by Mat Johnson
I kill the motor, follow her. I call, but she doesn’t stop. The path is steep, but Tal’s shooting forward, using her lanky legs until she’s over the lip and gone from me. There’s a moment of panic, fear that I’ve already lost her. In the woods. But when I get to the top of the hill Tal’s standing there, in front of a gate. It’s metal, new, temporary, still has the fencing company tags along the side of it. Past it are mobile trailers, and the summer hum of belabored air-conditioning. I don’t see anyone though, and before I can tell Tal this is clearly a mistake, that we should leave, she starts yelling. “Hello! Hello!” She keeps saying it. Tal is loud; she sounds scared. And she is, she’s scared I’m going to send her to the Umoja School. But whatever’s in her voice sets a couple of the trailer doors opening, and some brown people emerge and start walking toward us. And one white guy. He’s an ogre. Seven feet tall, easy. And he has blond dreadlocks. Doesn’t anyone comb their hair anymore? Damn near albino pale with his yellow hair matted together in thick rolls that shoot off loose and straight at the end like a dog’s tail.
“Yo cuz, can we help you?” he asks and it’s more of a demand than inquiry. The giant’s close enough that we can see the pale blue of his eyes and read his T-shirt. It says Malcolm&Garvey&Huey&George. “This is a private area, my man. If you here to see someone, you best name—”
“Warren Duffy!” My name interrupts him. But I don’t say it. It comes from a woman. She’s tall, her sable mane tied up behind her head, the large glasses resting on her nose, her face’s most prominent feature. I watch as she walks off one of the trailer’s little porches, carrying rolls of rubber mats under one arm and a gaggle of hula hoops in the other. Look at that, her sandals, they still clap for her.
I smile, wave, yell out, “Hi, so good to see you again,” but she just looks annoyed in my direction.
When she gets to the gate she says, “Look at that. The world’s biggest sunflower has come to bloom.”
6
RUSTY OLD TRAILERS, decomposing in the woods. There are different kinds of trailers—travel trailers with monotonous white ruffled siding, drab gray business ones the size of shipping containers, shiny aluminum ones shaped like suppositories. There’s even a row of mobile homes that look like Victorian houses for oversized dolls, lined up side by side on the grass in imitation of a town house block. But that’s it. Some moldy circus tents, but they just add to the feeling of bohemian impermanence. A good breeze and it’s all gone.
“I assure you, we are very well funded, and have already begun building an endowment,” the center’s director tells me. As soon as we’re introduced, she asks me to call her Roslyn, or Director Roslyn, but she doesn’t give me her last name. “A literal building is the next step.”
“But this is a public park, right?” It’s totally a public park. It’s owned by the City of Philadelphia.
“There’s an ongoing litigation.” She smiles calmly, the patience of a mother enjoying childlike naïveté.
It’s hard to tell Roslyn’s age because she’s clearly fit and wrinkle-free, and conventionally attractive, but from the full white of her hair I know she’s almost a generation older than me. She shows me her world and I look around this place thinking, Is it free? If not, can I afford it? But all I ask her is, “What’s a ‘sunflower’?”
“A ‘sunflower’? Where did you hear that? That’s a horrible word.”
“It’s a beautiful flower. You can eat it too.”
“Yellow on the outside, brown on the inside. A slang term for a biracial person who denies their mixed nature, only recognizing their black identity.” Roslyn turns her head to look over at me as we slowly walk down the wooded path, as if I’m the source of the etymology. “I don’t allow use of that word here. The Mélange Center is about inclusion of all perspectives of the black and white, mixed-race experience. Our goal is to overcome the conflict of binary. To find the sacred balance.”
“The sacred balance,” I say back to her, to prove I’m listening.
“The sacred balance. An equilibrium that allows you to live a life that expresses all of who you are and hide none of it,” she says, and she keeps talking. I look at her and offer an occasional “Yes” and smile, but mostly I watch my daughter across the lawn with that first biracial militant I encountered. She’s taller than Tal. Much thicker. How can any grown straight man become infatuated with teens when there are women walking this earth? With cellulite and stretch marks because they’re actually living?
