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
