He had gin this time. He drank.
When he took me home, he took me home through this back alley. When he stopped, I stopped. He put his hand down in my blouse. It surprised me at first, and I just stood there, but then when he started to bend his head down—
“Naw.”
“I just wont to suck your damn tiddies.”
“I said naw.”
“What’s that? Where’d you get that?”
He stood away from me. I put the little knife back in my pocket. He stood there saying nothing for a long time, and then he started laughing.
“Shit, a tiddy ain’t shit,” he said when we were walking back.
He drew tiddies on the wall and the landlord came in and bawled him out, told him to be sure he did pay the rent Monday. I was afraid to ask him again to let me help him. When the landlord left, Davis started laughing, and then he pulled up my skirt. He said my knees were like globes. He caressed them with his palms.
“It’s like you were a husband,” I said.
He looked at me hard. He was frowning.
“I mean you slept with me while I was bleeding, like a husband would, and didn’t try to arouse me till I was ready.”
“What’s a man for?”
I didn’t answer. He parted my thighs.
“Why you want me?” I asked.
“Only to ride you.”
“You said you used to work with horses.”
“Yeah, that’s how I got away from my . . . wife. Brought some horses up this way, and stayed.”
“You didn’t tell me you were married.”
“I thought I told you.”
“No, you didn’t tell me.”
Big rusty nails sticking out of my palms. But I let him fuck me again. And when he finished he lay down with his head on the pillow. I wanted him to stay closer longer, to stay inside me longer, but he didn’t, and I didn’t ask him to. I leaned over and put my tongue in his mouth.
“Where you going?” Daddy asked.
I was going out as he was coming in from work. I told him Alfonso was taking me over to the Froglegs restaurant.
“Jean going?”
“Naw. She doesn’t like to go out.”
“You used to didn’t like to go out.” I said nothing.
“She used to stay up in the house too much,” Mama said from the kitchen.
“If she need to go out, she ought to find somebody else to go out with,” Daddy said. Then to me, “If I was you, I be scared of him, the way he treat Jean.”
“He’s not a bad man,” Mama said.
Daddy told me to go on if I was going. I went out.
Davis said the landlady would always bring him the Sunday’s paper. She’d bring it to him on Monday, after they got through with it, but she never failed to bring it to him.
“Yeah, she’s got her eyes all out for me. If I was a certain kind of man, I bet I could get out of my rent too, but I ain’t that kind of a man. Got her eyes and her ass all out for me.
What you frowning at?”
a
“Nothing.”
“I ain’t studying her, though. I’m studying you.”
He plucked at my nipples and asked me to give him a smile.
I showed the dark line along one of my teeth.
“You keep going out with me,” Alfonso said.
The man with no thumb passed by our table but didn’t sit down.
“How you doing, buddy?” he asked Alfonso. He didn’t say anything to me.
“Aw, I’m doing everything,” Alfonso said.
“Go high places,” I heard the man say as he kept walking. “He don’t believe we cousins now,” Alfonso said.
“We are, though,” I said.
“He’s talking about you taking him high places, I could take you high places. Take you so high you’d start talking to Jesus.”
I said nothing.
“Shit. You frustrate a man. Shit.”
The man with no thumb passed by our table again. “She make you feel like a king, don’t she, buddy?”
“Naw, she don’t make me feel like no king, shit.”
He got up from the table. He looked at me hard, and then he left me in the restaurant. I thought he was coming back but he didn’t. At first I thought he was standing around outside to get some air or smoke, but when I went outside to look for him, he wasn’t there. I came back in the restaurant and sat down.
A man sat down across from me. He didn’t look old enough to be my father, he looked old enough to be my grandfather.
“My name’s Moses Tripp,” he said.
I didn’t give a shit what his name was, I was thinking in the kind of language Alfonso would use. I didn’t want him sitting there and I was wishing Alfonso would come back.
“Alonso coming back?”
I told him my cousin’s name was Alfonso. “Shit, that nigger ain’t none of your cousin. He coming back, or are you free?”
I said he was coming back.
“Well, I just take up some of your time till he come back.”
I sat there. I didn’t know whether to get up and try to go home alone, or wait for Alfonso.
“If I had the money, baby, I’d buy you a beer, but I ain’t got the money. I just got enough to, uh . . .” He cleared his throat, but didn’t say anything.
I just looked at him.
“You look so sweet,” he said. “You look choice. That’s how you look. Choice . . . I got, uh, five dollars. You think that’ll do?” He slid it across the table at me.
I got up and went out. He followed me out. I was thinking I should’ve known he’d follow me out.
“Do it for me, huh? Come on, honey. This is my last five.”
“Leave me alone.”
“Least feel on it for me. That ain’t fair. Five dollars for a feel, that ain’t . . . Alonso ain’t got nothing I . . . let me.” He reached for me down between my legs, then he screamed and pulled his hand back. He called