“Oh. Sunita.” The director follows my eyes. “Sun is a miracle, really, my little soul sister. But when you get called names your whole life, it’s easy to revert to doing the same.”
Sun. She’s at the younger end of my generation, with a name like that. Creative, but predating the celebrity insane-name movement, which means her parents were also hippies and most likely young and idealistic when she was born. The Brits, they can tell your social station from asking you the weather, but in African America first names offer not only class and region, but year.
“That’s fine. I’m sure Sun’s just used to the word from being called it.”
“Oh no, Sunita Habersham?” Roslyn asks, laughing. “Sun used to be the biggest Oreo on the compound.”
There’s a lecture. A spiel. I’m certainly not the first to hear it and by the time I do it’s fairly glossy and filled with sentences like “We aim to help mixed children deal with the unique challenge of negotiating African and European hybridity.” It’s a beautiful sentence. I don’t know what it actually means, or how you would do it, or what the end product would be either. “Now we’re actively moving to the next stage. A cultural center, an artist retreat. And a school. For your daughter’s age, it would be a GED diploma, by exam, but we offer teachers from the most competitive colleges and universities to give recommendations. We’re building something that will last. A permanent oasis. When you consider that this whole enterprise started as an annual weekend event just three years ago, you get a sense of the trajectory.”
“How’d you do it?”
“Nobody went home. On the last day of the retreat, nobody went home. And then more came. And here you are.” Roslyn smiles again. The grin doesn’t reach her eyes and it reminds me of the mask-like grins of the principals I submitted to from elementary through high school. Instinctively, I want to know if I’m going to be suspended.
We’re by the Victorian cottages now, with their gabled roofs. There’s more than a dozen in the row, with another row behind it. Beautiful little shotgun homes with intricate woodwork and little concrete block porches. But when you look under those porches, you can see the wheels. Roslyn notices me bend a little to look and says, “All of our teachers are well credentialed, and specifically trained in our method of multiracial balance. If you decide to enroll your daughter, I assure you, nobody will be absconding in the night with your tuition.”
When I hear the word tuition, the rest barely registers. Whatever it is, I’m fairly certain it’s beyond what I can afford. I have $532 in the bank, after buying back the bike and picking up some more furniture from Whosoever Gospel Mission. I will get funds from my father’s cash accounts, but who knows when and how much will be left over. Even to live in the damn shell of a house he left me I’ve had to arrange for some roofers and get an electrician who doesn’t care about codes. I’ll be chilling when the house burns down, but even that payout could take another year. Knowing this, that this is beyond my reach, I blink and the school becomes suddenly desirable. It’s an education out in the trees. It’s small classes with teachers still fresh and not worn down by the friction of reality against their good intentions. It’s probably the least threatening majority black place I could take Tal, and the only one where I wouldn’t have to worry about her destroying everything by saying something offensive. They seem a little wacky, but all teachers are a little wacky. At least the ones I’ve dated. Crazy hippie school out in the woods. Naïvely earnest mulattoes starting a comfy commune. It’s Mulattopia. Tal
in tie-dye. It would be so adorable.
“How much is it, can you tell me? Monthly?”
She says a yearly number out loud that’s so insanely high that I laugh because I think she’s messing with me. She smiles again, her perfect teeth on display, and I know she’s not. What kind of halfros have that kind of money? But she keeps going on, saying, “Fellowships and some financial aid are available. Although the forms are still being designed.”
We continue our tour, but only because I’m too embarrassed to say, Sorry, I’m one of those broke-ass Negroes you may have read about. I get Tal as soon as I can break away politely. My teenage daughter’s talking to Sunita Habersham, who after a half-hour to think about it still clearly doesn’t care for me. But she does seem to have a real appreciation for what my X chromosome can create though, because she’s holding Tal’s hand like she’s her aunt.
“We have to get going,” I say into Tal’s ear, give a little tug on her arm meant to move both of us toward the gate.
