The Turner House (41 page)

“W
E'RE ON THE
way to your house,” Chucky said at the door. He carried a huge pot of something with both hands.

“Who? You and your mama?”

“Me and Isaiah. I just strapped him into the car. Mommy doesn't wanna—”

“Oh, well then, excuse me.” Cha-Cha sucked in his stomach to squeeze past Chucky and into the house.

“Pop, Pop! You can't just . . . Oh, whatever,” Chucky said. He shut the door.

Tina sat in Chucky's living room, flipping through the DVR queue for something to watch. She seemed neither surprised nor relieved to see him.

“You wanna know what the funny thing is, Cha-Cha?”

He said nothing. He was afraid of what the funny thing might be.

“Everybody thinks we gotta make up. That old as we both are, we
have
to. But that's exactly why we
don't
have to. It's been thirty-seven years, Cha. Mostly good years. That's already beating the odds.”

“Tina, I was confused with Alice, not happy with my own life and confused. I'm sorry.”

Tina shook her head.

“It's bigger than Alice. What do we even have in common anymore, besides other people, besides our family? Just me and you, what do
we
have? You don't even like the things I like. You think they're silly, which is fine.”

“It's not fine. It's not fine for me to make fun of things that make you happy.”

“But we also can't . . .” Tina went on. “We hardly
touch.
Like, not even walking by each other in the hallway. Nothing. Maybe we've finally grown apart.”

She looked at him straight on.

“You and me probably have twenty years or so left, if it all goes right, and that's it. We'll be gone. If I'm not what you want for the next twenty years, then you should go find it. I'll do the same.”

Cha-Cha sat down. He had an inkling of what he wanted. To be satisfied. He recalled what his mother had told him the night before about Francis's haint. About his father's private unhappiness. He did not want that inheritance. He could accept a haint visiting him at night but not a life defined by regret. He thought about Troy, twenty years younger than himself and already wrecked by bitterness. This morning he'd been reminded of how smart Tina was, socially adept in a way that Turners were not. The party hadn't officially started when he'd left, and it was already missing a certain Tina-ness, an inclusionary spirit that he'd heretofore taken for granted.

He put his hand on top of hers, and she did not pull away. He kissed her the way he used to when they'd lived in that drafty apartment off Van Dyke and he had a six-pack and two real hips, that long ago. She kissed him back, and they made love on their son's sectional. Not quite the same as they had during their Van Dyke days, but very well nonetheless.

P
ARTY TIME, OFFICIALLY
. Tradition obligated everyone to come out of their hidey-holes and make a show of familial togetherness in the living room. There were too many people to sit down at the formal dining table and eat, so knees and palms cradled plates as people leaned against walls and sat cross-legged on the floor. Small groups absconded when they could.

Out on the deck, four Turner men and Rahul smoked cigars and drank Hennessy and Heineken.

“It's a lose-lose situation: white men won't vote for a woman, and
nobody's
gonna vote for a black man. Not even enough black folks.”

“Yeah, well, all
kinds
of folks been donating to Barack's campaign, so that's gotta mean something.”

“Shit, all kinds of folks donate to Feed the Children, but that don't mean they want your black ass over for dinner.”

“Say, Antoine, what's that you got tattooed on your neck?”

“What's it look like?”

“Rahul, you still got that convenience store off of Ford Road?”

“You don't wanna know what I think it looks like, it looks like a—”

“No, I sold it last year. Too much hassle.”

“See, I don't understand why you young guys wanna go and get neck tattoos. What's it gonna look like when your stuff starts hangin down like this, huh?”

“Can't get a job with a neck tattoo. No real job.”

“It's a
fist
, Uncle Duke. It's Joe Louis's arm and fist. Like the statue downtown?”

“I hear it, I hear it. You still have those apartments around there though, I assume?”

“I do. I thought about selling them two years ago, but lucky for me I didn't. Everyone who's been foreclosed on needs a place to rent right now. It's sad, but—”

“Ohhhh. Yeah I see it. You gotta kinda turn your head to the side, but I see it.”

