She gave one-word answers: Fine…I guess…Maybe. A month had passed and I was just as close to getting next to Fashad as I was before I knew Dream was his stepdaughter.
Dream took off for two weeks, saying she had no choice but to go to New York with her mother and brothers, which meant Fashad was home alone.
Fashad answered the door with his shirt off, wearing some gray drawstring pants from Banana Republic that were low enough for me to see his happy trail. His long good hair hung from the side of his face, and gently kissed his brown shoulder like an ocean kissing the sand.
“Can I help you?” he said without giving me the slightest hint that he recognized me. I remember being impressed at how well he’d learned to speak like a straight man. I don’t know how I kept from fainting. It was the first time I’d seen him so close up in years. He wasn’t wearing any cologne and there was absolutely no scent, but he sent all five of my senses into overload, and I felt like I could smell him. I wanted to answer but my lips quivered. I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t think, I couldn’t move. All I could do was stare at the giant bulge in his pants.
“Can I help you?” he repeated with a smile. I could tell he knew what I was doing.
“Hi, my name is Xander Thomas.” I stuck out my hand for him to shake.
His brown eyes widened and cleared at the mention of my name. We had a moment. The first “moment” I’d ever had in my life. I could feel the sexual tension mounting in my body and I knew both of our bodies were releasing every hormone they had.
Suddenly the moment came to an end. He didn’t shake my hand. He was about to close the door. So I put my hand on it.
“I work with Dream at the shop.”
“She ain’t here,” he said quickly, about to close the door again.
“When will she be back?” I said, placing my hand on it once more.
“She went to visit her grandmother in New York. She won’t be back for two weeks.”
“Oh, okay,” I said, sounding surprised and dejected. I don’t know why, but I expected the conversation to last longer. I could tell Fashad took my tone to mean I felt insulted by his lack of hospitality.
“You should come back then,” he suggested, sounding a bit nicer this time, but nevertheless very ready to shut the door.
I had to think of something or my chances were ruined. There was no way I could come back to the house without looking like a stalker. Besides, later the house would be packed with kids, and his wife. It was now or never. “My scissors,” I blurted, placing my hand on the door once more.
“What?”
“I think Dream might have my scissors. I need them. She told me to come here and get them. They’re on her dresser drawer.”
“You came all the way over here for scissors?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“You don’t have any other scissors?”
“Nope.”
“You’re a hairdresser and you don’t have any other scissors?” He placed his hands on his hips and looked at me like he knew what I really came for. I have to say, he was full of himself, but it’s not like he wasn’t right. I felt too stupid to try and come up with another excuse, so I decided to just fall silent rather than dig myself in any deeper.
Fashad laughed. “I’ll get them,” he said.
“No! I mean, she said she only want me going in there. You know how kids are with their stuff. They hate for their parents to be in the room. I’ll just be a few seconds. If I could just please come in. Please. It would be the best thing anyone has ever done for me.” The first part was a lie.
Fashad looked at me from head to toe, and a mischievous smile crossed his face. He looked down at his garden, then back at me. He wasn’t smiling anymore. He looked back at the garden in contemplation—then back at me. He closed his eyes for a moment, then looked back at me again. “Come on in,” he said, and the mischievous smile reappeared.
He opened the door, and the interior decor of the house left me breathless. Chandeliers, paintings, chairs, couches, televisions, nothing like what I’d imagined. I always thought his home would be dull, lifeless—a twin trap, a prison. This was no prison. This was a choice. Its inhabitants were here because they wanted to be.
“So, where’s Dream’s room?”
“It’s upstairs. You can come in here, though,” he said, gesturing me to follow him. “The game is on. Unless you got somewhere to be.”
“No, I don’t have to be anywhere. I don’t even have to be at work tomorrow.”
“Why you need the scissors, then?”
“I mean…well, I, um…”
He interrupted me with a laugh, then patted me on the shoulder. “I’m just kidding with you,” he said, allowing his hand to linger a little longer than any straight man would. He guided me into the TV room and sat down on the couch. I wanted to sit down right beside him but didn’t have the courage to be so forward. I sat down on the other end. He got up to get the remote, and I could not help but stare at the perfect package that showed right through his pants since he obviously wasn’t wearing any underwear.
“You watch ball?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said without thinking. Then I panicked when I realized what I’d said. “What?”
“The game.” He laughed. “You want something to drink?”
“Yes, please.”
“Anything special?” he said, getting up and walking to the kitchen, his firm ass not jiggling one bit.
“Anything you have will be fine,” I called. When he left the room I took a deep breath and realized it was the first breath I’d taken in a while. My nerves were pecking at me like a thousand tiny birds. The nervous sweat I’d worked up was ruining the perm I was trying to pretend was my own good hair. I don’t drink, but I felt like I was going to fold up like a chair if I didn’t get a lil tipsy.
Fashad handed me something and I took it straight to the head.
“Damn,” he said, sitting down right next me. He was so close I could feel his leg rubbing against mine. He threw his arm behind my head like we were thirteen-year-olds on a date at the movies. I didn’t know what was happening. Fashad couldn’t have been more forward, but I still didn’t get the picture. I still didn’t believe.
“I know you,” I said and looked at him for the first time since he’d sat down. His brown eyes calling my name. He kissed me. And I believed.
We did it twice. After the first time, I tried to talk to him, but he told me to shut up and wait in the other room until he was ready to go again. After the second time he escorted me to the door and told me never to come back. Said nothing was ever supposed to happen inside his home, and he started picking all the red roses in front of the house. I tried to give him my card, but he was too busy picking roses to notice. I sat it down at his doorstep, then went home and waited by the phone for him to call.
Two weeks later he called. He said he didn’t want to come over my house, because it was mine, but that he owned an apartment that had just been made available. He said he wanted me to move in there. Rent-free. On one condition. He said that I had to belong to him. I asked him what he meant and he just repeated what he’d just said. I said, “Yes, Fashad. I will belong to you.”
Fashad’s been good to me. The apartment is in a nice neighborhood. Close enough to the hood to hear gunshots and know I could get the details on the news at eleven. Far enough not to have to worry about seeing any of my neighbors on it. From the outside it might look like I’m his man-whore, but it’s not like that. I love Fashad. He might not know it, but he loves me too. He was using my name to pick up dudes, so I must have been on his mind, even after all those years. His house might not be a prison, but it is a trap. Down-low niggas aren’t there because they aren’t gay they’re there because they’re trapped in the lives they’re supposed to live. Fashad will be different. Someday soon my love will set him free.
THE MORNING BEFORE THE TRUMPET SOUNDS
CAMEISHA
Get your asses up. It’s time for sch
ool,” I say, knocking on the boys’ doors in my yellow housecoat from the Home Shopping Network.
“Momma, we don’t want to go to school,” said JD.
“What?” I asked, stepping into his room with a belligerent look on my face, my fist balled up like the red Power Ranger’s on his wall.
“We don’t want to go to school, Momma,” he timidly repeated.
“They ain’t learnin’ us nothing,” added his brother from the room across the hall.
“It’s they isn’t,” I responded, correcting my son. “They isn’t teaching you all nothing—and they teaching you, you just ain’t listening. If you was goin’ to the school back in the projects with all them reckless Negroes, then maybe you could say that, but I know them white folks ain’t lettin’ they kids go to no school where they ain’t teaching the kids nothing.”
“But, Momma, I just wanna play basketball,” said JD, now sitting up in his bed and looking me directly in the eye.
“Yeah, Momma, we just wanna play basketball,” Taj mimicked from the other room.
“Dammit, y’all goin’ to school, and I don’t want to hear no more bullshit,” I yelled, flipping on the light switch as I walked out of the bedroom.
“Why, Momma? Why we gotta go to school?”
The first response that came to mind was “Just because.” It was like the drill with the trumpet, or staying married. It was what people did to keep things in place. To maintain order. But what was the point of maintaining order? Where was the benefit, and who did it belong to? What was the emotional cost? And who paid it?
I paused and thought: They for damn sure don’t have the brains to be doctors. They really don’t teach basketball at school, and they ain’t never going to learn how to rap livin’ in the white folks’ neighborhood. Livin’ with the white folks ain’t teachin’ them nothing about the streets, and they daddy ain’t going to teach them. I don’t want them getting caught up in no mess no way. It seem like basketball might be the only chance they got to be SOMETHING more. How they sposed to make something of theyselves, cooped up in that school all day?
The mother in me wanted to pass them a basketball and tell them to go practice, pass, shoot, and dribble until their little hearts were content. The housewife in me was tired. The time the kids spent at school was the only time I had to myself. I felt selfish for a moment, but remembered my pastor saying the Bible said kids were supposed to go to school and wives were supposed to stay at home.
“You got to go to school, ’cause I said so.”
JD didn’t move, and I didn’t hear any footsteps from Taj’s room.
“Do I have to get a switch and whoop your little asses?” I yelled.
They got up.
I knocked on Dream’s door without bothering to try and open it, because I knew it was locked.
“Dream.”
“What?” asked Dream in a tone that would have set me off had it come from anyone else. But with Dream this was the way we always spoke to each other.
“It’s time for you to get up and go to work.”
“I ain’t goin’,” said Dream.
“Yes you is,” I said, waiting for Dream to give the obligatory “No I ain’t.” It didn’t come. Twenty years of going back and forth like such, twenty years of loving and hating each other all at once, twenty years of yelling and screaming—arguing instead of saying “I love you.” Now Dream had the nerve to be silent, as if the discussion was over, as if I wasn’t worth arguing with. First Fashad, now Dream—after all I’d sacrificed. I remembered how Fashad stopped arguing, then drifted away, when she interfered. I wasn’t going to let any he, she, or they come between me and my daughter.
“Open up this goddamn door!” I yelled, my voice even louder than when I yelled at the boys, the rasp in my voice more violent than I’d ever remembered it being.
Dream did not respond.
