5 Minutes and 42 Seconds

by Timothy Williams

  “Okay.”

  Fashad goes in and looks. He nods his head, then cues Xander in the direction of the TV room. Xander points to the room, silently asking Fashad whether or not it’s the right one—as if he hasn’t sat in that room hundreds of times before. He bangs the suitcase on the couch, and Fashad shushes him again.

  “Sorry,” says Xander, cursing himself for not taking advantage of the only time Fashad’s ever asked him to do anything that didn’t involve sucking or licking. “Now what?” he asks, after switching suitcases.

  “Put it in the trunk,” whispers Fashad.

  Xander closes the door quietly and carries the suitcase to the car.

  Once he reaches the cars, he realizes he doesn’t know which car Fashad meant. Xander figures Fashad probably meant his own, but he can’t open Fashad’s trunk without Fashad’s key. Xander puts the suitcase in his own trunk, then goes back in to tell Fashad what he’s done because he doesn’t want to seem like he’s trying to pull a stunt like Cameisha’s. He knows Fashad will be angry that he came back inside the house but also knows that he spends more time inside the house than Fashad does.

  If anyone sees him he’ll pretend he’s there to visit with Cameisha. He figures Fashad’s upstairs and begins to turn the corner to meet with him when he sees Dream in the garden on the side of the house—setting it on fire. Xander’s jaw drops in shock. This bitch is crazier than her momma. I guess she really was heated over Cameisha tellin’ her that her nigga wasn’t shit. Amused with himself, Xander giggles. That’s what Cameisha get. She should have been worried about taking care of her own man.

  Xander starts to walk up the steps but hears footsteps stumbling up above him. He knows it’s Cameisha by the clank of her stilettos. At first he decides to tell her he lost something when he was there earlier and simply came back for it, but just before Cameisha turns the corner of the winding staircase he decides to duck and hide behind the stairs, because he can’t risk Fashad hearing him and Cameisha being buddy-buddy.

  From his crouched position underneath the stairs, he peeks out into the TV room, hoping that no one will sit there. He sees Dream running in from the garden and pouring herself a glass of champagne. She sits down on the couch in front of the old TV. The smoke has thickened, but he sees Cameisha entering the room out of the corner of his eye. Dream tells her mother the garden’s on fire, and Cameisha races to the garden, going ballistic. As soon as she leaves, Dream goes into the garage.

  A couple of seconds later Fashad comes down the steps. Xander assumes Fashad’s flushed everything because he walks out the door looking pretty calm. He takes a look outside, and then walks back in the house looking startled, probably terrified at the possibility that Xander is somewhere telling Cameisha everything. Xander whispers to him from underneath the stairwell, “Fashad, Fashad, down here.”

  Fashad sees him and is about to call his name when Dream screams so loudly they can hear it between the blares of the fire alarm. Xander looks to his left and sees her staring at Fashad suspiciously. Suspiciously, Fashad stares back before pretending to walk out the door. As soon as Dream goes back into the garage, he turns and looks at Xander.

  “Come on!” mouths Fashad, not bothering to yell over the fire alarm. He walks out and Xander gets up from beneath the staircase. Xander looks to his left and sees the garage door open, so he runs into the living room. He kneels and peeks around the corner, waiting on Dream to leave, and sees a suitcase. She walks over, and trades the suitcase Fashad gave him to switch with a fake suitcase of her own. First Xander is shocked by her cunning, then outraged by her deceit. But more than anything he’s sympathetic. He reasons Dream must be getting mind-fucked by the boy Cameisha doesn’t like. She’s supposed to take the money to him, and wonders what he’s going to do when he sees there is no money. Xander figures he’ll probably break her legs, but he’s sure he’ll break her heart.

  Xander wants to run to Dream and hug her, to console her, because he feels the two of them are victims of a common social taboo. Dream is in a so-called unhealthy relationship because her man is using her for money. Xander is in one because his man is married with children. He wants to tell her how he’s learned that there’s no such thing as healthy and unhealthy, just happy and miserable. That whenever someone calls someone else’s relationship unhealthy, they’re jealous because their own “healthy” relationship is miserable.

  Dream takes Fashad’s suitcase and disappears into the garage. Xander is still sitting in shock when Fashad comes back inside. “What the fuck are you still doing here?” whispers Fashad, angrily enunciating each syllable.

  “I was just—”

  “Just hurry up before Cameisha see you,” he says, although Xander can barely hear him over the fire alarm.

  Xander doesn’t want Cameisha to see him in the house, because she would make their friendship known to Fashad; but what he doesn’t understand is why Fashad is hiding. The way Xander sees it, Fashad has every right to take his own money, and flush his own cocaine, anytime he pleases.

  “What happens if she does see us? She’s the one that did you wrong,” says Xander, not bothering to whisper.

  Fashad shushes him and motions for him to come on, without answering the question.

  Xander begins to walk out just as Taj and JD come down the stairs. He turns his head quickly, hoping they don’t notice him.

  “Daddy, what’s going on?” asks one of them.

  “It’s the garden. Go in the backyard and practice your layups until somebody tells you it’s safe to come back inside.”

  “Who’s that man?” asks JD.

  Xander turns his head even more, and closes his eyes, as if JD won’t see him if he can’t see JD.

  “No one,” says Fashad.

  “Is he a fireman?” asks Taj.

  “Didn’t I tell you to go play basketball outside?” commands Fashad, sweat pouring down his face.

  “But, Daddy, I’m scared,” says Taj.

  “Go find your mother, then,” orders Fashad without thinking, as if she were the answer to all their fears.

  The boys leave, then Fashad and Xander walk to their cars as discreetly as possible. The two-car entourage drives away from the home as the trumpet sounds, making it sound like a decrescendo.

  Xander pulls into the parking lot of his apartment building and Fashad pulls up right behind him. Xander gets out, and Fashad does the same, except his motor is still running.

  “Is it in your trunk or mine?” asks Fashad.

  “Mine.”

  “Good. Take it inside and put it somewhere safe until things calm down between me and Cameisha.

  “What?” Xander’s blood begins to rise, and he knows he’s about to go off on Fashad for the first time. Still, he wants to make sure he heard Fashad correctly.

  “Put it somewhere safe.”

  “After that.”

  “Until me and Cameisha work things out.”

  “What?”

  “Did I stutter, dumbass?” asks Fashad.

  “I know you are not about to go back to that bitch after what she tried to do to you!”

  Fashad pauses to walk over to the car, he turns off the engine, and walks over toward Xander. “Me and Cameisha just talked…She is my wife.”

  “You talked when? After she blew the trumpet and tried to turn you in?”

  “Yes. She called me when I was on my way over.”

  “Saying what?”

  “Saying that she couldn’t go through with it.”

  “It’s a trick.”

  “No it’s not.”

  “How you know?” asks Xander. “You wouldn’t have even been able to get that shit out if it wasn’t for me. Now that there wasn’t anything to find, how you know she ain’t just trying to backtrack.”

  “’Cause I know.”

  “What about what she did to you?”

  “Marriage is hard work, Xander.”

  “What about me?” asks Xander in disbelief.

  “What a
bout 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.”

  THE MORNING AFTER THE TRUMPET SOUNDS

  CAMEISHA

  The 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 d
irty 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.”