Mat Johnson - Loving Day

“ ‘Mutts.’ This gang you say you hang with, what’s up with that?” Héctor hits me with this as I’m rushing around, gathering my remaining illustrations in a pile.

“They’re just a bunch of mixed people. Half-black and — white folks. African and European. A little Indian. They got a kinda club.”

“So, they like Dominicans or Puerto Ricans or something?” Héctor rolls to a sitting position on his mattress, and from my bed I get a good view of his hairy beige feet.

“No. They’re American. Just black and white. And Indian, sometimes.”

“But yo, how is that different?” Héctor bends over, so I see the tips of his little dreads and his eyes staring at me, confused.

“I don’t know. They speak English,” is all I can think to offer.

“I speak English too, bro,” Héctor says, lying back on his bunk, finished with the discussion.

The mutts didn’t bail me out. There is no bail. There is no bail because there are no more charges. There is no one waiting for me but a clerk from my public defender’s office, who delivers this news and no more. As I walk back on the street, though, I decide to read my release as a silent gift. From Tosha. And I silently thank her as I rush toward Suburban Station and the way toward home.

THERE ARE THREE TRAINS that are supposed to stop at Wayne Junction, which is just two blocks below the mansion. Hardly anyone gets off there, though, because the train costs $1.50 more than the bus and is mostly for middle-class people and there aren’t a lot of those living on the border between North Philadelphia and Germantown. The conductor seems surprised when I ask him to make the stop, which I have to do or they’ll just crawl right by the platform as if the driver is covering his eyes the whole time.

I trudge up the hill of Germantown Avenue bringing flowers. For Tal. Roses. White for my little big girl. It’s trite and feeble and they’re a little brown around the edges because I got them at a kiosk in the station, but I don’t know what else to do. I don’t know, but know I have to do something, start somewhere. And if anyone else sees me — and everyone will, everyone will see me coming in — I want them to know that no matter what they think of me, this is what I think of her.

But no one in Mulattopia will see the gesture. Because when I get to the gate, I see that no one is there.

I stop walking. Look to the other side of the street. Try to figure out how I could get lost. In my own hood. I’m next to a park now. The fence looks the same, but nothing else. I look across the street, and the row houses look the same. But nothing else.

The trailers are gone. All the trailers are gone. Halfie Heights is barren. Mixed Mews is no more. I can see the earthen marks of worn ground, the dead brown patches in the grass, but all the other trailers are gone.

I look up the hill. I look up the hill, and at all the grass, and at the walkway. I keep looking because I can’t believe it. I walk closer, looking for someone to explain this. For something that will make sense to me. I don’t see that thing. Everyone’s gone. Everything’s gone. The garage is there. I keep walking along the fence, in the gate left unlocked and open. I keep walking. I walk up the hill. Don’t see her. Tal is gone. I keep walking.

The house is gone.

I stand on the top of the hill, by where the mansion’s front steps are supposed to be, and circle around, looking around. Looking and looking. There’s nothing to see. An exposed and barren basement squints at the daylight, its cover having run away. A brick-lined hole in the ground. Inside an old water heater. Pipes connecting to nothing. Spools of wiring like dead vines. Scraps of wood and snow of sawdust.

I sit down because I can’t stand for this. I sit on the lip of the hole and look inside, then again around.

Tal is gone. The house has gone. The house has absconded.

I’ve lost Tal.

The house is gone.

The door to the garage opens, and Tal comes out. My daughter. The garage door slams shut behind her before she realizes that it’s me, that I’ve come for her. Before I realize, it’s her, that she’s stayed for me.

My daughter starts to run my way, so fast at first, then slows, then stops halfway. Her arms drop, hang still, and she takes a slow step back even. Staring as if I am the unnatural aberration.

“You didn’t break out, did you? Because that would be really stupid, Pops,” Tal asks.

“No, honey. The charges were dropped,” I tell her. And I don’t get up. And I don’t mind that it takes her a moment to come closer, because as she’s standing still like that I can just look at her, see her again. When Tal reaches me, she reaches down. She hugs me while she’s still standing up, and doesn’t let go as she bends her knees and sits on the cellar edge beside me.

“Honey?” I ask over her shoulder. “Where’s the house?”

“Roslyn bought it.”

“Okay. But where is it?”

“I had to sell it. I thought I had to get you out,” Tal tells me, then grows quiet after I audibly thank the Lord a few times and adds, “Not the land, though. They just bought the house. They just took the house part.”

I pull back from Tal, hold her arms in my hands, look at her face. Wait for her to crack a smile, to tell me she’s joking. Instead she says, “They wanted to keep it safe,” and I have no response to that.

—

My daughter says Sun and Spider are supposed to be arriving back today as well, but I don’t want to go into the garage, where Tal has moved the rest of our things, and wait for them. I don’t want to go inside at all. I’ve been inside for sixteen straight days. I don’t want anything in between me and the sky until it’s necessary.

When it gets dark, it’s not cold, but the mosquitoes come, so we gather the scraps of wood the house shed in its departure, make a pyre on the packed dirt floor of the hole, close enough to the wall that we can keep sitting on it. Tal wants to use the art projects my students left behind as a fire starter, but I gather some newspaper from the recycling instead.

“Where did they go?” I ask when Tal’s finally gotten the bigger pieces of wood siding ignited. She pulls herself up to the wall, sits down next to me.

“Malaga.”

“Malaga,” I say, and I lose it. I can’t help myself.

“They bought the island. It was the big surprise. Roslyn told everyone at the last minute then three days later, they were off. What’s so funny?”

“Maine. One Drop’s in Maine. He finally found a place he can feel black enough.”

Tal’s quiet for a bit, staring at the fire with me. Waving the smoke out of the way in the moments when the wind blows it back. After a while, after the wood cracks and sparks and the structure we built falls in on itself, Tal says, “Pops?”

“Yeah, honey?”

“You know part of why you hate that guy is because you’re projecting your own racial insecurities onto him, right?”

“I do, honey,” I say, but I didn’t before.

—

Tal falls asleep on my shoulder before the embers die. There’s a light mist of rain, but not enough that it matters. Leaning my head on hers, I almost fall asleep as well, but then I worry she’ll fall forward into the basement, so I scoot back and lay her head and shoulders in my arms. She’s heavy, I’m tired, but it’s no burden. Because even though she just turned eighteen, asleep like this I can still see the last moment of childhood on her. The last fleeting sparkle. Tal’s eyes are closed, her mouth is open, her chest rises and falls, and in the firelight I catch a glimmer of the baby she was. I see it there and I rock her lightly in my arms, I rock her, and I can feel it right on her when I lift up one hand and wipe the dew off her forehead.