“He’s not supposed to see anyone, that was the agreement. Keep things clean. But when I call him at night? Not there. He says he’s going to the gym when he isn’t at the place he’s renting. For hours? Yeah, right. I don’t have, like, prosecutable evidence. But I know. It’s over. He’s just too much of a coward to make it official.”
“You don’t know,” I tell her. She’s filing her nails with an emery board she just plucked from her back pocket. The filing thing: I have seen her do this over the years when she is angry. First time I saw her do it, I thought she was sharpening them to scratch someone’s eyes out. “You don’t know. You’re probably just in a rough patch. Relationships go up, they go down. It’s just in a recess right now. Why would he be with anyone else? Especially another guy?”
“He swore it wasn’t another woman, and it has to be someone. I tried to have sex with him, four months ago, tried to put my head down there. It smelled like hair conditioner. I did the research, Warren. That’s what they do. That’s what lying scumbag husbands do: they wash their cocks with perfumed conditioner so you can’t smell the whore on them.”
“That crackhead: she was actually in my house. She broke in my house last night,” I shoot back at her. “Just in and out. Didn’t take anything, but still.” It’s a horrible transition. It’s supposed to be a horrible, noticeable transition. It’s supposed to signal that I am not comfortable with the chosen topic, so let’s leave it behind. I almost tell Tosha I’m planning on burning the place down just to shut her up, but I really am so keep that bit quiet.
Tosha, grinding with her emery board fiercely enough that I can see cuticle dust pouring down, ignores this response and answers whatever question I should have asked instead.
“Am I ugly now? Am I hideous? You used to say I was attractive. Am I still attractive? I’m a frumpy mom. Look at me. What happened to me?”
“You’re still beautiful. Very beautiful,” I tell her, and she is, but I can’t look at her right now. Instead, I look at the motorcycle, parked on the side of the garage. It’s still never been dropped. There’s some slight grinding wear on the foot pegs, but that’s it. It’s just like when I sold it to him. Nothing has touched this bike but dust. George has done an amazing job of taking care of it. George has done a better job of taking care of the bike than he has his marriage. George has done a far better job of this than he has with his marriage.
“I’ll talk to him,” I tell her, and the fact that we both know I have nothing to offer George allows her to break the moment she created. Tosha puts the file down.
“Are we going to talk, then? About it? About what happened? Or is it just going to hang out there?”
“About what?” I shouldn’t have come here. I should have just left. I should have saved more money. I should have stuck out my marriage. I shouldn’t have come here.
“About what? Warren, you take off twelve years ago and don’t write once? You don’t respond to one letter? I had to get your address from Sirleaf — which you know took multiple attempts because you know how he is — and you never even bothered to write back to me? You were supposed to be a groomsman in our wedding”—Tosha says “wedding,” and I hear her say “wedding,” and even though I don’t think of her that way anymore, the ghost of the me who did flashes in, then goes dark again—“but you just ran away! Like nearly five years of friendship didn’t matter anymore! You missed my kids being born! We were close!”
“I’m sorry,” I think to preface before I say, “I did friend you on Facebook.” I did. And I looked at her pictures, and pictures of her kids, and her and George, a lot. I hit LIKE often too, which I feel right now should count for something, but I don’t mention this. I got over it. I came back. I ain’t staying but I came back.
Tosha glares at me. Then she sighs and says, “Yes you did. And so did your wife. And it was good to see the pictures she posted. Even though you never bothered to message me back. And I love you like a brother. And that’s why I’m not going to smack the black off you for saying some stupid shit to me like ‘I friended you on Facebook.’ ”
“Well thanks because I don’t have a lot of black left and I really don’t want to lose the rest through slapping.”
“I need a friend right now,” Tosha says, and then she’s crying.
I’m trapped in a hug again, surprisingly. Every time I want to escape someone starts hugging me.
—
The bike is a gorgeous monument to nostalgia over practicality. Working the clutch is like trying to negotiate with a drunken bill collector. I was wrong: George ignored this bike as badly as he did his wife. Under twenty miles per hour, I’m riding down Germantown Avenue on the cobblestones and the motorcycle is shaking like it’s scared of black people. Its roar bounces off the row houses, echoing accusingly back at me. The vibration feels like the bike’s plea for me to slow down, to rethink the whole movement idea, but I don’t. I’m late, supposed to be at my dad’s place before Sirleaf comes through, but I’m looking down at the ground whenever I can because I have no idea where George’s money went. He put a new, roar-enhancing muffler on the thing, but he attached it so poorly the main noise it’s making implies it’s about to fall. The tires are narrow and I’m trying to keep my front one out of the trolley grooves. I’m looking down on the ground right in front of me the whole time, which is dangerous but I have a scar on my right knee from getting my bicycle stuck in these tracks in fifth grade and I can’t help myself. I know I’m late, but I can feel that scar on my knee now, the dead skin miraculously itching as it rubs on the inside of my jeans.
There’s somebody at the front gate. It’s not Sirleaf Day. It’s a white woman. It’s a white girl. My white girl. It’s my black girl who looks like a white girl with a tan and a bad hair day.
“You shouldn’t be out here, on your own. It’s not safe,” I tell her when I pull up. Tal pretends she doesn’t hear me over the motor so I yell it again.
“It’s okay, isn’t it? I mean, now that it turns out I’m a black? I get a pass on ‘the streets’ now, right?” There are a lot of bags. Four big ones, a human-size duffel bag, and a portfolio case. There’s a hamster cage, sitting right on the pavement. There’s a hamster inside it, running along the sides manically as if some of the local rats might try to jump it.
“Tal, what’s going on here?” I ask her, but I know.
“Irv kicked me out.” She shrugs. “I told him I wasn’t going back to Kadima. And about my GED plan. And he said if I didn’t go back to school I couldn’t stay there. So here I am.” I keep staring at the hamster. But I don’t say anything. I’m waiting till the right words come, but my tongue gets no offers. After a few seconds, Tal steps closer, puts her hand to my chin and aims my face back at her own. “I’m moving in. Dad.”
When she uses the d-word, with such palpable derision, my first thought is: I’m not old enough to be your father. The next thought is that not only am I old enough, but that I literally am her father. I look at her face. The neck, the cheekbones, the eyes, I recognize. Family. But the whole face, her face, I barely recognize it from the day before. This is a stranger. I feel some love there, or feel the need to want to love her, but I don’t know this person. The clearest emotion I can identify is a sense of responsibility. I will meet that responsibility. Or try. I will try to make sure she graduates high school. Then after, when I burn the place down, I will use the money to take care of her. I will make sure she gets out of this town. Hell, we could run together. Someplace nice, with temperate weather and a low crime rate. And then I feel the Umoja flier Tosha printed for me scratching at the inside of my coat pocket and the impulse is given physical form.