“It was my grandmother’s name.”
“How’d she get that name?”
“I don’t know. I think one time some gypsies came by their house, and one of them”s name was Medina, and her mama thought it was a pretty name.”
“Aw.”
The onions made tears in the corners of his eyes. He wiped them on his sleeve.
“I don’t know if it’s true or not. That’s what they told me.”
“If they told you, then it’s true.”
“I can help,” I said.
“Naw, you still got the cramps, ain’t you?”
“Yes.”
Elvira laughed. “Once you close them, do you keep them closed?” she asked.
I stared at the ceiling.
“I knew a man once,” Elvira said. “He drove every woman he had crazy. I don’t mean easy crazy, I mean hard crazy. Had some of em committing suicide and stuff, and even when these women knew how he’d done all these other women, they still wonted him. I guess they figured he wouldn’t get them, figured they was different or something. He was good-looking too. But every one of em that went with him just got plain messed up. He messed up every woman he went with. That’s the way I think of that nigger you had. That’s why you killed him cause . . .”
“Shut up.”
“Or maybe you that kind of a woman. Do you kill every man you go with?”
I stared at her.
“They call her the queen bee,” Miss Billie said, “cause every man she had end up dying. I don’t mean natural dying, I mean something happen to them. Other mens know it too, but they still come.”
“Why do they still come?” I asked.
We were in the kitchen and Mama was making Miss Billie and herself and me some lunch. Miss Billie was sitting at the table. I was standing up beside Miss Billie, playing with her gold earrings, and she was hugging me around the waist. Mama was peeling some hard-boiled eggs.
“They come cause they think won’t nothing touch them.
They think they caint be hurt.”
“Eva, why don’t you go back in the living room and play. I call you when lunch is ready.”
“Yes ma’am.”
I made a circle inside Miss Billie’s hoop earring. “The queen bee,” she said.
I went in the living room and got my jacks.
I had on a skirt with an elastic waistband. He put his hand inside my underwear until he touched the edge of the pad.
“Some women wear these so they won’t have to do anything.”
“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t wont to do anything.”
“Now all I got to put on this is vinegar,” he said, going back to the salad. “When the vinegar touches the egg it smells like . . . a woman’s smell.”
“What were you going to say?”
He didn’t answer. He had a sack full of paper plates. He got out two, and two plastic forks. He dished himself up a plateful and me a plateful. I stayed on the bed, but put my feet on the floor. He put my plate in my lap. He sat down beside me on the bed. He ate the lettuce and onions with his fingers and the bits of egg and tomato and cucumber with his fork.
“Egg’s the same thing a woman’s got up inside her,” he said. “That’s why it smells that way. It smells like fuck.”
I frowned.
He said, “Excuse me.” He took a bit of my egg on his fork, and gave me a bit of tomato from his plate.
“You don’t wear earrings,” he said. “Naw.”
“Most women who look like you do wear earrings.”
“What’s that suppose to mean?”
He didn’t answer.
I put my finger inside Miss Billie’s hoop and made a circle.
“I don’t wont Eva to hear things like that,” my mama said.
Davis saved most of his egg and ate it last, and then he folded my plate and his and put them in the sack he used for a trashcan.
“That was good,” I said.
“It’ll take a age for this room to air out,” he said, then he put his arm around my waist and kissed me.
She wanted to take me and Freddy to the park, but Mama wouldn’t let her take me to the park. She told Freddy’s mama I was too bad to be taken to the park, but I knew it was only because she didn’t want Freddy’s mama to take me.
I saw Freddy’s mama and a man kissing in the doorway. I was sitting out on the steps. Freddy was at school. I could see them up on the next floor, looking up between the stairs.
“You old enough to be in school, ain’t you?”
It was Mr. Logan. He had put his chair outside his door and was sitting. I’d been too busy watching Freddy’s mama.
“Naw sir,” I said.
“Well, you look like you old enough to be in school,” he said. I looked back at him and got up from the stairs. “See you, Mr. Logan,” I said and went inside my door. I was scared of him after what Miss Billie said. I kept expecting something white to come out of him.
That was our first year living in that building. My parents came from Columbus, Georgia, but I was five when Daddy moved us to new York, so I tell people I came from concrete. That same day I was sitting on the steps, Mama asked me to go to the store for her. I took a shortcut through this alley and that’s when I saw Freddy and some more boys.
“There’s Eva, we can get some.” I ran till my throat hurt . . .
Miss Billie had a bag of groceries. “Y’all get on away from here,” she said.
She waited for me until I got what Mama wanted, then she walked me home. She said they were a bunch of wild horses.
“We woulda got you if you didn’t have that old woman to protect you.”
He had me cornered on the stairs. “Miss Billie ain’t no old woman,” I
