Imagine Me Gone Read online

  I’d been leaning forward in my chair, keen for his response, but I sat back in wonder now. I didn’t think he had given my reporting a second thought. But no, he had it all worked out.

  “And so that makes what I do illegitimate?”

  “Not illegitimate. It’s just part of the context. Not many black women report on politics for national magazines.”

  “Oh, come on. Is that really where we still are? Isn’t that what you called ‘bureaucratic multiculturalism’? Checking the box with a colored face?”

  “That’s a danger, sure. But maybe what’s more telling is how you take the suggestion that the world isn’t a pure meritocracy. Like it’s an insult to your accomplishment.”

  “And it isn’t?”

  “Well. If it’s an insult, think what that means: all the qualified people just happen to be upper middle class and white. That’s a three-hundred-year coincidence.”

  “I’m asking you about the work I do, and you’re giving me a lecture on affirmative action?”

  His impassive eyes gave him the look of an ideologue trying not to sacrifice principle for sentiment.

  “I read your piece,” he said. “It was well done.”

  Maybe because I was tired, or because it had been so long since he’d offered me any praise, even this reluctant snippet caused my self-pity to well up in its warm, depressive sweetness. I worked as hard as I did, for so little pay, on articles and mini-articles and web teasers that passed into the ether almost as soon as they were published, ignored in favor of the cable-news bloviators, and yet still it turned out I was too privileged and establishment to satisfy my brother’s politics.

  “Thanks,” I said, signaling the waiter for the check. “I’m glad you liked it.”

  Back at the apartment, he helped me assemble his futon, and we opened the boxes with the sheets our mother had packed, along with the pillows and blankets. He made up the bed while I put away the plates and bowls, and rinsed off the silverware. Then we unpacked his suitcases and set up his closet. I wished we could play music, something to make the rooms a little familiar before I left, but he had forgotten his speaker cables, so we worked to the sound of the fan in the window.

  By the time we’d sorted all his belongings except the books and records, it was nearly eleven. I had an early flight from Detroit, and it would take us an hour and a half to get to the airport in the morning. I had booked myself a motel, and I drove us there in the Grand Am, along the empty streets, wanting more than anything for him to say something funny as we passed the gas stations and the darkened malls, something absurd to lighten the moment and release us both.

  In the parking lot, as I handed him the car key, it struck me that I should have booked us both at the motel, so he wouldn’t have to sleep in that apartment with no air-conditioning on his own. But it was late. It would take time for him to go back and get his pills, and I was exhausted.

  Michael

  I’d imagined it like the reading group with Caleigh and Myra: the camaraderie of a devotion to radical scholarship, an interrogation of the historical determinants of affect in black life, and perhaps some volunteers for the reparations movement. But to my shock it turned out that most of my fellow grad students subscribed to cable, went to the gym, and weren’t certain yet what interested them enough to write about. It’s not that they objected to my work, or didn’t want to hear about transgenerational haunting, but it didn’t move them. It was my thing, which was fine by them, though not a cause for urgency. Doubtless I came across as something of an odd quantity, being the only white man in the program and older than the junior faculty. Which isn’t to say anyone behaved in an unfriendly manner, just that if there was a potluck, I didn’t hear about it. No matter, I told myself, you’re here to do your work.

  That might have been enough, if I’d been able to consume books and articles as fast as I had those many years ago during the first reprieve of Klonopin. But pages of text appeared waxed to me now, covered in a film of distraction. By noon I’d have only a paltry set of notes, and acid in my stomach at the horror of all that remained unread. I kept putting off the duller course work to try to do my own, only to fall behind on both. In the evenings, on the phone, Caleigh tried to convince me things would improve, that I simply needed to adjust, while Mom suggested I would sleep better if I turned down the heat.

