The Turner House

by Angela Flournoy

  And then, because waiting for his questions was excruciating, Lelah confessed. Not a true confession, but an abridged, smoothed-over version of what she’d done to end up back on Yarrow. That she had fallen behind on rent because she “used to gamble” and had some “bad debt.” That Dwayne the lonely widower sexually harassed her at work. That she’d borrowed a couple hundred dollars from him long before that, and because of this the phone company was investigating.

  David didn’t say anything after she finished talking, so she felt compelled to repeat, “I’m not looking for you to save me. I’ll have it all taken care of soon.”

  “Why not stay with your daughter?”

  Lelah sighed and passed her hand through the air in front of her.

  “Have you talked to someone about the gambling?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I been to Gamblers Anonymous. I haven’t gambled in a long time.”

  “That’s good,” David said. “Addiction is real.”

  How was it possible that Troy and this man were friends? Lelah wondered. “Addiction is real” were three words Troy Turner would never say, and words for which Lelah had no response. They were three words that cut to the heart of a certain kind of truth but still failed to capture the seriousness of the problem. Lelah and David sat quietly, and the sounds of the street amplified. The chirrup of squirrels making mischief in the lot next door. A distant tire screech and the bass-induced rattle of a car’s cheap sound system.

  “Why do you, I mean, why did you do it?”

  Lelah couldn’t say. She could have talked about Missouri, and Vernon chasing her around their little apartment and the fleeting look on his face of genuine hate before he punched her in the stomach, the chest, the mouth, and finally the eye, but wasn’t that a long time ago? Lelah knew she was supposed to be past it. She wanted to say something about the nature of the stillness, but she didn’t have the right words to explain that feeling. She thought of comparing it to David’s own cherished meditating, his need for silence, but she knew they weren’t the same thing. When David meditated, he wanted nothing. When Lelah was still at the roulette table, she wanted everything. The story of her day-to-day stopped and was replaced by possibility for as long as she could maintain the stillness. She could walk out and be anyone, and more than a specific fantasy, the multitude of outcomes captivated her. Just turning the idea over in her head right now made her crave it. She could feel it in her thumbs.

  “I can’t explain,” she said, and David nodded, as if he’d never thought she would. They sat in silence again.

  “Really,” David said finally. “You’re grown, and you don’t have no overhead here.”

  Lelah wasn’t sure if he was trying to convince himself or her. It was too soon for her to be so desperate for his approval, but she was. He didn’t need her, yet it was clear he still wanted her, and even though she hadn’t told him the whole truth, she felt unburdened for finally telling someone a portion of it. He hadn’t left yet.

  “You ever been up here before?” she asked.

  “Me? No, I feel like every time I used to come see Troy your mother was in her chair right by the stairs, ready to pounce on me if I went up.”

  Lelah smiled.

  “Yeah, by the time Troy and me were growing up she’d gotten real paranoid about being robbed, so she didn’t let anybody up who wasn’t family.”

  She stood. If she did not act crushed by his presence here, if she could act natural, then he still might respect her.

  “Let me give you a tour, then,” she said.

  She showed him the tiny teal-painted bathroom, thankfully devoid of her drying underwear. She told him about how she and Brianne had lived in the girls’ room when they first moved back from Missouri, and her sister Marlene, newly divorced, had lived in the boys’ room. When Brianne was four she’d announced that she needed her own dresser, a place where her clothes weren’t up against her mother’s. Marlene and Viola found her a child’s dresser and vanity at a flea market, miraculously painted a terrible shade of pink similar to the girls’ room walls. Brianne had insisted on taking the dresser with her when she and Lelah moved off Yarrow, and she continued to drag it from little apartment to little apartment, all the way up until she went away to college. Lelah wished she knew what had happened to it.

  Back downstairs she re-created the living and dining rooms for him, where furniture used to be, who used to like to sit where at the table. In the basement Lelah told David about Lonnie’s band practices, and did her best to seem uninterested when he pulled a clump of track and field medals out of a memories box to inspect.

