Eva's Man

by Gayl Jones

  “I knew you’d be coming back,” I said.

  “Get dressed anyway, I don’t like to see a woman always naked.”

  “Honey, you in a trance or something?”

  “What?”

  The woman in the next cell was watching me. She had her hands on the bars and was peeking in at me. She was wearing the same kind of gray dress I was wearing.

  “I said you sitting there like you in a trance. like one of them demon women or something. I can understand it, though. All em Dr Frauds coming in and out all the time, enough to drive anybody crazy, if they ain’t already. You seen yours yet?”

  “What?”

  “I call em all Dr Frauds. You know. But that’s all they do. Nothing. And get ten, twenty dollars a hour for it too. Except the state pays em. If I had to pay em, I wouldn’t pay em. I just stay crazy. Why they put you in here? What you do?”

  “I killed a man.”

  “Aw, that’s bad. I bet it was all in the papers, wasn’t it? They put me all in the papers. What’s your name? Maybe I read about you.”

  “Medina.”

  “Naw, I ain’t read about you, but seem I heard about it. Was he your nigger or somebody else’s?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “I bet I know how it happen. Your man messing around with some other woman I bet.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah, I knew it was. I coulda told you that. My name’s Elvira Moody. You ever read about me?”

  “Naw.”

  She frowned.

  “What did you do?” I asked.

  She smiled. Her teeth were crooked and rotten, but she didn’t look more than forty-five. “I sold some men some bad whiskey. It didn’t do nothing but make them sick. But the bastards called the law on me, and they put me in here. They put you in here for anything. You just look at them funny, they put you in here.”

  “Aw.”

  “You be awright, though. They didn’t execute you, did they? What I say is as long as you alive and fucking, you awright. You know, I heard on the radio where they talking about letting the men have women visitors, you know, sex visits. I don’t know if they mean crazy mens too, but they in prison too and need it too, don’t they. It’s all controversial now though and all these citizens callin in on the radio bitching about it and talking about how the good lord didn’t mean for it to happen and it go against the Bible and how they outraged about it. You know how they do? But what I say is they ought to do the same thing for women that they do for men. If the men can have sex visits, the women ought to be able to have it too. Don’t you think that’s right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You ain’t much of a talker, are you?”

  “Naw.”

  “Well, you keep that up. I knew what it was, though. The minute I seen you, I said that woman done got herself mixed up with some nigger. I didn’t know whether he was yours or somebody else’s, though. But tha’s just what I thought. They ain’t nothing but bastards. All I do is sell em whiskey and get what I can get out of em. You know what I mean? But I bet you loved him, didn’t you? Well, you don’t have to tell me. You know it’s going to trouble you, though. I know womens that’s killed mens. It troubles them. It just seems like it just stays with em. They get back out on the street again, and some new man gets them mad and they be saying, ‘I done killed you once, I don’t wont to have to kill you again. Don’t make me kill you again.’ It just stay with em like that, and puts them out of their minds. I ain’t never raised my hand against a man myself, cause if you don’t get them, they get you, and if you do get them, the law get you. Tell me how it happened, honey. Naw, I know if you wouldn’t tell them, you wouldn’t tell me . . .”

  I submit the insanity of Eva Medina Canada, a woman who loved a man who did not return that love. Crumbled sheets and blood and whiskey and spit. You born fucking and you. Your honor the court recommends that . . .

  “All they think about is where they going to get their next piece.”

  On the toilet throne, I’m a queen bee. He stings me between my breasts, the buds on my breasts, the bud between my legs. My flower. Come on and take me higher. He strokes me way up in the crease in my ass. He strokes my back. I can’t feel the place where the thumb”s gone. It’s like he’s stroking me with all five fingers. I can’t feel the place where the thumb”s gone.

  “After you’ve done it the first time,” Mama said. Come on and take me higher.

  James, with a popsicle, felt me down between my legs. “How did all that blood happen, Eva?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How did all that blood happen?”

  “It looks just like a rose. You look just like a flower, Eva.”

  He thought I had never had. No I didn’t know what he was doing. A boy with a dirty popsicle stick. I didn’t even know what he was doing. I didn’t know what. He stung me between my legs.

  “Take you that long to pee?”

  He wouldn’t let me have a telephone because he thought some man might call me.

  “What man, what man would be calling me?”

  “One of your lovers.”

  “I don’t have any lovers. I don’t know what you mean, James.”

  “After you’ve done it the first time.”

  “There was no first time.”

  “You know the first time,” Joanne said, “they discovered me in a truck with an old man. He had asked me to get up in the truck with him and said he would give me money. He didn’t do nothing but ‘handle me’. That’s what the court said, ‘handled her and gave her some money’. I wasn’t nothing but four years old. I didn’t even know what he was doing. They said when I was a little girl, I used to have a face like a woman.”

  She said Miss Floyd, the superintendent, when she bent down, wiped her hand across her ass. That was why she moved her, so she wouldn’t have to get in the fight too.

