Bedtime Eyes

by Amy Yamada

  jazz music; I was having a hard time deciding what song I should sing at the club that night. I wondered why jazz singers always had to have that kind of low, husky voice Maria had. My problem was that my voice was soft and high-pitched. But after Spoon told me mine was the best for making love, it was enough for me that I only sounded good in bed.

  I quit my efforts to become a "jazz vocalist," and resigned myself to being just another singer.

  "What's in the envelope?"

  I 6 A M Y Y A M A D A

  "It's the capital I need to make money."

  "Can I see?"

  But when I tried to look, Spoon just pushed me out into the kitchen!

  and began making telephone calls. I gave up and started breaking ice to make myself a bourbon and soda.

  "Oh! Shit! Gimme some goddam motherfuckin' soda, bitch!"

  He turned to me as he slammed down the receiver. His four-letter j words sounded so musical—to me perfect English was as boring as an impotent man drinking flat beer. And it made me feel so close to him when he called me "bitch." You see, Spoon was a bitch's man. |

  Now that his calls were done, Spoon turned his attention to some^|

  thing new.

  "Why don't we have ourselves a little party before you go to work?"

  I stood watching in a vacant haze as Spoon carefully measured out identical lines of white powder on the cover of Ebony magazine and cut them with his navy ID card. I just assumed the drugs were a habit from his childhood in New York City.

  "Man, my dick is nothing but trouble. He goes looking for pussy everywhere . . . in discos... in bars..."

  Now he was in a good mood. Snorting coke put Spoon on an instant high, and he began babbling to a beat, his words a cross between a song and a wordy monologue. He told me it was real New York rap and that he'd been the number-one rapper where he came from. Then he told me a sad, sad story, but the rhythm he rapped it to was a happy, lively beat.

  "When my sister was only fourteen—

  she was raped by my daddy and she became a mama—

  and that's how I learned to treat whores—

  and that's how I learned tofuc—

  but I still didn't know what /{issing was then ..

  B E D T I M E E Y E S 5 5

  I stood there stupefied, watching Spoon pace around the room, and I downed my bourbon and soda in one gulp. Then I picked up the magazine and, bringing it close to my nose, I inhaled the coke in one big snort—my first time. An instant later I burst into a fit of coughing and sneezing and I couldn't breathe. I stayed crouched down on the floor, huddled and gasping for breath.

  "Are you okay, baby? You're supposed to hold one side of your nose with your finger and do it more slowly. It's always tough the first time."

  He was right. Everything's difficult the first time.

  When I eventually stopped coughing, I looked up at him. He was looking down at me, smiling with a worried look on his face. I could see the wealth of his experience shining in his eyes, and it made me feel like a little girl again.

  "I'm gonna be your teacher," he said.

  He sounded so responsible and dependable. It was just crazy.

  Sometimes I told Spoon he should write a book. It would be some weird how-to book about taking drugs. Or maybe about hanging out on the streets and walking like a gangster. Or maybe a teach-yourself guide to picking up innocent girls and using your body to make them crazy about you.

  The next thing I knew, Spoon had got a can of spray paint from somewhere and was trying to spray something on the bathroom wall.

  "Stop! We'll get thrown out of here!"

  "Okay, okay."

  Before I could stop him he had turned his attention from the wall to Osbourne, my cat. I saw his finger on the nozzle, and in a flash I scooped Osbourne up in my arms to save him.

  At first I didn't realize what had happened, but Spoon was holding his stomach, rocking with laughter. I looked in the mirror on the desk, and discovered that I had sacrificed myself for my cat. My hair was crimson, I 6 A M Y Y A M A D A

  dyed the color of a red pepper, and it stood out from my head, stiff and spiky. Even the boy in Renard's Carrot Top would have felt sorry for me Spoon was rolling on the floor now, still laughing.

  "My baby's a carrot—a carrot!"

  Then I imagined myself singing in the club later that night with my red lion's mane. Oh, shit! In my mind I could see all the drunken cus-tomers jeering at me, and the piano player trying to stifle his laughter.