  In the center of the basement, over a drain in the cement floor, an ancient water hose hung over an exposed beam. The other end of the hose was attached to the sink against the wall.

  “You ever use this?” David asked.

  “Not since I was twelve,” Lelah said. “That was for the boys in the summer. They’d take showers down here so us girls could have more time in the bathroom upstairs.”

  David walked over to the sink and turned the faucet. In the light coming through the high windows Lelah saw the hose twitch, then the water gush out brown. She took a step back from it. Soon it ran clear. David took off his shorts and shoes and shirt and smiled at her, a look she’d come to recognize. Although it was chilly and she feared spiders or mice, she undressed as well. She joined him under the hose, pressed her breasts against him for warmth. He lifted his arms up, reached behind her head and unwound her hair band. In another life this would have been presumptuous, wetting her hair without asking. But in this life in which she hadn’t felt another person touch her scalp in too long, his fingers were welcome. She kissed his collarbone, reached up for his neck.

  When David entered her, what Lelah felt was relief. She didn’t need him to save her, but she did need this, whatever it was and no matter what it meant, for as long as she could manage to hold on to it.

  Sometimes It’s Gotta Be You

  After being denied three times (the biblical significance was not lost on him), Cha-Cha drove around Detroit for several hours. All the way down Grand River to Warren, up Warren to Van Dyke and past Kettering High School, where Russell had been among the inaugural class. He wound his way through smaller residential streets, surprised by his ability to navigate them intuitively. They were like a system of familiar tributaries leading to a vital body of water. He lacked the nerve to face the house on Yarrow, ostensibly the site of his undoing, so he made his way to East Grand Boulevard instead. The old Packard plant stood in more or less the same state of decay since the last time he’d driven by it—blasted-out windows, cryptic messages graffitied across the walls, the scars of past fires evident here and there. What depressed him more than the ruined factory were the houses farther up the boulevard that he’d coveted growing up, now blighted and abandoned. Those big houses, with their high porches so far off from the street, could have easily housed a family with thirteen children. Now the wide center islands on some blocks were so overgrown with weeds and grass, a child could hide in them. He took Mack over to Gratiot and drove north for more than a half hour until he reached the cemetery where Francis Turner’s remains resided.

  In the center of a row of flat gravestones, Francis’s own stone was so besieged by untended lawn that only

  ANCIS R. TUR

  ELOVED FATH

  I Corinthians 13:

  could be made out in the center. Cha-Cha kicked back the weeds, whacked at them with his cane. He considered stooping over to yank up a few tufts but knew the effort would be futile. Viola was the only one who visited the place, and even she hadn’t been by for at least a year. The space of grass next to Francis’s stone remained empty in anticipation of the day that Viola would occupy it.

  He stood there for a long time, looking to the rest of the cemetery like an estranged son or brother finally paying his respects. The urge to cry rose up again, but Cha-Cha knew better and tamped it down. His father would not have wanted tears at his gr
avesite or anywhere else. It was likely the reason so few Turners visited this place; they could not imagine their father encouraging them to talk to the ground, to whisper or weep before a granite slab. There was a wrought-iron bench several rows out from Francis’s grave, closer to the narrow road. Cha-Cha sat down. His left eyelid twitched, as it used to when he drove long distances overnight. Fatigue. There could be haints here, Cha-Cha thought. The entire cemetery could be populated with ghosts that chose not to show themselves to him. His father could be among them.

