Page 24 of Mazywood

A couple more people, Johnny thought, and they had a quorum for an NAACP meeting. Recognizing reality was one thing, but what to do about it was a much longer conversation than three men had time for in the cooling air at the end of a long day.

“I hope you’ll reconsider the polish,” Rashad said. “That’s not just a company line—I really want to make this movie. I want you to have this win. I know people tell you this all the time, but I loved Misery Swamp when I was a kid. I’d never seen a Black horror movie before and that made me a fan for life.”

No, people did not say that to Johnny all the time—Frat House Haunting had wiped away his previous life. Misery Swamp had been Johnny’s first low-budget feature right out of film school, shot at a local park instead of a swamp. He was embarrassed at the clichéd theme of the spirits of enslaved people punishing the descendants of their tormentors, but his mother had told him that she had visited a true-life swamp in Florida with that name and he loved the title. He’d thought the title was the best part of the movie. But maybe not.

“Good to hear,” Johnny said. Money’s eyes were hot on him, so he didn’t quiz Rashad on his favorite scenes. For all he knew, Rashad might have just done a quick search online.

“What was wrong with the draft, Rashad?” Money said. “What’s really jamming us up?”

Rashad’s deliberate silence was the only answer they needed: Johnny had been right. He gave Money a knowing look and Money cursed under his breath. Johnny wondered if executives in other industries normalized speaking in silences, behaving as if questions hadn’t been asked before moving on to the next topic. He doubted it, somehow. It was no way to do business.

“Hey, I’ve been meaning to tell you…” Rashad said to Johnny after his meaningful pause. “I just found out you have a family connection to LDR.”

“What kind of connection?” Johnny said.

“The L in LDR stands for Lorenzo,” Rashad said, waiting for Johnny’s recognition. “Lorenzo Studios? Merged with Dynasty Studios back in the fifties. Then they linked up with Rialto Pictures. L-D-R. Lorenzo Studios discovered your grandmother. You know—Mazy.”

Mazy. The stone Johnny had felt in his throat spread like hardening concrete across his skin. Where had Rashad made that leap? Had he and Ben been talking about Mazelle Washington with their bosses at LDR? He was just lucky that none of her posters were on display on the conference room wall—not that they would dare.

“Small world,” Johnny said.

“History,” Rashad said, and smiled before he turned away.

Even on a day this ugly, the worst in Johnny’s recent memory—Except when Tasha said she was pregnant, don’t forget that one, Johnny boy—the last thing Johnny had expected to hear after his meeting today was his grandmother’s name.

Seven

MAYBE GRIEF, LIKE HURRICANES, HAD a calm eye.

The drive home was torture, with a sensation that reminded Johnny of the tachypsychia he experienced when the Florida Highway Patrol called about his mother’s car accident twenty years ago, his eyes seizing on random flashing lights and billboard images as he drove, his thoughts scattering from his head. But by the time Johnny pulled into his driveway in Baldwin Hills, his relief at returning home blotted out the rest of the afternoon.

Magic-hour dusk light was resplendent in gold across the ranch house’s peach paint and drought-friendly decorative stones and cacti, in vibrant Technicolor. The house his mother had grown up in during the 1950s looked nothing like the neglected relic it had been when he first inherited it. The only reason he’d moved in instead of selling it was because he wanted to feel closer to Sadie Washington, the woman who had raised him and given him her surname because his father didn’t deserve the honor, as her mother had before her. She’d wanted him to have his rightful inheritance, as she always called it, although Mom had refused to tell her who his real father was. (Some celebrity who’d had no business sleeping with a teenage girl, he guessed, or at least that was his favorite story to tell himself as a lonely kid.)

The pieces of her life his mother never talked about were plastered into the walls of the house. Although he’d never learned her most devastating memories—maybe he had no right to know them—he had repaired these walls with better ones. The four-bedroom house had gone from feeling too big to nearly too small after he married Tasha and they had Sharise, and then Imani. But after twenty years, the house finally felt like his.

And maybe it had been good luck in the end. He had created his family in this house.

Imani’s skateboard was left flipped over in the driveway, and three life-sized wire reindeer festooned with tangled light cords were lying on their sides near the front walkway to signal the family’s half-hearted attempts to start Christmas decorations. It was still early December, but the neighborhood got more competitive each year, so they were already late, although fake bloody handprints still decorated their windows from Halloween. All of it struck him as damn charming. He felt like George Bailey returning home after his nightmare at the end of It’s a Wonderful Life.

He was freed from his illusions, even if it was three years too late. He wouldn’t be spending the holidays in prep. Hell, maybe he’d have time to start writing his long-delayed novel version of Misery Swamp, with more nuance and a fresh angle. As he walked to his front door, Johnny thought of anything to be grateful for so his family would not see defeat on his face.

His game face was wasted. Sharise was nowhere in sight, and Imani was immersed in her VR game in the family room beyond the foyer, her eyes hidden behind the white gaming mask. She swung her controllers in wide arcs, some beast’s worst nightmare in a sword battle.

“Skateboard.” He reminded her daily to keep her skateboard out of the driveway.

“Sorry—ADHD!” Imani called out to him right before a dismayed cry, her substitute for cursing in his presence. “Daddy, you made me die!”

She was thirteen and still called him Daddy, another thing he felt grateful for. Johnny kissed the VR strap on top of Imani’s head. “I brought you here too, so we’ll call it even.”

Kissing Imani almost brought a tear to his eye, so maybe the dopamine high from escaping the traffic on Interstate 10 was wearing off. By the time he got to the kitchen, where he found Tasha unpacking delivery bags from the local sushi restaurant that vied with Roscoe’s for celebrations, depending on their mood—she could see it in his face. Tasha had sent him a text with stoplight and grinning-face emojis, her code asking if he’d gotten his green light, and he’d only texted back, We’ll talk later, so she wasn’t expecting good news. Mom had met Tasha a year before she died and told him she looked just like his grandmother at her age, and it was true even if Johnny hadn’t let himself see it. The striking angles on Tasha’s cheekbones were all he had noticed about her appearance at first: She could have sought out a modeling career if she’d been taller than five six and didn’t want to make use of her PhD.

Tasha welcomed him into her arms, and he sank into her warmth. They swayed in silence so long that Johnny tried to think of the last time he had danced with her. By now, they had been parents far longer than they had solely been two people who didn’t want to be apart.

“Tell me what those assholes did, baby.”

He told her. Even in his own retelling, all he heard was a reckless accusation of racism and a passionate, reasoned rebuttal. Slowly, Tasha’s soft eyes turned to a scowl. “Your Creed speech? You said that in a meeting?”

“You had to be there,” Johnny said. But now he was unsure, and he’d been there.