Loving Day (26 page)

I go upright silently. I don’t move any more than that. I don’t breathe. I hold my breath and listen. I hear nothing. Not cars. Not radios. Not humans. Not crickets. And then I’m scared, because I don’t hear crickets. There is always the sound of crickets, at night, in Germantown, in May. There are no crickets. There is nothing.

There is the white woman.

There is the sound of footfalls, running.

She is there and then she isn’t there and she’s running away. Goddamn half-naked white woman running through Germantown. That’s all it takes to ruin everything.

I run after her.

I run before I realize I can barely walk. I bang into the trailer next to Sun’s, hear some Oreo scream in the shaky inside, keep running. I’m going to catch her. I’m going to end the hoodoo nonsense. I am going to rid the land of all crackheads forever. She glides beyond me. I will push her to the ground, hold her there and scream, sit on her till the police come and Tal too, with half a tattoo but who cares because now she’ll know the lie of this place.

Bare pale white feet, black on the bottom. Ghosts don’t have dirty feet.

“Ghosts don’t have dirty feet!” I yell when she cuts through another line of trailers.

“What the fuck?” comes back, but not from her, from another trailer I slide into because the dewy grass is slippery and my balance even more unreliable.

A white shirt. Long. Like a gown. A dirty white gown. Maybe a hospital gown. But it’s her. The woman from the house. The burglar. I know her. I have seen her. Not like the others claim, not in some mystical revelation. I have seen this crackhead asshole and I know her and I don’t even know where from besides my dreams but I know her. It’s her. I am running. Stopping. Spying her through the maze of mobile homes. Running again.

“This is private property!” I yell like I own the place. I own the place. Or now Tal owns the place, but I would know if there were any white people living here. There are no white people here. There are tons of half-Europeans, but no whole ones.

Darting to the end of the trailers, she heads toward the last one, turns out of sight at its corner. I chase after the shadowed blur of her pale body. She runs from me like she’s guilty and she is and I will capture her and reveal her to the world.

“I see you!” I yell at her. “Everybody wake up! I see her! Come see her!”

It will be like
Scooby-Doo!
I do it for my Velma. Everyone will surround us while I whip off the ghoul’s mask.

I turn the corner and she’s gone.

She hasn’t gone farther. The grass is empty beyond. No one is that fast. She did not vanish into thin air. Only ghosts vanish into thin air. Ducking down, I look under the Victorian trailer, see nothing. I look up at the door. It’s Roslyn’s door.

It’s Roslyn’s door.

It’s Roslyn. It’s always been Roslyn. I am drunk and I am tired and I am breathing really heavy now too, but I know, it’s Roslyn. Behind it all.

Roslyn, who answers the door after only two knocks, because she’s awake. Of course she is.

“Where is she!”

“Warren? It’s very late. What’s wrong? Why are you doing this?” The expression; she plays it perfectly.

“I know she’s in there.”

Roslyn, who just stares at me. Standing in her doorway. Nothing but a long T-shirt on and a sleeping bonnet. Standing there like a door herself, a closed one. In a backward, inside-out T-shirt with the tag showing. Who won’t say a damn thing more. And I win. I win. Because she lifts up a finger and points down to the far end of the property, wags her head in defeat, and goes back inside.

I walk in the direction noted. As far into the dark as the compound allows. Along the line of the most rusted of the property’s fence, below where the slope of the hill hits its sharpest downturn, where the angle hides it from the rest of the property. I am coming for her. I am coming for him too, if he’s here. I’m coming.

I see a light. Not the steady drone of the streetlight. A spark. A flicker. Candlelight. Against the farthest corner of the yard. I see her, on the ground, before it. I start running, trying to get all the way before she can escape, am at full momentum again when I can already tell it’s not the white woman.

“What the hell is your problem?” comes from Sunita Habersham when I reach her. She’s on her knees. There’s not one light before her, but three. Bodega candles. Leaning up against the middle iron rods of the border. Their light flickers off her face, and the intimacy of her posture makes me feel the embarrassment as it takes over.

“Did you see a white lady?” I ask, because I can’t bring myself to ask what she’s doing, what this is, what is going on with her. Or why she’s frantically gathering up the pictures that I now see are lying on the ground before her, pulling them into a loose pile and sticking them in a cardboard box. I don’t look at them, don’t even want to guess what they are. I want to run past her, continue crackhead-hunting, pretend this is normal behavior on both our parts.

“I’m not crazy,” Sun insists.

“I didn’t say you were crazy. I wasn’t even thinking that.” And I wasn’t, because I hadn’t even gotten that far.

