“Germantown’s not that bad. There’s fancy parts of Germantown too. I know tons of rich kids who live here, in really nice houses, on really nice blocks. You act like it’s some hellhole,” she tells me, and I look around, and sure the street’s basically clean, and it’s mostly just a bunch of working people waiting for the bus, and she’s right. But three miles up Germantown Avenue the white people have Chestnut Hill, and it’s thriving, with microbrewers and Zagat-rated restaurants and a functional retail ecosystem and why can’t we have it like that?
At the house, the security cams install easily because they’re meant to go up quickly, discreetly, possibly before the owner comes home. I’m done with the hardware and finishing the install of the software by the time Tal walks in the door with bags and a look on her face as light as her load is heavy.
“Wow. There’s like no white people at all at night on Chelten Avenue. I didn’t see one!” she tells me as she closes the door.
“I hope you didn’t feel uncomfortable.” And I really mean that. Not as an apology, but because I hope I don’t have a daughter who feels uncomfortable if there are no white people around.
“Why should I? I mean, I’m not, like, white anymore. It’s very liberating. Totally.” And she’s off to the upstairs bathroom to change before I can question her line of thinking.
When she comes down the steps, Tal’s wearing solid cork platform pumps tall enough that the top of her head threatens to brush the paint-chipped doorway she walks through. Her feet are held there, perpetually in sprinting position, by a band of what appears to be cheetah fur, if cheetahs were pink. No cheetah is pink. Then there’s nothing but bare leg for a good eight inches going north, till a matching strip of print, presumably skinned from the same mutant feline, cuffs the bottom of her tight capri jeans. This feral pink fabric is on the collar of the jean jacket she’s wearing too, and it’s a good thing Tal’s wearing a jacket because the T-shirt she’s got on doesn’t even bother to cover her navel. Above, Tal’s hair is out. Out and screaming its inner Africa. Furious at years of bondage, and celebrating its nappy roots.
“I like your hair,” I tell her, because there are about 413 things I can think to say, and that’s the nicest one. Number two is: What’s the name of your twerk team? I open up my mouth, but nothing more constructive occurs to me, so I just keep looking at Tal, slack-jawed.
“What about the rest? That thrift shop went out of business, apparently. It’s a day care now. So I walked up Chelten and found this place called City Blue? Very urban. Very authentic. Don’t you think?” Tal opens up her jacket and points to the label on the chest of her tattoopattern shirt. It says APPLE BOTTOMS.
“It’s the name of the brand, Pops. Not a reference to my actual butt,” she says. When that doesn’t give her the desired response, Tal follows with, “It’s a very popular black brand.”
“You can’t think I would actually approve of this. You’re not going to your grandfather’s like that.”
“Yes, I am. I am so not worried about Irv and the whole Karp clan. If Irv can’t accept my blackness, then that’s his problem.”
“No, you’re not. Tal, those clothes have nothing to do with your ethnicity.”
“I’m supposed to be ‘transcending my assumed racial notions.’ That’s what the school you—you—sent me to, is telling me.”
“Tal, there’s no way they meant dress like that. Don’t conflate ghetto culture with blackness.”
Her mood, the smile, gone. She starts taking one of her hollow gold earrings out of her lobe and I think I’ve gotten through to her until it’s thrown at me. It’s a childish response. Possibly genetic, since I come back with:
“For the record, as your father I should let you know that dressing like a hoochie mamma is a bad life choice in general.”
“Fuck you!” The other earring actually hits me. On my forehead. It feels like it cuts deep but it’s only bleeding a little when I take my hand off it.
“You’re right. That was harsh. Fuck me. I’m sorry.” Sunita Habersham would know how to handle this. That’s who Tal needs right now.
“That’s right, eff you. I tried. You can’t say I didn’t try, okay? I’m trying.”
“Try what? What’s this about? Explain it to me, okay?” I pause for an answer. I wait for a few seconds, unsure if I should be breaking the silence.
“I knew,” is all Tal finally tells me. I see her shoulders shake, think she’s laughing, but then she lets out a wail and goes at it harder and I know she’s crying. Tal’s really crying; there is a sound long and hollow like it’s being pulled out of her, ripping flesh as it goes. I reach out, pull her into me, but her arms are just limp under my own.
“I knew. I always did.” Her voice cracks; her body shakes. I hold her firmer like I can stop this.
“Knew what?”
“I knew you were black. What I am. Nobody, like, had the decency to say something to my face, but I knew,” Tal says after her breathing slows.
“So you knew. You kinda thought you knew, but now you really know. It’s not too bad, right? It’s no biggie. You’re still you,” I tell her, and I try to say it with joy. I’m hoping that if I say it laughing, if I laugh lightly at her reaction, then Tal’ll start laughing too. But Tal just keeps crying. It’s getting lighter though, her body still now. And then it gets quiet, but for the heaviness of her breathing. Until Tal says:
“I told all my friends that you were an Israeli soldier.”
“Okay.”
“Missing in action,” she follows with, and then I do laugh for real. I can’t help it. I hear myself and try to stop, but I can’t. And then it’s okay, because Tal joins me. And thus the dark spell is broken. “Just let it go,” I tell her. I look down and she’s got snot on me, my daughter, and snot all over her psychedelic cat print. But at least she’s still laughing. Still with the tears, but mostly laughing now. Laughter I can deal with. Laughter I know.
“I knew,” Tal says, quieter. She calms down. Calmer but the tears keep coming, as if something’s broken in her and they’re just pouring through the crack. “I knew,” Tal says again, which makes no sense. Because my daughter doesn’t know anything. Tal has no idea. Because I have no clue, and she has even less of one than me.
11
THERE’S SCREAMING AND whooping and noise itself breaking and then it starts again. The world has hit its wall, we all die in explosion and rage. I shoot up in my bed and see the broken plaster of the ceiling and know I’m in a crack den and the cops are outside and I don’t know what to do and I’ve never even done cocaine and now they’re going to shoot me. And then I realize I’m in my father’s burnt-out room, on a mattress, and that my burglar alarm has caught something.
I own a Taser. I know I have a Taser, and I search around the side of the bed for it and there is nothing and they’re coming for me, but then I find it. It’s not night, it was just an afternoon nap, but the newspaper tapped over the windows dims the light. I hold the Taser out to the dim. No one’s there. The alarm is still whining. My head hurts from it and I remember Tal and push off my sleeping bag and jump to my feet and head downstairs.