“Nothing sad about it. I'll tell you, I remember when Hubbard, the old mayor of Dearborn, said he wouldn't ever have any niggers living in his city. He said it right on TV! They kept voting his
fool
self back into office, too. Now look. You and your A-rab brothers
own
that town. It's a beautiful thing.”

“That's not what I was gonna say it looks like. It looks like you got a big old dick tattooed on your neck, you ask me.”

“Well, I just own those apartments.”

“That's real funny, Uncle Duke. Real funny.”

“And, I'm not Arab, you know. Indian, Quincy. But it
is
something, you're right.”

Lelah walked out onto the deck, hands on her hips. The party was going okay without Cha-Cha and Tina, even without Brianne. She wasn't happy, but she wasn't miserable, either.

“Enough man talk already,” she said. “DJ Lonnie's got the basement set up, and if y'all don't come downstairs and dance, he might cry.”

Every Turner dances, two left feet or no. Even Russell, oafish by nature, floated and swung to the right combination of seventies soul and egging on. They hustled. Lelah and her sisters spent three songs breaking down the moves for their nieces, and finally on the fourth it came together, a miracle of steps and taps and pauses and turns. “Finished” it might have been, but Cha-Cha's basement never lost its earthy, cave-like essence. The warmth of bodies made the loamy smell rise, and it felt like dancing in a bunker made of earth.

Around nine o'clock Marlene brought Viola from her room, where she'd been napping. She had a fresh batch of pain pills in her bloodstream and looked like a high-noon sun in all of that yellow. Those who had been dancing came upstairs to give birthday tribute speeches and cut the cake. On a nephew's insistence, and after a little back-and-forth about young people's hypersensitivity, and aggressive Turner communication styles, they used a kitchen towel to regulate who spoke when. Marlene encouraged Lelah to go first.

Lelah stood in front of the huge flat screen, thinking of what to say, still sweating from dancing, and wringing the kitchen towel with both hands. Just then Cha-Cha and Tina walked into the living room. Someone whistled, and a few people clapped.

“It's Tina Turner, ladies and gentlemen! Tina Turner!” Duke yelled. An old, unfunny joke.

“Oh, you should go first, Cha,” Lelah said.

Cha-Cha sat on the arm of the couch nearest Chucky and shook his head. He suddenly remembered Lelah at fourteen at a party similar to this one, for Viola's birthday, playing the flute he and Tina had bought her. She'd worn a serious expression when she played, and her body became rigid, but the music itself had sounded effortless.

“The last can go first tonight,” he said. “Go on.”

“Well, I guess. Hmm. I just wanna say that as the thirteenth, I looked up to you all so much. I wanted to be each and every one of you at some point. But now I just wanna be myself. I don't know. The point is, I love you all. I'm happy to be a Turner. And I love you, Mama. Happy birthday.”

Viola nodded and smiled.

Lonnie went next. He pinched the towel with two fingers. His eyes darted around the room, challenging anyone to butt in. “Now, I don't wanna bring us all down with talk of death.”

“But you're about to, huh?”

“Excuse me. I said I don't wanna bring us down. But by now you all been to the east side, and you seen what they did to the house. I know people feel frustrated about it, but think about this: I'm alive. Me!”

“Lord knows
that's
a miracle.”

“It
is
a miracle. I'm not gonna go into too much detail, but if the only thing we have to complain about all these years later is that some fools ripped off a piece of our house, then we are very fortunate. Thank you for that, Mama.”

Francey jumped up and grabbed the towel.

“To piggyback off of that. Ahem, I said to piggyback off of
that
, can we talk about the love my daddy had for this woman? So much love. You know, I remember when I was little, one time, when we stayed in that rented house on Lemay and Mack . . .”

And so began the overly specific anecdotes. They had their moment, as did shy grandkids and even brand-new significant others, mortified to be put on the spot. The jokes inevitably took a turn to the crude, and some speeches slurred more than others. The love pivoted between hard and unwieldy and tender and sincere.