  It hadn’t occurred to me that living on my own would be different from living with Ben and Christine. I’d come to dread Ben reminding me IT’S THURSDAY, the day I spent in fear of forgetting to take out the garbage or properly clean the bathroom (I might use the wrong detergent and ruin the tile; I might miss a patch of mold and reap a silent resentment). There was none of that on my own now at Spartan Village. I took the trash out when so moved. Yet no one was in the other room watching 24, eating slow-cooked legumes. No one affectionately mocked my frozen-enchilada dinners, as Christine had for years. I hadn’t realized that her laughter was what made them honorable. I had lived most of my adult life with Ben, and later with him and Christine together, without noticing I was doing it, and yet I had never suspected that hearing the muffled edge of their conversations through closed doors and the toilet flushing upstairs had done so much to assure me that other people existed. In the new apartment the cinder-block walls cut off all sound of the neighbors.

  Occasionally, on the walkway, I’d chat with the portly medical resident from next door, a soft-skinned, childlike man from Delaware who was doing a rotation at a pain clinic and complaining of having to treat nothing but refractory patients. Like the woman who’d gone to visit relatives in Chicago after her third spinal surgery only to be run down in the aisle of a Costco in a shopping-rage incident, requiring him, against his better judgment, to FedEx her a prescription for fentanyl patches, which she’d applied all in one go, causing her to miss the Detroit stop on her bus home, and sleep through to Toronto. They’re dumpster cases, he said, other services don’t want to deal with them, so they turf them over to us. Leading me, naturally, to wonder what kind of supplies he might keep in his own apartment.

  As is the way of things, I was forced to take more Klonopin to get through the days. Dr. Bennet had written me for a decent supply to tide me over during the transition, but I’d run through it in a jiffy. Then I went through the batch that Dr. Greenman, my new shrink at the University Department of Mental Hygiene, had prescribed before a month had passed. The first time, she obliged me with an early refill, and she did it again a few weeks later, as any humanitarian would. But after my third request she began exhibiting signs of moralism, suggesting I needed to be more disciplined.

  By then, the sweating had commenced. Night sweats were one thing. I was used to waking in soaked sheets; bedding could be laundered and the day needn’t be lost. But sweating through my shirt before making it to the bus stop was a real drag. The temperature had nothing to do with it. Wind could be blasting off the steppes of Michigan and still my pores ran like broken faucets, my skin as slick as a clapped donkey in July. In seminar, I hesitated to raise my hand lest the stench of my underarm waft across the table. But I’d waited a long time to get here and I wanted to contribute, so I started bringing a washcloth and an extra set of clothes with me onto campus each day, to towel off and change before class.

  The program was affiliated with a mentoring scheme for minority high schoolers, and with Caleigh’s encouragement, I signed up to volunteer two afternoons a week. They paired me with a sophomore named Jaylen. Our first task was to work through a review book for the state English test. But after ten minutes muddling through a Marge Piercy poem, I commented on his Juicy J T-shirt, and we got sidetracked on a discussion of the Memphis origins of crunk. I concurred in his judgment that Three 6 Mafia’s “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp” was a mainstreamed train wreck by an otherwise innovative crew, and that Juicy J himself bore much of the responsibility, given his brand-expansion ambitions. This was around the time that Oris Jay (aka Darqwan) finally got around to releasing another Sh
effield bass record on his homegrown Texture label, and I suggested that if Jaylen really wanted to give his thorax a shake he check out some British dubstep. Which I’m happy to say he did. By our third meeting it was clear I had more in common with him than I did with my fellow grad students. For one thing, we were both fifteen (at the level of the psychic), we listened to inordinate quantities of dance music, and as far as I could tell, we were both attracted to his English teacher.

  I did my best dragging him through Abigail Adams’s correspondence and Newsweek excerpts on paragliding, but at the bottom of the sessions we always circled back to what we were listening to. When I mentioned I had a subwoofer in the trunk of my car, he asked if he could hear it, and I ended up driving him home to the beat of a Torsten Pröfrock / Monolake workout from Berlin. Rolling through the streets of Lansing with him, I realized I hadn’t had anyone else in the car since arriving in Michigan, and certainly no one to listen to music with. I rather appreciated the company. Unlike my family, he never asked me to turn the volume down. And really, what would I have done all these years without a monster sound system in my car? Where else, beyond the walls of a club, can you experience bass loud enough to wipe your memory clean without complaint from the neighbors? Sound systems are what turn cars into escape vehicles, even if you’ve got nowhere to go. A drive to the convenience store is five minutes of that storm blowing in from paradise. I’ll take the sneers of oldsters at intersections expecting gunfire. The relief is too rare to give up for civility’s sake.