“It’s a ritual. For closure.” I look down at my ankle, which I realize is hot. Because it’s burning. I hop from the pain, see something fall off my pant leg. I lift it up, hold the remains of a photo, the image of a man’s flannel shirt obscured by a destructive line of ember that glows in the darkness.

“Wait—What the hell? Are you burning these?”

“They’re just prints! It’s a releasing ceremony, okay?”

“So this is where you’ve been going? All those times at night when you disappear?” There is actually relief in my voice, and that leads to a little levity, which I understand immediately Sun takes as mocking.

“Not every night. Just some anniversaries.”

“You’re out here, making an alter?” I hand her the singed image. Sun takes it, blows on it gently, like suddenly it is something to take great care of.

“Roslyn says my problem, with getting over Zeke, isn’t that I never got a note. My problem’s all the other reminders he left behind. I mean, that’s the idea. I don’t know. Roslyn suggested it.”

“Oh, okay. Roslyn suggested it.” I don’t intend for there to be any sarcasm in my voice. I don’t even think there is; Sun just borrows my cynicism from earlier conversations and applies it here. It’s enough to break the spell of her defensiveness, put her into an opposite mode.

“What the hell are you doing out here?”

“Tal would like your support as she gets her Sesa tattooed,” I say. It just comes out of my mouth, overriding the more problematic subject of fake-ghost-hunting. I wasn’t even thinking about my original motivation; the sentence was just sitting there, waiting to escape, waiting for the moment when my brain shut down. “I let her get it. Since I forgot her birthday,” I add, when the first explanation clearly doesn’t seem good enough.

“Tal’s birthday isn’t until next week,” Sunita Habersham tells me, fastening up her box with rubber bands. “Next Thursday,” she says before blowing out the candles. Sun saves “She played you” for when we’re walking back.

IN FOUR PIECES,
it will go, the house that Loudin built. The structural mover assures me that they can do the job, that the initial deconstruction shouldn’t take more than a week at most, that the restorative work to hide the surgical cuts shouldn’t take more than a few months. While he talks, mistaking me for someone who cares, his men measure and take notes and hold little detectors to the walls to see where the beams are, spraying orange paint in response to their finds. They can do the cuts right down the line of the wood. When it’s reassembled, you won’t be able to tell the difference, the project manager tells me. You could take this halfway around the world and it would hold. Houses like this aren’t built anymore.

The call from Tosha interrupts this, and I’m still not ready to take it, but I don’t want to talk about my father’s house anymore.

I answer with, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s too late for sorry, Warren. I’m just calling to tell you, I will be there. I watched it, and I’m not letting this get any further. And not just me, I’m not the only one who thinks this has gone too far. We will be there. The community. With our own press, our own cameras. We’re
not just going to let this divisive bullshit happen. I still care about you, but I can’t believe you had the nerve to go on TV talking about jungle-fever ghosts. And in that dirty ass T-shirt.”

I’m asking her what she’s talking about. I’m saying “Wait, talk to me,” before I realize she’s hung up.

—

The anchors’ lead-in is “Spirits of Philadelphia,” and a bunch of prattle and toothy grins, and even though it’s just a clip you can tell it’s the last segment of a slow news night.

“Why didn’t you tell me this came on?”

“I didn’t have time,” Tal says, which is a lie. She must have known it would be broadcast last night, which is why she has the show’s site bookmarked already, and why she didn’t say a word through breakfast. So I brace myself.

The first shot is Loudin, in the daylight. It’s taken from the street. Then the camera takes a stroll through Halfie Heights, and the voice-over describes it as “a new commune exclusively for black people who are half-white.” Spider’s Airstream: “They live in makeshift motor homes for now, but they insist they’re here to stay, and that they are the future.” Roslyn comes on. She’s sitting on the front porch of my father’s house like she already owns it. “We offer a sanctuary for people of both African and European ancestry to move beyond the cold war of black and white in America, and come to peace with themselves.”

Tal, who hangs over my shoulder, straightens and steps back now. So I know it’s coming.

“But not all is peaceful at Loudin Mansion,” the voice says in a campy fifties horror-movie style. Same shot of the house, but now a filter flips the image to a black and silver negative. “Sightings of two ghosts, one female, white, and one a purportedly black male, have been reported throughout the camp.” When Tal comes on, her name appears at the bottom over the title “Property Owner/Ghost Witness.”

“They were here. I believe it was a sign. I believe it was the first interracial couple, welcoming us. Telling us the house is ours.”

