No One in the World

by E. Lynn Harris; RM Johnson

  Now my mother finally turned to me. “Sit,” she said. “Your Aunt Rochelle—five years ago, we argued over some money. It was a thousand dollars or something. She said she gave it back to me. I said she didn’t. This family is rich . . .” My mother chuckled sadly. “But I haven’t spoken to my sister in all that time for a lousy thousand dollars. It was the principle of the matter, I kept telling myself. But now she’s dead and . . .” My mother tightened her grip on my hands and wept loudly.

  “Ma, don’t—”

  “I loved her. Your aunt . . . she was so wonderful.”

  “I know, and I know you loved her,” I said, hugging my mother, feeling as though I was about to start crying myself. “She knows you did.”

  “But she’s gone.”

  “She’s with God, Ma. She’s in a better place.”

  “I haven’t spoken to her in years. I didn’t say good-bye. And now she’s gone,” my mother said, pulling away from my embrace. “I don’t want the same thing to happen to you.”

  I leaned away from her. “What are you talking about?”

  She pulled more Kleenex from the box on the nightstand, dried her face, and looked deeply into my eyes. “Your father didn’t think you should ever know this, but I don’t want you to go through life without ever . . . without . . .”

  “Mother, what are you talking about?”

  “I begged your father. It wasn’t right to separate you. I wanted to take you both.”

  “Mother, please. What are you saying to me?”

  “Forgive me, Cobi, for what we’ve done,” my mother said, smearing tears from her eyes with the tissue. “But when we adopted you, there was someone else. Cobi . . . you have a twin brother.”

  3

  I marched down the long halls of my parents’ mansion, my heels clicking loudly against the black-and-white tiles, the sound echoing up to the high ceilings.

  My mother told me not to bring this to my father. “This is between us,” my mother said, trying to hold me in her room. “He never wanted you to know.”

  In front of the door to his study, I raised my fist and prepared to knock but grabbed the knob instead and pushed through the door unannounced.

  My father, the great Cyrus Winslow, president and CEO of Winslow Products, looked up from his computer monitor. His reading glasses sat low on his nose.

  “Why didn’t you knock?”

  My father was a big man with broad shoulders. His skin was the color of peanut butter. His dark, wavy hair receded from his lined forehead. His face was clean shaven, and although very distinguished looking, he appeared much younger than his seventy years.

  “Mother told me,” I said, infuriated.

  “Told you what?”

  “About my brother. I have a twin brother and you never told me!”

  “Don’t you raise your voice in my house,” my father said, taking off his glasses, tossing them aside on his desk.

  “I’ll do whatever the hell I want,” I said, no longer caring if he chose not to speak to me for days because he disapproved of me, like he had so many times in the past. “You kept this from me. Why would you do that?” I was on the verge of tears.

  My father stood, all six foot three inches of him. He walked around the big oak desk. “Sit down.”

  “I don’t want to sit.”

  The room was mostly dark, except for the lamp burning dimly on his desk. The ceilings were high. The hardwood floor was covered with an expensive Persian rug. The room smelled of the old leather-bound books stacked on the shelves lining his office walls. I stood before him, my arms crossed over my chest.

  “Your mother and I had already adopted your sister,” my father said, leaning on the edge of his antique desk. “We wanted a little boy. We chose you.”

  “But there were two of us.”

  “Like I said, we chose you.”

  “Why not both of us?” I said, my voice high pitched. “Or neither?”

  My father scoffed. “Is that what you really would’ve wanted? Do you know how most people live? Do you know what’s out there? We’ve given you everything. A top-tier education, the freedom to pursue a career as an attorney. You have a twenty-million-dollar trust, and you’re about to receive shares of this company on your next birthday, and you question me? Do you know the kind of life you would be living right now if we hadn’t adopted you? You could’ve been the scum you’re putting behind bars every day.”

  “I’ve worked hard to get to where I am today, to achieve what I have. It wasn’t just about what you provided me.”

  “If that’s what you want to tell yourself, son.” My father walked back around his desk. “Leave my study and come back when you’re able to discuss this sensibly.”

  “If you couldn’t take both of us, why didn’t you just leave me there, too? I know it’s what you wish you could’ve done.”

  “We are not going to talk about that, Cobi,” my father said.

  A tear ran down my face as I thought about that spring afternoon, back in high school when my father discovered me and a very handsome football player from school with the body of a junior Olympic athlete, kissing and petting in the darkness of the garage behind my house.

  I had been one of the most popular boys in my school at the time. I did my best every day to play the role. But like every teen, I had a secret. Liking boys was mine, and although I constantly tried to deny myself, the urge was always too strong.

  In the middle of our kissing and necking, the garage door was abruptly thrown open, sunlight invading the dank space. The silhouette of my father darkened the doorway. He stared at us with our shirts off, our pants halfway down our thighs for what seemed like forever. Then he simply turned and walked away.

