Edna and Regina were both on the couch. When the baby saw me she said, “Eathy,” and pulled away to crawl in my direction. Regina grabbed her before she fell to the floor.
Edna hollered as if she had been slapped.
“You been down to the police station?”
“Quinten Naylor wanted to talk with me.” I always felt bad when the baby cried. I felt that something had to be done before we could go on. But Regina just held her and talked to me as if there were no yelling.
“Then why you come home all liquored up?”
“Com’on, baby,” I said. Everything seemed slow. I felt that there was more than enough time to explain to her, to calm everything down. If only Edna would stop crying, I thought, everything would be okay. “I just took a drink down at the Avalon.”
“Musta been a long swallow.”
“Yeah, yeah. I needed a drink after what Officer Naylor showed me.”
That got her attention, but her stare was still hard and cold.
“He took me over to a vacant lot on a Hundred and Tenth. Dead girl over there. Shot-in-the-head dead. It’s the same man killed them other two girls.”
“They know who did it?”
I had to suppress my smile. Taking that angry glare off her face made me want to dance.
“Naw,” I said, as soberly as I could.
“Then how do they know it’s the same man?”
“He crazy, that’s why. He marks ’em with a hot cigar.”
“Rape?” she asked in a small voice. Edna stopped crying and looked at me with her mother’s questioning eye.
“That,” I said, suddenly sorry that I had said anything. “And other stuff.”
I took Edna to my chest and sat there next to my wife.
“Naylor wanted me to help him. He thought I mighta heard somethin’.”
When Regina put her hand on my knee I could have cheered.
“Why’d he think that?”
“I don’t know. He knows that I used to get around pretty good. He just thought I might have heard somethin’. I told him that I couldn’t help, but by then I needed a drink.”
“Who was it?”
“Girl named Bonita Edwards.”
Her hand moved to my shoulder.
“I still don’t see why a policeman would come here to ask you about it. I mean, unless he thought you had something to do with it.”
Regina always wanted to know why. Why did people call me for favors? Why did I feel I had to help certain people when they were in trouble? She never did know how I got her cousin out of jail.
“Well, you know,” I said. “He probably thought that I was still in the street a lot. But I told him that I’m workin’ for Mofass full-time now and that I don’t get out too much.”
I had lived a life of hiding before I met Regina. Nobody knew about me. They didn’t know about my property. They didn’t know about my relationship to the police. I felt safe in my secrets. I kept telling myself that Regina was my wife, my partner in life. I planned to tell her about what I’d done over the years. I planned to tell her that Mofass really worked for me and that I had plenty of money in bank accounts around town. But I had to get at it slowly, in my own time.
The money wasn’t apparent in my way of living. So there was no need for her to be suspicious. I intended to tell her all about it someday. A day when I felt she could accept it, accept me for who I was.
“He knows that I get around the neighborhood is all, honey. They found that girl just twelve blocks from here.”
“Could you help them?”
Edna stuck her hand down my shirt pocket and drooled on my chest.
“Uh-uh. I didn’t know nuthin’. I told him that I’d ask around, though. You know it’s an ugly thing.”
Regina studied me like a pawnbroker looking for a flaw in a diamond ring. I bounced Edna in my arms until she started to laugh. Then I smiled at Regina. She just shook her head a little and studied me some more.
Edna felt like she weighed a hundred pounds and I laid her across my lap. I lay back myself.
Regina put her cool hand to my cheek. I could count each knuckle. I thought about that poor dead girl and the others.
Edna fell asleep. Regina took her to her crib. And I followed her to our bedroom. A room that was so small it was mostly bed.
She undressed and then moved to put on her nightclothes. But I embraced her before she got to her gown, my pants were down around my ankles. We fell back into the bed with her on top. She tried, weakly, to pull away but I held her and stroked her in the ways she liked. She gave in to my caresses but she wouldn’t kiss me. I rolled up on top of her and held her head between my hands. She let my leg slip between hers but when I put my lips to hers she wouldn’t open her mouth or her eyes. My tongue pushed at her teeth but that was as far as I got.
Regina let me hold her. She buried her face against my neck while I worked off my shorts and shirt. But when I moved to enter her she turned away from me. All of this was new. Regina wasn’t as wild about sex as I was but she would usually come close to matching my ardor. Now it was like she wanted me but with nothing coming from her.
It excited me all the more, and even though I was dizzy with the alcohol in my blood, I cozied up behind her and entered her the way dogs do it.
“Stop, Easy!” she cried, but I knew she meant “Go on, do it!”
She writhed and I clamped my legs around hers. I bucked up against her and she grabbed the night table with such force that it was knocked over on to the floor. The lamp was pulled from the electric plug and the room went dark.
“Oh, God no!” she cried and she came, shouting and bucking and elbowing me hard.
When I relaxed my hold she pushed away and got up. I remember the light coming on and her standing there in the harsh electric glare. There was sweat on her face and glistening in her pubic hair. She looked at me with an emotion I could not read.
“I love you,” I said.
I passed into sleep before her answer came.
