by Mat Johnson
It wasn’t hard to reach Mahalia Mathis: her phone number was listed in twenty-four-point font on every electronic page. In fact, the next morning Mrs. Mathis proved to be one of those rare individuals who picks the phone up on the first ring. Before it even rang on my end, catching me off guard. Even though I gave her a vague line of questioning about her website, Mrs. Mathis answered my opening questions immediately in a raspy but bubbling voice, as if we had an interview appointment prearranged weeks in advance.
“I am of Greek, Hopi, Crow, Blackfoot, Chinese, and Danish descent,” she interrupted me to declare immediately after I mentioned the genealogical page on her site. Hearing this, I poked my head back at the computer screen to look at the image of the Negro there looking back at me.
“Actually, I’m calling to inquire about one of your ancestors in particular. You listed a three times great-grandfather, by the name of Dirk Peters, is that correct?”
It was then that for the first time in this already five-minute call Mahalia Mathis actually paused from talking and came up for air. And what a great intake of air it was: a massive, dramatic gasp that seemed less appropriate to a question than to a mortal wound. The inevitable release of wind was no less a performance: the resultant sigh was labored and bass filled. I asked if there was something wrong.
“I will not be able to do this over the phone. You are a stranger, so I do not mind telling you: I am a very sick woman and I am not long for this world, honey. No, not long at all. If you expect me to discuss this … alleged Dirk Peters business with you, you will need … you will need to inquire in person. And considering my condition, you will have to do this immediately.” I eagerly agreed, and despite the clear theatrics, she had me hooked. Even though it would mean getting patted down at the airport for an hour, and risking an airborne explosion flying to Chicago.
I didn’t know that meeting Mrs. Mathis also meant I would be forced to travel from Chicago to the bleak urban landscape of Gary, Indiana; after thoroughly reading her website, I was under the impression that Mahalia Mathis was a resident of the Second City. I soon found that what I thought was a residential address in Chicago was in fact a post office box, and that her driving directions led me not only out of the city but out of the state of Illinois altogether. This information arrived at my cottage in an overnight package from Mrs. Mathis, along with an elaborate press package that included glossy head shots of the lady and several print clippings from her neighborhood newsletter, some more than a decade old, all attesting to her numerous creative abilities.
I found her residence an hour out of O’Hare without much trouble. It was harder to leave my rental car parked on her street, with its thugs hanging about the concrete like bats hang in caves.
“Niggers!” Mrs. Mathis yelled out at them as she let me into her town house, a response which only increased my concern that the car was done for, despite the fact that she insisted this would scare them away for a while.
The home of Mahalia Mathis was elegant on the inside, ornate. It was crowded too. There were many possessions on display in this house, and many, many cats to guard those possessions. Mrs. Mathis struck an impressive figure herself, wearing a muumuu of green paisley silk and a sparkled turban to match. She was a statuesque woman, both in height and in weight; aside from an occasional violent fit of coughing, she didn’t look sick or weak to me as she went about her overcrowded house, with its many boxes and piles of antiques and random curiosities. She was a hoarder, and I was happy about this: if this woman had ever possessed anything of use to my quest, it was clear that she still had it.
It was in Mrs. Mathis’s living room, seated at a large mahogany table covered in antique lace, that we began our discussion in earnest, tape recorder and notepad on my side of the table, a dusty box marked “pictures” on its lid in a handwritten scrawl between us.
“You must realize that the man you speak of—”
“Dirk Peters,” I interrupted. I wanted no mistakes about this.
“Dirk Peters,” she acknowledged with a hand to the side of her temple, as if even uttering those words made her anxious. “You have to understand, in my family, we weren’t even allowed to say his name out loud. No one in my mother’s generation talked about him, and that’s because no one in her mother’s generation did, or the one before that.”
“But why?” I asked, largely because Mrs. Mathis took a couple of seconds off after her opening confession, dabbing her head with a handkerchief repeatedly even though it must have barely been more than sixty degrees Fahrenheit in the room. I was still wearing my coat.
