Invisible man - Ralph Ellison [195]
"Take this," I said, shoving another glass into her hand. "It'll be better after you've had a drink, more realistic."
"Oh, yes, that'll be wonderful." She took a drink and looked up thoughtfully. "I get so tired of living the way I do, beautiful. Soon I'll be old and nothing will've happened to me. Do you know what that means? George talks a lot about women's rights, but what does he know about what a woman needs? Him with his forty minutes of brag and ten of bustle. Oh, you have no idea what you're doing for me."
"Nor you for me, Sybil dear," I said, filling the glass again. At last my drinks were beginning to work.
She shook her long hair out over her shoulders and crossed her knees, watching me. Her head had begun to weave.
"Don't drink too much, beautiful," she said. "It always takes the pep out of George."
"Don't worry," I said. "I rapes real good when I'm drunk."
She looked startled. "Ooooh, then pour me another," she said, giving herself a bounce. She was as delighted as a child, holding out her glass eagerly.
"What's happening here," I said, "a new birth of a nation?"
"What'd you say, beautiful?"
"Nothing, a bad joke. Forget it."
"That's what I like about you, beautiful. You haven't told me a single one of those vulgar jokes. Come on, beautiful," she said, "pour."
I poured her another and another; in fact, I poured us both quite a few. I was far away; it wasn't happening to me or to her and I felt a certain confused pity which I didn't wish to feel. Then she looked at me, her eyes bright behind narrowed lids and raised up and struck me where it hurt.
"Come on, beat me, daddy -- you -- you big black bruiser. What's taking you so long?" she said. "Hurry up, knock me down! Don't you want me?"
I was annoyed enough to slap her. She lay aggressively receptive, flushed, her navel no goblet but a pit in an earth-quaking land, flexing taut and expansive. Then she said, "Come on, come on!" and I said, "Sure, sure," looking around wildly and starting to pour the drink upon her and was stopped, my emotions locked, as I saw her lipstick lying on the table and grabbed it, saying, "Yes, yes," as I bent to write furiously across her belly in drunken inspiration:
SYBIL, YOU WERE RAPED
BY
SANTA CLAUS
SURPRISE
and paused there, trembling above her, my knees on the bed as she waited with unsteady expectancy. It was a purplish metallic shade of lipstick and as she panted with anticipation the letters stretched and quivered, up hill and down dale, and she was lit up like a luminescent sign.
"Hurry, boo'ful, hurry," she said.
I looked at her, thinking, Just wait until George sees that -- if George ever gets around to seeing that. He'll read a lecture on an aspect of the woman question he's never thought about. She lay anonymous beneath my eyes until I saw her face, shaped by her emotion which I could not fulfill, and I thought, Poor Sybil, she picked a boy for a man's job and nothing was as it was supposed to be. Even the black bruiser fell down on the job. She'd lost control of her liquor now and suddenly I bent and kissed her upon the lips.
"Shhh, be quiet," I said, "that's no way to act when you're being --" and she raised her lips for more and I kissed her again and calmed her and she dozed off and I decided again to end the farce. Such games were for Rinehart, not me. I stumbled out and got a damp towel and began rubbing out the evidence of my crime. It was as tenacious as sin and it took some time. Water wouldn't do it, whiskey would have smelled and finally I had to find benzine. Fortunately she didn't arouse until I was almost finished.
"D'you do it, boo'ful?" she said.
"Yes, of course," I said. "Isn't that what you wanted?"
"Yes, but I don't seem t'remember . . ."
I looked at her and wanted to laugh. She was trying to see me but her eyes wouldn't focus am aer head kept swinging to one side, yet she was making a real effort, and suddenly I felt lighthearted.
"By the way," I said, trying to do something with her hair, "what's your name, lady?"
"It's Sybil," she said indignantly, almost tearfully. "Boo'ful, you know I'm Sybil."