“Don’t change the subject,” I tell her. “Listen, I’m not planning on keeping this property, okay? They can’t come here. I have other plans.” I don’t tell her, Because it’s burning down. Because I can make more on the insurance than any sane person would ever pay me. Because I have the know-how to burn this wreck down, having done the research at the library, by looking it up on YouTube.
“I never said anything about them coming here. Tal is the one—”
Tal screams. From upstairs. Sun doesn’t hear it. Sun is still talking. But I hear Tal. And though I haven’t been there for her most of her life, I’ve been here these months, so I know my girl’s screams. And this one might mean something, if I heard it right. So I wait. Look up. Like I can see through the exposed and rotting drywall on the ceiling. Sun’s still making mouth noises, but my ears are aimed up. A second later Tal screams again and I start running. And at the steps I know Sun has heard it too because she runs with me.
We hit the second floor so fast I slide into the wall. The bathroom. There is nothing being screamed now, but I know. The crisp echo off the porcelain: the bathroom. I have nothing in my hand, my spear is lost, Taser in the car, baseball bats downstairs. I don’t care. My weapon is my body. I swing open its door. White subway tile predating subways. White claw-foot tub. White sink. Not-white girl.
Tal’s standing there, hands over her mouth. I look on her for blood, then in the sink, then on the floor. A gust blows in through the halfopen window, cold, still winter. I go to the tub. I reach for the shower curtain, thinking someone might be on the far side behind it. Nothing.
“What?” I ask my daughter. “What is it?”
“Outside,” Tal whispers. So light I don’t understand. Not till she’s pointing again. Then I look. It’s dark. It’s the night, the frozen night. I can’t see. But then I do.
There’s two people fucking outside my window.
That’s not right. That can’t be right. So, specifics: there’s a naked black man. Fucking a naked white woman. From behind. Outside my bathroom window.
Both upright. In the dark.
I squint. Yes. It’s dark, but that is what I’m seeing.
“Get the hell out of here!” I yell. All the anger there. All.
Sun shoots her hand to my mouth. Very slow, low, as if not to interrupt them, she says, “We’re on the second floor.”
We are on the second floor.
Those fuckers out there are floating twenty feet off the ground.
Another scream. I think it’s Tal again, but when I turn around, no, it’s Sun. Tal’s hand is up, holding her phone at them as if it were an exorcist’s bible.
I turn around. There’s nothing outside the window but night again. I lift the window up higher, put my head out, look around. Nothing. No one on the lawn. No one on the street beyond. I grab the window frame, slam it down and lock it.
Reflection. I think, Reflection, it must’ve been a reflection. There is a mirror over the sink and one by the door. There are no ghosts.
I start to run for the hall but Sun grips my arm, yanks me back.
Tal puts the phone down, says, “We can’t spend another night in this place alone, Pops. Not just us. Not without more people here.”
I need to search the lawn. But Sun won’t let go of me. And Tal hugs me too. Their arms are woven. Sun’s head is up. It keeps staring at the window.
My daughter’s face is lit by her phone. She starts poking at it, trying to replay what just happened.
“Who were they?” Sun whispers aloud.
“The first interracial couple,” Tal says. I look at her. She’s smiling at the screen. “The first couple,” she repeats, like this is an historical moment she’s captured.
17
THE VIDEO IS in color. But barely. Faint pale tones only margins from gray. It takes a second — even having been there, it takes a second — to know that you’re looking down a narrow bathroom. Mostly because the camera is aimed up at the window. It’s only in a brief jostle of the lens, presumably as Tal balanced herself, that we get a flash of the sink, dislocated a good inch from the exposed plaster of the wall, or the permanently stained toilet that takes two pulls of its hanging chain to flush. The focus quickly resets on the window. First it’s framed by the crumbling wood of the windowsill, then as it zooms outside the image is engulfed by the darkness of that night. But not all dark. There is something. I will grant my daughter that. I am not beyond reason. I am not so divorced from the facts before me that I can’t say, “Yes, there is an image of vibrating figures.” I saw it the first time. In fact, I am so intricately connected to reason that I must both acknowledge that I, too, did see something, something reminiscent of two figures fornicating, but also that I would have to be delusional to think it was a ghost. Or two ghosts. Or that they were the ghosts of the first black and white couple in America. Fucking.
The crackheads were in the house. Again. I know I am right, I have faith in my original estimation. The outdoor cams caught nothing. The vision was a reflection, no doubt. They were behind us. They were down the hall, their image refracted off the broken glass on the bathroom door. I can show you how they did it. I can draw diagrams. The eerie lighting that still sparks from that fuse box probably helped, I’m sure. I don’t know how they keep getting in and the fact that I haven’t found them doesn’t mean that some other mad explanation must be true. We’re talking angles and reflection here, simple physics.
“Ghosts of the First Interracial Couple” Tal titles it when she puts the clip online, because she’s sticking to her faith. She creates an account called “Mélanged.” It gets ninety-four hits in two weeks. The only other video uploaded to the account is one of Spider awkwardly yanking on one of his Creole accordions, which garners only thirty-seven views, presumably from the man himself. When pressed how she made the leap toward this context for the title, Tal says, “I can feel it. I just have this sense. They are it. They are, like, our Adam and Eve.” I laugh every time she says it. Tal never does.
—
“Great ancestors of dark and light, through time and the veil of life, we beseech you! Your children of Africa and Europe! Show us your love!” Tal exclaims. She’s in the dining room. She’s broken down her tent for this, packed all her things neatly in the hall, out of the way of the stairs because that would be a fire hazard. “Reveal to us once more your glory, give us a sign to guide us toward your truth.”
I’ve got fifteen teenage mulattoes all up in my living room. Tal, Kimet, their little mixie-pixie friends. Crammed in there, all sitting on the floor. All those zits and such. Lot of bumpy beige flesh. Sitting in the damn near dark. Nobody else saying a word. One Drop is the only one over twenty-one in the group, sitting on crossed legs, massive thighs protruding into the space of the crowded room. The kids I recognize as sunflowers, they hang around him, like always. He’s got his eyes closed, along with a few of the others as they start to chant “Om.” I keep looking at him. I wait for him to open his eyes, because I’m fairly sure he’s just here because he still wants to screw my girlfriend. I catch him, every once in a while, checking out Sunita Habersham. I’m watching you, big boy, my eyes say, but his are closed so it’s an optical monologue.
“Your primal pain has blossomed generations of love. Let us praise you for your sacrifice.” Tal’s got the incense going, which I thought was a bit much at first but I appreciate later when several of the older ones show up smelling like weed. The rest of the community must be sane, because although Tal hung fliers all over my lawn, they’re not here. “This is your home. This is your land. We are your people. Blended by love, in your image!”