Loving Day (16 page)

—

“The cops are just doing the whole ‘You’re not supposed to be squatting on public property thing.’ It’s no biggie,” Spider tells me. We cut back and walk single file around the side of the perimeter after feigning like we were walking north toward the creek again.

“What do you mean it’s ‘no biggie’? Why are they doing that?”

“Because we’re not supposed to be squatting in a public park.”

The kids trail behind us, Kimet, the oldest, picking up the rear. A few kids actually ask, “Are we there yet?” They just arrived on earth, so lack all consciousness of cliché.

“It’s over there,” Spider yells and keeps hopping forward, short enough to avoid all the low-hanging branches that I have to push through.

“What’s over where?” I can see the fence through the brush. We’re at the back of the camp.

“The VIP entrance,” Spider tells me, then lifts up one end of a flap created by a cut in the mesh fence. I pull up the other end, make sure the kids don’t get snagged on the edges while crawling inside. I count them off. We still have eleven, and I’m pretty sure they’re the same kids
we left with. The mixie pixies, they love this. They think it’s a joke. They think it’s an adventure. They laugh. I don’t laugh.

“Come on, it’s fun!” Spider insists. He actually is having fun. Kimet is the last one through, and he’s out of earshot walking with the others back to the classroom when I say, “No, this is bullshit. So this place really could get evicted at any minute?”

“Roslyn’s got good lawyers, though. Like, the best ones. They get a judge to get an injunction, it’s a whole thing. Usually takes about four hours, tops.”

“Usually? What do you mean, ‘usually’?”

“Like a dozen times. Once a month since last year. First it was the neighbors fussing, but Roslyn finally won them over. Last couple times it’s been that guy from the Umoja School. He keeps calling the cops, I’m pretty sure. You know the type. Black folks like him are used to having the power to say who’s black and who’s not. It really pisses them off that some people just opt out.”

“It pisses him off now because his son is here. Kimet.”

“Oh. That makes even more sense. Oh well. It’s cool, though. The whole place is on wheels. If it hits the fan, we just roll.” Spider giggles at the vision. I see it too, and the only response I make is the clenching of my jaw.

I look around at the buildings. I look around again at all the wheels. Even the fence is attached at its base to mere concrete blocks. I can see the grass beneath our feet and imagine this whole space empty again, with just those blades remaining. For a second, I am standing on a vacant lot. Gone are all the black-and-white harlequins.

For her crucial final precollege year, the launchpad to a life of more promise and less struggle, the sole paternal gift I’m not too damn late to offer, I have enrolled my daughter in a school that can literally disappear overnight.

—

I’m Googling “prestigious GED programs” on my phone before I even get home. I’m searching for “Philadelphia Magnet Schools Late Enrollment.” I start thinking, if Mélange collapses maybe I can get Tal to stay
with me and do over her senior year. Private school, even—I might be able to cash in on the house by then, possibly even sell it. I start hating myself for not plastering and painting before, not doing all I know how to do to repair this hermitage every moment of the day and faking what I don’t. We’ve already compiled the list of prospective colleges, schools with decent dance programs in California, Rhode Island, and Washington State, the latter being my favorite as it’s the farthest away. It seems an impossible goal, remote yet imminent when I think about how I have to pay for it.

Irv’s car is in my driveway. I get the gate open, get back into my car then pull up slowly behind it like it might decide to suddenly lurch back and smash me. My headlights flash into its cab as I head up the hill. It’s empty inside. The lights inside the house are dark, upstairs and down. There’s someone lying on the porch. Not Irv. Not Tal, either. I can see Tal in the kitchen, through the window.

The fear comes back but I don’t listen to it. I decide the fear itself is nothing of merit, a few little chemicals in my brain, dripping the wrong way. I walk right over and if I must I will walk right through.

“Tal’s home,” Sunita Habersham tells me, pulling herself up off her back and onto her elbows. “She looks exhausted, needs the quiet. She came by Mélange looking for you, but it was locked up. She gave me a ride here in her grandfather’s car. I said I’d wait out here for you.”

Sunita Habersham in the dimness of the one yellow lightbulb. Life can have a sepia tone.

“And why’d you want to see me?” I ask, because the time to ask her is now, before it gets weighted.