“Because he is the Dirk Peters written about by that great author Mr. Edgar Allan Poe, all those years ago. The one who accompanied Arthur Gordon Pym on his southern adventure!” she shot back at me as if I was a fool. But I did not feel like a fool at that moment. To the contrary, I felt brilliant: I hadn’t even mentioned Poe’s novel before this point.
“Mrs. Mathis, do you realize that this is a major historic revelation?” I asked, struggling to constrain myself. “It’s an important discovery for American literature and for America herself. Why did your family keep this a secret for so long?”
In response to my query, Mahalia Mathis made no attempt to hide her disappointment in the poor display of intelligence on my part for even pursuing this line of questioning. After much eye rolling and elaborate head wagging had been completed, Mrs. Mathis finally saw fit to compensate for my lack of intuition.
“Well, he left that poor white man down there to die, didn’t he? Not only did he go along with a mutiny, which would have brought shame enough to my family’s name had it been widely known. But the fact that he left that poor white man to die on some iceberg, to freeze to death. The fact that Arthur Pym was a famous white man just made it worse. Time was, if white folks hear your kin killed one of them, they libel not to let the fact that it was a hundred years ago stop them from getting their rope.”
“Oh, I get it, I see, right. Why didn’t I think of this before? Of course there would have been larger, real-world repercussions to worry about, particularly as an African American man in—”
“A what?” Mrs. Mathis’s hand shot down to collapse on my own.
“An African American man?” I repeated, assuming I had garbled the last of my words in the excitement of the moment. When I said “African” again, Mrs. Mathis squeezed my fingers so tight it left me with the impression of being gripped by a blood pressure machine.
“Honey, I got lots of Indian in me. I got Irish and I got a little French too. I got some German, or so I’m told. I even got a little Chinese in me, on my mother’s side. Matter of fact, I’m sure I got more bloods in me than I knows. But I do knows this: I ain’t got no kind of Africa in these bones,” Mahalia Mathis delivered, poking her naps back under her turban as she snorted at me derisively.
After taking a moment to gather herself from my apparent slight, Mrs. Mathis proved to be as helpful as I’d hoped. From the cardboard box that sat beside her, she removed a folded piece of yellowed paper carefully wrapped in aged cotton cloth, and placed it on the table before me. Although clearly impressed with the white gloves I had brought with me for the purpose of revealing to her my own Dirk Peters manuscript, Mrs. Mathis still smacked my hand when I reached for her document. She chose instead to hold open her fragile paper for me to read. I was expecting to see Peters’s chicken-scratch handwriting before me, and when I didn’t I could feel my body deflate slightly in response. It was good that it did, because when I read the words written there I needed room for my mind to expand.
Mr. Dirk Peters.
I will kindly ask you to stop harassing me, as I have now addressed your fear of defamation in regards to this matter. I will write again that I had ended my tale of long fiction without showing our mutual friend coming to any sort of demise, by foul play or other. But, in light of your request and the energetic ones of your local legal counsel, I have considered the matter further. Instead of adding your requested discla
imer, however, I have written an epilogue in Mr. Pym’s hand to serve as the final linking entry. Thus it will end the book, and I trust as well this correspondence.
Sincerely,
E.A.P.
After a lengthy recounting of her family history and the presentation of many a brown photo of many a brown face, Mrs. Mathis kindly agreed to make a deal with me. For her part, she would make me a color photocopy of her priceless letter, done on archival paper for historical purposes, and in return I happily agreed to escort Mrs. Mathis to some kind of local social gathering on the following day, when I was to return to pick up my treasure.
“It’s good luck, you coming when you did. You’re going to like this. It’s right up your alley” was all she would tell me of what she had planned.
* (Negatively.)
† Laissez les bons temps rouler!
‡ Usually, these claims take the form of the sentence “You know, I got Indian in me.”