I stood, paralyzed by my daughter’s betrayal, in front of my bedroom door, the remnants of the life I’d created for the two of us slipping away. I was about to give in, to give up hope, but decided to fight back instead. I was going to hold this family together, whether it wanted to be held together or not. And if that meant leveling the house in the process, so be it. I found Fashad’s hammer in the bright-red toolbox I’d bought him for our one-year anniversary—way back when I thought he was the kind of man who cared enough about his home to fix the things that were broken.
I stormed back up the stairs, grasping the hammer, my eyes wide with loneliness and desperation, my teeth clenched and ready for battle. Taj and JD’s mouths opened when they saw me, and they began pleading their cases in terror.
“Momma, don’t!” yelled JD.
“We gettin’ ready as fast as we can, Momma,” said Taj, tripping over himself, trying to run back into his bedroom.
I ignored them both as I made my way to Dream’s door and banged on it with the hammer. “Open up this goddamn door right muthafuckin’ now,” I said, sweating profusely, my breath bated from running down the stairs to find the hammer.
Dream remained silent.
Venting every bit of loneliness and frustration I’d ever felt and never voiced, I again banged the hammer against the door.
Dream screamed.
Taj cried.
I grunted.
And JD stared like he was watching a movie.
I banged the hammer against the door again.
Taj screamed.
JD cried, “Don’t hurt her!”
Dream moaned.
I grunted.
I banged the hammer against the door. Again.
JD screamed, “Please, Momma!”
Taj plugged his ears.
Dream opened the door.
Taj and JD closed their eyes, plugged their ears, and hoped against hope that no one would get hurt.
Seeing them, I finally dropped the hammer and gazed at the scene—the mangled door, the hammer, my children screaming and moaning in fear. This was what my family had become. Ashamed, I snapped back into reality and fell to my knees in regret.
“Why you always blowin’ shit out of proportion?” asked Dream, not showing the slightest bit of emotion. I sighed. The anger had left and once again I felt unloved.
I stood and stared at my daughter spitefully. “Stupid girl,” I said, still out of breath from slamming the hammer against the door, discreetly attempting to wipe tears from my cheeks because they embarrassed me.
Dream rolled her eyes and adjusted her blue beehive, as if the chaos had displaced it.
I barged into the room and sat down on my daughter’s bed. “Sit down. Me and you are ’bout to have a talk,” I announced.
Dream stood silent, arms folded in defiance.
“Fine. Don’t sit. I don’t care. We still gonna have a talk.”
Dream began picking up the products in her makeup kit that I had accidentally knocked over. She sighed indignantly, picking them up especially slowly, pretending to be unfazed by anything I had said.
“So, you ain’t goin’ to work, huh?” I asked.
Dream waited a few seconds, trying to decide whether or not to respond. She decided the silent treatment would make her appear to be timid and girlish. I could see the rage in her eyes contemplating yelling and acting a fool, but she saw me cut my eyes at her and thought better of it.
Slowly she walked back to her baby-blue canopy bed, sat down, and crossed her legs like a businesswoman meeting another businesswoman for lunch. “No, I’m not,” she said, almost in a whisper, trying to make me feel like I was the crazy one and she was Miss Calm, Cool, and Collected.
“Mmm-hmm,” I said, rolling my eyes at my daughter’s attempt to be anything more than the silly child she was.
“So what do you plan on doing with your life?” I asked, my voice mockingly cordial and upper-crust, mimicking my daughter’s new sense of self. “How are you going to get a job without any credentials?”
Dream glared at me with disgust. “I don’t need no job. You ain’t
got no job.”
Incensed, I dropped the act. “No, I don’t, but there’s a big difference between me and your little dumb ass that you can’t understand: I have a husband.”
Dream smugly cut her eyes at me, then smiled slyly, acting as if she knew something I didn’t.
“Don’t look at me like that!” I commanded. “You think you somethin’ else now that some nigga wants the puss.”
Dream’s eyelids shot open, exposing her big brown irises as her jaw dropped.
“I wasn’t born yesterday. You been tryin’ to hide that shit, but I been livin’ too long not to notice,” I said, and as I began to pace around the room, the anger in my voice rose exponentially.
“I hear you creepin’ around the house at one and two o’clock in the morning. I see how you be spending forty-five minutes on your hair to go to the store. Store, my ass! I see how you don’t eat but half your food at dinner.” I paused to let her squirm. “Are you tryin’ to lose weight for your little boyfriend, Dream?” I taunted.
“So?” said Dream, and she folded her arms in front of her stomach, where she must’ve lost five, six pounds.
“So,” I said, mocking my daughter’s calm voice once more. “You think this nigga gonna take care of you? You think this nigga gonna put you in a house like Fashad did me? You think this nigga gonna buy you diamonds and have every bitch in the city hating you?”
The look on her face said it all. No longer was she the diva with a man she just knew was the best of the best. She was a confused, inexperienced little girl who didn’t know what love looked like.
“You ain’t even got to answer. I know you do. ’Cause you’re dumb,” I said, poking Dream on the side of her head with my index finger.
She knew I was right. She didn’t say one word.
“So tell me about this nigga.”
Dream smacked her tongue and looked away, angry at me for bringing her little secret out in the open.
“You don’t even have to tell me about him. I’m going to tell you about him,” I said and sat down beside my daughter, since I was much calmer now.
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