“Wow, you’ve really drawn up an indictment.” I was fumbling for breathing room, nothing more.

“That’s what you call it when I won’t play depressed for you? You switch to your little Kafka fantasies? I don’t have the power of indictment, Dylan. I’m just the official mascot for all the shit you won’t allow yourself to feel. A featured exhibit in the Ebdus collection of sad black folks.”

“That’s unfair.”

“Let’s see, Curtis Mayfield, “We People Who Are Darker Than Blue”-sounds like depression to me.” She chucked the CD to the floor. “Gladys Knight, misery, depression. Johnny Adams, depression. Van Morrison, total fucking depression. Lucinda Williams, give her Prozac. Marvin Gaye, dead. Johnny Ace, dead, tragic.” As she dismissed the titles she jerked them from the shelf, the jewel cases splitting as they clattered down. “Little Willie John, dead. Little Esther and Little Jimmy Scott, sad-all the Littles are sad. What’s this, Dump? You actually listen to something called Dump? Is that real? Syl Johnson, Is It Because I’m Black? Maybe you’re just a loser, Syl. Gillian Welch, please, momma. The Go-Betweens? Five Blind Boys of Alabama, no comment. Al Green, I used to think Al Green was happy music until you explained to me how fucking tragic it all was, how he got burned with a pot of hot grits and then his woman shot herself because she was so very depressed. Brian Wilson, crazy. Tom Verlaine, very depressed. Even you don’t play that record. Ann Peebles, I Can’t Stand the Rain. Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, blecch. “Drowning in the Sea of Love,” is that a good thing or a bad thing? David Ruffin, I know he’s a drug addict. Donny Hathaway-dead?”

“Dead,” I said.

“The Bar-Kays, it sounds happy, but I get a bad feeling, I get a bad vibe from this disc. What’s going on with the Bar-Kays?”

“Uh, they were on Otis Redding’s plane.”

“The Death-Kays! ” She overhanded it to shatter against the far wall and rain onto the pillow.

“Okay, Abby.” I held out my palms, pleading. “Peace. Uncle.” My spinning brain added, Sprite! Mr. Pibb! Clitoris!

She stopped, and we both stared at the crystalline junk around her feet.

“I have some happy music,” I said, dumbly adopting her terms.

“Like what?”

“‘You Sexy Thing’ is probably my favorite single song. There’s a lot of disco-era music I like.”

“Terrible example.”

“Why?”

“A million whining moaning singers, ten million depressed songs, and five or six happy songs-which remind you of being beaten up when you were thirteen years old. You live in the past, Dylan. I’m sick of your secrets. Did your father even ask if I was coming down with you?”

My face was hot and no speech emerged.

“And all this shit. What is this shit, anyway?” Alongside the box sets on the shelf above the CD cases were arrayed a scattering of objects I’d never shown off or named: Aaron X. Doily’s ring, Mingus’s pick, a pair of Rachel’s earrings, and a tiny, handmade, hand-sewn book of black-and-white photographs titled “For D. from E.” Abby’s unlaced boots crackled in the broken plastic cases as she walked. “Whose little shrine is this? Emily? Elizabeth? Come on, Dylan, you put it there so I could see it, you owe me an explanation already.”

“Don’t.”

“Were you once married? I wouldn’t even know.”

I took the ring from the shelf and put it in my pocket. “This is all stuff from when I was a kid.” It was a slight oversimplification: E. was the wife of a friend from college, the gift of the book commemoration of an almost which was really a just-as-well-not.

Mingus’s comic books were in a box in my closet, mingled with mine.

She grabbed the Afro pick. “You were already taking souvenirs from black girls when you were a kid? I don’t think so, Dylan.”

“That’s not a girl’s.”

“Not a girl’s.” She tossed the pick onto the bed. “Is that your way of telling me something I don’t even want to know? Or did you buy this off eBay? Is this Otis Redding’s pick, stolen from the wreckage? Maybe it belonged to one of the Bar-Kays. I guess the truly haunting thing is you’ll never know for sure.”

I lashed out. “I guess I have to listen to this shit because you don’t feel black enough, Abby. Because you grew up riding ponies in the suburbs.”

“No, you have to listen to it because you think this is all about where you grew up and where I grew up. Listen to yourself for a minute, Dylan. What happened to you? Your childhood is some privileged sanctuary you live in all the time, instead of here with me. You think I don’t know that?”

“Nothing happened to me.”

“Right,” she said with heavy sarcasm. “So why are you so obsessed with your childhood?”

“Because-” I truly wanted to answer, not only to appease her. I wanted to know it myself.

“Because?”

“My childhood-” I spoke carefully, finding each word. “My childhood is the only part of my life that wasn’t, uh, overwhelmed by my childhood.”

Overwhelmed-or did I mean ruined?

“Right,” she said. And we stared at one another for a long moment. “Thank you,” she said.

“Thank you?”

“You just told me where I stand, Dylan.” She spoke sadly, no longer concerned to prove anything. “You know, when I first spent a night in this house, you don’t think I didn’t walk up here and check out your shit? You think I didn’t see that pick on your shelf?”

“It’s just a pick. I like the form.”

She ignored me. “I said to myself, Abby, this man is collecting you for the color of your skin. That was okay, I was willing to be collected. I liked being your nigger, Dylan.”

The word throbbed between us, permitting no reply from me. I could visualize it in cartoonish or graffiti-style font, glowing with garish decorations, lightning, stars, halos. As with the pick, I could appreciate the form. Most such words devaluate, when thrown around every day on the streets by schoolboys of all colors, or whispered by lovers such as myself and Abigale Ponders. Though it had been more than once around the block of our relationship, nigger was that rarity, an anti-entropic agent, self-renewing. The deep ugliness in the word always sat up alert again when it was needed.

“But I never was willing to be collected for my moods, man. You collected my depression, you cultivated it like a cactus, like a sulky cat you wanted around to feel sorry for. I never expected that. I never did.”

Abby was talking to herself. When she noticed, a moment after I did, her expression curdled. “Clean up your room,” she said, and went downstairs.

The airport shuttle’s horn had been sounding for some time now, I realized. My room would have to wait to be cleaned, and the five or six CDs I’d selected would have to be enough. The Syl Johnson record, Is It Because I’m Black, had skated to the top of the small heap of discs and plastic left behind where Abby had been. I fished it up and added it to the wallet.

At the kitchen table Abby stood, one boot up on a chair, cinching the endless laces. She’d already refreshed the Africanoid jewelry in her piercings. It would seem an absurd costume for a student in a classroom, if I hadn’t known how hard her fellow students dressed for the same occasion. The boots were only a little obstacle to the art of dramatic exitry-she’d surely meant to be out the door before me, meant her last words upstairs to be conclusive.

I grabbed the bag at the door. Her face, when she looked up, was raw, shocked, unmade. The van honked again.

“Good luck today,” she said awkwardly.

“Thanks. I’ll call-”

“I’ll be out.”

“Okay. And Abby?”

“Yes?”

“Good luck, too.” I didn’t know if I meant it, or what it was meant to apply to if I did. Was I wishing her good luck in leaving me? But there it was, our absurd coda completed, good luck on all sides. Then I was gone.