“What the hell kind of question is that?” I ask. Neither Sunita nor my daughter responds, so I stare back at the test. There are no boxes to fill in.
“Should I just put yes or no?” I ask, and at the other end of the dark little trailer room, Sunita says, “Just put your answer,” not even looking up from whatever she’s working on. Tal is writing away, so I get back to it. I write, Probably, I don’t know, but I do know white folks were a little too excited about a black man murdering a blond white woman. I turn the page and the next question is Name the most important musician of the twentieth century and explain your justification.
“Is this some kind of pop-culture scorecard?” I ask. No response, once more. I see Sun write something again at her podium, and then I get paranoid that her notes are part of the test too, that I’m being tested on taking the test, so I keep going. I write Bob Marley, and a note about seeing his image across Africa more than paintings of White Jesus, and you see a lot of those in Africa. This proves very prescient because on the next page the question is What race was Jesus?
The thing keeps going. The next page features a picture of a black man and a white man running through the streets, the black man in front. The white guy behind him is a cop. I know this picture. It was used in an ad campaign against racism in Britain, I saw it across the tracks on a wall in Charing Cross station. It’s a mental trap. The black guy in the front turns out to be an undercover detective. There’s no way anyone can know that without being told. Next to Describe Scene I write:
They’re both cops, but that is irrelevant. A picture of anyone who isn’t wearing a suit running from a police officer would imply guilt, because businesspeople are the only criminals the law doesn’t care about. Hence the question then becomes one of class. We assume middle- and upper-class people don’t run from the law, because they defend themselves by manipulating the law. Like O. J. Simpson did.
This answer pleases me.
My daughter is turning pages before I am, but I am exasperated before her. The questions keep coming: What do you eat New Year’s Day? What card games do you know? What are your feelings about mayonnaise? What do you do with these? — and a picture of dominoes. With every question, with every answer, I become more inclined to grab Tal’s hand again and walk out, nearly overwhelmed by this impulse. I look up at Sunita Habersham, standing there in judgment. I’m used to having my blackness questioned, but never on paper, and never by an Oreo who would damn me for it. But my daughter is two desks over, just jotting away, unaware of this pretext or just uncaring.
By the final question, Name your black friends [minimum three], I answer, Nat Turner, Warren G. Harding, and What T. Fuck? and then get up to hand it in. All I get is a curt thank-you. Sunita won’t even look up at me from her podium, and when I peek I see I was right; she’s written notes on a page with my name on it. Next to her notes though, Sunita’s reading a comic book. Sunita Habersham is reading Mind MGMT, which is a really good comic book, the sort you have to make the lifestyle choice of visiting specialty comic-book enclaves to find. The sound I make, the puff of air, is less a sigh than the reaction to a gut punch. I have no defenses against this combination of shared interest and physical attraction. I take –7 vulnerability points on all attractive female geek attacks.
Gone is my racial righteousness and in its vacuum I am so drawn to Sunita Habersham that I experience it through the lens of terror: that I will fail to connect with her on even the most platonic of levels, that this is a pivotal life challenge to which I will fail to rise. That the intuition I felt on the first day, that she can save me, was a premonition. When Sunita finally looks up, holding my gaze, I choose to believe this is a signal of mutual attraction.
“Mind MGMT. Do you like comic books?” I lead with.
“We met at a comic convention. What, did you think I was just there for you?” She shrugs, goes back to reading.
Mutual attraction is not equal attraction. No cartoon bluebirds sing around our heads or link our hands with ribbon, but I believe we silently share the knowledge that we are grown-ups who enjoy the same obscure hobby, are of close enough age, are of similar heights and fitness proportion, and that we both have faces several others have found pleasant. Also: I’m a big man. And Sun’s a big woman. Tall, full, real. We share a sturdy similarity. Surely she must know we are both Kapha Doshas, in the ancient Hindu Ayurvedic tradition. And I can lift her. And she knows I can lift her — oh yeah, she knows — and not every man can do that. But I can because I match her. I want to lift her. I want to carry her and let whatever thing she’s figured out about how to be black, white and not, carry through the strain in my arms. She knows. I know she does. I can feel it next to her. I can feel good next to her. I look down, as fast as I can past her breasts to her hands on the podium. A hell of a lot of bracelets clack above them but all that metal and not a thing on the only finger that means something.
“You’re black identified,” Sunita tells me. She’s barely looked through my test.
“Really? I could have told you that, but it took me thirty minutes to fill the thing out. How did you—”
“The last question. Most white-identified mixed people actually try to list names. You expressed outrage at the question, a typical black-identified response. I already saw a few more answers, I doubt the rest will indicate different. Or you can wait here for the next ten minutes.” I want to wait. I want to wait and talk to her and tell her how silly this test is, this mixed-race posturing. I want to do it in a way that shows her how witty I am. I want her to be able to tell me why I’m wrong. I want her to be right, even though I am. I want to be on the same page in the same space and not feel alone but hinged to someone solid. Someone just like me, so I can know what it feels like to not be different. Someone just like me but happy. And eventually part of me wants that to lead to sex so I can complete the bonding. I step closer to the podium to hide when the erection starts to build. But Sunita doesn’t notice, because she doesn’t even bother looking at me.
“That’s not some kind of sin here, is it? Did I fail or something?”
“No pass or fail. Not a judgment. It just tells us which realignment class to assign you. Almost everyone ends up in one class or the other.” She looks up for a moment, offers a pharmacist’s impersonal grin, then drops her head and expression as she looks down to my test again. “But I knew you were a sunflower when I met you. The male sunflowers always hit on me. Somehow they know they don’t have a chance and need to prove their manhood by defeating reality.”
“We’re leaving,” I tell Tal, and she gets off her phone long enough to stand and gather her things.
“Was my father being a dick? My father can be a dick. Please excuse his dickishness.”
“Jesus, Tal, don’t say ‘dick.’ She didn’t mean ‘dick,’ ” I tell Sunita, who actually winks and nods. Instantly, I feel less offended. Then I realize it’s because she’s agreeing with Tal.
Sunita Habersham’s head bobs and I read that as, You are a dick, a huge dick, isn’t that funny? but her mouth says: “She’ll be in the opposite class. I’ll talk to Roslyn; we can work this out. So come tomorrow, if you can make it. At eight A.M.”
“We’re going,” I tell Tal again, and holding her arm we head to the door.
—
Riding back, I am so angry I say nothing. Tal, for her part, allows me the silence, or at least doesn’t say anything loud enough for me to hear. When we arrive at the mansion, Tal climbs off and says, “Warren? Between the two, you know where I stand. If that Thor-looking goliath at the gate can fit in at Mélange, I got no worries. I just want to get the diploma and go start my life, okay? Just help me. Just help me get the hell out.”