Mat Johnson - Loving Day

“That’s offensive,” Dot says, and I agree with her. I would say I agree with her, but my mortification has moved me past verbal expression.

“That’s the motto, Mom.” Elissa smacks her own head. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen a real person do that.

“Class of ’74,” Roslyn tells them. “I did all thirteen years at Kadima. Well, twelve really, I did my junior year abroad at Kibbutz Lotan, in the Arava Valley. That’s where the concept for the Mélange Center comes from: a holistic community of outreach, a society of ideals, a home for the wanderers. What I set out to do was give mixed-raced people that same vision my faith gave me.” Roslyn keeps going. She is just starting, and she’s already going. There’s a speech coming; this is the preamble.

A text message that appears on my phone says, Come to the door .

I go to the door Irv closed. I try to open it again, do so as loudly as I can, but nothing follows. So I knock. Tal opens it. She’s been crying. She knows. Past her, I see Irv sitting on the edge of a made bed, head in hands.

“Never mind. I’m fine.”

“Are you sure? I’m here. I’m here for you. You know that, right?”

“I’m going to spend the weekend here,” she says, staring off. Then, looking back at my eyes again. “I mean, I want to spend the weekend here. I need to. With Irv. Is that okay?” my daughter asks me, and of course it is.

When I come back to the table, the wheelchair is empty. Roslyn is standing. Roslyn is talking with Elissa; Dot leans in too. Art sits on a chair in front of them, legs folded, taking it in.

“We create our communities, our identities, but we do it by maintaining our heritage,” and Roslyn makes it sound like something she has never said before, like she’s just thinking it up on the fly. I wait, listen to the whole spiel one more time, just like I listened to it at the campfire days before. After a while, Roslyn pauses for air, and I lean in to tell her it’s time to go.

Goodnight, Pops , my phone’s display tells me. I look back at Irv’s door, it’s closed again. I want to text her that I love her. Because I do. But I haven’t told her this truth to her face, and a text is no way to begin.

I take the wheelchair out to the car, then come back for Roslyn, who’s still going. She ends with, “As Rabbi Hillel said, ‘If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? And if not now, when?’ ”

The first contribution comes from Elissa. It’s written out leaning the checkbook high against the wall, and with a look to her mother as soon as she puts it in Roslyn’s hand in exchange for thank-yous. The older lady follows.

“I gave McCain and Romney less than this, combined. Am I absolved now?” Dot asks her daughter as she writes out her check as she presses it vertically on the armoire.

Roslyn looks at the donation amount and says, “I believe you are.”

I drive Roslyn back to my house, where she says her car is parked. Down Kelly Drive, through the woods, windows open to wake me up. She plays with the radio, sings along to some oldies I’ve never heard before, turning it up loud enough that we don’t have to talk. Around us, the trees of Fairmount Park, the snake of Lincoln Drive, as we go through the forest that brings us to Germantown. I want the night to be over. The whole night, from the alarm to this moment, all of it needs to be over.

It isn’t until after I drive the Beetle up the hill toward the garage and turn off the engine, that Roslyn says anything to me. And that’s after I go to open my car door but she doesn’t, and I’m forced to ask her why.

“Where’s your ride?” I ask, and she points to an old hatchback on the street. She didn’t say anything when I drove past it. Still, she makes no move to get out.

“You want me to drive you back over there.”

“No. I want you to give me the Taser.”

“What?” I ask, but I know what. I start laughing. Roslyn laughs too. But then she stops, and waits for an answer, and I realize she’s serious. And suddenly this isn’t funny anymore.

“Come on, Warren. You were a bad boy; you have to face the punishment. Families have rules. I have my dignity to consider. It’s going to hurt me to do it, but now I have to Tase you, then we’re even. You have it on you, don’t you?”

“Yeah, right. Listen, I’m so sorry about before. I thought you were a burglar.”

“I’m not,” Roslyn says. “And you shouldn’t have done that; it was very naughty. Now hand it over.”

The Taser’s in my pocket. It has been all night. Roslyn knows this; she’s looking right at it. Its bright yellow plastic handle is hanging out. She could just reach in and take it if she wanted. But she doesn’t. She wants me to hand it to her. She wants me to go out back and pick my own switch for my whupping. But she’s not my mother. I don’t know who she is, really, beyond someone who wants something.

“Give it to me, Warren. If you want to continue at Mélange,” Roslyn orders, and I, too exhausted to argue, give it to her.

Roslyn inspects it for a moment. She holds it out to the window, says “Pow,” smiling. Her other hand goes to the rearview mirror, angling to herself. She holds it straight up beside her head, squinting into the reflection of her own action-hero pose. Then she turns it on.

“Yo! You got to be careful with that.” I scoot away from her in my seat as if three inches will change anything.

“It’s a beautiful thing, Warren, to actually feel a physical representation of power,” Roslyn says. “In your hands,” she adds, and then shoots me.

—

I wake up and it’s still dark and I’m still buckled into the driver’s seat and every cell in my body has been individually extracted, beaten with a ball-peen hammer, then set afire before being shoved back to its original form. I ache in spaces between crevices I could have gone a lifetime without feeling. I’m wet all over, from sweat mostly, but in some areas probably from urine. My testicles have retreated so far into my body cavity I very well might not ever see them again. I turn to the street. Her car is gone now. It isn’t until this moment that I think, Wait, why did Roslyn come to my house in the first place?

I look over at the passenger seat to ask her. But Roslyn’s gone. There’s someone there though.

In her place, sitting next to me, is a crackhead dude. A naked one. In the seat, in the dark, in Germantown, at 2:37 in the morning, next to me, is a naked crackhead man.

The hair on his chest is thick and blacker than the brown of his skin and it runs from his nipples to his thighs. His cock is shriveled and deflated and lies in a crevice of dark wool. His chest shakes, the upward head snaps repeatedly back, violent shudders, and it’s this that forces me to look at the face.

The mouth is open as he shakes his head. He’s crying but the only sounds are gasps. There is no hole blacker than the space between his lips, and it grows wider. It swallows his words. It must. Because I hear nothing before losing consciousness once more.

WHEN I WAKE back up, I stay in the car, immediately start it up, and begin backing out again. It’s daytime. It’s possible I’ve just dreamt the vision. But I’m not going in the house. Not alone. Never alone. I don’t even like being alone on the lawn.

Something happened in the car at my father’s house after my boss electrocuted me, but I don’t think about it. I drive the same car to the store, back, but don’t think about it. Can’t think about it. Won’t let myself. Instead, I spend Saturday prepping the classroom for the rest of the term, go to sleep in my office studio that night and don’t open my eyes until I’m sure the sun has retaken the sky once more.