  The second sighting of something extraordinary is not supposed to live up to the first. Cha-Cha expected to feel less bothered, less fearful in the presence of his haint on subsequent nights. The opposite was true. Still no fanfare, no boogieman theatrics. The light and the sound remained the same. Was it a hallucination? He’d read online that when a person’s vision failed—from cataracts, say—the brain could transmit images that mimicked actual seeing. Colorful shapes. People in elaborate costumes. Scenes remembered, and even some never witnessed before. Our brains could be that generous to us. But Cha-Cha thought his eyesight was fine. He’d never even worn reading glasses. For three nights he moved from room to room in his house, hoping each time he would be able to sleep. Insomnia was its own kind of haunting. He became familiar with the clicks and sighs of the house, the soft breathing of his wife, which he hadn’t paid attention to since the nights they slept in shifts with newborn babies nearby. Viola seemed to sleep in two-hour intervals. He’d hear her wheezing breath settle into a steady snore, then sometime later her TV clicking through channels, the volume raised a few decibels.

  The haint was a large and fathomless unknowing. A challenge. A taunt. On the third night, when Cha-Cha tried to sleep in the basement, he found the nerve to get up and put his hand to it. The blue light felt like nothing, the same temperature as the air around it, and his hand glowed as it might in front of his big screen when he switched the input to DVD. A spotlight from nowhere.

  The following afternoon he decided to contact his siblings. He had no friends, and the sleepless nights made him desperate. Plus, Alice had told him several months before that he needed to start “tapping into his resources” for emotional support, seeking help from the people he helped all the time.

  Francey, Second Child, Sixty-Two Years Old:

  “You wanna know what I remember from the actual incident? Hmm . . . Honestly, I been thinking about this more since you came over and put in my filter. Now that I stopped eating meat, I feel like I can remember all sorts of things better, you know. Like it’s all high-def now. Of course I remember thinking there was a haint up in your room.”

  “And?”

  “And what, Cha-Cha? We were young, and when I moved into the big room I didn’t have any problems, so I don’t know. You been reading that Zora book?”

  “A little. I been reading up on hallucinations too.”

  “Jesus, don’t read that, Cha. You’re not hallucinating.”

  “According to Alice I might be. I don’t think I am, but—”

  “You need to let go of that Western mindset, I keep telling you. Had I listened to them after I got sick, I’da ruined my liver and kidneys by now, taking a million pills a day. These white folks don’t know everything, trust me.”

  “Alice isn’t white.”

  “Still. You know what I mean. Anyway, what’s going on with the house? Rahul told me that you could maybe get some type of tax write-off if you short-sell it.”

  “Francey, do you remember what it looked like? It was blue, right?”

  “He didn’t show it to us yet. He said it’s called an MI-X form or an MI-2 maybe, if you want to look it up.”

  Quincy, Third Child, Fifty-Nine Years Old:

  “The problem is all those women up there with you. You know I love our sisters, Cha, but they’re hysterical. I don’t doubt they’d drive me crazy too.”

  “I’m not crazy, Quincy.”

  “Of course you’re not crazy. You’re my big brother, and a Turner man. Listen to me though: that haint might be real, it might just be in your imagination, I don’t know. But your reaction to it is a choice. All this hysteria over a ghost? You can unchoose that, Cha. Turner men don’t choose hysteria.”

  Russell, Fourth Child, Fifty-Seven Years Old:

  “Tina said you upset Mama, and every time I call Mama she say she ain’t up to talk.”

  “Mama’s confused, Russell, and that’s not what I called to talk about.”

  “Well, what you call for then?”

  “I called about that haint from the big room. I want to know what you remember.”

  “All I remember is what Daddy said.”

  “I know what Daddy said, Russell. Come on, now. You remember the haint as being real, don’t you?”

  “Sure it’s real. Or was real. No one ever saw it again, so that’s got to mean something too.”

  “I saw it on Sunday, and every night since. Plus that time when I had my accident.”

  “Aw, nobody thinks you really saw it when you had that crash. Tell you the truth, we all thought it was them painkillers.”

  “So you’re telling me it could happen only once on Yarrow, and then never again?”

  “Sure. Isn’t that how the world works? We were all just at the wrong place at the wrong time back then, or the right place at the right time, depending on how you look at it. You should read the emails I send out, Cha. They’re all about miracles and chance encounters. Things like that only happen once.”

