“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
