Pym_ A Novel - Mat Johnson [20]
“Honey, I got lots of Indian in me. I got Irish and I got a little French too. I got some German, or so I’m told. I even got a little Chinese in me, on my mother’s side. Matter of fact, I’m sure I got more bloods in me than I knows. But I do knows this: I ain’t got no kind of Africa in these bones,” Mahalia Mathis delivered, poking her naps back under her turban as she snorted at me derisively.
After taking a moment to gather herself from my apparent slight, Mrs. Mathis proved to be as helpful as I’d hoped. From the cardboard box that sat beside her, she removed a folded piece of yellowed paper carefully wrapped in aged cotton cloth, and placed it on the table before me. Although clearly impressed with the white gloves I had brought with me for the purpose of revealing to her my own Dirk Peters manuscript, Mrs. Mathis still smacked my hand when I reached for her document. She chose instead to hold open her fragile paper for me to read. I was expecting to see Peters’s chicken-scratch handwriting before me, and when I didn’t I could feel my body deflate slightly in response. It was good that it did, because when I read the words written there I needed room for my mind to expand.
Mr. Dirk Peters.
I will kindly ask you to stop harassing me, as I have now addressed your fear of defamation in regards to this matter. I will write again that I had ended my tale of long fiction without showing our mutual friend coming to any sort of demise, by foul play or other. But, in light of your request and the energetic ones of your local legal counsel, I have considered the matter further. Instead of adding your requested disclaimer, however, I have written an epilogue in Mr. Pym’s hand to serve as the final linking entry. Thus it will end the book, and I trust as well this correspondence.
Sincerely,
E.A.P.
After a lengthy recounting of her family history and the presentation of many a brown photo of many a brown face, Mrs. Mathis kindly agreed to make a deal with me. For her part, she would make me a color photocopy of her priceless letter, done on archival paper for historical purposes, and in return I happily agreed to escort Mrs. Mathis to some kind of local social gathering on the following day, when I was to return to pick up my treasure.
“It’s good luck, you coming when you did. You’re going to like this. It’s right up your alley” was all she would tell me of what she had planned.
* (Negatively.)
† Laissez les bons temps rouler!
‡ Usually, these claims take the form of the sentence “You know, I got Indian in me.”
§ The most repeated line in the manuscript was “______ was a lazy sod.”
‖ Having examined the hand and paper stock of that first cover page, I came to the conclusion that that page alone was not the work of Dirk Peters himself. Rather, I believe, it was the work of another, earlier owner of the manuscript. Apparently this owner attempted to translate the text into readable English, but after slogging through the opening title, author, et cetera, admitted defeat and went no further.
IT turned out that Mahalia Mathis was not the only resident of Gary, Indiana, to claim Native American descent. Despite the fact that the satellite city of Chicago was 84 percent black, there were enough “Indians” to form a club, and it was to participate in its gathering that Mrs. Mathis had recruited me.
The Native American Ancestry Collective of Gary (NAACG) met on the first Thursday of every month at the Miller Beach Senior Center.* During our long and illuminating ride, I was simultaneously given a tour of the modern-day Gary, complete with a commentary on its most famous entertainment family, and told of the saga of Mahalia Mathis’s own family, the Jacksons.† Mahalia’s late husband, Charles, had passed a decade before. Charles, Mahalia acknowledged, had indeed been “colored.” Mrs. Mathis went on to note that both her sons had married white women and that her grandchildren had been spared Charles’s burden. It seemed that her sons had been spared the burden of their mother as well, because it was