• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 359 0

to do with books. When I tried adding the keyword “Pym” to the search, I was drowning in information on Poe’s fictional account. Largely out of curiosity, I tried an image search for the name instead. The result: “Dirk Peters” was fairly common in the planet’s paler regions, as many a white Dirk Peters smiled for the camera in various snapshots. I was pushing absently through pages of these images in the hope of seeing perhaps a lithograph of Peters’s fictionalized portrait when a wholly inconsistent image struck me. Below that same Anglophonic name was the head shot of a woman, a black woman, probably in her sixties. It was a glamour shot, taken through the forced dreaminess of a Vaselined lens. Her chin rested on her hands, and one of those hands held a large red rose, like it was a singles ad. The entire photo was no bigger than my thumbnail, and even from that I could tell that flower was plastic. Clicking the link below took me to the obviously amateurish website of the woman in the picture, a self-proclaimed “Singer, Actor, Poet, Novelist, Dancer, Actress and Noted Psychic Person,” who went by the name Mahalia Mathis. By this point I was just browsing for laughs. I stopped laughing when I came to a page titled “Genealogy.” And there, at the top of a long and haggard willow of a family tree, was a patriarch who held the same name as the one I had been searching for, next to a tag that read “Crow Indian, Michigan.”

It wasn’t hard to reach Mahalia Mathis: her phone number was listed in twenty-four-point font on every electronic page. In fact, the next morning Mrs. Mathis proved to be one of those rare individuals who picks the phone up on the first ring. Before it even rang on my end, catching me off guard. Even though I gave her a vague line of questioning about her website, Mrs. Mathis answered my opening questions immediately in a raspy but bubbling voice, as if we had an interview appointment prearranged weeks in advance.

“I am of Greek, Hopi, Crow, Blackfoot, Chinese, and Danish descent,” she interrupted me to declare immediately after I mentioned the genealogical page on her site. Hearing this, I poked my head back at the computer screen to look at the image of the Negro there looking back at me.

“Actually, I’m calling to inquire about one of your ancestors in particular. You listed a three times great-grandfather, by the name of Dirk Peters, is that correct?”

It was then that for the first time in this already five-minute call Mahalia Mathis actually paused from talking and came up for air. And what a great intake of air it was: a massive, dramatic gasp that seemed less appropriate to a question than to a mortal wound. The inevitable release of wind was no less a performance: the resultant sigh was labored and bass filled. I asked if there was something wrong.

“I will not be able to do this over the phone. You are a stranger, so I do not mind telling you: I am a very sick woman and I am not long for this world, honey. No, not long at all. If you expect me to discuss this … alleged Dirk Peters business with you, you will need … you will need to inquire in person. And considering my condition, you will have to do this immediately.” I eagerly agreed, and despite the clear theatrics, she had me hooked. Even though it would mean getting patted down at the airport for an hour, and risking an airborne explosion flying to Chicago.

I didn’t know that meeting Mrs. Mathis also meant I would be forced to travel from Chicago to the bleak urban landscape of Gary, Indiana; after thoroughly reading her website, I was under the impression that Mahalia Mathis was a resident of the Second City. I soon found that what I thought was a residential address in Chicago was in fact a post office box, and that her driving directions led me not only out of the city but out of the state of Illinois altogether. This information arrived at my cottage in an overnight package from Mrs. Mathis, along with an elaborate press package that included glossy head shots of the lady and several print clippings from her neighborhood newsletter, some