5 Minutes and 42 Seconds (17 page)

“'Cause I know.”

“What about what she did to you?”

“Marriage is hard work, Xander.”

“What about me?” asks Xander in disbelief.

“What
about
you?” asks Fashad, implying that Xander's happiness is neither his concern nor his responsibility. “I ain't gay, Xander,” Fashad says matter-of-factly, without flinching, as if he were telling someone what his name is.

“Well, I am.”

“You ain't no fag neither,” says Fashad.

“Yes I am.”

Fashad shakes his head condescendingly. “You think you the only twin that ever wanted to leave the state with somebody?” He lights up a cigarette. “Every twin got somebody they wanted to leave the state with at some point or another.”

“We can be each other's somebody,” says Xander, and he grabs Fashad's Gucci belt.

“I said every twin got one. My ship sailed.”

“Who was he?”

“Pie,” says Fashad, knocking Xander's hand away.

“Then why are you still here?”

“I thought if I could take Cameisha out the picture, we could be together,” says Fashad. Xander bites his lip because the beginning of Fashad's story sounds familiar.

“I took her out the picture the best way I knew how. I made her mine.” He puffs and blows the cigarette smoke slowly, then continues. “Pie hated me for it. I had no idea the relationship between a twin and his girlfriend could be so complicated. You mess with a twin's wifey and you're messing with his very identity. I had to find that out the hard way,” says Fashad, looking blankly to the sky. As if the words he's saying have no emotion behind them. Xander wonders if he's cried so much about it that he can't cry anymore.

“He never returned my calls. When I stopped by he wouldn't answer the door. I got so mad at him…” He pauses.

“I told the busybodies at Olive Baptist he was gay. I said he wanted me to be gay with him but I told him it was a
sin. I told them to go to Ralph's and see what was going on in there for themselves. That's why I blew Ralph's spot. I was the reason Pie got caught in there.” He puffs again and looks away.

“Pastor came back the next Sunday and preached a sermon on top of the ashes. I went because not being there would have been suspicious. Every twin I know that wasn't caught at Ralph's before it burned down was at the sermon, and either sitting in the first three rows or singing in the choir. Pastor said the stuff that happened at Ralph's was an abomination. That it don't belong. That we don't belong. I stopped listening to him after that. I put my Walkman on under my hat and said “Amen” whenever the women beside me clapped.

“Two years later Pie came to the apartment. He said he knew it was me. I thought he came looking for a fight, and even if he did I wouldn't have minded. After two years, I was just happy to see him. I think I wanted him to hit me. I wanted a simple punishment for what I'd done.” Fashad pauses again to puff.

“He thanked me, Xander. Said that he was always gay and was too afraid to say. Said he found a place where he belonged.”

“What did you say? Did you tell him you needed him?”

“What can you say to something like that? We never talked about being gay down at Ralph's. I can't tell you most of them niggas' names, but I can tell you whether or not they are a top or a bottom, and how big a dick they have. I damn near had a heart attack when he walked on my steps
wearing earrings, and a tight pink top that didn't cover up his pierced belly button.”

“So you just let him go? You didn't say nothing?” asks Xander, wondering why he was rooting for Fashad to have made things work out with Pie, knowing that if Fashad were with Pie, he and Xander never would have reconnected.

“I tried. When he opened up that car door, my heart took over from my brain and ‘Take me with you' fell from my lips.”

“He looked at me like I didn't know what I was saying, and he was probably right.

“He said twins don't belong anywhere in the world. Said the world of a nigga/fag was the world of a twin, and as far as a twin is concerned, twins don't exist. Said that we don't exist in our own world, so we never would belong in anyone else's. He told me the place where he belonged was in here,” said Fashad, sensually caressing his own chest with his left hand. “He said he belonged in his own skin, no matter how gay, or how black it was.

“He told me I had to figure out a way to belong in
my
own skin.

“Did you find a way? Is that why you let him go?”

“Nope. I never wanted to. I don't want to belong in a skin I've never liked being in,” says Fashad, looking down at himself with disgust. “The only time I felt right was when I was with him.”