  The talk did not happen till a day later. The conversation lasted for only ten minutes, but there was a single message—my father would not tolerate a gay son. I was told never to let him see evidence of that abomination again.

  I yelled, cried, screamed that I could not help who I was, that I should not have to hide myself, not from my own family. My father stared at me like I was a freak, reminded me of the warning, and then ended the conversation. He never brought it up again.

  “After that day, you stopped loving me,” I said.

  “That’s not true!”

  “You were ashamed of me. Still are. I’m the secret that would’ve killed your precious business.”

  “You’re the one who wanted to pursue law. You didn’t want to enter the business,” my father said.

  “Because I knew you saw me differently. You didn’t trust me anymore.”

  My father lowered himself into his chair, exhausted. He looked every bit of his seventy years now. “Son, I’m sorry that you feel this way, that you feel I treated you badly. I may have my ways, but know that I love you. I do love you.”

  I looked hard at him, examining every line in his face, searching for the truth. All I could see was the same man I had seen for most of my life. The man I always felt cared little for me. Another tear fell. I angrily wiped it away and then said, “Well, I don’t believe you when you say that, Dad. And to tell you truth, I never have. If you want, I’ll drive you and mother to the airport. But when you come back, I’ll be gone. This way you’ll never have to see your abomination of a son again.”

  4

  I had to get out of the house if only for a little while before it was time to take my parents to the airport. I made a phone call, drove downtown, then pulled along the curb of the state building and waited with my hazards blinking.

  It was spring, my favorite season in Chicago, and the May evening was a warm one.

  My sunroof was open, the windows down as a slow Mary J. Blige song played softly while I stared down at my hands.

  My passenger door opened and shut. When I looked up, I saw Tyler Hayden Stevens sitting in the car beside me. An Illinois state senator, he was six foot one, 205 pounds, and his skin was the color of beach-baked sand. His jawline was strong, and although many men th
ought they were out of style, Tyler wore a thick, perfectly shaped mustache. He looked like a black Tom Selleck in his prime or a young Stedman Graham. He showed a smile of straight white teeth, but when he saw the sadness on my face, the smile disappeared. “Baby, what’s wrong?”

  “Stuff with my father again.”

  Tyler looked out the back window for oncoming cars. “Let’s get out of this traffic and go somewhere we can talk about it.”

  We finished talking in the dark parking structure under the state building.

  “So you have a twin brother. That’s great news,” Tyler said. “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You going to look for him?”

  “I need to find him,” I said, turning away from Tyler, an angry frown on my face.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I haven’t had an open relationship since I’ve come back from school to live there, all because I know what my father would say, how he would look at me. Over five years of sneaking around. I’m tired of clandestine meetings.”

  “Then why stay?”

  “I told him I was moving out, but it’s my home. I love seeing my mother every day, and even though he has his ways, I like the fact that he’s there, too. You know what family means to me. But if I did get my own place, would that change things between us? Would we come out, announce to all our friends and the world that we’re seeing each other?”

  “That’s nobody’s business.”

  “Then would you move in with me?”

  Tyler looked uncomfortable when he said, “You know I’m not in the position to make that happen. Not now.”

  “Yeah, I know,” I said, disappointed. “So I’ll stay at home in the meantime and work things out with my father. We fixed things before. We’ll fix them again.”

  5

  An hour later, I stood at the front door hugging my mother as my father waited in the back of the large Mercedes S600, the uniformed driver standing by the passenger side, holding open the back door. My father had decided he didn’t want me taking them to the airport after all.

  “We’ll straighten all this out when we return, all right,” my mother said, holding my cheeks in her hands.

  I hugged her once more, wishing I could go with her but knowing my trial schedule wouldn’t allow it.

  When the driver opened the door, I caught a glimpse of my father. I looked at him with an expression on my face pleading for us to talk further. He looked away.

  At 1:24 a.m. I woke up, startled out of my sleep by a ringing phone. I rolled over in bed, clumsily answering the call.

  My eyes were barely open, my voice was groggy. “Hello.”

  It was my sister. She was crying, hysterically. I could barely understand her through her tears when she gave me the news.

  At 5:13 a.m. I stood, my arm tightly around Sissy’s shoulder, the two of us waiting in the emergency room of the Indiana hospital where survivors of the Delta 767 plane crash had been taken.

  One hundred sixty passengers were already confirmed dead, but Sissy and I had not yet heard whether our parents were among those listed.

  Sissy told me she had worked late, like she always did, over at Winslow Products headquarters in downtown Chicago.

  She said she didn’t walk in the door of her house till almost eleven. After having a drink and winding down, she sat on the living room sofa and clicked on CNN. The news of our parents’ plane going down on an Indiana farm not long after takeoff was all over the news. She phoned me moments later.

  Now Sissy and I stood in the emergency room, waiting for a close friend of our family, Roger Welkin, to walk back through the door.

  He was a police detective, knew important people working for the National Transportation Safety Bureau, and could find out whether our parents had survived the crash.