  Jaylen was understandably wary of me, but excited to suddenly be a font of pre-releases for his friends, who couldn’t believe he’d got his hands on a bin full of screwed and chopped tracks they hadn’t even heard of. I didn’t review much anymore (not wanting to write about Moby turned out to be a real professional liability), but the records and press releases still arrived by the bushel, adding to the stacks Alec thought I should be putting up on eBay. I started giving most of the non-dross to Jaylen. I’d fill a bag with CDs and the odd twelve-inch, and offer it to him when I dropped him off. I’m sure I went on too long when we happened upon a snippet of Wordsworth or a James Baldwin quote in his review materials, but he didn’t seem to mind. You’re weird, he said. How come you’re not a professor? I told him that I was nominally in training to become one, but that I wasn’t sure if the modern academy was sufficiently politicized for me. You should meet my mom, he said, she always votes. I’d seen his mother in their driveway a few times, and she’d offered a wave. Luckily her looks were not of such force as to arrest me at first sight, but I certainly had no objection to his suggestion that I make her acquaintance.

  I appreciate you helping Jaylen, she said, when I brought him home one afternoon. I hope he’s not asking you for all that merchandise you’re giving him. That child is spoiled enough. I get it for free, I said, it’s no trouble. So you’re over at MSU, she said. I’m still working on my bachelor’s over there. I keep saying I’ll finish in time so when he’s getting out of high school we can graduate together, but we’ll see if I make it.

  Thank goodness that even at greater proximity she didn’t trigger in me the obsessional rush, tensing my gut or goading me into telling her that I loved her. The moment had a gentler aspect. I didn’t converse with many people outside of seminars. Weekends were empty—only phone calls, and always the apartment in silence when I hung up. Yet I didn’t feel the necessity to romance this woman. I only wanted to go into the house with the two of them and share a meal. But then I heard Caleigh’s voice saying, Flipper, don’t be a creep. So I kept it to pleasantries and took my leave.

  When I raised my uncontrolled perspiration with Dr. Greenman, she asked if there was anything I was particularly anxious about at the moment. Like, say, the Feds trying to garnish my fellowship checks for back taxes? Or your refusing to write me a script for enough medicine to get by? Or that I waited so long for this chance to get everything down, from George Clinton to the Finland Station, from slave ships to Holocaust studies to the echo of loss in the speed of a high hat, only to find my concentration shot? But I didn’t want to be rude. She was a basically sympathetic woman, in her wide-wale cords and cable-knit seasonals. I believed her concern for my condition to be genuine, even if her rectitude about prescribing controlled substances blinded her to the fact that my need for them at this point was nothing more or less than a way to make it through the hour.

  What could I do? I began trolling for benzo equivalents on the Internet, where people seemed to agree on the utility of kratom, a quasi-opioid tea drunk by Thai fieldworkers that apparently took the edge off in a serious way. The FDA hadn’t gotten around to banning it, so I ordered a pound and got started. It had no place in an aromatherapy regime, but neither did people with actual problems. Its effect was akin to strong coffee laced with high quantities of Benadryl. I consumed it every morning. That’s how my days began: more Klonopin than the doctor ordered, a thermos of coffee, a mug of kratom, three or four legacy meds, a few hundred milligrams of whatever Dr. Greenman was pushing, followed by a hot shower. By November, I’d largely given up on my course reading, let alone any assignments past due, which made attending my seminars less relevant and even inappropriate. My mother would only worry if I told her, as would Celia and Alec. I talked to Caleigh about it, but she chastised me, saying that even if I didn’t write brilliant essays, I needed to keep up with the work. This was my chance, she said. This was how I would find a job.