“It’s Wednesday. I brought the new batch of comic books. My whole pull list.”

“You came to show me your comic books. You don’t talk to me for weeks, and now, comic books.”

“I had to think, okay? And I decided I wanted to see more of you.”

“You seemed finished when you left before.” My aim was to be jovial. The actual sounds that I emit are nothing like that. No humor can be found there, by either one of us.

“I guess I wasn’t finished with you yet.” She shrugs, as if her own
self was a mere acquaintance. “If that’s not okay, I can go. I need a ride, though. You can still borrow my comics. Except for this…one.” She flips through the comics, pulls out an issue of
Locke & Key
. “Haven’t read this one.”

I roll my eyes, but take her hand. Sun lets me. Soft, sweating palm. I pull toward the door.

“Not in the house.”

“What? You just want to sit on the porch?”

“Tal’s in there,” Sun tells me. “It’s too weird.” The only thing I find weird is that statement.

We go, back to my dad’s little Volkswagen Beetle. We don’t read comics at first, optioning to begin our meeting with fondling instead. It’s almost roomy, with the seats pushed all the way down.

As we progress toward fornication, I look at my father’s house when the angle permits it, waiting to stop if a curtain moves. One never does. Even as our sounds starts building.

“Don’t yell ‘Shazam!’ this time.”

“Right, this time
you
yell a catchphrase when you come.”

“Which one?”

“Surprise me!” We stop talking.

I don’t come. And I don’t want her too either. I go as slowly as I can. Because when she comes, Sunita Habersham will leave me again. So I don’t let her. I break rhythm, keep pausing. I look out on the vacant lot of the lawn, the grass long and unkempt and dead from the winter’s first frost. It’s so bare. I focus on anything but the pleasure. But eventually the car windows are steamed and I can’t see out anymore.

Afterwards, we do read comics, with the windows cracked. She only stays until the glass has gone transparent once more, and then, per her request, I drive her home.

—

The times Sun visits me following this one, she still won’t go in the house. So in my driveway we meet. She shows up every Wednesday evening, for new comic-book release day. Sometimes she even comes
Thursdays as well, if we haven’t read all the issues, sitting in the car postcoital the day before. Sun never mentions the “boyfriend” again. I don’t ask about her “boyfriend.” I ask her to come in the house, I ask her to have dinner with me and my daughter, but I stop doing that eventually since she keeps saying “No.”

THE WOMAN WHO
breaks into my house breaks into my dream. She sits at the end of the mattress, facing away, but I know it’s her. I know the bones popping through the back of that wet paper flesh could only be hers. And she’s crying. I hear her crying, want to tell her to stop. But if I do she’ll turn around and look at me, and I’ll remember her face and I don’t want that memory.

I put all my energy into lifting one arm, nothing. I put all my energy into kicking one leg, get the same. She leans backward to look at me, like she will fall once more into the bed, and then we will all be doomed. Doesn’t turn around, just leans back. Arches her spine, throws her head far enough that I see her nose and know her eyes will be next. I try to close mine, my eyelids do work, but I can’t close my ears. I hear the whimpers. I hear the sniffs of mucus loosened by tears. I hear the whine.

My eyes open, real eyes, and see the real waking room. Darker than the one of dream. Messier. Pants strewn on the floor, discarded comic books, sentinels of empty Diet Dr Pepper cans. My arms can move,
and I gather the covers to me, giving myself another layer of fabric to protect against the universe. The loudest thing is my breathing, and I settle it down. Force it to slow, allow one heavy sigh before normalcy. The next sound is not from me. It’s from the side of my bed. I still hear the sobbing.

I will scream. I’ve decided. If she’s in this house again, I will make a sound like no man has ever been proud to utter. It will be loud. It will be the entirety of my defense against the world. It will be all of me converted into vibration.

She’s in the corner, the hair is over her face. It’s dark, full, hangs all the way past her neck. But it is curly, too. It ripples and bounces as she cries. It’s my daughter.

“Tal? What’s wrong?” I ask, but specifics don’t yet matter so I swing my legs over and go to her, kneel and wrap her in both arms. Tal’s in the chair, my knees are on the floor. She’s been acting like everything is fine in the time since she got back from Irv’s, since his news, and yet here she is, in the dark, undone. I hug her like she’s broken and I can squeeze her tight enough to mend.