The light of the camera simultaneously flattens Tal’s makeup-less
face and makes the poof of her hair appear wild and expansive. My daughter looks as crazy as this sounds. They show the clip of her bathroom video; a link to the YouTube page where it’s hosted even pops up. It’s even grainier, filtered through the lens of television. After describing the footage, the voice says, “Not everyone agrees about who’s doing the haunting.”

“They were the ghosts of crackheads,” it edits me as saying.

“Tal!” I yell in real life but I no longer feel her behind me. I’m described in a screen tag as “Witness’s Father.” The voice-over says I am a longtime Germantown resident so it can interrupt me until I blurt out my next comment out of context.

“I saw something. Definitely,” my image tells the world.

The anchors are laughing. One says, “That’s some story!” Then the other says, “Skeptics can come see for themselves. Loudin Mansion will be open for tours this Friday, June twelfth, for the Loving Day Festival. Loving Day celebrates the anniversary of the
Loving
v.
Virginia
verdict that allowed interracial marriage nationally.” It then goes black.
Replay
, the screen dares.

I look over at the tent. The flap is down, the zipper is tight. She’s in there.

“We are not having tours of the house tomorrow,” I say to it.

“It’s my house. I can do what I want,” comes back to me.

I scroll down the page, look at the comments. Some Mulattopian, surely, has posted an event listing for Loving Day, under the name CrispusAttacks. Besides that, though, lies the subconscious of ugly America. PatriotGoEagles writes,
Ghosts come from trauma. That woman was probably raped by that black guy
.

“Haters gonna hate,” Tal says after I read it to her. The sub-comment discussion for this entry reads like watercooler dialogue at a Klan meeting. One of these replies links to an article already written in reference to the clip, billed as a
Must Read Response
. I click on it. The article is called, “Mongrel Separatists? Obama’s America Invades Philly.” The first line is:
Remember when we warned of Reverse Racism, and the Libertards all laughed—now we know why they were really laughing
.

What comes after that, my daughter doesn’t need to hear, so I stop
reading it aloud. Into my pause, Tal says, “That’s so stupid. How can you be racist against ghosts?”

“Listen, honey. Here’s a news flash from outside the Mélange bubble: Americans know how to be racist against anything. People look at interracial couples through their own, distorting racial lens. It doesn’t matter what form they take.”

“That’s just one nutjob,” she tells me.

“That article has eighty-four likes. On Facebook. So those are just the people willing to link their names to it.”

Tal doesn’t say anything in there for a bit, but I can hear her on her own laptop.

“Well the First Couple video now has 22,786 page views,” Tal says back triumphantly.

—

I only know about Tal’s membership in the Loving Day Planning Committee because Tal, in her insistence on leaving the house for the final meeting before doing the dishes, chooses to reveal this to me. A teenager’s every move is their opportunity for the clandestine and the only way I get in on this is to demand that I come. I have to be there. I have concerns. I have concerns that need to be raised. I have to be there also because Roslyn is not answering my texts or calls directly. Tal gets a response, though, and I’m allowed. “As my guest,” my daughter makes the point of telling me.

It’s a late-spring day, but we’re inside the administration trailer, encased by its depressed low ceiling and wood-veneer paneling. The room has more than a dozen people shoved into it, the hum of an air conditioner forcing everyone to speak a little too loud for grace. My attempt to grab Roslyn before the meeting begins is foiled by a delegation of half-breeds from other mixed-race organizations and locales. Apparently not just black and white people are sleeping together. “Everyone is loving everyone, always, everywhere, and this room is proof of that,” jokes the hapa dude after his introduction. He flew in all the way from Oakland. For this. It’s going to be huge.

I sit through forty-five minutes of prattle and minutiae. Also, I sit
through the way Roslyn stares at me. Like she’s won, and like she’s happy about it. Staring over at the Amerasian issues therapists, and the multiracial marketing coordinator, all the other lords of their own online and community mixed-race support groups, the Great Mulatto Queen addresses her court of subjects. The regality of her chandelier earrings, the rich draping of scarves over head and breast—none is as majestic as the look of joy in Roslyn’s eyes. Or maybe she’s actually happy. Maybe this is all her dream. Maybe it’s all come true, everything she imagined in her darkest hour would bring her bliss and fulfillment.

“It’s going to be protested,” I say the second Roslyn asks if there are any questions. “I talked to a friend. She made it clear. There are going to be protests, the whole damn day I’m sure.” Roslyn looks at me as if I’m not even speaking. As if the only reason she’s even facing my way is to read me like a clock on a wall. So I turn, physically, to the rest of the room.

“This is an existing neighborhood. There is an existing order. Racially, locally, all that. Blowback is going to happen. And with that video circulating online, who knows how many other wackos are going to be drawn out. You need to seriously consider canceling this. This whole place will be on the news for something a lot less silly than ghosts. This could be bad.”