  Marlene, Fifth Child, Fifty-Five Years Old:

  Via text message:

  (Part 1 of 2): I’m too upset to pick up the phone. I hear you’re moving forward with the short sale. If you sell the house I will never forgive you. I don’t put down my

  (Part 2 of 2): foot on anything in this family, not ever. But you do this, and you break my heart. Not trying to be dramatic, just how I feel.

  Lonnie, Sixth Child, Fifty-Three Years Old:

  “That was the only time I remember peeing on myself. Ain’t that impressive? I was what, three? And I just stopped cold turkey after that night. I could never forget that.”

  “What would you say if I told you I saw the haint again here in my own house?”

  “I believe you. Why wouldn’t I?”

  “I don’t know. Thank you, Lonnie.”

  “Lonnie?”

  “I’m here. I’m looking for the back of my earring. I figured out it’s easier to locate things when I take a minute to be quiet.”

  “Oh . . . well, can you stop looking until after we hang up?”

  “Sure, Cha.”

  “Thank you. You’re the first person out of everybody to really say they believe me.”

  “I am? God. You know, sometimes our siblings disappoint me, Cha.”

  “I know, but I don’t think they mean to. I hope they don’t. But anyhow, I’m glad you believe me. The problem is now I can’t sleep anywhere in the house without seeing it. I’m not really talking to Tina, and I’m sleepin on the couch, so my back and hip is hurting. I even tried the basement and it’s there too, no matter where I go. It’s still only showin up at night though. I don’t know what to do.”

  “You only got one option. Or two, actually. You could pray really hard, but knowin you and Tina, y’all already tried that. So two: you could try to talk to it.”

  “And say what?”

  “Shit.”

  “Lonnie?”

  “Lonnie, are you all right?”

  “Huh? I’m here. I just lost the stud. I wasn’t thinkin and I kept the stud in my ear while I was looking for the back and it fell out too. Shit. I bet you this ear’s gonna close up. This is my third try this year, Cha. First time I got the wrong ear. I had forgot that the right ear’s for sissies. So then I took that out and got another one put in the left ear, but then I was visiting some girl in Hawthorne and—”

  “Gotdamnit, Lonnie, I’m trying to talk to you about something important!”

  “Hello?
”

  “I’m still here, Cha-Cha. I’m sorry. I haven’t eaten all day, and you know how I get when I’m lightheaded.”

  “It’s fine. You were sayin I should talk to the haint. What should I say? I’m not tryna fool around with any séances or them Ouija boards. Francey’s acting like I need to take it back to Africa to figure this out, but I don’t know how she expects me to do that.”

  “To tell you the truth, this sounds like some kind of reckoning. And you’ve got to take heed of it, not be scared of it.”

  “A reckoning for what? Why haven’t you eaten yet? It’s already three o’ clock in LA. You need some money?”

  “Money? No, I mean, I get my check on the first, so that’s what? Couple more days. I still got some stuff around here I can eat.”

  “I’m gonna send you a hundred dollars.”

  “Thank you, Cha-Cha. I really appreciate it.”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “I just been a little down lately is all, and I’m tryna figure out why. This girl from Hawthorne, Lily—”

  “Lonnie. What’s that you said about taking heed?”

  “Huh? Truth is, Cha-Cha, I can’t call it. Maybe you shouldn’t even talk to it. Just listen harder. If you need to go someplace for a while and think, you know you can come here. It’s just me in this apartment. And I get paid on the first.”

  Netti (Antoinette), Seventh Child, Fifty Years Old:

  From: TurnerGal7@coolmail.com

  To: CTurner1@isecs.net

  Subject: RE: I need to talk to you. [Auto-reply: Vacation Away Message]

  Namaste,

  I am on vacation in India, will return May 29th. If this is work-related, please contact my second-in-command LaShelle Dozier.

  Kisses from the Taj Mahal!

  —Antoinette Turner

  “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”—Gandhi

  Miles and Duke (Donald), Eighth and Ninth Children, Forty-Eight and Forty-Seven Years Old: