Loving Day

by Mat Johnson

  “I have a present for you!”

  “I don’t see any presents, Pops.”

  “This!” My arms go out, up. I motion, circle, get a little dizzy, stop. “You see all around you. All this is yours! I am signing over Loudin to you. I’m signing the inheritance over to you! To do as you like! As long as that’s selling it and taking the money and going to Whitman College! And giving me the rest to live on!”

  Tal looks around, caught for a moment, then says, “Wait, you were going to pay for the college anyway. That’s not really a gift.”

  “But now you’re going to pay for it!”

  Tal starts to walk away. I look up, at Spider, leaving Sun’s trailer, alone. The door shuts behind him. Spider shrugs. At least I got one of them, his gesture tells me.

  “What do you want from me?” I yell after my daughter and it sounds annoyed and I don’t mean that so I try again with “Whatever you want, I’ll give you whatever you want,” which I immediately realize is something that should never be said to a teenager but, there, I’ve already done it. And this gets Tal to stop.

  When she looks at me, I know she doesn’t know what she wants. Or she does, but they are not things a mortal can do. She waits it out though, thinks on it. I’m proud of her for that. The genie has granted the wish. She is trying to think of an answer better than “Three more wishes.”

  “I want my Sesa tattoo. I’ve earned it.”

  “You’re not eighteen yet. I said when you’re eighteen.”

  “Dad. My birthday was two days ago.”

  —

  Tal’s arm is swabbed and prepped and Spider seems very professional about it, and I don’t want to be here. I want to end the day, admit defeat, call it a night. I want to end the month. I want to end the life. I can’t end my life because Tal needs me and that hurts, the lack of chance at the alleviation of pain, but she needs me. And I need to be a good father. I will never be a good father, though, so I just want to be a better father. The kind of father who buys a calendar and puts important dates on it. At least that kind of father.

  “I’m so sorry,” I say one more time, then again with another “so” in it. I’m building a mountain of apologies. Tal isn’t answering me, she’s not talking to me at all, but I’m going to climb the mountain of regret and reach her someday, so it has to be tall.

  Spider lays a stencil on her skin, presses it down, and I know that soon he will take a needle and pour ink into her bleeding flesh. There’s giggling from Tal as she’s branded with the preliminary etching. I don’t find it funny, because soon it will be permanent. To Spider she talks, even smiles, when he holds up her temporary design, the swirl outline with the Star of David on the inside.

  “I was hoping you’d at least throw a little Gaelic twist in there, for your old man.” I try to play along.

  “Do you want that, sweetie?” Spider asks Tal directly.

  “No,” Tal says, so I know she can hear me.

  After the design is pressed on wet paper to her skin, Tal looks at it in the mirror like it’s a good thing it will soon be made to last the rest of her life. Spider has the needles. Spider has the true ink. Permanence comes with pain, as always.

  “Okay, now here’s the big question,” Spider says to her. He’s holding up what looks like an airbrush gun in one hand, and a ruler-sized wooden rod in the other. “Do you want to do this modern style, or do you want me to go the traditional hand-tattoo route?”

  “Spider, you are not needling my daughter with a stick.”

  “It looks primitive but actually hurts a little less. A little.”

  “Honey, listen to me. This thing, it’s forever. Are you sure you really want this on your body forever? Are these people that important to you? This Mélange thing, I know you love it, but it’s only going to be a couple months in a long life. You’re off to college, then you have your whole—”

  “Poke me with the stain stick,” Tal tells Spider.

  “Is that okay, dad?” Spider asks me, and takes my shrug.

  Tal flinches at the initial piercing. I go to her before I even think of doing it. Kneeling on the floor, I pat Tal’s head, transitioning from my hand to a towel when I feel the sweat beading on her brow.

  “Pops? You have no idea how bad this stings,” Tal says finally. I don’t know. I am the last untattooed man on earth. I am He Who Has No Ink. Everyone else has made their decision, has chosen their totems. The lack of paint on my skin at this age—where it seems like even babies are written upon in the maternity ward—has made me the last of my own clan. We, the undecided.

  “You could go next, dude. It’s been a long year. Join us! It’s not a Mélange thing; it’s a mixed thing. You’ve earned it.”

  “Yeah, no thanks. My plan is to finish this life unscarred.”

  I can’t actually see what’s happening. Or I can’t actually bring myself to see. I look at Tal’s face. I force myself to stop flinching when she does. There’s her pain. And here I am, finally. I missed her flu shots, her first fall from a bicycle, even her ear piercings, but for this I am present. Tal’s first tattoo. The moment she is forever marked. The moment even her body loses its pretense to being a blank state. We have stories. Now you can just see one of her chapters.

  It’s taking too long. “Can I do something for you, honey?” I ask Tal. “What can I do for you right now. For the pain?”

  “Bring me vodka.”

  “No.”

  “Then bring me Sun,” Tal tells me, adding a yelp when I seem reluctant to carry out the order.

  —

  I knock so lightly on Sun’s door. I’m so polite. Just cute little taps, evenly spread out, I’m very controlled and considerate.

  “Sunita? Please. Open up. I need to talk to you.”

  When that doesn’t work, I hit a little harder, and a little more so every few beats. “Sun. Please. It’s not for me. It’s for Tal.” My voice is low, but it doesn’t need to be. There’s no one else outside to hear me. I have no idea where everyone is, but they aren’t walking the grass alleys of Halfie Heights. There must be a party. A party to which I wasn’t invited. Two parties, most likely, one for the Oreos, one for the sunflowers. You would think the sunflowers’ party would be rocking more bass, but Little Halfrica is silent.

  When I sit down on the stoop, I say it again. “It’s for Tal.” Because it all is for Tal. These steps, they’re metal and narrow and hurt my ass but I don’t care because it’s for Tal. Also, it’s pathetic. I want Sun to see me being pathetic. I want her to see my regret. I want—

  The light goes on beside the trailer. Just appears, no sound. Bright light. I look to Sun’s windows. Curtains still drawn. Space behind them now dark inside. It was the outdoor motion detector. I haven’t moved.

  I go upright silently. I don’t move any more than that. I don’t breathe. I hold my breath and listen. I hear nothing. Not cars. Not radios. Not humans. Not crickets. And then I’m scared, because I don’t hear crickets. There is always the sound of crickets, at night, in Germantown, in May. There are no crickets. There is nothing.

  There is the white woman.

  There is the sound of footfalls, running.

  She is there and then she isn’t there and she’s running away. Goddamn half-naked white woman running through Germantown. That’s all it takes to ruin everything.

  I run after her.

  I run before I realize I can barely walk. I bang into the trailer next to Sun’s, hear some Oreo scream in the shaky inside, keep running. I’m going to catch her. I’m going to end the hoodoo nonsense. I am going to rid the land of all crackheads forever. She glides beyond me. I will push her to the ground, hold her there and scream, sit on her till the police come and Tal too, with half a tattoo but who cares because now she’ll know the lie of this place.

  Bare pale white feet, black on the bottom. Ghosts don’t have dirty feet.

  “Ghosts don’t have dirty feet!” I yell when she cuts through another line of trailers.

  �
�What the fuck?” comes back, but not from her, from another trailer I slide into because the dewy grass is slippery and my balance even more unreliable.

  A white shirt. Long. Like a gown. A dirty white gown. Maybe a hospital gown. But it’s her. The woman from the house. The burglar. I know her. I have seen her. Not like the others claim, not in some mystical revelation. I have seen this crackhead asshole and I know her and I don’t even know where from besides my dreams but I know her. It’s her. I am running. Stopping. Spying her through the maze of mobile homes. Running again.

  “This is private property!” I yell like I own the place. I own the place. Or now Tal owns the place, but I would know if there were any white people living here. There are no white people here. There are tons of half-Europeans, but no whole ones.

  Darting to the end of the trailers, she heads toward the last one, turns out of sight at its corner. I chase after the shadowed blur of her pale body. She runs from me like she’s guilty and she is and I will capture her and reveal her to the world.

  “I see you!” I yell at her. “Everybody wake up! I see her! Come see her!”

  It will be like Scooby-Doo! I do it for my Velma. Everyone will surround us while I whip off the ghoul’s mask.

  I turn the corner and she’s gone.

  She hasn’t gone farther. The grass is empty beyond. No one is that fast. She did not vanish into thin air. Only ghosts vanish into thin air. Ducking down, I look under the Victorian trailer, see nothing. I look up at the door. It’s Roslyn’s door.

  It’s Roslyn’s door.

  It’s Roslyn. It’s always been Roslyn. I am drunk and I am tired and I am breathing really heavy now too, but I know, it’s Roslyn. Behind it all.

  Roslyn, who answers the door after only two knocks, because she’s awake. Of course she is.

  “Where is she!”

  “Warren? It’s very late. What’s wrong? Why are you doing this?” The expression; she plays it perfectly.

  “I know she’s in there.”

  Roslyn, who just stares at me. Standing in her doorway. Nothing but a long T-shirt on and a sleeping bonnet. Standing there like a door herself, a closed one. In a backward, inside-out T-shirt with the tag showing. Who won’t say a damn thing more. And I win. I win. Because she lifts up a finger and points down to the far end of the property, wags her head in defeat, and goes back inside.

  I walk in the direction noted. As far into the dark as the compound allows. Along the line of the most rusted of the property’s fence, below where the slope of the hill hits its sharpest downturn, where the angle hides it from the rest of the property. I am coming for her. I am coming for him too, if he’s here. I’m coming.

  I see a light. Not the steady drone of the streetlight. A spark. A flicker. Candlelight. Against the farthest corner of the yard. I see her, on the ground, before it. I start running, trying to get all the way before she can escape, am at full momentum again when I can already tell it’s not the white woman.

  “What the hell is your problem?” comes from Sunita Habersham when I reach her. She’s on her knees. There’s not one light before her, but three. Bodega candles. Leaning up against the middle iron rods of the border. Their light flickers off her face, and the intimacy of her posture makes me feel the embarrassment as it takes over.

  “Did you see a white lady?” I ask, because I can’t bring myself to ask what she’s doing, what this is, what is going on with her. Or why she’s frantically gathering up the pictures that I now see are lying on the ground before her, pulling them into a loose pile and sticking them in a cardboard box. I don’t look at them, don’t even want to guess what they are. I want to run past her, continue crackhead-hunting, pretend this is normal behavior on both our parts.

  “I’m not crazy,” Sun insists.

  “I didn’t say you were crazy. I wasn’t even thinking that.” And I wasn’t, because I hadn’t even gotten that far.

  “It’s a ritual. For closure.” I look down at my ankle, which I realize is hot. Because it’s burning. I hop from the pain, see something fall off my pant leg. I lift it up, hold the remains of a photo, the image of a man’s flannel shirt obscured by a destructive line of ember that glows in the darkness.

  “Wait—What the hell? Are you burning these?”

  “They’re just prints! It’s a releasing ceremony, okay?”

  “So this is where you’ve been going? All those times at night when you disappear?” There is actually relief in my voice, and that leads to a little levity, which I understand immediately Sun takes as mocking.

  “Not every night. Just some anniversaries.”

  “You’re out here, making an alter?” I hand her the singed image. Sun takes it, blows on it gently, like suddenly it is something to take great care of.

  “Roslyn says my problem, with getting over Zeke, isn’t that I never got a note. My problem’s all the other reminders he left behind. I mean, that’s the idea. I don’t know. Roslyn suggested it.”

  “Oh, okay. Roslyn suggested it.” I don’t intend for there to be any sarcasm in my voice. I don’t even think there is; Sun just borrows my cynicism from earlier conversations and applies it here. It’s enough to break the spell of her defensiveness, put her into an opposite mode.

  “What the hell are you doing out here?”

  “Tal would like your support as she gets her Sesa tattooed,” I say. It just comes out of my mouth, overriding the more problematic subject of fake-ghost-hunting. I wasn’t even thinking about my original motivation; the sentence was just sitting there, waiting to escape, waiting for the moment when my brain shut down. “I let her get it. Since I forgot her birthday,” I add, when the first explanation clearly doesn’t seem good enough.

  “Tal’s birthday isn’t until next week,” Sunita Habersham tells me, fastening up her box with rubber bands. “Next Thursday,” she says before blowing out the candles. Sun saves “She played you” for when we’re walking back.

  21

  IN FOUR PIECES, it will go, the house that Loudin built. The structural mover assures me that they can do the job, that the initial deconstruction shouldn’t take more than a week at most, that the restorative work to hide the surgical cuts shouldn’t take more than a few months. While he talks, mistaking me for someone who cares, his men measure and take notes and hold little detectors to the walls to see where the beams are, spraying orange paint in response to their finds. They can do the cuts right down the line of the wood. When it’s reassembled, you won’t be able to tell the difference, the project manager tells me. You could take this halfway around the world and it would hold. Houses like this aren’t built anymore.

  The call from Tosha interrupts this, and I’m still not ready to take it, but I don’t want to talk about my father’s house anymore.

  I answer with, “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s too late for sorry, Warren. I’m just calling to tell you, I will be there. I watched it, and I’m not letting this get any further. And not just me, I’m not the only one who thinks this has gone too far. We will be there. The community. With our own press, our own cameras. We’re not just going to let this divisive bullshit happen. I still care about you, but I can’t believe you had the nerve to go on TV talking about jungle-fever ghosts. And in that dirty ass T-shirt.”

  I’m asking her what she’s talking about. I’m saying “Wait, talk to me,” before I realize she’s hung up.

  —

  The anchors’ lead-in is “Spirits of Philadelphia,” and a bunch of prattle and toothy grins, and even though it’s just a clip you can tell it’s the last segment of a slow news night.

  “Why didn’t you tell me this came on?”

  “I didn’t have time,” Tal says, which is a lie. She must have known it would be broadcast last night, which is why she has the show’s site bookmarked already, and why she didn’t say a word through breakfast. So I brace myself.

  The first shot is Loudin, in the daylight. It’s taken from the street. Then the camera takes a s
troll through Halfie Heights, and the voice-over describes it as “a new commune exclusively for black people who are half-white.” Spider’s Airstream: “They live in makeshift motor homes for now, but they insist they’re here to stay, and that they are the future.” Roslyn comes on. She’s sitting on the front porch of my father’s house like she already owns it. “We offer a sanctuary for people of both African and European ancestry to move beyond the cold war of black and white in America, and come to peace with themselves.”

  Tal, who hangs over my shoulder, straightens and steps back now. So I know it’s coming.

  “But not all is peaceful at Loudin Mansion,” the voice says in a campy fifties horror-movie style. Same shot of the house, but now a filter flips the image to a black and silver negative. “Sightings of two ghosts, one female, white, and one a purportedly black male, have been reported throughout the camp.” When Tal comes on, her name appears at the bottom over the title “Property Owner/Ghost Witness.”

  “They were here. I believe it was a sign. I believe it was the first interracial couple, welcoming us. Telling us the house is ours.”

  The light of the camera simultaneously flattens Tal’s makeup-less face and makes the poof of her hair appear wild and expansive. My daughter looks as crazy as this sounds. They show the clip of her bathroom video; a link to the YouTube page where it’s hosted even pops up. It’s even grainier, filtered through the lens of television. After describing the footage, the voice says, “Not everyone agrees about who’s doing the haunting.”

  “They were the ghosts of crackheads,” it edits me as saying.

  “Tal!” I yell in real life but I no longer feel her behind me. I’m described in a screen tag as “Witness’s Father.” The voice-over says I am a longtime Germantown resident so it can interrupt me until I blurt out my next comment out of context.