Mat Johnson - Loving Day

“Don’t worry about it, just pay me back when you can. Unless they rob you blind first.” Tosha is inspecting the GPS device, turning it in her hands. “This tracker’s too big; I need a smaller one.”

“They didn’t take my car. They even left the keys in the glove compartment. I’m not really worried about theft, I’m worried about them getting in and getting near Tal. I don’t need a tracker.”

“It’s not for you. It’s for the white bitch.”

—

I don’t know if the “white bitch” is really white. I mean, even through the bookstore window I can see that the blond is bleached and she’s got a tan that looks like it doesn’t go away in the winter.

“I got to get back to the house. I got the roofers coming,” I whisper to Tosha from the passenger seat. This gets her to drop the binoculars she’s been staring through since we parked. They’re not like the high-powered, professional scopes we were just looking at in the spy shop. These are pink, plastic, and have a purple strap that dangles loosely in front of Tosha’s face as she peers through them. It almost makes what we’re doing seem light, trivial, instead of wrong and creepy and probably illegal.

“Let me get this right, it’s a whole big compound, with an education program and all, just for half-black people? In the park, with the bugs? What the hell is the point of that? All that just to run away from being black?”

“They’re not trying to run away from blackness. Some of them are even learning to run to it. They’re just mixed people trying to be themselves.”

“They’re not mixed ,” she snaps back, the word wet and viral. “I’m black. You’re black. African American, Bilalian, Negro, Colored folk, blackity-black, black. Those Oreos up there, they’re black too, although I’m sure they’d cry if you told them. We’re all mixed with something, no one is pure. Who cares about percentages?”

“Yeah, but it’s not about genes, DNA. It’s about being able to express all of who you are culturally. I mean, they would say that. That if you grew up connected to parents of two races, just saying, ‘I’m black,’ or whatever, negates part of who you are, culturally. As a person.”

“They realize they’re in America, right? You could dress in just kente and only eat fufu and you still wouldn’t balance out the whiteness. We speak English. We wear European clothes. Really, all that’s not enough white for them?”

“I’m telling you, they’re not trying to be white.”

“Because they can’t. And they think they’re better than black people.”

“How is acknowledging that they’re not just black acting superior?”

“They’re trying to abandon the community. They’re trying to cut black America loose, so they can live some post-racial fantasy. That shit is dangerous. It weakens us, as a people.”

“They’re just trying to be themselves.”

“Okay, so you’re mixed now? Then say it,” she demands.

“I’m mixed.”

“No.” She looks over at me, studies. “Say you’re not black.”

“I am not…” going to say that. I can’t. I even try for a second, and I can’t. I can’t bring myself. It’s too damn scary. It’s up is down and down is up and nothing is right. Just the thought of it. It brings the enormity of this whole line of reasoning to my mouth to clog there. “I could have used this, you know?” I do manage. “When I grew up. Having the world see me as what I was and not as what I wasn’t. My daughter could use that,” and that’s enough to get Tosha to wag her head and raise the binoculars back to her eyes and focus outside the car once more.

“There she is. That fucking cracker whore,” Tosha says, and there are two words I’ve never heard her say before. But I look at the woman in the bookstore window. She doesn’t look like a whore, but I’m not sure what a whore is. I’ve met several sex workers in social settings — lovely people on average. When I think of the word whore , I think of a cancerous leach of human dignity, but that woman in there doesn’t give off that vibe. She isn’t even a seductress. She’s dressed like any other young professional in work attire, a contradictory mix of attractive and uninviting. Her face, though, is really beautiful. She looks like someone you could see a movie with then fall in love with after the conversation it sparks.

“I don’t understand how he could do this. I keep looking at this bitch — I’ve been here before, okay? I’ve seen them holding hands, kissing, this shit is real — and I don’t know how that bastard could do this to me. Explain that to me.”

I see the white girl and I think, George couldn’t say no. That’s what I think. He couldn’t say “No” to coffee, then “No” to a beer, then “No” when their legs brushed under the table, then “No” to a kiss, then “No” to her bed, then “Yes” to never being with her again. And now his life is all fucked up. It seemed pretty simple. He didn’t do it to Tosha. He didn’t even do it to this white woman. He did it to himself. The clarity of other people’s lives.

“I bet she has irritable bowel syndrome,” I tell Tosha. “IBS: that’s what they call it. I bet she has to shit every twenty minutes, and then when it comes out it’s scorching stomach fluid and she sits on the toilet making sounds like a howler monkey.”

“Do you think so?” Tosha pulls her binoculars back out of her purse, adjusts the lens. “How can you tell?” I’m about to tell her I was just joking, but then she says, “I can see it. IBS. I can totally see that now.”

I look at Tosha. Her hair is straightened but matted, sealed together on the left side that she surely sleeps on. Tosha considers herself a proud black woman. Proud black women take excellent care of their hair. That’s what they do. I want to go away. I want to go away and let her work this all out and then come back when it’s all fixed and we can casually laugh about it from a distance. But I also want to be a man who doesn’t go away. Not from his friends, family, self.

“I want you to go in there. I want you to go in there, and talk to that bitch, and when she’s not looking, I want you to drop this GPS in her pocketbook. Got it?” She holds it up. It really is small. A third of a finger, small. Peter Parker spider-tracers tiny.

“That’s a bad idea. Tosha, why do I even have to say something like this out loud?” Tosha doesn’t respond because we both know the answer. I have to say this out loud because her husband couldn’t keep his penis in its proper container. “I got a better idea. Let’s call Sirleaf. Just invite him over for lunch, I’ll come too. We can casually figure out what your rights are. He does divorces. He’s done several of his own.”

“Maybe. If I see him at the gym, maybe I’ll ask,” she says quickly, looking away, then turns to me and follows with the more focused “You married a white woman. Let’s talk about that.”

“What?”

“Yeah. What were you thinking?” Tosha asks me.

“I was just thinking, ‘I’m marrying Becks. I’m moving on with my life.’ ”

“ ‘Moving on’? Don’t you mean, running away?”

“No, just moving on.” Past you , I don’t say. “Trust me, I never felt blacker than on the streets of Swansea, Wales.” Or in my own bed with her , I will not say either.

“I’m serious, wasn’t that part of it? You fleeing to Europe and into the arms of a white woman? The abandonment of blackness. Abandoning black women. Did it have to do with your mom?”

“No! Look, people see mixed couples, they project their own issues onto them. Race traitors. Progressive heroes. Whatever. I saw people do this with my parents’ marriage, and with mine. Me being with Becks had nothing to do with my mom, okay? It wasn’t about abandoning black women.” It was about Tosha abandoning me, but I can’t say this. I can’t say this and get out of the car with our friendship fully intact. It’s old, it’s over, it doesn’t matter anymore. And Tosha already knows, I’m sure. She knows the “why” and she knows my hesitation.