The Turner House (10 page)

Troy knew from the beginning of the talk that his six sisters could fit the seaman's description—he wasn't blind, after all—but the last bit about Lelah doused him in a proprietary rage he'd never experienced before. It wasn't a fight as much as a quick pummeling of David's face, but both men were assigned thirty days of on-boat restriction and thirty days of labor. The latter half of their 30/30s, when Troy and David spent four hours a day suspended from cables to paint the starboard side of the ship, bonded the two sailors, their differences overshadowed by a shared longing for home.

David looked at the time on his phone.

“I bet Jillian is waiting for you. Go head and drop me off.”

Troy had planned to buy him a few rounds of drinks for setting the call up, but it felt like David was in a rush to get away. He dropped him off and headed home.

Hamtramck, a small city surrounded by the larger city of Detroit, had experienced several lives over the past century—German farming community, Polish immigrant enclave, even one of the most rock 'n' roll cities in America, according to one magazine. None of these lives had ever included enough black people for Troy's liking. He sometimes liked to sit in his patrol car on the street in front of his rented duplex to remind his Eastern European, Chaldean, and plain old white neighbors that he (A) was gainfully employed, and (B) had the law on his side. Tonight he parked his SUV, walked up to his door, stopped with his key in the lock, and sniffed the air. He could smell Jillian's dinner from outside, something with Worcestershire sauce. Lamb chops. He heard her singing along to one of her quiet storm mixes. It was a female vocalist with a voice too deep for Jillian to mimic. Anita Baker. He rolled his shoulders back and stepped inside.

His ex-wife, Cara, had been all curves and softness. Big ass, fleshy thighs. Jillian was the first woman Troy had dated who was linear and firm. Nearly as tall as Troy at five feet ten. Like a model, is what he'd thought back at Cobo Center when they met. He watched her shoulder blades work up and down as she grated parmesan cheese onto a salad in the kitchen. Quitting the flight attendant job had stripped her of some glamour—she rarely wore makeup outside of lip gloss now, and kept her hair in ponytails more often than not. But the hours on her feet sewing in weaves, washing and flat-ironing hair hadn't affected her posture. She was statuesque. She had the sort of even complexion—medium brown with orange undertones—that, coupled with her athletic frame, suggested continuity, an unwillingness to mottle or sag.

“Camille tried to chat with you earlier,” she said. “I was checking my email on your laptop when she called. I told her to try again tomorrow.”

“I'll catch her in the morning,” Troy said. He sat on the ottoman in the living room and took off his sneakers. His nine-year-old daughter, Camille, and his ex-wife lived in Kaiserslautern, an American military community outside of Frankfurt. He'd bought her a new laptop with a webcam so they could talk for free online.

He and Jillian ate on TV trays set up in front of the couch. Jillian associated sitting around the table every night with the strained family dinners of her childhood in Lansing, when she and her younger two sisters had to report on the highs and lows of their school days before they could eat dessert. Table or no table, Jillian had never broken the habit of recounting her day in detail. He listened to her talk about a man who came into the salon with a shopping bag full of bootleg DVDs. A customer gave him a $100 bill, expecting change, and he ran out with the money.

“I promise you, you never seen a old-ass man move that fast,” she said. “And we tried to play the DVD he gave her. It was blank!”

Troy laughed. They were skilled at this, being good when things were good between them.

“We need to go ahead and start looking into flights for Camille this summer,” Jillian said. “It's almost that time.”

He walked into the kitchen with their dirty plates. This was their agreement: she cooked and he cleaned up afterward. He'd never made such agreements with Cara, or the women he'd dated before. He had cleaned up plenty of times with other women, but it always felt like a favor he was doing them, rather than an expected contribution. Now he felt mature enough to where it didn't hurt his ego to clean the kitchen or fold the laundry without being asked.

“Babe? Did you hear me?” she called from the couch. “I said it's time to start looking for flights before they start going up.”