“What? We just got here. I actually like this place. I can take modern dance. And the boring coursework’s only three hours a day, the rest is electives.”
“We have to go.”
“They offer an after-school Zumba class, Warren. We’re not going anywhere.”
“Tal, please. It’s private,” I whisper. “Look, I can’t afford it. Sorry. We have to go now.”
“Oh, so I have to go to the Umoja School?” Tal asks. Really loud. “I have to go to the black school, where I’ll never be black enough? Where I’ll never truly fit in?” Tal doesn’t believe any of this. Or even if she does, she’s instantly ingested their dogma so well she knows this is exactly how to push these people’s buttons. Tal is a habitual buttonpusher, clearly, and she’s already worked out where their keypad is located. And they hear her, because Tal is nearly screaming now.
Sunita Habersham hasn’t walked away. She looks over at me like I’m the asshole. I am the asshole, but there’s no way Sun could know that. “Finally, I find a place where I can truly be myself and—” Tal keeps going. I try to yank on her arm a litter harder, drag her out. Instead, Sun’s hand grabs my arm first.
“Your daughter hasn’t finished her campus visit. What was the point in coming up here if you’re going to leave halfway through?”
“Sorry, this was a mistake. And also sorry about the thing at the panel; I acted like an insecure jerk. But we have to go. I didn’t know it was private. My error. I can’t afford this right now. Honestly.”
“If it’s really a tuition thing, just join the center. Work for it. That’s why I came to your silly panel in the first place: we need a part-timer in art. I mean, you know, if you don’t think you’re too black for us.”
“See, work, Pops. That’s what being a dad is all about. Working for your kids.” Tal stops Sun’s sniping to contribute.
“That’s it? I teach some classes, and conceivably she can go here for free?”
“Not free, nothing’s free. But I’ll talk to Roslyn. And you’d have to take the Balance Test.” And with that she finally lets go of my daughter, and leans into me.
“Because she really needs to be here,” Sunita Habersham says, her voice hushed but firm. That smell: tea and a mouth of honey.
“Did she say something offensive?” I whisper back, but I don’t get a verbal answer. Just raised eyebrows and that wide mouth silently pantomiming, Oh yeah.
“I can take a dance test. I have an audition routine I’ve been working on,” Tal interjects.
“Not dance, honey: balance. The Balance Test. Everyone has to take it.”
I stand on one foot, make a show of it. Balancing shakily, I put my arm out then bring my finger to my nose, giving a little chuckle. Sunita Habersham doesn’t join me. I look at Tal as she turns to Sun and asks, “If he fails or otherwise makes an ass of himself, does that reduce my chance at admission?” and I laugh loudest and rustle Tal’s hair like she’s an adorable four-year-old and that shuts her up again.
—
The first question on the quiz is, Was O. J. Simpson guilty? That’s all it says.
“What the hell kind of question is that?” I ask. Neither Sunita nor my daughter responds, so I stare back at the test. There are no boxes to fill in.
“Should I just put yes or no?” I ask, and at the other end of the dark little trailer room, Sunita says, “Just put your answer,” not even looking up from whatever she’s working on. Tal is writing away, so I get back to it. I write, Probably, I don’t know, but I do know white folks were a little too excited about a black man murdering a blond white woman. I turn the page and the next question is Name the most important musician of the twentieth century and explain your justification.
“Is this some kind of pop-culture scorecard?” I ask. No response, once more. I see Sun write something again at her podium, and then I get paranoid that her notes are part of the test too, that I’m being tested on taking the test, so I keep going. I write Bob Marley, and a note about seeing his image across Africa more than paintings of White Jesus, and you see a lot of those in Africa. This proves very prescient because on the next page the question is What race was Jesus?