§ The most repeated line in the manuscript was “______ was a lazy sod.”
‖ Having examined the hand and paper stock of that first cover page, I came to the conclusion that that page alone was not the work of Dirk Peters himself. Rather, I believe, it was the work of another, earlier owner of the manuscript. Apparently this owner attempted to translate the text into readable English, but after slogging through the opening title, author, et cetera, admitted defeat and went no further.
IT turned out that Mahalia Mathis was not the only resident of Gary, Indiana, to claim Native American descent. Despite the fact that the satellite city of Chicago was 84 percent black, there were enough “Indians” to form a club, and it was to participate in its gathering that Mrs. Mathis had recruited me.
The Native American Ancestry Collective of Gary (NAACG) met on the first Thursday of every month at the Miller Beach Senior Center.* During our long and illuminating ride, I was simultaneously given a tour of the modern-day Gary, complete with a commentary on its most famous entertainment family, and told of the saga of Mahalia Mathis’s own family, the Jacksons.† Mahalia’s late husband, Charles, had passed a decade before. Charles, Mahalia acknowledged, had indeed been “colored.” Mrs. Mathis went on to note that both her sons had married white women and that her grandchildren had been spared Charles’s burden. It seemed that her sons had been spared the burden of their mother as well, because it was clear from her tone that she was estranged and isolated from all of her people.
“Your mother must have been so relieved when you came out,” Mahalia Mathis turned in her passenger seat to say to me, reaching out to lightly touch the back of my neck, where my stringy hair met my fired alabaster skin. I giggled nervously, jerked my head, and eventually the older woman put her hand back at her side again.
Once the community center had been entered it was rather easy to locate the dozen or so NAACG members. This was not because the group looked like Native Americans; to my eyes, they looked like any gathering of black American folks, some tan and most brown. What distinguished this group was their attire. The first man I saw in the room had a full Native American headdress, a Stegosaurus spine of white feathers that reached all the way down to his moccasins. He was sitting on the edge of a metal foldout chair trying not to harm his plumage while he sipped his coffee from a Dunkin’ Donuts cup. As I walked in with Mrs. Mathis on my arm, he turned toward us and the red war paint he had on his nose and cheeks spread as he smiled. Others in the room were more muted in their attire, but all seemed to have their flair. By the open box of donuts a woman wore a casual coat made of simulated Hopi cloth. Over by the blackboard a tall, slender brother chuckled and chatted on his cell phone, his raised hand a miniature museum of turquoise finger ornaments. Past him, a portly man with chemically relaxed hair tied into two greasy ponytails twirled one of those wet ropes with his finger as he waited for the meeting to begin. The only person besides myself who was not outfitted in some form of indigenous attire was a brown-skinned woman in a pink raincoat sitting in the farthest chair from the door as she read a magazine, but clearly she was the waiting escort of someone in the group.
Somehow it had been spread around the room that I was a reporter sent to cover their event.‡ The folks, pleasant and welcoming, made their introductions by telling me both their names and their Native connections. Tanisha Johnson—Cherokee. Antony Thomas—Chickasaw. Tyrone Jackson—Seminole.
“We’re so glad you’re here, so glad that you came to record this special day,” Tyrone told me, and the others who began to take their seats as well agreed.
“Well, you know I couldn’t just let this day go by, could I? This is historic,” Mahalia Mathis boomed, her own hair hot-combed back into a Pocahontas bun for the occasion.
I whispered to her, “I’m sorry, what is today?”
“Today, we get our proof. That was my surprise. It will make an excellent essay for you; I know it. Today the truth is revealed, at long last. DNA testing isn’t just for criminals trying to get out of jail free; it’s for decent Indians trying to prove their heritage.”
“It took us a year, and a lot of phone calls, but we found Dr. Hollins over at the University of Chicago to do our test for us, part of a program I read about in the Telegraph,” bragged Antony, handing me a cruller on a napkin. “All expenses paid, all we had to do was scrape a Q-Tip in our mouths and they said they’d do the rest.”
