“You could go next, dude. It’s been a long year. Join us! It’s not a Mélange thing; it’s a mixed thing. You’ve earned it.”
“Yeah, no thanks. My plan is to finish this life unscarred.”
I can’t actually see what’s happening. Or I can’t actually bring myself to see. I look at Tal’s face. I force myself to stop flinching when she does. There’s her pain. And here I am, finally. I missed her flu shots, her first fall from a bicycle, even her ear piercings, but for this I am present. Tal’s first tattoo. The moment she is forever marked. The moment even her body loses its pretense to being a blank state. We have stories. Now you can just see one of her chapters.
It’s taking too long. “Can I do something for you, honey?” I ask Tal. “What can I do for you right now. For the pain?”
“Bring me vodka.”
“No.”
“Then bring me Sun,” Tal tells me, adding a yelp when I seem reluctant to carry out the order.
—
I knock so lightly on Sun’s door. I’m so polite. Just cute little taps, evenly spread out, I’m very controlled and considerate.
“Sunita? Please. Open up. I need to talk to you.”
When that doesn’t work, I hit a little harder, and a little more so every few beats. “Sun. Please. It’s not for me. It’s for Tal.” My voice is low, but it doesn’t need to be. There’s no one else outside to hear me. I have no idea where everyone is, but they aren’t walking the grass alleys of Halfie Heights. There must be a party. A party to which I wasn’t invited. Two parties, most likely, one for the Oreos, one for the sunflowers. You would think the sunflowers’ party would be rocking more bass, but Little Halfrica is silent.
When I sit down on the stoop, I say it again. “It’s for Tal.” Because it all is for Tal. These steps, they’re metal and narrow and hurt my ass but I don’t care because it’s for Tal. Also, it’s pathetic. I want Sun to see me being pathetic. I want her to see my regret. I want—
The light goes on beside the trailer. Just appears, no sound. Bright light. I look to Sun’s windows. Curtains still drawn. Space behind them now dark inside. It was the outdoor motion detector. I haven’t moved.
I go upright silently. I don’t move any more than that. I don’t breathe. I hold my breath and listen. I hear nothing. Not cars. Not radios. Not humans. Not crickets. And then I’m scared, because I don’t hear crickets. There is always the sound of crickets, at night, in Germantown, in May. There are no crickets. There is nothing.
There is the white woman.
There is the sound of footfalls, running.
She is there and then she isn’t there and she’s running away. Goddamn half-naked white woman running through Germantown. That’s all it takes to ruin everything.
I run after her.
I run before I realize I can barely walk. I bang into the trailer next to Sun’s, hear some Oreo scream in the shaky inside, keep running. I’m going to catch her. I’m going to end the hoodoo nonsense. I am going to rid the land of all crackheads forever. She glides beyond me. I will push her to the ground, hold her there and scream, sit on her till the police come and Tal too, with half a tattoo but who cares because now she’ll know the lie of this place.
Bare pale white feet, black on the bottom. Ghosts don’t have dirty feet.
“Ghosts don’t have dirty feet!” I yell when she cuts through another line of trailers.
“What the fuck?” comes back, but not from her, from another trailer I slide into because the dewy grass is slippery and my balance even more unreliable.
A white shirt. Long. Like a gown. A dirty white gown. Maybe a hospital gown. But it’s her. The woman from the house. The burglar. I know her. I have seen her. Not like the others claim, not in some mystical revelation. I have seen this crackhead asshole and I know her and I don’t even know where from besides my dreams but I know her. It’s her. I am running. Stopping. Spying her through the maze of mobile homes. Running again.
“This is private property!” I yell like I own the place. I own the place. Or now Tal owns the place, but I would know if there were any white people living here. There are no white people here. There are tons of half-Europeans, but no whole ones.
Darting to the end of the trailers, she heads toward the last one, turns out of sight at its corner. I chase after the shadowed blur of her pale body. She runs from me like she’s guilty and she is and I will capture her and reveal her to the world.
“I see you!” I yell at her. “Everybody wake up! I see her! Come see her!”
It will be like Scooby-Doo! I do it for my Velma. Everyone will surround us while I whip off the ghoul’s mask.
I turn the corner and she’s gone.
She hasn’t gone farther. The grass is empty beyond. No one is that fast. She did not vanish into thin air. Only ghosts vanish into thin air. Ducking down, I look under the Victorian trailer, see nothing. I look up at the door. It’s Roslyn’s door.
It’s Roslyn’s door.
It’s Roslyn. It’s always been Roslyn. I am drunk and I am tired and I am breathing really heavy now too, but I know, it’s Roslyn. Behind it all.
Roslyn, who answers the door after only two knocks, because she’s awake. Of course she is.
“Where is she!”
“Warren? It’s very late. What’s wrong? Why are you doing this?” The expression; she plays it perfectly.
“I know she’s in there.”
Roslyn, who just stares at me. Standing in her doorway. Nothing but a long T-shirt on and a sleeping bonnet. Standing there like a door herself, a closed one. In a backward, inside-out T-shirt with the tag showing. Who won’t say a damn thing more. And I win. I win. Because she lifts up a finger and points down to the far end of the property, wags her head in defeat, and goes back inside.
I walk in the direction noted. As far into the dark as the compound allows. Along the line of the most rusted of the property’s fence, below where the slope of the hill hits its sharpest downturn, where the angle hides it from the rest of the property. I am coming for her. I am coming for him too, if he’s here. I’m coming.
I see a light. Not the steady drone of the streetlight. A spark. A flicker. Candlelight. Against the farthest corner of the yard. I see her, on the ground, before it. I start running, trying to get all the way before she can escape, am at full momentum again when I can already tell it’s not the white woman.
“What the hell is your problem?” comes from Sunita Habersham when I reach her. She’s on her knees. There’s not one light before her, but three. Bodega candles. Leaning up against the middle iron rods of the border. Their light flickers off her face, and the intimacy of her posture makes me feel the embarrassment as it takes over.
“Did you see a white lady?” I ask, because I can’t bring myself to ask what she’s doing, what this is, what is going on with her. Or why she’s frantically gathering up the pictures that I now see are lying on the ground before her, pulling them into a loose pile and sticking them in a cardboard box. I don’t look at them, don’t even want to guess what they are. I want to run past her, continue crackhead-hunting, pretend this is normal behavior on both our parts.
“I’m not crazy,” Sun insists.
“I didn’t say you were crazy. I wasn’t even thinking that.” And I wasn’t, because I hadn’t even gotten that far.
“It’s a ritual. For closure.” I look down at my ankle, which I realize is hot. Because it’s burning. I hop from the pain, see something fall off my pant leg. I lift it up, hold the remains of a photo, the image of a man’s flannel shirt obscured by a destructive line of ember that glows in the darkness.