Pym by Mat Johnson Page B

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 clear from her tone that she was estranged and isolated from all of her people.
    “Your mother must have been so relieved when you came out,” Mahalia Mathis turned in her passenger seat to say to me, reaching out to lightly touch the back of my neck, where my stringy hair met my fired alabaster skin. I giggled nervously, jerked my head, and eventually the older woman put her hand back at her side again.
    Once the community center had been entered it was rather easy to locate the dozen or so NAACG members. This was not because the group looked like Native Americans; to my eyes, they looked like any gathering of black American folks, some tan and most brown. What distinguished this group was their attire. The first man I saw in the room had a full Native American headdress, a Stegosaurus spine of white feathers that reached all the way down to his moccasins. He was sitting on the edge of a metal foldout chair trying not to harm his plumage while he sipped his coffee from a Dunkin’ Donuts cup. As I walked in with Mrs. Mathis on my arm, he turned toward us and the red war paint he had on his nose and cheeks spread as he smiled. Others in the room were more muted in their attire, but all seemed to have their flair. By the open box of donuts a woman wore a casual coat made of simulated Hopi cloth. Over by the blackboard a tall, slender brother chuckled and chatted on his cell phone, his raised hand a miniature museum of turquoise finger ornaments. Past him, a portly man with chemically relaxed hair tied into two greasy ponytails twirled one of those wet ropes with his finger as he waited for the meeting to begin. The only person besides myself who was not outfitted in some form of indigenous attire was a brown-skinned woman in a pink raincoat sitting in the farthest chair from the door as she read a magazine, but clearly she was the waiting escort of someone in the group.
    Somehow it had been spread around the room that I was a reporter sent to cover their event. ‡ The folks, pleasant and welcoming, made their introductions by telling me both their names and their Native connections. Tanisha Johnson—Cherokee. Antony Thomas—Chickasaw. Tyrone Jackson—Seminole.
    “We’re so glad you’re here, so glad that you came to record this special day,” Tyrone