Xander wants to say something perfect-pitched and consoling, something to let Fashad know he is more than just a fag, he's a person, one whole, complete person who is loved
and can give love if he allows himself. But Xander's sure such words don't exist.

“He kissed me for the first time when he came back. We always fucked, we never kissed. That was the rule at Ralph's—you could do whatever you wanted with a twin, but you never kissed, because kisses could lead to something else. He kissed me, Xander. He kissed me outside, where anyone could have seen us, so I pushed him away. It was the biggest mistake of my life. He smiled and told me I wasn't ready to belong anywhere. He got in his car and never came back. It's the only thing I let myself cry about,” says Fashad, standing stone-faced, emotionless.

“I thought he was wrong at first. I thought I didn't have to belong in my own skin, I just had to make the world think I belonged. But I was so mad at everyone for not letting me and Pie be together…. Why should we have to learn how to belong when everyone else is born belonging? I started competing with the world. If I couldn't belong in the world, I wanted as many things as possible in the world to belong to me.

“I made a perfect life, a life the rest of them wanted—with a nice home, kids, and the sexiest wife in Detroit. I got so deep into that life I started to think it was mine. I always had boys on the side, but when you came over that night and we fucked in my home, I understood what Pie was trying to say. I was lying to myself.

“Are you saying you
are
gay?” asks Xander.

“Hell no, I'm not gay,” he says with a tense giggle, “but I got feelings.” He continues, purposefully not looking at Xander. “There once was a man I wanted to sleep with and
wake up with. Being gay ain't just about fucking, Xander. It's also about getting stones and Bibles thrown at you.”

“Is that why you're on the down low, so people won't throw stones and Bibles at you?”

“And because I want to be.”

“Why?”

“I'm not with Pie, but when I'm fucking I can close my eyes and pretend I am. That's the only time I feel like the world didn't get the best of me. When I'm not fucking, I'm making money so more things can belong to me. It makes me feel like someday I might come out on top.”

“You'll never have enough money to buy the world.”

“What you want me to do? Get called out? Say I got called out, then what? I couldn't make money, and I still wouldn't have Pie. Least this way I don't have to know they won until I die, and when that happens I won't give a fuck, now, will I?”

Xander looks down and wonders. “If Pie came back, would you leave for him?”

“If Pie came back, we'd live in a happy home full of stones, Bibles, and broken windows right here in Detroit.”

T
he champagne tastes
like gold Kool-Aid now, but I'm not drunk. No money, no freedom—a harsh reality that even alcohol can't suppress. I pour another glass and remember the glimmer of hope. The moment the cop looked at me and I felt like a woman again. The moment when things were clear. When I still had money and was going to be okay—with or without Fashad. When I could boot him, and
her,
out of my life for good. When I was still going to see the world, and be something more. Now I'm going to spend the rest of my life trapped in this house that's not a home, soap operas my only window on a world not populated by ungrateful kids and a low-down dirty dog of a husband. I take another sip of the champagne, wishing it were poison.

“I do deserve better. Maybe I can't have it, but that don't mean I don't deserve it,” I say aloud to no one. “Twenty
years raising kids. Twenty years washing clothes, wiping behinds, cooking dinners…”

The garage door opens, and I stop talking to myself. I hear footsteps trying to creep up the stairs unnoticed.

“He left you, didn't he?” I spit. Even I notice my speech is slurred with alcohol. I turn off the R. Kelly playing lightly in the background, put down the bottle of champagne, and turn to face my daughter, hoping she will cry a thousand tears. Not because seeing Dream cry pleases me, not because I need to say I told you so, but because I need to feel like a mom again.

“You were right,” says Dream in the doorway.

She takes a few more steps toward me, then stops. “You were right. Are you happy?” Dream stares at me with the immense pain of abandonment. I remember looking like that myself the first time Fashad didn't come home.

“Come here, child,” I say.

Dream is hesitant.

“I said come here.” Out of habit I begin harshly, but then I add “please.”

Dream wipes tears from her eyes and slowly paces toward me.