“Mmm-hmm,” Troy mumbled. He sponged Worcestershire sauce and cold lamb fat from the skillet. Every summer Troy sent for Camille for a month. For three years it had been the only time he'd seen her in person. Jillian had come to look forward to the visits too. Troy knew she wanted a child of her own, a child that he was not poised to give her. Viola had always called him the Lucky Boy because he was the last son born, and Francis had tried harder to be present in his life than he had the six boys before him. They'd gone fishing on Lake Saint Clair, to countless Lions games out in Pontiac. One summer when Troy was twelve, Francis, inspired by an announcement on the morning news, had tracked down the SwimMobile for Troy and two of his friends. He dropped them off on the west side. He must have noticed their apprehension at swimming with kids from unfamiliar blocks because he'd told them, “This whole city belongs to you. Specially at this age. Don't let nobody stop you from enjoyin it.” He'd sat in his truck as they splashed around in the mobile pool—an eighteen-wheeler with an open cargo container in the back filled with hydrant water—listening to the radio and smoking his pipe. Francis even attended Troy's graduation from basic, something he'd never done for Quincy, Russell, Lonnie, Miles, or Duke when they finished boot camp. This extra time spent was not enough for Troy, because Francis still existed behind a wall of formality. You could not go to Francis for advice about girls, or bullies, or even siblings. He would shrug off responsibility with something like, “Your mama got a better head for that sorta thing,” or “Might as well ask Cha-Cha, what's an old man know?” It was if his father had finally figured out the value of sharing his time with his children but not his heart. Troy tried to give more than this to Camille, via video chats, spontaneous gifts in the mail, and support of her extracurricular interests, which ranged from German and French classes to ballet. It took a lot of energy, and Troy did not think he had enough reserved for another child, nor enough money.

“We should put her in a little summer program,” Jillian said. “She's old enough now to do a day camp, or maybe a short sleep-away one. There's this one in the Upper Peninsula that's a week long about ecosystems and stuff. Maybe Cara would help pay.”

He dried his hands and came over to the couch.

“I met with Dave earlier tonight.”

“Oh yeah? What's he talking about?”

“Um.” Troy hopped back up and went to the fridge for a beer. “Ha. It's funny. We was talkin about my mama's house, actually.”

He could feel her eyes on him, even as he faced the fridge in mock deliberation (they only had Heinekens to choose from). He knew her head was cocked, that she was incredulous that he'd brought the issue up again. Soon her neck, that beautiful, elongated, near limb that had drawn him to her in the first place, would be tensing up, shrinking into her shoulders.

“Dave knows a guy who can help with the house paperwork, but it'll cost extra. And, um, I was thinkin maybe we could wait to bring Camille out here till the second half of the summer, like late July?”

He turned around to find her posed just as he'd imagined.

“What the fuck, Troy? What's there to even . . . help with? Huh? We had this . . . conversation not three fucking days ago.”

“Yeah, but the more I think about it, we gotta do this, Jill.”

He sat on the couch, ignored her hostile posture, and moved in close. If they were willing to be close to each other, it could not be considered a fight yet. He put his hand on her thigh.

“Why?” she asked. “You need to . . . to really
think
about why. You're gonna piss folks off . . . damn near
everybody.
And the house is basically worthless. Why?”

“Cause people like Cha-Cha and them always get taken advantage of,” he said. “So scared of breaking the rules, like somebody is even thinking about them. Wasn't nobody thinking about us when they
made
these rules. But they wanna sit around and follow them.”

There was a difference between violent, destructive crimes and bending rules that were prejudiced or predatory to start. Over the last few months, as the housing bubble burst, he'd read article after article about banks pressuring black and Latino homebuyers, even those whose income and credit scores could have warranted a better deal, into subprime mortgages. It was illegal and deplorable to steal from your neighbor, yes. Manipulating a housing system that had manipulated people who looked like you for decades? He saw no harm in that. But for as long as he could remember, Cha-Cha and Tina had acted like the integrity police. They had been above getting illegal cable installed in the nineties when everyone had “black boxes.” They wouldn't let anyone drive their cars if they weren't on the insurance, not even around the corner. A couple years back they had overextended themselves financially to prevent their son Chucky from filing for the unemployment compensation he was entitled to. It was a particular sort of Turner weakness: self-sabotaging self-righteousness masked as self-reliance. It made Troy sick.