IT WAS AFTERNOON IN MY DREAM. That golden sort of sunny day that they only get in southern California. Bonita Edwards was sitting under that tree with her legs out in front of her and her hands, palms up, at her side. There were birds, sparrows and jays, foraging through the grasses around her. A little breeze put the tiniest chill in the air.
“Who did this?” I asked the dead girl.
She turned to me. The bullet hole showed sky-blue in her head.
“What?” she asked in a timid little voice.
“Who did this to you?”
Then she started to cry. It was strange because it wasn’t the sound that a woman makes when she cries.
Regina was leaning up against the tree with both hands. Her skirt was hiked up above her buttocks and a large naked man was taking her from behind. Her head whipped from side to side and she had a powerful orgasm but making the same kind of strange crying noises that Bonita Edwards made.
I hated them all. I could feel the hatred down in my body like a deep breath. I grabbed Bonita by the lapels of her pink party dress and lifted her. She hung down, heavy like the corpse she was, still crying.
Crying in that strange way. Like a kitten maybe. Or an inner tube squealing from a leak. Like a baby.
I opened my eyes, feeling chilly because I had kicked off the blankets. Edna was crying in little bursts. I got up and stumbled to the door. At the door I looked back to see that Regina had her eyes open. She was looking at the ceiling.
I was frightened by her. But I dismissed the fear as part of my dream.
Soon it will all be over, I thought. They’ll catch the killer and my nightmares will go away.
— 6 —
I WENT TO THE KITCHEN to put Edna’s formula on the stove. Then I got a diaper from the package that Jesus brought home every other day from LuEllen Stone.
Edna was crying in the corner of the living room where we’d set up her crib. I turned on the small lamp and loomed over her. That silenced the cri
es for a moment. Then I leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. That got a smile and a coo. I carried her back to the kitchen, where I laid her on a sheet rolled out over the kitchen table. I filled a red rubber tub with tepid water and undid the safety pin of her diapers.
She was crying again but not angrily. She was just telling me that she felt bad. I could have joined her.
I washed her with a soft chamois towel, saying little nonsense things and kissing her now and again. By the time she was clean all the tears were gone. The bottle was ready and I changed her fast. I held her to my chest again and gave her the bottle. She suckled and cooed and clawed at my nose.
I turned toward the door to see Regina there staring at us.
“You really love her, don’t you, baby?” she asked.
I would rather her call me that sweet name than make love to any other woman in the world. It was like she opened a door, and I was ready to run in.
I smiled at her and in that moment I saw something shift in her eyes. It was as if a light went out, like the door closed before I got the chance to make it home.
“Baby,” I said.
Edna shifted in my arms so that she could see her mother. She held one arm out to her and Regina took her from me.
“I need some money,” Regina said.
“How much?”
“Six hundred dollars.”
“I could do that.” I nodded and sat down.
“How?”
I looked up at her, not really understanding the question.
“I asked you how, Easy.”
“You asked if I could get you six hundred dollars.”
When she shook her head her straightened hair flung from one side to the other and then froze there at the left side of her head.
“Uh-uh. I said that I needed that money. I ain’t ax you fo’nuthin’. You coulda wanted t’know why I needed it. You coulda wanted to know how much I already have.”
Out of the small back window, over the sink, the sky was turning from night to a pale whitish color. It felt like the world was getting larger and I wanted to run outside.
“Okay. All right. What you need it for?”
“I need clothes for me an’ the baby, I got bills t’pay for my car, and my auntie down in Colette is sick and needs money t’go to the hospital.”
“What’s wrong with’er?”
“Stones. That’s what the doctor said.”
“An’ how much you already got?” I almost felt like I was in charge.
“Uh-uh, Easy. I wanna know where you could get yo’ hands on six hundred dollars,” she snapped her fingers, “just like that.”
“I don’t ask you ’bout the money in yo’ pocket, baby. That’s your money,” I said. “It ain’t got nuthin’ t’do with me.”
“You don’t need t’ask me nuthin’, Easy Rawlins. You know I work right down at Temple. I get there at eight every mo’nin’ an’ I’m home at five-thirty every day. You know where my money come from.”
“An’ you know I work fo’ Mofass,” I argued. “I might not have reg’lar hours like you but I work just the same.”
She snapped her fingers at me again. It made her furious that I could tell such a lie. “Ain’t nobody clean an’ sweep fo’ a livin’ could come up wit’ that kinda money. You think I’m a fool?”
We had both come from hard times.
Regina was the eldest of fourteen Arkansas children. Her mother died giving birth to their last child. Her father disintegrated into a helpless drunk. Regina raised those children. She worked and farmed and smiled for the white store owners. I don’t know the half of it but I do know that her life was hard.
She had once told me that she’d done things that she wasn’t proud of to feed those hungry mouths.
“I ain’t no criminal,” I said. “That’s all you gotta know. I could get your money if you need it. You want it?”
Edna, who was now cradled in her mother’s arms, laughed loudly and threw her bottle to the floor. Her eyes and smile were bright and mischievous.
Regina bit her lip. That might have been a small concession for some women but for her it was capitulation to a bitter foe.
“You should tell me what I wanna know, Easy.”