“Protests mean press. All press is good press, generally.” Roslyn, always pleasant, always smiling just enough to promise not only happiness but the opportunity for more. “We want the world to know we exist. Nobody cares about marches or rallies anymore. They want spectacle. They want ninety-second clips they can peruse on their choice of mobile device. Our guest speakers are already here, the bands and equipment are booked.”

“My house is a mess. And not ready for a tour,” I point out.

“Fine. But people are already in cars, trains, planes, coming here. For this. For us. For all of us. This event is happening. Protesters are just the final ingredient to make the day monumental. How many agree?”

“Agreed!” comes from across the room. Even Tal, she says it. I hear
her voice distinctly because she’s the one I love here and also she’s right by my side.

“Sarah, make sure you resend the press release immediately. Add the part about the expected protesters. Make it a headline. Use the word ‘controversial’ in it too. Also, ‘outrage.’ They’ll see ‘outrage,’ and think page views.”

I get one voice on my side. One fellow champion of sanity in the whole lot of mutts. I have no idea what ethnic groups she’s mixed with, either. Laotian and Ecuadorian? Pakistani and Italian? Who knows, she’s just another member of the international legion of tan. But the woman is wearing a business suit, and is by far presenting the most professional air in the room, so I take special pleasure in cloaking my agenda in her gravitas.

“Does this dovetail with the image that you hope to promote, though? If the intent is to create an atmosphere of acceptance to interest the marginalized?”

Standing to speak to us all, opening her arms high like a bear staking its territory, Roslyn says, “This year, it’s about making our presence known. About thrusting ourselves into the dialogue. Not just locally. As far as we can. Nationally. Internationally, if possible. Next year, our second Loving Day event will be at our new rural location, and then we can focus on message refinement. This year, this year we announce to the world that we are here, this is our time to be heard, our time to be whole. If this is big enough, next year, they will come from all over to find us.”

“What ‘new rural location’?” And I know Roslyn hears me, because she responds to everyone else.

“Tomorrow night, we have a major announcement. The Mélange Center for Multiracial Life will be unveiling a new satellite retreat in a setting that combines natural beauty with major historic resonance.”

“What ‘new rural location’?” I ask again, and keep asking, but no one can hear me over the applause.

—

Tal follows me out because she can tell I’m mad and it’s not with her. “We don’t have to do the ghost tour, Pops. I mean, it would be so awesome, but I was thinking, you’re right we would have to clean, which is a pain in the ass. And now there’s all the orange spray paint. And honestly I don’t know if the ghosts would like it, you know?”

“This isn’t about ghosts.”

“It’s about Roslyn, isn’t it? You know she’s awesome, right? Look at all she’s done here. It’s going to work out. You have to trust her,” Tal finishes with, which is what gets me to slam the front door behind us.

“No I don’t, and you don’t. Or you shouldn’t. I am your family. They are not your family. She’s a liar, Tal. Did you hear that crap about the second location? She told me she only had money to buy one. Just to get the price on the house down. She lied to me. She lied to
us
. Do you know how much that probably cost us? Thousands. Hundreds of thousands, probably.”

“She didn’t lie,” Tal tells me.

“Roslyn lied,” I say. Calmer now. It’s just true. It’s simple. The words don’t need emphasis. I walk up the stairs. I want a shower. I want a drink. I can do both up there.

“She didn’t lie,” Tal calls after me before I can reach the top. “I’m not selling her the place. Not yet. I’m going to keep renting to Mélange for a little while, so they can buy the other place first. It’s an opportunity we can’t miss, and we can’t afford to do both.”

I fight the urge to yell by walking down the steps, slowly. I take my time. Because I want to be calm when I get there. When I get to her. There’s an air of menace coming off me, I realize, in the slow and deliberate fall of my feet before I get to Tal. But it works too, because by the time I’m there before her I’m speaking in almost a whisper.

“Honey? You can’t. Do that.
We
need that money. You and me, the real ‘we.’ For college. I need that money. To live.”

“I don’t want to go all the way to Washington State. I want to be here, with them.”

“You have to go.”

“I want to be with you, Pops. This is my home.”

“Trust me,” I tell her. Let the words sit there. “It’s time to grow up. It’s time to get out of this house.”

Tal turns around, heads to leave out the front door. Then, confused by the metaphor of her actions, turns and goes into her dining room. For a while, the only sound in response is her zipping up the entrance to the Coleman. But I still stand there. Because it’s not over.

“I’m not selling. It’s my house. Legally, it’s my house! You can’t make me leave here.”

But I can. I can.