  And then there was the manager—what if he fired me as soon as I walked into the club? If I lost my job, how would I be able to look after Spoon? Maybe I'd even be forced to let someone else use my pussy.

  Spoon calmed down and looked up at me. But as soon as our eyes met he burst out laughing and began rolling around on the floor again. Shit!

  He was laughing at me. And this was all his fault! In a fury I gulped down a second bourbon and screamed, "Fuck y-o-o-o-u!!"

  I wasn't in the habit of swearing like that. Spoon suddenly stopped laughing and stood up.

  "Baby, you're turnin' into my kinda woman."

  "Go to hell, you motherfucker!"

  "That's right, Kim. That's the way "

  Spoon inched closer and closer. I was rooted to the spot. It was like he was an animal and I was his prey. I fumbled in the sink behind me, and my hand found the sponge. I threw it at him, and it hit him in the face and fell to the floor. Osbourne scrambled around, desperately trying to get out of the way, and ran under the bed.

  Without even glancing at the sponge on the floor, Spoon grabbed both my arms and pinned them to my sides. I didn't say a word. I pretended to struggle so it would turn him on, but he just pressed his lips hard to mine. I stopped resisting and fell into his arms.

  Spoon lay me down on the floor and began to undress me. I pretended that I was sulking, but I wanted him to know I was only pretending, so I curled my arm around his neck, and drawing him close, I B E D T I M E E Y E S I a

  bit his earlobe. His eyes flashed, telling me he knew the game I was playing. He really was becoming my teacher.

  "My darling little hot chili sauce . . . "

  After we had made love on the kitchen floor, his "hot chili sauce,"

  who was feeling quite a bit spicier, decided to call into work to say she couldn't make it to the club to sing that night because her father had died. The manager was very sympathetic and told me to take a few days off. The truth was I never knew my daddy—he left before I was born—

  so I didn't feel guilty at all. And what better way to spend the time than partying with Spoon? That night my stage performance took place in my room; it was a nasty little performance with a lot of alcohol, a little bit of cocaine, and just the right number of joints. And my audience was Spoon and Osbourne.

  We partied long and loud, and in the end we both drank too much and threw up. By the time we had finally begun to cool down, it was already morning.

  H i

  1 was awakened by the sound of Osbourne meowing for his breakI fast. I opened the refrigerator and took out a can of cat food for him 1 and a big carton of milk for myself. I fed the cat and then gulped the milk straight from the carton. My throat was unbearably dry and my body still felt like it was floating.

  I quickly cleared away the remains of the previous night's party and went back to bed. The cold floor under my bare feet had me shivering, and the milk had chilled me through to the bone. All I wanted was to curl up under the warm blankets and go back to sleep again.

  Making a gap in the Venetian blind with my fingers, I peered outside.

  It was raining. It looked as though it wouldn't stop all day. I was feeling good and put the telephone away in the closet. When it starts raining early in the morning it feels like evening all day long.

  I slipped into bed beside Spoon, wrapping the blankets around me.

  To me his naked body was the most comfortable sheet in the world.

  "I can hear rain," he mumbl
ed

  "Are you awake?"

  "Uh-huh..

  "It looks like it could last all day long."

  I 6 A M Y Y A M A D A

  "I feel like shit."

  "Tired?"

  Spoon stared into the big frameless mirror by the bed, and answered

  "I've got a hangover."

  "Me too. I think it's a good excuse to spend the day lying around."

  " U m m . . . "

  Resting his cheek nonchalantly on his palm, his elbow on the pillow, Spoon began caressing my body. It felt so good, my eyes narrowed like a cat's and I confessed to him, "You're my most comfortable sheet."

  "Yeah? Well, you're my blanket," he said with a smile.

  The way he put it made him seem so innocent, like some rough, in-experienced young boy trying to whisper sweet nothings. It reminded me of the way I was impressed by Chet Baker even though he had a terrible singing voice. Whenever I listen to his songs, my insides feel like sugar dissolving.

  It was still raining. Spoon began to nibble my earlobe. I wasn't wearing earrings, so I could feel the saliva seeping through the hole in my ear.

