Eve Out of Her Ruins by Ananda Devi Page B

suggestive of night rather than day. I would have seen them as vestals if they had made me the object of their worship. All dressed in white, their veils barely hiding their gentle hearts, their swaying hips, their bronze backsides.
    But they’re like two hands on a body. They don’t need a third. They are free to do whatever they like, whenever they like. Their smiles suggest no need for any boys. Their eyes bind them to each other. We are invisible.
    That scares the gang. I can sense something changing in them, even after they’ve tolerated Eve’s escapades for so long, and Savita’s distant prettiness, and even what drew them together at first. But they don’t want these female bodies being dangled in front of them with no hope of a taste. Eve can move from man to man, but when she’s with Savita, that’s when she slips away. We’re not yours, the two of them say. We never will be. On their tiptoes they slip and slide. The cigarettes flare with sharp inhalations and reveal malicious glimmers in the guys’ eyes. Kenny whispers, it’s time to teach those two a real lesson. The others just get hard. Yeah, what’s their game? A girls’ game, sure, but no way these sluts have any idea what’s coming to them.
    And they keep talking.
    I try my best to calm them down, to change their mind. I have tothink up a hundred different ways to distract them. I say to Clélio, hey Clélio, remember that car you got the license plate number for, yeah, I have the address, my uncle handles vehicle registration stuff. But Clélio’s in his own little world, he’s biting his nails to the quick, and when that happens he doesn’t have any time to listen to me. But everyone else is all for it: let’s go slash the tires on that huge four-by-four, they say. Let’s break the windows and give that little lady a scare.
    Nobody really wants to go do it, but when you’re a gang, you have to forget that you’re a person, you have to be part of this moving, powerful, hot body that nothing can stop. Once you start moving, you have to go all the way.
    Clélio doesn’t want to come.
    Leave him, says Kenny, he’s got his head in the clouds.
    We can’t leave him alone, I say.
    Leave me alone, says Clélio, as he’s peeling away the dead skin on his soles.
    And I do it, because I want to get the rest of them away from Savita and Eve. I want to distract them from the two women.
    We leave the cité at the mercy of Clélio’s breakneck fury.

EVE
    Savita’sjust left me in front of my place. I didn’t go inside right away, as usual. Tonight, more than ever, everything’s weighing down on me. The teacher’s thrown me off. He was like a lizard; he seemed to actually be in love with me—as much as a man can actually know how to love. He stares at me for minutes on end and sighs, and then, suddenly, he unleashes a pent-up fury, but that doesn’t even make me angry.
    Tonight, something weird happened. Something I’d never experienced before.
    Just when he realized it, he seemed shaken, as if he was about to start crying. I can’t figure it out. I don’t think he just wants my body, the way everyone else does. I think he wants me, too, the soft and warm thing beneath my icy crust. When he puts his hands in me, I feel like he’s trying to find that. To find me right where it hurts so much to be touched. But maybe he’s just like all the others and wants to see me wince in pain, and that’s all it is. Maybe he’s just a man the same way all the others are men.
    Fortunately, Savita waits for me every time in front of the school. When I see her, I forget what’s just happened. When I see her, I catch a glimpse of the moments to come and I can shut the door on what tears me apart.
    I think of Savita tonight, she who saves me from myself.

SAVITA
    I’m afraid tonight. I’mwalking her home again, but