Mat Johnson - Loving Day

Sunita Habersham. She squats down. She puts a hand to my face, where it stings. She has the sense to ask, “Baby, are you okay?” and I lack the sense to say anything but, “Oh yeah. I’m fine. I’m chilling.” To prove this, I go to get up, which turns out is a hard thing to do after your hands have been barbecued. But I rise, still. And Sun hugs me, and I realize she called me baby, which was very nice, yes. I’m in a lot of pain. And there are all the other people. They are all around us, the whole camp, everyone. Tal is there, Spider is there, almost everyone I know now and all the faces I know who have names attached I’ve never bothered to remember. But look at them. They look so concerned. And not about the blessed car, because that’s gone now, I can accept that. And not the house, because the house has not altered its trajectory in the slightest. They look at me. They care about me. My unintentional community. They stand at a distance, sure, crowding together and leaving us in the epicenter of their circle, but I think this is a gesture of respect for the emotions of the moment. And also, yeah, because of the car being on fire.

Still embracing Sunita Habersham, I turn her gently, so I can look back at the ruining of my father’s car. This accidentally aims her gaze toward the mansion. Sun just saw the house, I realize, when she pushes me away. She saw the house, and what I did to it.

“Baby,” I start to try back at her, but the slap she hits me with, it really hurts. Emotionally. But largely, physically. It’s very sobering.

“How could you do this to us!” is screamed at me. Sun is pointing. I follow her finger, to the damned house façade. The fuse box, it pops. Too late. The sparks not even remotely close to the blackened mark of the first flames climbing up the wall. Jumping to the conclusion of arson would makes no sense, out of context. But Sun has context.

“Which us ?” I ask, and my general confusion at the moment, my blurry vision, the growing distraction of the intense biting pain emitting from large portions of my epidermis, would seem to add to my clueless innocence. But not to Sunita Habersham, who slaps me again. Who then takes me with two hands by the front of my shirt.

“I can’t believe you could actually be so stupid,” she whispers, her nose almost touching my own. But you burn pictures , I want to say, but don’t.

“I didn’t do anything.” I didn’t. The house is still there. The house will always be there. They can try to move it a couple feet; it doesn’t matter. The house will always be here. It’s not my inheritance, or Tal’s, or my father’s. It’s history itself. It is its own legacy.

“I know what you did. What you tried to do. You did this to us ,” she says, before letting go of me and walking away.

“This was my releasing ceremony,” I yell. I start to stomp after her until George makes my momentum halt.

“What the hell is going on?” he wants to know. I don’t know why he’s here, on the other side of the wall. I turn to look at him and see the massive black smoke cloud still coming out of my father’s dying car, so yeah I kind of know. The sirens, I can hear them coming too, getting closer, and that makes more sense, so I push George’s hand off my shoulder. And I start running toward Sun before she can get to the crowd and this is all over.

“I asked you a question. Don’t just walk away,” he demands in full cop voice.

“No. I’m running,” and I take off full speed for Sunita Habersham.

George is running too. He tackles me from behind, and I go down. I’m on the grass once more. On my face first, and then on my back when he flips me over.

“You need to calm your ass down.” George’s hands hold my wrists, his body’s weight seals my pelvis to the earth. I try to lift them, to get him off me, but his move is practiced, time-tested, without counter.

“Sun!” I yell. I lean my head back, try to see her. I do see her, the back of her once more, walking beyond where the crowd has spread for her. “Sunita Habersham!” again, but nothing.

Then, into the gap in the crowd, strolls a vision. A vision as exotic and out of place as all of us. An animal. A zonkey . A real life zonkey. Stripes in the front and the back all white ass. It strolls up, into the gap in the crowd. And it looks at me. Confused. Then gives up, bends over, and starts chewing the grass in front of Roslyn’s feet. The older woman stares past the beast to the house, looking genuinely pained when she looks back in my direction. She pulls on the zonkey’s rope and walks him off as if she’s protecting his innocence.

“You reek. You’re drunk, aren’t you? Is there nothing you don’t screw up?” George leans in, seemingly waiting for me to give thoughtful answers. “I know about you and Natasha,” he whispers. “After all that time waiting for your chance, you even fucked that up.”

“That’s my father.” The voice is so calm, measured, that both George and I turn in surprise. Tal stands there, high above both of us. I can’t see her features because of the glare of the sun above. I can make out enough, though, to see that she reaches out and puts a hand on George’s arm. I feel a warm drop hit my face. It’s George’s sweat, and it’s disgusting, but for a second it creates the only place on my face not burning.

“Miss, you need to take your hands off me and step back.”

“You need to get the fuck off my pops,” my daughter says to him.

George takes his left hand off me to remove Tal’s grip from his arm.

That’s when I punch him in the mouth.

THE 14TH DISTRICT Police Department holding cell is actually not so bad compared to the City of Philadelphia Detention Center, which is where they take me when the alcohol wears off and the pain can occupy the vacated neurons and I really start feeling the fullness of my situation. I spend the first night handcuffed to a bed. There is metal on my wrists. Bonds. But I’m actually fine with this, because in exchange they handcuff the other eighty-seven guys in the room to their beds as well, and these men worry me more than slavery metaphors.

During my booking, I am unable to provide adequate fingerprints, due to the fact that my tips have blisters on them. After much discussion about this, I am given a pen and paper to provide a handwriting sample in the meantime. My mug shot, however, goes over like gangbusters, and is viewed by not just George, who is clearly already enjoying himself immensely, but by several of his colleagues, whom he calls in to check out my portrait on the screen so that their day may be brightened. On being returned to my prison hospital bed, George, his jaw clearly swollen from where I popped him, takes me aside so that I can view the masterpiece myself.

Looking at the photo, I don’t recognize this man. He has no eyebrows. His skin is red and shining from the ointment applied by the nurse that afternoon. His eyes are dulled by painkillers. He is trying to smile his cracked lips, but his cheeks hurt so much that his grin comes off as a grimace. Gone too is the hair on my head, and I reach one gauze-covered hand to feel that my hairline has been burnt back past my ears.

“You look like the Red Skull,” George tells me.

“Come on, man. I’m sorry. You gotta let me go.”

“Actions have consequences,” George tells me, smiling, pausing enough for me to take in the message privately even though there are two others in the room. Then, “This is how it works. You assaulted an officer.”

I didn’t assault an officer, intentionally. I assaulted a George. I explain this to Sirleaf Day, via his answering machine, which tells me in response that he is “out of the country pursuing investments, leave a message and I’ll be sure to get back to you.” After three days, I’m not so sure, so I then explain this to the public defender before my arraignment and urge her to bring up this backstory to the judge, but she is not really interested in hashing it out at this time. My assigned attorney is more focused in setting bail, aiming for a reasonable $20,000. I question her strategy when the bail comes in at $100,000 instead, due to the seriousness of my crime and the fact that I’m a flight risk. I also get a trial date. In a month.