  Spoon asked me what my favorite time of day was for making love.

  "Anytime," I said coyly.

  He told me he liked to make love best in the morning, especially if it was raining.

  "It's raining now," I reminded him.

  "You didn't know that about me, did you?" he said tenderly.

  He pressed his lips to my neck and sucked hard—so hard I thought he might suck the skin clean off—and he left a spider's web of purple bite marks scattered across it. Meanwhile the spider inside me was waiting to feast itself on his heart, but it wasn't long before I gave up on such an ambitious plan and began enjoying my role as Spoon's little play-thing. And as he threw his toy around like some impulsive child, I began to feel pleasure in the pain.

  He reached out his arm and put a record on the turntable. On days B E D T I M E E Y E S 5 5

  like this he liked to listen to Thelonius Monk. The piano sounded like rain. My pleasure was interrupted.

  Spoon lay on the bed, his burnt-black body only partly covered by the sheets. He reminded me of Brother Rufus in the Baldwin novel, listening to the saxophone and crying out from deep down inside his heart:

  "Please, won't you give me your love?"

  Spoon didn't need a saxophone. He could say all he wanted to say with his body. I would probably have even become an alcoholic prostitute for Spoon if he had wanted me to. But I wouldn't have wanted him to be my pimp—if I were up for sale, he wouldn't be able to leave bite marks on my neck anymore.

  "When I was young and I didn't know anything about women, a friend of mine told me they had a hole between their legs for guys to stick their cocks into. So from then on I thought there was, like, this big gaping hole between a woman's legs. So the first time I slept with a woman I was really confused—I thought, Damn, this bitch ain't got no hole. I didn't realize I had to look for it."

  His story made me feel more relaxed.

  "So now you know, do you?"

  "Sure, like this. But now I don't need to search for the holes with my fingers no more—they come looking for m e . . . . "

  I wanted to tell him the hole was alive. I wanted to tell him it was breathing and that if you put a mirror up close, it would mist up. I opened my mouth to tell him, but nothing came out. I often lost my voice when he was doing that to me.

  "Your skin really is the color of ebony, isn't it?"

  It was the saddest color in the world, and yet it was the most beautiful color I had ever seen. However suntanned I got, I could never come close to the color of Spoon's skin. If I ripped his skin, the blood would flow red from his flesh. When he made love to me, there was white liquid.

  I felt his head between my legs and I was helpless. I could see the top I 6 A M Y Y A M A D A

  of his head, covered thickly with hair like little coiled springs. His tongue was like some enormous snail eating up my skin, layer by layer.

  I could feel his little gold earring against my thigh. It always got in the way when he was down there, but he liked to wear it because it made him look good. Small rivulets of sweat ran down from the hollow of his back to his ass. I was always wary of touching him there. I was sure that if I got my hand in between the hard muscles of his butt cheeks, he'd grip it so tight I wouldn't be able to get it out again and I'd probably have to cut it off at the wrist. It would be like the little girl in the fairy tale, the girl with the red shoes who had to keep on dancing and dancing and couldn't stop until they cut her feet off. I'd have to keep dancing, too.

  I didn't want to lose these things that bound me.

  "Mmm, delicious. Juicy."

  Spoon wasn't concerned with what I was thinking—only with what he was feeling himself. He didn't think. He only spoke about the things his body reacted to. When he danced, it wasn't because he heard music—it was the other way around: he needed music because his body had started to dance. And now his tongue was dancing and playing music all over my body.

  There was no let-up of his tongue. My pussy juices were starting to turn into the kind of filmy skin you get when you boil milk.

  "Do you know how cats fuck?" he asked.

  " N o . . . "

  In an instant I felt Spoon's weight on my back. His thick, wiry chest hair was rubbing against my spine, and I felt like I was going to cry.

  Then suddenly he bit my left shoulder hard.

  "That hurt! What the . . . ?"

  "This is the way cats fuck—till all the hair comes off the female's shoulder."

  "Really?"

  B E D T I M E EYES 2 5

  "Yeah, and they make a horrible noise, too."

  "Like this?" I made a noise like a cat yowling. Gradually the cat's yowling gave way to my own yowling, and it gave me such pleasure to allow Spoon to subdue me. I looked in the mirror at the side of the bed.

  Grasping the sheet between my fingers, I could see my body laid out on the sea of white wrinkles. It looked like a blurred photograph. Then, on top of me came my favorite black sheet, forming a sharp, tight contrast.

  After a while I could no longer tell whether the sheets were white or black, and through a hazy semiconsciousness, all I could do was follow the reflection of my red polished nails in the mirror.

  I cried out again like a cat.

  "Shhh, quiet, baby. Listen to the rain."

  I hadn't noticed, but Thelonius Monk had finished playing, and the rain was the only sound left in our dimly lit room.

  C H A P T E R FIVE

  I had just finished taking off" my stage makeup and peeling off my I big, feathery false eyelashes when Spoon came home. He stumbled I around the place, shouting and bumping into things, drunk.

  I got out of bed and offered him a glass of water. Not out of kindness, you understand, especially since he was drunk and being so obnoxious. I just knew how to deal with him now that we were living together.

  "Drink this and sober up!"

  Spoon's leather jacket reeked of cheap gin and absinthe.

  "Jesus, Spoon! You stink!"

  "Shut the fuck up, bitch!"

  He snatched the glass from my hand and smashed it on the floor. A sliver of flying glass caught me, and blood trickled down my cheek.

  "So, I smell, huh? What kinda smell? Answer me, bitch! Answer me!"

  Spoon grabbed me by the neck and started to choke me.

  " I . . . I ' l l . . . tell you . . . let... me g o . . . I can't breathe..

  He tore his hands from my throat and flung me against the wall. His eyes were glassy and unfocused. He'd been doing drugs again.

  I 6 A M Y Y A M A D A

  "You smell like a loser, you bastard! You're nothing but one big infe riority complex."

  He snatched a bottle of white rum from the table and threw it against the wall. It smashed, filling the room with the sound of splinter-ing glass and the sweet aroma of the liquor.

  Then suddenly, he s
at down on the floor, motionless, staring vacantly into space. His hands were covered in blood, cut by shards of the broken glass. Looking closely at his face, I noticed some dried blood. So, he'd been fighting, too. Sitting there on the floor, his fly undone, he looked absolutely pathetic.

  "Why don't you zip your fly? Did you forget to do it after you peed?

  Or have you been out fucking other women?"

  I knew he hadn't.

  "Fucking? What makes you think I've been out fucking? You've had some guy in here while I've been out, haven't you? You brought him here, spread your legs and let him fuck you, didn't you, you cheap whore! I bet you bring guys back here every time I go out, you fucking bitch!"

  Ranting and raving, he grabbed me by the hair and dragged me around the room through the carpet of broken glass, the sharp splinters piercing my skin.

  "Is he black or white? Don't tell me he's fucking Japanese! They're all such ugly bastards."

  "You scum! You're just a no-good drunken junkie! I'm one of those ugly Japanese bastards, too. But I'm still better than you. Dirty asshole! You were born miserable and you'll always be fucking miserable!"

  I wanted to cry to relieve the pain. I sobbed convulsively, but the tears just wouldn't come.

  Spoon just didn't have a middle ground on anything. In fact, it was from living with him that I discovered there were actually people who couldn't eat plain, lightly flavored food. He was altogether too sweet, too spicy, and too greasy for that. One minute I was swimming in the sweetest of sweet cream, and the next I felt as though I'd had pepper sauce poured over my head. My stomach just couldn't cope with it. 1

  knew I was on my way to an ulcer.

  "Goddammit! Every fucker makes an ass of me! I can't do anything right," he cried.

  "I can't make an ass of you—you already are one! I love you. Am I weird? I think you're sweet. I mean it...."

  Spoon stopped breathing. He just stared at me.

  Shit, I thought, he's going to hit me.

  I screwed my eyes shut and clenched my jaw so he wouldn't break any teeth—he had already knocked out two of them. How was it that the same hands that hurt me like this could also tickle me or take me to the very heights of ecstasy?