The thing keeps going. The next page features a picture of a black man and a white man running through the streets, the black man in front. The white guy behind him is a cop. I know this picture. It was used in an ad campaign against racism in Britain, I saw it across the tracks on a wall in Charing Cross station. It’s a mental trap. The black guy in the front turns out to be an undercover detective. There’s no way anyone can know that without being told. Next to Describe Scene I write:
They’re both cops, but that is irrelevant. A picture of anyone who isn’t wearing a suit running from a police officer would imply guilt, because businesspeople are the only criminals the law doesn’t care about. Hence the question then becomes one of class. We assume middle- and upper-class people don’t run from the law, because they defend themselves by manipulating the law. Like O. J. Simpson did.
This answer pleases me.
My daughter is turning pages before I am, but I am exasperated before her. The questions keep coming: What do you eat New Year’s Day? What card games do you know? What are your feelings about mayonnaise? What do you do with these?—and a picture of dominoes. With every question, with every answer, I become more inclined to grab Tal’s hand again and walk out, nearly overwhelmed by this impulse. I look up at Sunita Habersham, standing there in judgment. I’m used to having my blackness questioned, but never on paper, and never by an Oreo who would damn me for it. But my daughter is two desks over, just jotting away, unaware of this pretext or just uncaring.
By the final question, Name your black friends [minimum three], I answer, Nat Turner, Warren G. Harding, and What T. Fuck? and then get up to hand it in. All I get is a curt thank-you. Sunita won’t even look up at me from her podium, and when I peek I see I was right; she’s written notes on a page with my name on it. Next to her notes though, Sunita’s reading a comic book. Sunita Habersham is reading Mind MGMT, which is a really good comic book, the sort you have to make the lifestyle choice of visiting specialty comic-book enclaves to find. The sound I make, the puff of air, is less a sigh than the reaction to a gut punch. I have no defenses against this combination of shared interest and physical attraction. I take –7 vulnerability points on all attractive female geek attacks.
Gone is my racial righteousness and in its vacuum I am so drawn to Sunita Habersham that I experience it through the lens of terror: that I will fail to connect with her on even the most platonic of levels, that this is a pivotal life challenge to which I will fail to rise. That the intuition I felt on the first day, that she can save me, was a premonition. When Sunita finally looks up, holding my gaze, I choose to believe this is a signal of mutual attraction.
“Mind MGMT. Do you like comic books?” I lead with.
“We met at a comic convention. What, did you think I was just there for you?” She shrugs, goes back to reading.
>
Mutual attraction is not equal attraction. No cartoon bluebirds sing around our heads or link our hands with ribbon, but I believe we silently share the knowledge that we are grown-ups who enjoy the same obscure hobby, are of close enough age, are of similar heights and fitness proportion, and that we both have faces several others have found pleasant. Also: I’m a big man. And Sun’s a big woman. Tall, full, real. We share a sturdy similarity. Surely she must know we are both Kapha Doshas, in the ancient Hindu Ayurvedic tradition. And I can lift her. And she knows I can lift her—oh yeah, she knows—and not every man can do that. But I can because I match her. I want to lift her. I want to carry her and let whatever thing she’s figured out about how to be black, white and not, carry through the strain in my arms. She knows. I know she does. I can feel it next to her. I can feel good next to her. I look down, as fast as I can past her breasts to her hands on the podium. A hell of a lot of bracelets clack above them but all that metal and not a thing on the only finger that means something.
“You’re black identified,” Sunita tells me. She’s barely looked through my test.
“Really? I could have told you that, but it took me thirty minutes to fill the thing out. How did you—”
“The last question. Most white-identified mixed people actually try to list names. You expressed outrage at the question, a typical black-identified response. I already saw a few more answers, I doubt the rest will indicate different. Or you can wait here for the next ten minutes.” I want to wait. I want to wait and talk to her and tell her how silly this test is, this mixed-race posturing. I want to do it in a way that shows her how witty I am. I want her to be able to tell me why I’m wrong. I want her to be right, even though I am. I want to be on the same page in the same space and not feel alone but hinged to someone solid. Someone just like me, so I can know what it feels like to not be different. Someone just like me but happy. And eventually part of me wants that to lead to sex so I can complete the bonding. I step closer to the podium to hide when the erection starts to build. But Sunita doesn’t notice, because she doesn’t even bother looking at me.
