Mat Johnson - Loving Day

“Charter schools. That’s what people are doing now. They’re free, there’s usually a theme. There’s an Asian one in Chinatown and a black one, not too far from you, past Wayne Junction. Umoja. Guy I used to work with’s the principal. I’ll give you the brochure. That’s what you need for her: real Afrocentric, positive. But not Germantown High.” Tosha grimaces, her hand waving the idea out of the air like so much flatulence. “Don’t let her first real experience with black folks be running from them.”

“You need to clear your head, get out in the open air,” George says. “You need to get back on your bike. I still got the Harley. Needs to be run and I don’t have time. I poured a couple thousand into it since you sold it to me, but I’ll give you a good deal on it. You want to impress your daughter, let her see her old man rolls in style.”

“Buy the bike back, Warren. I’ll show you where it is,” Tosha tells me. When George briefly turns his back to Tosha, she mouths Please! and makes shooing motions with her hands.

“Look, they say being a father’s just about showing up,” George says when he turns back around. “It’s true, too, the standards really are that low. You show up, you don’t beat them, you love them, you pay for stuff. That’s all there is to it.” On this final phrase, George slaps my back. He slaps hard, not hard enough to hurt me but enough to say he could do it if he tried. He is a man. He is a father. He’s licensed to carry a gun. It makes me love Tosha even more, because she saw all the way back then that he would become a man and I wouldn’t. I used to want a time machine so I could go back and stop George from taking her from me. Now I want one to go back even further and make him my father too.

—

“George’s fucking some white dude and he hasn’t lived here in a year,” Tosha tells me in the garage. It seems so improbable, illogical, that I just say who? , but she ignores me. “He just comes over for breakfast, tells the kids he’s working the late shift. He tells me we’re just separated, but he’s leaving me. I know it, I fucking know he is.”

“Who is?” I ask again, but it’s such a stupid question she doesn’t answer and I don’t expect her to, so I follow with “Who with?” after an appropriate pause.

“I don’t know but I’m going to prove it, too. I’ve got him under surveillance,” Tosha tells me. I look at her, and I try not to smile, but there’s a little hint there because I’m thinking she must be wrong. I’m not willing for her marriage to be in trouble. They have everything I am sure brings happiness. They have two beautiful kids, and one okay-looking one. They have a big house, a big solid six-bedroom house made of fieldstone and old wood and it looks sturdy enough to withstand a hurricane or tornado, even though none of those things happen in Philadelphia. George is a detective. George is a black detective. That’s about as close as you can get to being a superhero. Tosha, her lips still full, her nose still broad and bold, is an African goddess sent to humble the racists who would mock any aspect of black femininity. She still stuns me, when I look over at her. Tosha’s thick thighs can run half marathons and her red tongue can quote from Hamlet in the exact voice of Maya Angelou. If these two aren’t happy, if they can’t make it work with all the tools at their disposal, we are all doomed, and I refuse to accept that. I shake my head no , but she doesn’t heed me.

“He’s not supposed to see anyone, that was the agreement. Keep things clean. But when I call him at night? Not there. He says he’s going to the gym when he isn’t at the place he’s renting. For hours? Yeah, right. I don’t have, like, prosecutable evidence. But I know. It’s over. He’s just too much of a coward to make it official.”

“You don’t know,” I tell her. She’s filing her nails with an emery board she just plucked from her back pocket. The filing thing: I have seen her do this over the years when she is angry. First time I saw her do it, I thought she was sharpening them to scratch someone’s eyes out. “You don’t know. You’re probably just in a rough patch. Relationships go up, they go down. It’s just in a recess right now. Why would he be with anyone else? Especially another guy?”

“He swore it wasn’t another woman, and it has to be someone. I tried to have sex with him, four months ago, tried to put my head down there. It smelled like hair conditioner. I did the research, Warren. That’s what they do. That’s what lying scumbag husbands do: they wash their cocks with perfumed conditioner so you can’t smell the whore on them.”

“That crackhead: she was actually in my house. She broke in my house last night,” I shoot back at her. “Just in and out. Didn’t take anything, but still.” It’s a horrible transition. It’s supposed to be a horrible, noticeable transition. It’s supposed to signal that I am not comfortable with the chosen topic, so let’s leave it behind. I almost tell Tosha I’m planning on burning the place down just to shut her up, but I really am so keep that bit quiet.

Tosha, grinding with her emery board fiercely enough that I can see cuticle dust pouring down, ignores this response and answers whatever question I should have asked instead.

“Am I ugly now? Am I hideous? You used to say I was attractive. Am I still attractive? I’m a frumpy mom. Look at me. What happened to me?”

“You’re still beautiful. Very beautiful,” I tell her, and she is, but I can’t look at her right now. Instead, I look at the motorcycle, parked on the side of the garage. It’s still never been dropped. There’s some slight grinding wear on the foot pegs, but that’s it. It’s just like when I sold it to him. Nothing has touched this bike but dust. George has done an amazing job of taking care of it. George has done a better job of taking care of the bike than he has his marriage. George has done a far better job of this than he has with his marriage.

“I’ll talk to him,” I tell her, and the fact that we both know I have nothing to offer George allows her to break the moment she created. Tosha puts the file down.

“Are we going to talk, then? About it? About what happened? Or is it just going to hang out there?”

“About what?” I shouldn’t have come here. I should have just left. I should have saved more money. I should have stuck out my marriage. I shouldn’t have come here.

“About what? Warren, you take off twelve years ago and don’t write once? You don’t respond to one letter? I had to get your address from Sirleaf — which you know took multiple attempts because you know how he is — and you never even bothered to write back to me? You were supposed to be a groomsman in our wedding”—Tosha says “wedding,” and I hear her say “wedding,” and even though I don’t think of her that way anymore, the ghost of the me who did flashes in, then goes dark again—“but you just ran away! Like nearly five years of friendship didn’t matter anymore! You missed my kids being born! We were close!”

“I’m sorry,” I think to preface before I say, “I did friend you on Facebook.” I did. And I looked at her pictures, and pictures of her kids, and her and George, a lot. I hit LIKE often too, which I feel right now should count for something, but I don’t mention this. I got over it. I came back. I ain’t staying but I came back.

Tosha glares at me. Then she sighs and says, “Yes you did. And so did your wife. And it was good to see the pictures she posted. Even though you never bothered to message me back. And I love you like a brother. And that’s why I’m not going to smack the black off you for saying some stupid shit to me like ‘I friended you on Facebook.’ ”