People began to feel antsy, ready to keep the party going in their own ways. But no one moved. Viola had yet to address her children. She waited for the room to quiet down, for everyone to have a turn. For her there was no rush. Her thoughts cleared up with each minute; the words solidified in her head. She thought of the longing she felt to get out of that shotgun house so many years before, how as the three of them went north, she had no inkling what this city might be like, no idea that she was capable of loving so many. She had not cared for her children equally, and never had time to worry about the good or bad of that fact. They were individual parts of herself. She knew it didn't matter what she said right now because her children were the proof, as were their children, and their children's children, whom she could not name. They had crowded her thoughts, burdened her heart, and wanted too much from her over the past sixty-four years, and it had been worth it to try to give. Much better than being a regular old preacher's wife.

She would be gracious. She would talk about strength and pride. She would tell a little joke. They would all feel loved.

SUMMER
1951

Francis had returned to the salt mines, to breathing in dry ocean air deep beneath the city. He'd pushed down what needed pushing down inside of him in order to make it through each shift. He did this for Viola and Cha-Cha, and soon enough for Francey too. They first lived in a tenement on Elmwood Street in Black Bottom—more crowded than Odella Withers's boardinghouse, and in worse condition. While Francis worked at the mine, Viola looked after their children, and the children of neighbors for extra money. She did not complain about the rats, the shoddy plumbing, the poor heating, the rude policemen on the street, or the smell of the rotting gutter behind their building. As long as they were there together, these were temporary inconveniences. They lived there for four years. The job at Chrysler meant daylight again for Francis, and feeling as if he could stand upright. They moved to a house on Lemay and Mack, a rental with a coal stove, on the edge of a neighborhood whites were quickly fleeing.

The summer afternoon they moved into 6257 Yarrow was humid. Rainwater dampened the front lawn. The Turners stood on the sidewalk and regarded their home; it promised more space than anyplace they'd lived in yet. Francis unlocked the front door, and Cha-Cha, seven years old by then, ran up the stairs and straight to the middle room, thereby claiming it for boys for the next forty years. Viola, five months pregnant with Russell, held Quincy's hand as she inspected the kitchen, the basement, and the bathroom. She did a short, celebratory dance in the hallway upstairs. Francis lingered on the porch with little Francey in his arms. He smiled down at his daughter. He allowed himself to hope.

For showing me that families are their own universes worthy of exploration: my aunties Valerie Moore, Sharon Dunbar, and Leisha Williams. Thank you to my stepfather, Bob Harper, and his children, Jasmine and Joshua. A very partial list of cousins: Style Bell, Terrence, Angie, and Thomas Dunbar, Damon Hawkins, Jason Moore, Tadia James, and Latonia Curtis. Thank you to all of the Hempsteads, especially Aunt Rose.

I am indebted to the work of Thomas Sugrue, author of
Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit
, for showing me that you can't talk about the history of Detroit without talking about housing discrimination. The stories collected by Elaine Laztman Moon in
Untold Tales, Unsung Heroes: An Oral History of Detroit's African American Community, 1918–1967
shed light on how it felt to be there as the city changed.

Thank you to my agent, Ellen Levine, for your patience, your sense of humor, and your willingness to step in and advocate for me. To Jenna Johnson at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, for working tirelessly for this book, and for buying those nachos. Margaret Wimberger helped me wrangle my dates and character ages, which was no easy task.

I've had so many wonderful teachers. I'm grateful to Michelle Huneven and Alexander Chee for being insightful advisors and excellent friends. Thank you to those who have read some incarnation of this book, and to those whose lessons made my writing stronger: Lan Samantha Chang, Marilynne Robinson, Elizabeth McCracken, ZZ Packer, the gracious and generous Allan Gurganus, T. C. Boyle, Daniel Alarcón, and Michael Martone. Thank you to Connie Brothers for being kindhearted and no-nonsense, a winning combination.

For reading my work, laughing along, pushing me, and believing: Emma Borges-Scott, Evan James, and Jihan Thompson. A million hugs and a grand jeté for the brilliant, understanding Robert Valadéz.

Thank you to Justin Torres and Ayana Mathis for taking me seriously even when I did not take myself very seriously, and for showing me how the work can be its own reward.