On the sidewalk, I can hear the phone ringing in my breast pocket. I think, Sunita, but when I look at it it’s Tosha’s name and face staring back at me. I try to shut it off and I’m poking at it and then she’s talking to me.
“Warren? Warren? Warren?”
“Natasha, I’m here.”
In response, Tosha blurts forth with, “You’re going to get a call from George asking if we’re engaged so just say yes.”
“Are you serious? Tosha, it’s two in the morning.”
“When he asks, just say, ‘Yes!’ Okay?” and then she’s silent. I look at the phone’s screen, and see she’s disconnected. It goes dark. Then it lights up again, and I see George’s name and number there.
“Hey,” George says.
“Hey,” I respond as if him calling me right now, at this time of night, is totally normal.
“So…” George continues. I don’t know what to fill in here. Our past phone conversations were less stilted, but usually consisted of “How you doing?” followed by “Cool, man. I’ll go get her.”
“Warren, I don’t want to hear any bullshit right now. I’m gonna ask you something, and I expect a straight answer. This involves me, but it also involves my children, and I don’t play when it comes to my children, understand?”
“I understand,” I say, because it’s late and I’m out on this street and I want this over.
“So let me just ask you something: Are you fucking my wife? Or is she once again fucking with me?”
I think about it. I think about what to say. I think of nothing. So I hang up the phone.
I walk. I don’t feel good. The text that follows from George, You are dead, doesn’t make me feel better. Nor even does the one after: Metaphorically. The previous text should not be misconstrued as a literal threat of grievous bodily harm. Shit head.
—
I sit in the middle of the school bus, in the center of all the empty rows, as Roslyn drives me back home again. I don’t say anything. I don’t look at anything; my head stays in my hands, holding the weight of my skull. When the bus stops at my father’s house, I don’t even notice at first, think it’s just another red light until the engine dies.
I look up. There’s an outline in the dark. Roslyn stands before the exit steps.
“Rise up, fallen fighter. Rise and take your stance again,” she says, not joking. I do get up, so I don’t have to hear any more of that crap. “Don’t fall to despair. You’ll never win her heart like that.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know women,” I say this time to Roslyn, for the more feminine perspective.
“Women are just people, honey. You don’t know people. That’s worse.”
I walk toward the bus’s front door. Roslyn doesn’t move out of my way.
“Come here. Come.” One. Two. Three steps closer. I’m too close to her now. And she’s still standing there, blocking me. I stop with one foot almost between hers. Roslyn grabs my hand, pulls me closer.
“Ask yourself, what do you want?” She squeezes my palm in hers, then takes my other hand as well. If she pulls, I will fall forward, into her. She does. I do.
She doesn’t hug me, she envelops me.
“I’ve got you,” Roslyn tells me. She has me. It’s absurd; I’m pulled so far into her my chin is on her shoulder blade. Her body is warm and soft and her poncho feels woolly to my touch.
“I have you, baby. Let go. Same thing I tell Sunita: you can let go. Let me carry the load.”
I feel her lift me. Just for a second. Just enough that I marvel at this woman’s strength, will. Just long enough that I can feel my ankles lose their burden, lifting slightly from the ground.
“You just need a little mothering, that’s all,” Roslyn says. And then I really do let it go.
I cry. Without filter this time. First the damn tears and all their blurring and then I’m barking ragged sobs. I don’t even know why. I just want to go home. I just want to be alone, even though that’s the last thing I need now and it feels good not to be solitary in this moment. I miss my real mother. I miss her so much. These are her tears, not mine. Just that they’ve been stored in me, and now that I’m drunk they’re escaping.
After Roslyn gets me in and upstairs, after I get my pants off, Roslyn tucks me into bed. She throws my blanket over my fetal pose. My dignity is gone. It’s okay, life feels light without it. It feels even better when she tucks the blanket under my body, then kisses me on my forehead. And with the lightest “Sleep tight,” leaves the room.
Nothing has changed but my mood. Roslyn is a good person. I get her now. And I am not a bad person either. I have my innocence, my vulnerability; that needs to be protected. I was wrong about Sunita Habersham, but I was wrong about Roslyn too. I haven’t been tucked into bed since puberty. It’s beautiful. It’s a good, simple thing. I find it literally sobering.
I keep waiting to hear Roslyn walk down the steps afterward — my digestive system is out of its element with the Ethiopian food, and it’s about to get loud under my duvet — but she goes into the bathroom. It’s horrid in there, tiles ripped up on the floor, calcium stains in the cracked tub; Roslyn deserves better. She must have decided she does too, because I hear her leave it without flushing.
From the creaking doors and floorboards, my ears follow Roslyn going into the next room. There’s nothing in there, just building materials, ladders, my father’s debris. But I hear her. Pausing at the entry. Then walking in steady, deliberate footsteps into the room. Then walking back out. I hear her in the hall again, and just when I think she’s finally going to leave, I hear her do the same thing at the next bedroom. Walk inside in even, rhythmic footsteps. Then walk out again. Then the next room. She’s measuring, I realize. With her steps. Like my father used to do when he forgot his tape ruler. I don’t know why. I don’t know what she wants or what she’s after. But I hear as she stands still, in the last doorway, taking it in. Pausing long enough to really inspect the space, then closing that last door lightly behind her and heading back to the stairs finally.
16
OFF THE COAST of Maine, about an hour north of Portland, on an island resting on the mouth of the New Meadows River, among those last spatters of New England where North America blends into the Atlantic, there lived a community of mulattoes. For real. There were about forty of them, and most shared a common black ancestor, a sailor who settled in the area a century earlier. The island, Malaga, as well as the town of Phippsburg just across the narrow strip of water from it, once had a stable economy, when shipbuilding and the commerce of the sea made the area a prime location. But the movement toward steam-powered boats at the end of the nineteenth century left these communities poor and isolated, like many coastal Maine towns. Still, impoverished as Malaga was, it did have some wealthy benefactors, and by 1910 a new school was built and the island showed signs of long-term improvement. The community might still be there today, the sole black neighborhood of rural Maine. But at the same time some were seeking to help this group, a plan was hatched to save the local economy by turning that part of the river into a tourist destination for wealthy urban vacationers. This plan lacked room for a bunch of poor Negroes sitting in the middle of the scenic landscape. Newspapers soon raged with headlines like STRANGE COMMUNITY ON MALAGO [sic] ISLAND and told stories of the “peculiar people” and their “romantic tales.” Twisted by yellow journalism, the community became cast as a miscegenated Gomorrah. The public was presented with a living representation of the hybrid splicing H. G. Wells had just written a novel about, only this time, it was The Isle of Doctor Mulatto. This distorted and warped story provided cover for the state to seize control of Malaga and evict its residents, destroying the entire community. Eight of the Malagans, people too old or young to take care of themselves, were sent to The Maine School for the Feeble-Minded, where all but two would die. The state even dug up Malaga’s cemetery, dumping the bodies in the sanitarium’s potter’s field, lest their blackness taint the island soil like lime.