I’d gone with him under the stairs? I dream. There’s no hoot. He pulls me hard. He takes his stick out. There’s a bubble at the end of it.

  “It’s to measure you,” he says. “It will let me know when you’re level.”

  He slides his back down the wall, and pulls my dress up. He keeps telling me it won’t hurt. “Eva, it won’t hurt.” Pulls my pants down. He tells me it’s no different from a popsicle.

  “Ain’t no man I wont but you. Ain’t no penis I wont but yours,” Mama says. Where is she?

  I’m on the floor. Tyrone and me. He says I make him feel like kindling.

  “Sleep with me, Eva.”

  “No.”

  “You know you don’t wont it like this.”

  “No.”

  “You know you don’t wont it like this.”

  “No.”

  “When you going to let me make love to you again?”

  “Never.”

  “When you going to love me, Eva?”

  I don’t answer.

  “When you going to let me feel you?” I don’t answer.

  “When you going to feel me again?” no answer.

  “How long has it been, honey?”

  “It’s been a long long time.”

  Mr. Logan is an old owl perched on the stairs. Mama says, “Ain’t no man I wont but you.” Daddy says, “Why’d you take him on then?”

  Tyrone puts my hand on his thing. Then he jams himself up inside me.

  I got back on the bed, my knees parted. He came in. “Eva, what are you doing?”

  “Nothing, I was waiting for you.”

  “I think I forgot the mustard.” He peeked in the sack. “No, I didn’t forget it.”

  “What about the bourbon?”

  “I thought you said brandy.”

  “Yes, I did. I’m sorry.”

  “Is this kind all right?”

  “Yes.”

  He sat the things down on the table. Cabbage and sausage. What I had the first night. A big loaf of bread and some cheese. Beer for himself.

  “Aren’t you going to have any brandy?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I’ll have a little brandy. I’ll wash it down with this.”

  “I’ll rinse out the glasses,” I said, getting up. “Do you want the brandy before or after dinner?”

  “I’ll have mine after dinner.”

  “I’ll wait too.”

  We sat down at the table, opposite each other. I kept my eyes on my plate. I spread the mustard on my sausage.

  “Do you want any?”

  “Naw, I told you what it looks like. Baby’s doodoo.”

  “The horseradish kind looks more like that,” I said. “I thought it would bother you.”

  “No, it didn’t bother me.”

  I tried to think of what he was talking about. I watched his mouth, but not his eyes.

  “I think they burnt the cabbage,” he said. “It still tastes good.”

  “Yeah, it does.”

  I felt it good against my tongue and in the hollows of my mouth. I thought of him rubbing my back and thighs.

  “You eat food as if you’re making love to it,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  “No, I like it. I like to watch.”

  I found it hard to go on eating, hard to find my mouth. I looked up, but he wasn’t watching any longer. I went on eating, my shoulders bent.

  “What are you thinking? You’re not talking.”

  “Nothing.”

  “Why aren’t you speaking?”

  “I don’t have anything to say right now.”

  “Did what I say bother you? You said it didn’t bother you.”

  “No, it didn’t bother me.”

  “I don’t mean about the mustard.”

  “No, it didn’t bother me.”

  He looked at me hard. He got up and came over and walked behind me and put his hand on my shoulders. He belched, said excuse me. I could feel my muscles tighten, my skin withdraw, but he didn’t act like he could feel it. I held my own belch in, till it made me feel sick. All that gas inside. I said nothing. He took his hand away. His plate was already clear. I soon cleared mine. They were paper ones, so I threw them away. He got out of his shoes and socks and sat up in bed.

  “I’m too full now.”

  “I ate too much too,” I said. “Do you want the brandy now?”

  “Yeah, I’ll have a little. You?”

  “Yes.”

  He leaned back and closed his eyes. I went over to the table, filled the glasses, my back to him, then brought him his. He smiled and took the glass. I got my glass and sat down on the bed beside him.

  “Come, sit closer,” he said.

  I sat closer. He held me around the belly with his left hand, drinking from the glass with his right. I drank.

  “You had some earlier, didn’t you?” I asked. “I didn’t think you could tell.”

  “Yes, I could tell.”

  He rubbed my belly, patted my belly, thumped my belly, drank. I drank.

  “I should have a duplicate key made for you,” he said.

  “I didn’t think you’d planned to be here long,” I said. “Or have me here.”

  “Still, you should have one. Where were you l
iving?”

  “I was between places.”

  “It’s good to be between places.”

  “Is it?”

  “But you might wont to go on living here.”

  I didn’t answer. Then I said, “Yes, I might.” Then I asked, “When will you be leaving?”

  “I don’t know. It’s better not to know.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I’ll have one made anyway,” he said. Then he gripped my waist. I had my back to him and didn’t watch. But he gripped my waist hard enough to break my ribs. “Bitch.” I belched.

  He didn’t see me at first and then he saw me and came back where I was. I was leaning against the seat with my eyes open. He asked if anybody was sitting there. I said “Naw.” He put his bag up and sat down. He said he was on his way to Denver, Colorado. I said I was on my way to Wheeling, West Virginia. He’d looked young until he got up close, and then I could see the lines around his eyes.

  I put my hand on his hand. I kissed his hand, his neck. I put my fingers in the space above his eyes, but didn’t close them. They’d come and put copper coins over them. That’s why they told you not to suck pennies. I put my forehead under his chin. He was warm. The glass had spilled from his hand. I put my tongue between his parted lips. I kissed his teeth.

  “That kiss was full of teeth,” James said. He stood back and laughed and then kissed me again.

  I opened his trousers and played with his penis. My mouth, my teeth, my tongue went inside his trousers. I raised blood, slime from cabbage, blood sausage. Blood from an apple. I slid my hands around his back and dug my fingers up his ass, then I knelt down on the wooden floor, bruising my knees. I got back on the bed and squeezed his dick in my teeth. I bit down hard. My teeth in an apple. A swollen plum in my mouth.