  On Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, I did my best to gather myself with a change of shirts and an extra cup of kratom before driving over to the school to pick up Jaylen. The idea was that we meet for the first month in the safe space of the school and then, once trust had been established, we could venture out on our own. Mentors were asked to keep tabs on their mentees’ academic progress, but we weren’t required to limit ourselves to that. Mostly Jaylen and I drove around Lansing with the subwoofer.

  I’d started playing him old-school stuff I thought he should know, music I hadn’t listened to in years, Larry Levan garage mixes, Afrika Bambaataa, Neil Young, anything with an ache of the real. When I got to Donna Summer, though, he balked. You’re just trying to mess with me, he said. That’s fag music. To date, he’d struck me as a mild-mannered kid. As for his mother, on the spectrum of the politics of black respectability, she fell somewhere in the hesitant middle, of small enough means to preclude class pretensions but scared enough for her son to want him to toe a line she never had. Music seemed like their compromise, the thing she didn’t try to control. He could visit the imaginary power of making his white classmates fear a black planet, but still turn the music off and get on with the business of getting on. But that masculine fantasy left no room for Donna Summer or Diana Ross or, for that matter, Nina Simone or David Bowie. They queered the pitch. Telling him that my younger brother was a respectable, middle-class homosexual didn’t seem like it would do the trick. Instead, I played him the last twenty seconds of Summer and Moroder’s “Our Love,” where the synth begins to pulse and drip over the beat like chemicals made to dance, and I told him, There is no techno without this. It’s the genealogy of what you already love.

  When we got to his house, his mother, Trish, was just pulling in. I could offer you some coffee, she said, if you like. They lived in a one-story brick house with a front sitting room used only in the event of company. The couch and chairs were covered in clear plastic to protect the fabric, which I was glad for, relieved that my dampness wouldn’t make a stain. On the glass-top coffee table was a bowl of dried flowers, russet and dusty pink. Jaylen sat uneasily on the far end of the couch from me, and rolled his eyes when his mother said she’d love for him to go to MSU when he graduated high school. He’s already a Spartans fan, she said, so why not? Because I don’t want to stay here, he said. She cast a chastising glance at him, then turned to smile at me.

  Do you have your own kids, she asked, hopefully. Yes, I said, I have a son and a daughter. They’re six and eight. Oh, that’
s just the best, she said, and laughed. By the time they get to this one’s age they’re nothing but trouble. Though he’s better than his sister. She’s already living at her boyfriend’s and there wasn’t no use trying to stop her. You must be run off your feet with those two, she said, and here you are taking time to help Jaylen.

  They don’t live with me, I said, they’re with their mother in Chicago. I go there to visit them. I could feel Jaylen’s eyes on me, but he said nothing. Well, at least you do that, she said, philosophically, at least you do that. Sweat flowed down my torso and I could only hope she didn’t smell it. It’s Jaylen’s turn to make dinner, she said, he’s doing tacos. You’d be welcome to stay.

  After a few extra Klonopin in the bathroom, the scene became quite ordinary: the overhead light in the kitchen, the shredded Kraft cheese, Jaylen’s dogging his mother for pestering him not to eat so fast. Even the conversation about what I studied, which usually confused people, seemed ordinary enough. When you live most days alone in a room with a tiger kept from pouncing on you by nothing more than your constant stare, being poured a cup of Pepsi can feel almost Christlike in its mercy. It seemed perfectly natural to tell his mother, when she asked, that I had grown up on the south side of Chicago in an extended, mixed-race family. Oh, Flipper, Caleigh would say later, and we would argue. But there I was, eating dinner with the two of them, and we were jovial.

  Despite my repeated insistence, they wouldn’t let me wash the dishes. They mistook it for a chore. They didn’t know the pleasure it would give me, or what that pleasure would count for. But I was their guest, and so I desisted. It was already dark out, the early darkness of winter evenings, when six o’clock seems like midnight. Jaylen’s mother turned on the outside light, and I thanked her for the hospitality on the way out to my car. Be safe out there, she said.