“I’m going to send my baby to college on this evidence, just you watch. We tried to join the Sioux Nation a few years back, and they had the nerve to turn us down. We’ll see about that now,” Tanisha humped, the tassels that lined her coat and pants rippling like the legs of a centipede.
The others were equally excited, and as they told their stories of ostracization by their respective Native nations, I empathized with their obvious pain. Although they didn’t mention it, I imagined walking around Gary, Indiana, dressed in Native American attire had probably led to other incidents of alienation as well.§
It was out of empathy that I removed a pad from my pocket and began taking notes, half convinced that I might just write an essay about this, that maybe I could play at being a pop psychologist. If this Negro in a Rick James jacket could call himself a war chief, then why not? Then the brother from the University of Chicago’s lab finally arrived.
“Well, as many of you thought, your tests have proven that, as a group, you do have a percentage of Native American heritage. There is a margin of error, of course, but overall your tests proved to have between zero and thirty-two percent Native DNA, between eleven and sixty-four percent European DNA, and as for your African DNA—”
“On average then,” Tyrone interrupted eagerly, “how much Native blood do we have?”
The professor stiffened visibly, put down the chart he was reading from, and leaned back on the desk behind him. “Well, the average … On average you have about six percent. Six percent Native blood among you, which is about the average for African Americans on the East Coast, for instance.”
“Six percent? Six percent?” Tyrone stood, indignant. “That’s all you could find, six percent? Well what the hell is the margin of error?”
“Six percent.” The professor coughed into his hand and then immediately began shuffling his individual results, moving to hand them out just so he didn’t have to stand in the center of the room anymore.
As the NAACG members inspected their individual test results, it became clear to me that the natives were getting restless. Antony, for instance, dropped his Boston creme right onto the floor and declared, “It’s scalping time!” Mrs. Mathis, clearly trying to keep herself composed as the elder of this village, not even bothering to look at her own results, attempted to calm the room. “Professor, you did say that some of us have thirty-two percent Indian, right? You did say that.”
“Well, one of you does. The rest … not so much,” the professor, in motion, offered. Amazingly, his coat was already on when he said this, and most of his many papers had been speedily repacked into his briefcase.
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br /> “Me!” came a slight but jubilant voice from the far corner of the room. It was the woman in the pink raincoat, who now pumped her fist, staring at her report as if a great bounty had been won. Her round brown face did look like she belonged to a tribe, but more Igbo than Apache.
When I turned back to Mahalia Mathis, she seemed to have aged nearly ten years in as many seconds. Her mouth was agape, her top denture clacked loosely down for lack of support. Mrs. Mathis thought the thirty-two percent Native was her, I realized. That was the only thing that had let her keep her composure before now. Putting a trembling hand to the folder before her, Mrs. Mathis looked inside, and I peered discreetly over her shoulder. Two percent Native. Twenty-three percent European. Seventy-five percent African. This last bit I saw when I picked the findings off the linoleum after Mahalia Mathis collapsed, unconscious.
Discovering to my great relief that the older woman was neither dead nor in a coma, I carried Mrs. Mathis off the floor and out of the room, placing her barely conscious body in the backseat of my rental car. There she moaned and coughed as I returned her to her residence, invisible in my rearview mirror, her occasional sobs the only proof I had that she had recovered from her faint. At her curb, my steadying arm was all that managed to get her to her door. Not a word was said, not even “Good night.” I was so freaked out by the entire incident, so in a rush to distance myself from the entire event, that I left her front stoop before I realized that I didn’t get what I had come for: Poe’s letter. It took all of my social strength to return right then to Mahalia Mathis’s door and knock on it. “The letter,” I bellowed to the wood, attempting to be both loud and empathetic, repeating this refrain until my throat was as sore as my rapping knuckles. It took me a while to accept that, even if the older woman heard me, she was beyond my reach now.