“I can’t breathe, Pops,” is the only thing that gets me to loosen.

I try again, the whole list: what’s wrong, whatever it is we can talk about it, nothing can be that bad. Tal says nothing more. I’m still holding her. I try a little rocking motion, but she resists. After two minutes, it gets awkward.

“Everyone I ever love will leave,” Tal says finally.

“But new people come. Sometimes. Sometimes, when we make room for them.” I think this sounds deep. I was just thinking of her, in my life, but it sounds like something someone would put in nice font over a pretty stock photo, so I’m proud of it. Tal is less impressed, though.

“Irv’s going to die. I couldn’t sleep. I was lying there, and I realized everyone I love disappears. They either die, or they leave. It’s that’s simple. I’m stupid, I only just figured it out.”

“That’s not stupid. That’s the single hardest thing to accept in the world. That everything changes. Sometimes it changes for the better,
though.” I try again, and again I’m thinking about her, the fact that she came into my life, and now it is better. No question. And after this moment in time, she’ll also go.

“That’s the best advice you’ve ever given me,” Tal says with so little enthusiasm that it tells me competition was nominal.

“That wasn’t advice.”

“Whatever.” Tal pulls out of my arms. Standing, she snorts all the liquid she can with her nose, wipes the rest off with her forearm. “Disgusting,” she says to no one, then walks out of my room.

I stay sitting on the floor long after she leaves. I will not go back to sleep. In the gloom, I can see the bed. I can see the foot of it. There’s an indentation in the fabric of the fitted sheet I want to believe I’m just imagining is in the shape of a boney ass.

—

“Mouths shut, pencils sharp, let’s get ready to scribble,” I say, because that’s what I’ve been saying to start for a while now and, perhaps because of its slogan-like nature, they tend to obey. Then I walk around and offer guidance and criticism one on one, which helps them to learn and me to avoid panicking that I don’t actually know how to be a teacher. This works, on average, for about thirty minutes. I stroll through the room, check on the status of their projects. After the first few days resulted only in pictures of superheroes punching each other, Spider made sure they had visual references for their tri-racial isolate projects.

“But when are we going to do our presentations?” the little fat one says today. It is not right to call “the little fat one” “the little fat one,” so out loud I call him Marcus, which works since it’s his name.

“Well, Marcus,” I say, largely to display my knowledge of his identity. This is important, because it compensates for the fact that for a few seconds I have no idea what he’s talking about. When I see his poster board and the memory kicks in, it doesn’t help me much, because it was Spider’s assignment, and Spider isn’t here. Today is a Non-Spider-Appearance Moment, which usually occurs about once a week without
prior warning or later comment. “You get an extra point for diligence. I was going to wait until the end of class, but we can start now. Would you like to go first, then?” I ask, because I really have nothing planned for the class today anyway, and time is for killing.

Marcus doesn’t bother to answer. He gathers his things and comes to the front of the room. His only request is for a plug, to connect his smart phone. And then, pushing
PLAY
, he stands before us, papers in hand, head down.

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.”

“Okay. When? Now?”

“Tomorrow night. There’s an acoustic concert, downtown. At Acousticism. It’s every first Thursday, a lot of us go, from Mélange. Mostly the so-called Oreos, but some of the sunflowers too. Even One Drop’s crew. We’ll get something to eat first. Ethiopian.”

“Yeah. Sure. Fine. Good,” I say, my humorless, declarative tone matching her own. I don’t say,
I was just going inside to get condoms
. I have no defenses against Catwoman-related seduction. “The restaurant is called Almaz. Elijah will be there too; it’s his favorite place. Then we can see what this is. We all can.”

—

“You know that crazy bitch invited me out on a date with her boyfriend?” I ask Spider. We’re in the back of the faculty meeting the next day. I still can’t believe it. I can’t. I start thinking it’s a test, that I’ll show up and it will just be Sunita, that if I go I prove that I don’t care and I still want to be with her. Or, it’s a test to see if I’m a big enough eunuch to put up with something like this. Then I think of Sun’s face when she said it, the utter lack of humor.