  “She dropped something and I stooped down to pick it up. That was when I felt her hand across my ass. When I turned around, though, she was smiling, looking like she hadn’t done anything.”

  “You lying.”

  “Naw, I ain’t lying neither. That’s why she wants me in there, where she won’t have any competition. I see the way she looks at you too, only she’s scared of you.”

  “Why’s she scared of me?”

  “I don’t know. She just is.”

  “I don’t want your lovers calling you,” James said.

  When he got between my knees, he said, “I always wanted to meet a woman like you, always wanted a woman like you, always wanted, always wanted a . . .”

  The queen bee, sitting on the toilet throne, wipes between her legs. Her nipples are full of blood.

  “They told me her father abused her mother when she was pregnant, and she came out gumming her own umbilical cord—she couldn’t gnaw because she didn’t have no teeth—so she came out gumming.”

  “Do you know what this is?” James asked. “No.”

  “A rubber.”

  He wanted me to watch him put it on.

  “She wiped her hand across my ass,” Joanne said. “She won’t bother you, because she’s afraid of you. You’re a queen bee.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She wouldn’t tell me. Sour cabbage and spoiled sausage spread with turd mustard.

  “Your honor, this woman’s already got a record. Stabbed a man in the hand twenty years ago. Was in jail for six months.”

  “What was the motive?”

  “A motive was never given. She never said anything. She just took the sentence.”

  “What motive did the man give?”

  “He called her a bitch. Said all he was trying to do was buy her some beer.”

  Buy some pussy. Spread my legs so I’ll be fucked in the ass again. Go fuck yourself, I told him. I don’t want to fuck myself, I want to fuck you. I was seventeen when he tried to. Damn bitch. But he couldn’t do a thing. I bet you were born fucking and will die fucking, you fucking bastard. That bitch s
tuck me. I wasn’t trying to do nothing but buy her some beer. What do you have to say? nothing.

  We were in this place. Well, yeah, he wanted to buy me some beer all right. He said Baby, if I had the money I’d buy you a beer. I said that was all right because I didn’t want a beer. Then when I got up to go he followed me outside. I told him to get lost.

  “Bitch, if you don’t wont a man to speak to you, you ought to stay in the house.”

  I told him to get lost again but he wouldn’t so then I knifed him.

  “What’s been happening here?”

  “Shit.”

  Somebody wrapped a rag around his hand till the cops came. He was holding it, saying “Shit.” They were holding him to keep him from getting at me. But I said he wasn’t getting at me cause I still had the knife.

  “I wasn’t doing nothing but trying to kiss her.”

  “My ass.”

  “He told me to get up in the truck and he’d give me some money. An old man with hair in his ears and a skullcap on. He slid his hand up between my thighs and told me how nice and soft I was. He didn’t have any teeth. A woman saw me get in the truck and called the police. They got him for ‘handling me’. He said he hadn’t done anything. They asked me what did he do. I was four years old. I said he showed me his stick.”

  “No matter how old they get,” this woman said. “They hands always find the crotch.”

  “I heard you breathing hard in there last night like you was into something in there,” Elvira said.

  I said nothing. I watched the eggsack like a turd hanging out. I wanted to be fucked again.

  “Still I say they make it simpler if they do something for women. let us bring men in.”

  Breath and sweat and desire riding my back. I closed my eyes.

  I wanted her to be quiet.

  “If they let you, would you have one?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You ain’t the other kind, are you?”

  “Naw.”

  “We got some in here, you know, that’s that kind. Cause if you wont someone to stroke it for you, there’s them that will. Stroke anything that need to be stroked.”

  “I’m not that kind.”

  “I wasn’t saying you was.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Don’t get huffy. I’ll drop it. You know, I bet that nigger wasn’t worth it, was he?”

  “What?”

  “What you did.” I said nothing.

  “You know, I ain’t seen you laugh, I ain’t seen you cry, I ain’t seen you do nothing, cept breathe hard last night. You too serene. When a woman done something like you done and serene like that, no wonder they think you crazy.”

  Stuff a sausage up her ass. “My head hurts.”

  “I’ll get em to bring you an aspirin.”

  “I don’t want one.”

  Finger up her raw ass.

  “Awright, suit yourself. But listen, I’ma tell you something. If you let them get to you, they break you. But if you don’t let them get to you, they can do all the hammering they wont to but they ain’t going to break you. What I say is take it easy. The only things that ought to be taken hard is dicks. He.”

  I said nothing. “Well, suit yourself.”

  I lay on the cot, breathing. “What’s wrong?” she asked softly.

  I didn’t answer. I wanted to make music, hard, deep, with my breath, my tongue inside his mouth. I thought of undoing his trousers, making gestures with my tongue, gestures he’d understand, and then his hands would go into my panties, between my legs and ass.

  “Want me to do it for you?” no answer.

  “I’ll do it for you if you want me to, honey,” she whispered. Her voice wasn’t soft now, it was husky even in the whisper. It was harsh. “You won’t help yourself, that’s why can’t nobody else help you, cause you won’t help yourself.”