“You know, Cha-Cha's not the only one who put some money and time into that house,” he said. “When I first got out the service, I lived on Yarrow with Mama, and Cha-Cha
never
came over to see how I was doing, let alone how Mama was doing. He came over to ‘handle business,' like check on the water heater or whatever, but that's it. And doesn't spending time count more than his stupid money, especially cause his money comes with strings attached? Like, when I was in high school I had to take the bus out to Cha-Cha's house early every morning, and Tina would take me and Chucky and Todd to school. It's cause they had a better basketball program over there, and by that time Kettering was a shithole. I'd wake up around six just to get there, and wait for Tina to wake up around seven-thirty and take us. I had made it on this traveling team, and I needed new team shoes and a special jersey. Daddy and Mama didn't have the money, so they told me to ask Cha-Cha, which is what they
always
said when they didn't have the money, but that's not my fault, right? Remember I'm only fourteen, fifteen years old. The shoes and jersey were like a hundred dollars.

“Do you know that before he would give me the money he made me get to his house at
five in the morning
for a month? He didn't want me to shovel snow, or do any chores or nothing. I just had to get there at five, and he'd come down the stairs in his pajamas when he felt like it, let me into the house, then go back to sleep. And his own sons were upstairs sleep the whole time! Fuck was the point of that, huh? Even in the navy, if they made us wake up at the crack of dawn, there was a point, we did some drills or whatever. Me standing outside, I couldn't even do my homework, I stood there on the front step looking like a fucking burglar. I know he just did it cause he
could.
And every day that I had to go to practice without the gear I felt like shit cause you know the white boys on the team came back with their money the
very next day.
You know how cold it is at three-thirty in the morning in the winter? I'd be standin at the bus stop on the east side hopin I didn't get jumped, freezin my ass off.”

Troy breathed quickly. The veins in Jillian's neck relaxed.

“I'm sorry, babe. He probably thought he was building your character or something.”

“It's true,” she added after a while. “The banks
are
being extra predatory right now. I saw it on the news. They know people can't pay their mortgages, they knew it when they gave them the loans or let them refinance, but they refuse to renegotiate.”

Troy nodded. He hadn't intended to tell her about Cha-Cha and the basketball gear. It was a stupid, old, humiliating story, but it had done the job.

Had his childhood been a happy one? The question felt irrelevant. Cha-Cha had made it through. He couldn't recall being extraordinarily unhappy—he was clothed, fed, never molested, and never
beaten
beaten. Alice had posed the question to him earlier that morning, and now he posed it to his sister Francey in her Oak Park kitchen. He lay on his stomach underneath the kitchen sink, breathing in mildew and straining to snake the plug for her new alkaline water-filtration system to a power outlet in the adjacent cabinet. Francey's husband, Richard, had electrocuted himself as a boy by jamming a fork into a socket, and now he avoided even minor electrical work. Every once in a while Francey would call Cha-Cha over to hook up a sound system, install a new light fixture, or fix the sprinklers, and during these visits Richard was nowhere to be found.

“What a weird thing to ask,” Francey said. “You say this woman's black, huh?”

“Darker than you and me.”

Plug finally secured, Cha-Cha rolled onto his back on the tile. Francey hovered over him. The track lighting on the ceiling made her close-cropped silver afro glow. With her cat-eye glasses and sparkly green earrings, she looked extraterrestrial.

“That's really what goes on in therapy? They ask you to drag up a whole bunch of stuff from childhood? I thought that was just on TV. We're so old! At some point that stuff doesn't matter no more.”

“I said . . . the same thing,” Cha-Cha said. He tried to catch his breath. Sweat trickled down the back of his neck. “Unless something crazy had happened.”

“And nothing crazy did,” Francey said.