  When I saw Mr. Welkin enter the room, I could not read the man’s blank face. But when he approached Sissy and me and politely asked if we would follow him to the back of the room, where we could sit and talk, I knew.

  The funeral was held one week later at Trinity United Church of Christ, on the South Side of Chicago. It was the same church President Obama and his family had attended when they lived here.

  Scores of cars moved slowly into the parking lots around the church, while countless stretch limos with darkened glass sidled up to the curbs, letting out Chicago celebrities and VIPs.

  To say the event was well attended was an understatement. Because my father had such high standing in the community, everyone from Kanye West and Jesse Jackson, to Al Sharpton and former mayor Daley attended, as well as members of the Johnson family, publishers of Ebony and Jet.

  As everyone entered, they gave me looks of sympathy, shook my hand, and hugged me and my sister.

  I watched the sea of people coming to mourn my parents and was happy when I saw Tyler. He walked over to me, shook my hand, leaned in to me, and whispered, “You’re going to get through this. I’m here for you.”

  Because my parents’ remains were never found, there were no coffins or urns, only two large portraits of my mother and father and a snapshot taken years ago that we had blown up. It was a picture of them at a hair care conference in Atlanta. They had never looked happier in their lives.

  Sissy and I sat in the first pew, holding hands. I felt hers trembling in mine, heard her sobbing, though I knew she did everything in her power for me or anyone else not to notice. My father had raised her to be strong, to never show weakness, and although she made an earnest attempt, the grief was too much for her to bear.

  The reverend, a bearded, distinguished-looking man who had known my father for thirty years, had been speaking for only a moment, but the words of love and loss must have cut deeply into my sister’s soul. Helpless, she cried louder. She pressed her handkerchief harder against her face, but she could not muffle her pain.

  Shaking her head, she turned to me with tear-flooded eyes and said, “I’m sorry. I can’t.” Sissy stood and hurried away. I reached out for her and considered following, but felt like I’d be abandoning my parents. I couldn’t do that. So I sat there, feeling the tears crawling down my cheeks.

  I had cursed my father, told him I had never believed he loved me, because he had kept me from my brother. He made me walk through this life by myself, when I had a twin all along. But the loneliness I had then was nothing compared to how alone I felt now that I had lost my mother and father.

  6

  Three days later, Sissy Winslow sat at her office desk, clutching the framed picture of her late mother and father.

  She hated to think of where she would’ve been now if her parents had not adopted her. She had never made an attempt to find her biological mother or father, because the day they had given her up was the day they had stopped being her true parents. She owed the Winslows everything.

  “One day you’re going to take over this company,” Cyrus had told her when she was just fourteen years old.

  Yes, she was a straight-A student, read and studied because she thought it was fun, not because she had to. She considered Madam C. J. Walker, Congresswoman Maxine Waters, and Oprah Winfrey her role models, but she had always thought her older brother, Cobi, would take over the company when it was time.

  It was only when her brother told her about what had happened in the garage that Sissy understood why her father chose to groom her to take over Winslow Products.

  She hurt for Cobi but accepted the obligation of becoming future CEO with an excitement she never before had felt.

  Sissy was often found at her father’s side while he worked in his study, absorbing all that he taught her. Many days after school, a driver would take her to the corporate office, where she spoke to employees and spent hours gathering a wealth of information.

  Sissy had grown to love Winslow Products. Not just because it was what her father and grandfather devoted their lives to, but because of its high standing in the African American community and its charitable contribut
ions to organizations such as the NAACP and the Sickle Cell Foundation as well as many historically black colleges and universities, such as Howard University, Spelman College, and Florida A&M, where Winslow Products recruited many of their outstanding employees.

  Sissy was always honored to know that one day she would head this wonderful corporation. She just wished the time hadn’t come so soon or under such life-shattering circumstances.

  A knock came at her door.

  “Come in,” Sissy said, smearing tears from her cheeks and rolling her chair to face away from the door.

  Sissy’s secretary peeked in. “The board is assembled and ready for you, Ms. Winslow.”

  Sissy stood at the head of a long conference table, wearing a business suit that was perfectly tailored to her athletic body. It was the color of a ripe peach. She was an attractive woman with large, bright eyes, full lips, and a button nose. Her hair was sandy brown, straightened, and cut shoulder length.

  She stood tall and looked around the table at the twelve board members, who were also shareholders of Winslow Products. They were older, distinguished-looking men and women, their hands folded before them, attentive looks on their faces.

  This meeting was being held to discuss the dismal state of the company and to install Sissy as the new president and CEO of Winslow Products.

  To offset his business’s losses, Cyrus Winslow had sold off a great deal of the company’s shares, making it vulnerable for other companies to buy a majority stake. Procter & Gamble was who they were most worried about. P&G had bought Johnson Hair Care Products, Winslow’s competition, in 2003, made a mess of it, then sold it in 2009 to some small investors.