Mat Johnson - Loving Day

“No, we’re definitely being evicted.” Sun says it so casually the statement is clearly beyond debate.

“She doesn’t mean this year,” I assure Tal, based on no other information than an imaginary document found in my brain in a folder marked ESSENTIALS.

“Oh no, I mean right now. The cops are at the compound with a dispersal order. I don’t think they’re going to leave this time. All my stuff’s packed in the car, it’s horrible.”

I forget Tal is a teenager. Sometimes, I think of her as a child, look at her and see all the younger ages I missed. Often, because of her wit and feigned worldly manner, I also see Tal the young adult she is moments away from being. But when she lets out a scream at the top of her lungs, only breathing in to yell “No,” in one elongated syllable, I see a teenager. “This cannot happen, are you kidding? Are you messing with me? Pops!”

“You’re not kidding?” And when Sun’s head shakes, the last of my composure dissolves. “How could you not say this as soon as you got here?”

“I didn’t want to ruin the meal,” Sunita offers quietly. Before I can respond, Tal continues screaming, louder.

“Pops! You have to do something!”

“Just stop! There’s nothing I can do!” My volume, as unexpected as it is for both of us, calms Tal. Or at least the shock shuts her up for a bit.

“Actually, you can.” Sun looks at me. Tal looks at Sun. Sun keeps talking. I start bracing. “The community needs someplace to go. Temporarily.”

“Come here! They can all come here! This house is so big! And the land! Everyone could fit here!”

“Enough!” I try to match Tal’s volume again, but can’t.

“There’s more than enough space on the lawn for all the trailers!” Tal continues, giving away everything before Sun can even bring herself to ask.

“It’s not that simple,” I tell her.

“Yes it fucking is.”

“Go to your room!” I fall back on.

“My room is a tent, in the dining room,” Tal points out. Literally pointing out, over to it.

“Then go upstairs and take a shower before bed.”

“I already got a shower,” Tal says, but she gets up and heads for the steps before I get the chance to tell her to take another one.

I make Sun come with me into the kitchen. I don’t even do it with words. I just walk to the sink, turn and lean against it, and wait there silently until she gets up from the table and joins me.

“You knew.” I want to whisper, I want to scream, I manage to do both. “That’s why you’re here tonight. Not for us. Not for me. Roslyn sent you here, didn’t she? It’s about the land. That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? How long? That’s all I want to know. How long has she been planning this?”

“Warren? Listen to yourself. You’re upset, I understand. So I’m going to choose to not get offended. But you’re having a paranoid episode right now.”

“I saw her — or heard her, at least. Roslyn. Here, in this house, scoping out the property. Creeping around in the dark, going into the rooms upstairs, oh yeah I heard her and I get it now. She wants this place, doesn’t she?”

“Wait, why the hell was Roslyn in your house at night, upstairs?”

“Don’t change the subject,” I tell her. “Listen, I’m not planning on keeping this property, okay? They can’t come here. I have other plans.” I don’t tell her, Because it’s burning down . Because I can make more on the insurance than any sane person would ever pay me. Because I have the know-how to burn this wreck down, having done the research at the library, by looking it up on YouTube.

“I never said anything about them coming here. Tal is the one—”

Tal screams. From upstairs. Sun doesn’t hear it. Sun is still talking. But I hear Tal. And though I haven’t been there for her most of her life, I’ve been here these months, so I know my girl’s screams. And this one might mean something, if I heard it right. So I wait. Look up. Like I can see through the exposed and rotting drywall on the ceiling. Sun’s still making mouth noises, but my ears are aimed up. A second later Tal screams again and I start running. And at the steps I know Sun has heard it too because she runs with me.

We hit the second floor so fast I slide into the wall. The bathroom. There is nothing being screamed now, but I know. The crisp echo off the porcelain: the bathroom. I have nothing in my hand, my spear is lost, Taser in the car, baseball bats downstairs. I don’t care. My weapon is my body. I swing open its door. White subway tile predating subways. White claw-foot tub. White sink. Not-white girl.

Tal’s standing there, hands over her mouth. I look on her for blood, then in the sink, then on the floor. A gust blows in through the halfopen window, cold, still winter. I go to the tub. I reach for the shower curtain, thinking someone might be on the far side behind it. Nothing.

“What?” I ask my daughter. “What is it?”

“Outside,” Tal whispers. So light I don’t understand. Not till she’s pointing again. Then I look. It’s dark. It’s the night, the frozen night. I can’t see. But then I do.

There’s two people fucking outside my window.

That’s not right. That can’t be right. So, specifics: there’s a naked black man. Fucking a naked white woman. From behind. Outside my bathroom window.

Both upright. In the dark.

I squint. Yes. It’s dark, but that is what I’m seeing.

“Get the hell out of here!” I yell. All the anger there. All.

Sun shoots her hand to my mouth. Very slow, low, as if not to interrupt them, she says, “We’re on the second floor.”

We are on the second floor.

Those fuckers out there are floating twenty feet off the ground.

Another scream. I think it’s Tal again, but when I turn around, no, it’s Sun. Tal’s hand is up, holding her phone at them as if it were an exorcist’s bible.

I turn around. There’s nothing outside the window but night again. I lift the window up higher, put my head out, look around. Nothing. No one on the lawn. No one on the street beyond. I grab the window frame, slam it down and lock it.

Reflection. I think, Reflection, it must’ve been a reflection. There is a mirror over the sink and one by the door. There are no ghosts.

I start to run for the hall but Sun grips my arm, yanks me back.

Tal puts the phone down, says, “We can’t spend another night in this place alone, Pops. Not just us. Not without more people here.”

I need to search the lawn. But Sun won’t let go of me. And Tal hugs me too. Their arms are woven. Sun’s head is up. It keeps staring at the window.

My daughter’s face is lit by her phone. She starts poking at it, trying to replay what just happened.

“Who were they?” Sun whispers aloud.

“The first interracial couple,” Tal says. I look at her. She’s smiling at the screen. “The first couple,” she repeats, like this is an historical moment she’s captured.

THE VIDEO IS in color. But barely. Faint pale tones only margins from gray. It takes a second — even having been there, it takes a second — to know that you’re looking down a narrow bathroom. Mostly because the camera is aimed up at the window. It’s only in a brief jostle of the lens, presumably as Tal balanced herself, that we get a flash of the sink, dislocated a good inch from the exposed plaster of the wall, or the permanently stained toilet that takes two pulls of its hanging chain to flush. The focus quickly resets on the window. First it’s framed by the crumbling wood of the windowsill, then as it zooms outside the image is engulfed by the darkness of that night. But not all dark. There is something. I will grant my daughter that. I am not beyond reason. I am not so divorced from the facts before me that I can’t say, “Yes, there is an image of vibrating figures.” I saw it the first time. In fact, I am so intricately connected to reason that I must both acknowledge that I, too, did see something, something reminiscent of two figures fornicating, but also that I would have to be delusional to think it was a ghost. Or two ghosts. Or that they were the ghosts of the first black and white couple in America. Fucking.