Mat Johnson - Loving Day

The beat comes on. It’s bossa nova.

“Brasil,” Marcus says, lifting his head up. Holding up his poster board, which says the same. Then he drops his head again. Behind him, a recorded woman’s voice sings in Portuguese, and Marcus is respectfully silent until her verse is done, then he lifts his notes, takes a deep breath, and begins.

“O Brasil é uma sociedade mestiça. Foi invadido pelos europeus em 1500, e originalmente…”

It’s clearly not fluent, there’s a hint of phrase-book mimicry in his voice, but he seems to know what he’s saying; there’s rhythm in his sentences. I recognize enough cognates from Spanish to nod along.

I’m not surprised the class politely listens. They’re good kids, for the most part. What catches me off guard is when Marcus ends with “Não acredito que os professores” and they all laugh, comprehending, at his last line.

—

“They take Portuguese, two hours a day, plus lab. Most of the kids. Brazil’s the largest mixed-race population in the Americas. Dude, how did you not know this?” Spider tells me, when he finally shows up, after class has been dismissed. This time, he offers the excuse that a tattoo went long, which could either refer to the time it took to do or the literal length of the image.

“My daughter takes French.”

“No, your daughter takes French Creole, Louisiana style.”

“Papa! Tu ne comprends pas?” says Tal, whose hair is in cornrows today. I refuse to acknowledge this change in appearance, and we’re playing a game to see how long I can keep that up. Tal’s sitting on my desk, bored already, in just the seconds she’s been in the trailer. I don’t know the specifics of what she’s said but I get enough of the gist to tell her to stop being a smart-ass and go meet me at the car.

“Why Portuguese? Nobody in America speaks Portuguese. Spanish is everywhere.”

“Come on, you know how mixies are. Every one of us has some place they heard about, where people look like us, where we could totally fit in. Morocco. Cape Verde. Trinidad. Man, I pretended to be Puerto Rican all through high school. It’s that dream: home. To finally go fit in somewhere. Isn’t that what everyone here wants? To feel what it’s like to be in the majority? To be home?”

—

I think of that word, home , when I stick my own key in the door of my father’s decrepit mansion. It opens, but I don’t belong here. We walk in and Tal immediately drops her bag right on the floor. I tell her to pick it up and lock the door behind us, but I don’t want us to be locked in here forever. The word home , it sticks with me through lunch, as I watch Tal separate the peas and chicken and carrot squares from her fried rice until it almost looks like a healthy, balanced meal instead of bulletproof takeout. She doesn’t even eat the peas; she gives them to the hamster. I know this because he doesn’t like them, and doesn’t eat them either.

“You could learn French, too,” she tells me, after a while. “Creole zydeco is kinda crunk.”

“You say ‘crunk’ now?”

“I am crunk now, Pops,” Tal insists, but the white-girl shrug that follows is the same as it ever was.

Home . I go to my desk, try to draw it without predetermining what the image will be. I find myself starting with a street, and then that street becomes Germantown Avenue. I know its cobblestones better than any surface on earth. I know the story, that they were carried from England as ballast on the first ships, and then used to pave the road that stretches from here to downtown. Yet it offers no comfort in connection. Halfway into the sketch, the basic pencil lines already etched, I realize this image is about leaving this place, not loving it. That road for me is about getting the hell out, which has always been the central dynamic in my relationship to Germantown. So I scrap it, and think of Swansea. You make me feel like I have a home in this world. That if a great hand shook the planet, I wouldn’t fall off . I wrote this at the bottom of an illustration I did of Becks, around the time I asked her to marry me. She hated the picture, but didn’t tell me for years, then did it silently by leaving it behind when she moved out. And then I thought, I can fall off now. I can finally disappear into nothing.

But Tal is here, and now I can’t anymore. And she makes me not want to either. She makes me want to build something, for her.

At car. Got the new issue of The Walking Dead. Bring water . The text comes and I look out the window and Sunita Habersham’s station wagon is on the street. I know she’s not in her car. She’s in mine. Waiting for me. This is how she does it. No forewarning, no arrangement. Just a text, like this one. Bring water is actually a major step forward in our electronic foreplay.

I bring a glass of water, with ice, and think, Tal won’t notice if I don’t rush. I walk from the kitchen to the front door trying not to spill and Tal sees me and says, “You’re not kidding anyone,” and looks back at her homework.

At the Bug, Sun’s sitting in the driver’s seat. She’s got the seat pulled all the way back, and stares up at the tattered ceiling. I don’t get in. I stand next to her door.

“Look, why don’t you come inside? At this point, it’s just weird. We could order some more food, maybe? I had a big lunch but we could just get a coffee or something.”

“Nah, I’m totally stressed out. Just get in here,” Sun tells me. There’s a wink offered, but I don’t want it.

After a few seconds, acknowledging that I am not going to move farther, Sunita deigns to look up at me. Her eyes are passive and bored. Then she looks away again. It’s not until I tap on the window that she sits up and rolls it down, the seat still supine behind her.

“The night is young,” I tell her. I want to get in and read comic books, enjoy the physical aspects of our friendship. But if I get in and we do this she’ll just leave. I need to build a home. This automotive pied-à-terre, what is it constructing? This is no longer new sex. Now it’s just sex. Just sex is good as well, but without the novelty it must meet more stringent requirements. I need more. Tal deserves more, a woman in the house who is actually willing to come inside the house.

“It’ll get cold soon. We could forget the comics and just get to the finale.” There’s Sunita’s smile popping. It doesn’t erupt; she puts on her face like a pair of sunglasses.

“Let’s just go inside. I was about to make dessert. Got a muffin mix. Let’s break bread this time. Tal said there’s supposed to be an amazing new series on Netflix. We could watch it together, when she’s done her homework. Or something by ourselves, something date-like, that would be nice. We could even just go upstairs. But not in the car this time.”

“Upstairs? With Tal home?”

I say, “She knows you’re here already. This isn’t about her,” then sigh. It comes as a completely physical reaction to holding my breath a bit in the moment, yet it works perfectly as an emotional statement. I open the door, hand her the glass of water. Sunita Habersham takes it, sips.

“I need something more,” I tell her. I almost say we need , which might have scared her even if she realized my “we” is Tal and I. “I don’t know what this is, but I need something more if you and I are going to continue.”

“Want me to dress up like Catwoman?” she asks. She isn’t kidding. From her handbag, she pulls out a black whiskered mask and shakes it at me.

I turn and walk away. I’m at the steps when Sun honks the horn. When I turn around, she’s gotten out.

“Fine. We’ll go on a date then. A proper one.”