“I want to tell you a story,” I say, scooting over, making a space for my daughter to sit.

“Once upon a time there was a girl who was just a little younger than you. You a big career woman with your hair stylin' and all, but this girl just wanted a house, and a family. A real home. Something simple. Everybody she knew lived in an apartment, and the only kid she knew who knew his daddy was afraid of him. She wanted a real home, like the ones on TV where everyone loved each other.” I cringe at
the memory of past lives, mourning the difference between where I thought I would be and where I am.

Dream begins to say something, but I place my hand over her lips.

“One day a man came along promising that someday he'd make her dreams come true. She was sure he was her knight in shining armor, so she believed him, and the future seemed bright. Then the girl got pregnant. He left her without a penny to her name. She saw that the someday he promised was never going to come—not with him, at least. She met another man, and he offered her a home, and to be her husband. She took it, Dream, and she was happy. Her and her baby.”

I can tell Dream is confused.

“But the man wasn't who he seemed. One day she looked up and saw she didn't have what she wanted, though she had what her children needed. She was living his illusion. She hated him for that, but she stayed, and she hid it, Dream. She hid it because it was the right thing for her children.” I look away from Dream, not wanting my daughter to see her mother cry.

“Momma,” says Dream, trying to console me.

“Let me finish my story,” I interrupt her gently.

“Her daughter gets all grown up. Her daughter doesn't need her anymore. And she doesn't know who she is if she's not the person her daughter needs.”

“I need you,” says Dream.

“Then it hits her: twenty years have passed and she's further away from her dreams than she was when her daughter was born. She tries to fix it. She promises herself she's going to get a new husband, a real husband, and finally get that home, but something goes wrong.” I stop abruptly.

“So what does she do?” asks Dream.

I look at my daughter without even trying to hide my eyes. “You tell me,” I answer, realizing for the first time that I need Dream as much as she needs me.

“I don't understand.”

“I don't want you to understand,” I say, knowing that twenty is too young to comprehend a regret so deep, constant, and complex. “I want you to know that…” I continue, trying to find the words to communicate as much of what I feel as I think Dream is capable of understanding.

“That what?” asks Dream, practically begging me to share my pain with her.

“I want you to know that…” I pause once more. “That it was hard, Dream. But I did the best I knew how.”

We both sit silent and let the words sink in.

“I have a story,” says Dream timidly, breaking the silence.

I nod my head, giving my daughter permission to tell.

“Once upon a time there was a little girl who just wanted her mother to love her, but her mother wouldn't do it.”

“I always loved you.”

“You never showed it.”

“I stayed here. I fed you. You had clothes to wear. You never wanted for anything. I would have killed to have your childhood.”

“That wasn't enough, Momma.”

“What did you want? So what? We was never the mother-fucking Huxtables. I wasn't Clair and you for damn sure wasn't Rudy.”

“I wanted you to say it.”

“I can't.”

“Why not?”

“Because no one ever taught me how.”

They pause.

“The girl finds someone who promises he will love her. She believes him.”

“That's not my fault. That's not my fault, Dream. I warned you,” I say, trying to sound emotionless.

Dream ignores me and continues.

“He asks her to do something, and she does it just because he says so.”

I turn to look at her and see the shame and regret in her eyes. My heart sinks. “Stupid girl,” I whisper, knowing my daughter has just confessed.

Dream cries. “I'm sorry. I just needed someone to love me.”

I grab my daughter roughly, the way I have so many times before. This time I pull my daughter's head to my breast and whisper, “Sweet girl…”

“I didn't know, Momma. I had no idea.”

“Sh-sh-sh-sh-sh,” I comfort her.

“He said we were going to use it to be together, and that you had money already, and…”

“Sh-sh-sh-sh,” I say.

I don't want to hear about the money. I don't want to know how he, she, they took it. I don't want to yell at my daughter for ruining my chance to “have a real life.” My children are my life, and I already
am
something more than somebody's baby's momma. I am a mother.

I lean down and kiss Dream on the cheek. “I love you,” I whisper, and in that instant her house becomes a home.