Angela Flournoy - The Turner House

Francis never returned to Arkansas after collecting his family. And the call to something greater—to preach, to lead, to be anything other than a man who worked too much and made too little—either had stayed in Arkansas with his haint or had never really been within him. For funerals and summer trips he would drive Viola and the children as far as her brothers in Cleveland, and as they made the journey south, Francis would turn back to Detroit. He would continue to take things that happened in the city personally—white flight, the government-sponsored demolition of Black Bottom and Paradise Valley, plants closing, drugs arriving—but he would love the city just the same, even if he did not love who he had become within it.

There truly ain’t no party like a Turner house party. Like a single-celled organism, it can change shape and reproduce itself with little fuel. The food runs out by 9 P.M., no matter how much they make, but the booze never ends. The children, in a pop- and candy-fueled ecstasy, will do doughnuts on their Big Wheels in the basement. Or, minus miniature vehicles, they’ll play video games on the old big screen down there, standing up, jostling one another, fighting the big screen’s static, and only stopping for Faygo and pee breaks. In the absence of any toys at all—which is unlikely because Cha-Cha’s basement doubles as a toy graveyard—Turners under the age of twelve may resort to old school play, linking arms and running as fast as they can in a circle until someone vomits, playing tag in the dark until someone gets a minor concussion, or simply screaming at the top of their prepubescent lungs until an adult comes down and threatens them into silence. The adults will play dominoes, bid whist, and Po-Ke-No. They tell the same embarrassing stories about one another and guffaw as if they’re new. They make liquor runs; they make new boyfriends uncomfortable; they make neighbors consider calling the police. They will eventually kick the children out of the basement, tuck them away upstairs, and dance in the belly of Cha-Cha’s house to classics from the disparate decades of their youths.

But first: preparation. Quincy gathered his brothers and their adult children in Cha-Cha’s living room, put his sisters on speakerphone, and devised a game plan. Tina’s absence necessitated this pre-party huddle. Cha-Cha went along with the plans as if it wasn’t his house and he wasn’t supposed to be hosting. He couldn’t face the day, with its marathon drinking and joking and inevitable arguments, without Tina. What he needed was solitude to think about the mess he’d willingly made of his marriage. A Turner house party had no room for solitude.

Quincy, Russell, Miles, and Duke left the house and came back with enough farm-animal limbs to start their own butcher shop. Then Miles and Duke, the Californians, marinated beef for carne asada and brined their chicken in lime juice and beer. Quincy and Russell, the southerners, changed into short sets and Panama hats, puffed on cigars, and began the complicated process of concocting rubs for their ribs. Lonnie foraged through the house for music. The nieces and nephews staked their claim on adulthood by going out to buy the first haul of booze.

Cha-Cha hosed out old moldy coolers in the driveway and wondered how long he could get away with going back to bed before someone noticed. Lonnie opened the garage door, presumably for more light to help him as he sifted through the boxes of cassette tapes and records stacked behind a tangle of rusty bikes. He didn’t speak to Cha-Cha, and Cha-Cha was grateful to him. He felt like a hostage in his own house. He saw now that these parties were larger than him and Tina, and even Viola. That his family could go on party prepping in Cha-Cha’s house when his home life was an obvious wreck indicated of a lack of respect. This was what happened when an open-door policy—something Cha and Tina had prided themselves on—ran amok. When mi casa es su casa was taken literally. His house had become an extension of the Brotherly Banquet Hall of their youths, except his siblings slept here too, and paid no security deposit for damage. In exchange, Turners thought their presence was expression of love enough; that they’d booked flights and crossed state lines to invade Cha-Cha’s space was supposed to be some sort of gift to him. It felt more like an ambush.

Miles came around the side of the house with two hot links on a skewer and a Corona in each shirt pocket.

“Early spoils of the war,” he said, and pulled off a link for Cha-Cha. Cha-Cha found no joy in the taught, salty skin of the link, nor in the spicy, juicy meat inside, but he ate it anyway, because historically he loved hot links. He put the Corona in his own shirt pocket for later use.

“So,” Miles said. “I looked into tearing down the house. Not to sell it, but I figure we could tear it down and keep the grass mown till we wanna rebuild or whatever. Less hassle. Plus it wouldn’t be uglying up the block.”

“Let’s just focus on getting ready for the party,” Cha-Cha said. “So everybody can have a good time.”

“Shit, I’m already having a good time. I got a link and brew, don’t I? I’m just sayin I get it, is all. Turns out it’ll cost at least eight thousand to tear that sucker down and haul the junk away. And then we’d still have to renegotiate the loan. It ain’t an easy decision.”

“Who’s tearing what sucker down?” Duke said. He sauntered over from the side of the house, beer gut first. “The house?”

Miles and Duke had always been a package deal, so inseparable that folks on Yarrow thought they were twins instead of a year apart. Cha-Cha vacillated between envying their built-in friendship and being suspicious of it. He now saw it as a way for neither brother to truly grow up, an annoying Frick and Frack routine they’d never stopped performing.

Duke stared at Cha-Cha, waiting for an answer.

“Nobody’s tearing anything down,” he said.

“Good,” Duke said. “Cause I been doin some math.” He mimed punching numbers into his calculator palm.

“Me too,” said Miles. “That’s what I was just sayin. It costs at least eight thousand—”

“Three thousand seventy-six a piece!” Duke yelled over him. “That’s all it is per child to get the loan paid up. Don’t try to tell me that all a these grown-ass people can’t come up with three thousand. Three Gs, as the young folks say.”

“That’s a lot of money for me,” Lonnie said. “I’m on a fixed income.” He did not look up from his boxes of music.

Miles and Duke exchanged quizzical looks and snickered.

“Well, according to Russell, that’s money down the toilet,” Miles said. “He won’t pay it cause a what already happened to the garage.”

“We might as well hash all this out before the party starts,” Duke said. “Before folks get that liquor in them, and the girls come over and get emotional.”

“Marlene gonna kick your behind if y’all do this without her,” Lonnie said, walking toward them.

“Ain’t nobody scared of Marlene,” Duke and Miles said in unison. This was a lie.

“I’ma go get Russ and Quince,” Duke said.

Cha-Cha could not stay for this. He didn’t care that this was his house, and that he was the one who would have to sign for any final decision. He saw why Troy, wrong-headed as he’d been, thought it was easier to just do what he wanted and fill in his siblings later. Nothing would be decided in this driveway roundtable, with his sisters excluded and meat still grilling in the backyard. He walked past his brothers to the front door, set down his Corona on the entryway table, and picked up his keys. He turned up the radio as he sped away, and only faintly heard his brothers calling after him.