“I ain’t hidin’ nuthin’ from you, baby. You need money an’ I could get it. That’s because I love you an’ Edna and I would do anything for you.”
“Then why won’t you tell me what I wanna know?”
I stood up fast and Regina flinched.
“I don’t ask you about Arkansas, do I? I don’t ask you what you had to do? When you tell me your auntie needs money I don’t ask you why, at least I don’t care. If you love me you just take me like I am. I ain’t never hurt you, have I?”
Regina just stared.
“Have I?”
“No. You ain’t laid a hand on me. Not that way.”
“What’s that s’posed to mean?”
“You don’t hit me. It wouldn’t matter if you did, though, ’cause I be out that door right after I shoot you if you ever laid a hand on me or my daughter.” The defiance was back. It was better than her pain. “You don’t hit me but you do other things just as bad.”
“Like what?”
Regina was looking at my hands. I looked down myself to see clenched fists.
“Last night,” she said. “What you call that?”
“Call what?”
“What you did to me. I didn’t want none’a you. But you made me. You raped me.”
“Rape?” I laughed. “Man cain’t rape his own wife.”
My laugh died when I saw the angry tears in Regina’s eyes.
Edna stared at her mother wide-eyed, wondering who this new mother was.
“An’ that ain’t all, Easy. I wanted to name our daughter Pontella after her great-grandmother. But you made us call her Edna. You said you just liked the name, but I know that you namin’ her after that woman yo’ crazy friend was married to.”
She meant EttaMae.
She was right.
“All I wanna know,” I said, “is if you want that six hundred dollars. I’m willin’ t’get it but you gotta ask me.”
Regina raised her beautiful black face and stared at me. She nodded after a while; it was a small, ungrateful gesture.
And an empty victory for me. I wanted her to be happy that I could help when she needed. But what she needed was something I couldn’t give.
— 7 —
I MADE MYSELF SCARCE for the next few evenings. I’d go out to different bars and drink until almost eleven and then come home. Everybody was in bed by then. I could breathe a little easier with no one to ask me questions.
Never, in my whole life, had anyone ever been able to demand to know about my private life. There was many a time that I’d give up teeth rather than answer a police interrogator. And here I was with Regina’s silence and her distrust.
At night I dreamed of sinking ships and falling elevators.
It got so bad that on the third night I couldn’t sleep at all.
I could hear every sound in the house and the early traffic down Central Avenue. At six-thirty Regina got out of bed. A moment later Edna cried in the distance, then she laughed.
At seven the baby-sitter, Regina’s cousin Gabby Lee, came over. She made loud noises that Edna liked and that always woke me up.
“Ooooo-ga wah!” the big woman cried. “Oooogy, ooogy, oogy, wah, wah, wah!”
Edna went wild with pleasured squeals.
At seven-fifteen the front door slammed. That was Regina going to her little Studebaker. I heard the tinny engine turn over and the sputter her car made as she drove off.
Gabby Lee was in the bathroom with Edna. For some reason she thought that babies had to be changed in the bathroom. I guess it was her idea of early toilet training.
When she came out I said, “Good morning.”
Gabby Lee was a big woman. Not very fat really but barrel-shaped and a lighter shade than about half of the white people you’r
e ever likely to meet. She had wiry strawberry hair and definite Negro features. She reserved her smile for other women and babies.
“You here today?” she asked me—the man who paid her salary.
“It’s my house, ain’t it?”
“Honeybell”—that was one of the nicknames she had for Regina—“wanted me to do some cleanin’ today. You bein’ here just be in my way.”
“It is my house, ain’t it?”
Gabby Lee harrumphed and snarled.
I went around her to relieve myself in the bathroom. There was a dirty diaper steaming in the sink.
The newspaper on the front porch was folded into a tube shape held by a tiny blue rubber band. I got it and started a pot of coffee in the old percolator that I bought three days after my discharge in 1945.
Jesus kissed me good morning. He had his book bag and wore tennis shoes, jeans, and a tan short-sleeved shirt.
“You be good today and study hard,” I said.
He nodded ferociously and grinned like a candidate for office. Then he ran out of the door and tore down out to the street.
He was never a great student. But since the fifth grade they put him in a special class. A class for kids with learning problems. His classmates ran a range from juvenile delinquent to mildly retarded. But his teacher, Keesha Jones, had taken a special interest in Jesus’s reading. He sat up nearly every night with a book in his bed.
I poured myself a cup of coffee and settled down to the breakfast table intent on making some decision on what to do about Regina. Who knows, I might have gotten somewhere if it wasn’t for the headline of the Los Angeles Examiner.
WOMAN MURDERED
4TH VICTIM
KILLER
STALKS SOUTHLAND
Robin Garnett was last seen near a Thrifty’s drugstore near Avalon. She was talking to a man who wore a trench coat with the collar turned up and a broad-rimmed Stetson hat. The article explained how she was later found in a small shack that sat on an abandoned lot four blocks away. She was beaten and possibly raped. She had been disfigured but the article didn’t specify how. The article did explain why this murder was front-page news where the previous three were garbage liners—Robin Garnett was a white woman.
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