  I was breathing. I couldn’t tell how hard or loud I was breathing. He was there. He wasn’t laughing. He just watched me. Then he got on my back. He hung onto my back. We were naked. He went in from the ass like a cockroach. We were fucking. “What am I doing to you?”

  “You fucking me.” Both his hands fingered my clit. He made me. “Oh, Jesus. It’s your pussy, Davis. It’s your pussy.” After I came he kept touching my clit and it hurt. “Please don’t.”

  He parted my hair with a comb, scratching my scalp till it bled.

  “I’ll do it for you,” she said.

  “No.”

  “Did you like it? Was he good?”

  “Yes. He was good.”

  “Bouncing up and down in that hole. I know he was good, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “I would’ve did it for you.”

  “No.”

  “Did you and him use to undress each other?”

  “No.”

  “Makes you feel closer, or something.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You could’ve shared it with me. Your long fuzzy public hair. I call it public hair.”

  “Naw.”

  “I bet you can still feel him going in there between your legs, going in you.”

  “No.”

  My teeth bit shadows. I put my legs around his neck. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, I’m all right.”

  “Remember how I told you it just stay with you. It’s a sin and a shame, but it do.”

  I was laying on the bed in his room. My muscles were tense. I was staring out the window. light came in through the window from the signs over bars. They made patterns on my belly. I was naked. The muscles in my legs were hurting. She was waiting for me to say something. I wanted to reach down and rub my legs, but I didn’t move.

  “I heard you wrapped it in a silk handkerchief when you finished. Honey, you got imagination.”

  I laid with him as soon as we got there. It was evening but we didn’t sleep. He stroked my forehead. I never liked anyone to touch my forehead, but I let him touch it.

  “You know. I used to read about things like that in the Police Gazette before I started meeting people who did them.

  You know, you a celebrity in here, you know that? Yeah you are.” She sang, “I heard it through the grapevine, how much longer will you . . .”

  I licked the palms of my hands. I bit shadows. I put my legs around his neck. He wrapped me in elbows.

  “Shit, there’s those that won’t ask you if they can do it for you, just do it. Especially right in here, they got some crazy people, crazier than I am. They just be thinking they be doing something you wont done. They won’t know no different.”

  Smell in my bloomers. Fuck and urine.

  “He was good, wasn’t he? I bet he was good.”

  He said I was good too. He asked me what he was doing to me. I said he was fucking me. He said I was doing hell to him. He called it my stringray. He was on my ass, coming in through that way. I wanted to tell him how I was feeling. But I never would tell him.

  “Let me make it feel sweet for you, honey.”

  “You haven’t had it in a long time, have you?”

  “You hard, why you have to be so hard?” She sounded like she wanted to cry, but then she got evil. “Knifed a man when you was seventeen. Killed a man when you . . . Couldn’t be much younger than I am, are you?”

  I said nothing. “How did it feel?”

  He’d undressed me and he was sweating. And then he held onto my shoulders and drew me toward him and I was naked and sweating, not with my own sweat, but with his sweat. He had no tenderness, no none, and then he laid me on my back on the bed. He didn’t play first. No, he went in before I was ready. He made sounds in his throat like when you got to go doodoo.

  “Felt good, didn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “I bet it felt good.”

  “Yes.”

  “You could’ve shared it with me.”

  “No.”

  “What did he prom
ise you to make you kill him?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What did you promise him?”

  “That I’d stay with him. That I’d always be there. In that room.”

  “Why?”

  I didn’t answer. “Did you tell him?”

  “No.”

  He liked my hair that way. He’d never let me comb it. No, he’d never. He’d be doing it and make my pelvis rise up and my ass shake and he kept kissing me and asked, “What am I doing?” I kept wanting him. He kept saying Oh, oh, oh, oh. And I kept wanting him. I just kept wanting him.

  “What am I doing?”

  “You fucking me.”

  “What am I doing?”

  “You fucking me.”

  Every Saturday morning and Sunday afternoon James said he had to go down to the train depot. He said he had this friend who had a wife that they let out of the narcotics Hospital every weekend so she could be with her husband, and every weekend she would make him buy her a bottle—not any narcotics—just a bottle. He said the man was scared of her, because every Sunday evening when he took them back to the depot, the man would have a new scar on him. He said that the man was scared that one of those weekends she would kill him, but he still went and got her.

  “What your doctors been telling you?” Elvira asked. “What?”

  “About what you did?”

  “They think I was trying to fuck him when he couldn’t fuck back.”

  “What you think?”

  “I think I was trying to get fucked.”

  “Eva?”

  “What?”

  “Don’t you want to?”

  “No.”

  “What did you like him to do?”

  I liked him to get up against my ass and come in that way. I never told him what I liked, so he didn’t do it a lot. I don’t know if he liked it or didn’t think I liked it. I liked it when we’d go to sleep, lying ass to ass. He said when I stroked his ass it made him come faster. But that meant he didn’t want me to.

  “Eva.”

  “Leave me alone.”

  “Fuck you then.”