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.
SMOKEY
Ugh,” says the clerk, looking down at the magazines in disgust. “I should have known. All the fine ones are, these days.”
“I don’t understand,” says Smokey, now panting again.
“I don’t understand,” he repeats.
“I don’t either,” says the clerk, agitated.
“This was sposed to be full of money,” says Smokey, wiping the sweat from his face with the front of his shirt.
“Well, someone sure fooled you.”
“Is there a problem here?” asks a voice from behind.
“No, there ain’t no…,” says Smokey, and as he turns around he sees the voice came from a cop. He stops himself mid-sentence, shudders, and puts his head down into his suitcase.
“No,” says the clerk, “he’s just having some trouble with his luggage.”
Smokey fiddles with his suitcase until the cop is gone.
“You can get up now.”
He thanks her and tries to wipe his sweaty face once more, but he’s swearting too profusely to make much of a difference.
“So what you gonna do?” asks the woman.
“I don’t know,” says Smokey, worrying he might start to cry and look even more like a fag than he already does.
“Well, you better figure something out,” says the woman, sounding detached, wanting Smokey to understand that she is through caring.
Smokey stands still for the first time since the gunshots rang, wanting to take time to mourn. Not just to mourn the lost money, but to mourn for Fashad, Dream, and even Cameisha. He begins to rock back and forth, to give way to the pain, and the hopelessness, then he remembers the cops and realizes things could get a lot more painful and hopeless if he doesn’t find a way to get out of the country. There’s no time for feelings. I’m a gladiator, he thinks.
“I need you to hook me up,” he says, flashing her the dimples.
“Hook you up? How?” says the woman skeptically, not responding to his dimples the way most women did. He can tell the gay porn has ruined her earlier budding attraction.
He leans in and licks his lips like LL. “Anything you can do,” he whispers seductively.
“Well, I mean, I guess I can give you my employee’s discount to Boston, but once you get there what you gonna do? How you gonna get to Canada with no money?”
“I’ll figure that out when I get there,” he says.
“Aight. I’m guessing you don’t want that luggage to board,” says the woman with a smirk.
Smokey closes his eyes in gratitude. “Thank you. Naw, that faggot shit is nasty. Thank you, though,” he says again, wiping his face on his sleeve, before kicking the luggage aside.
“Here’s your ticket,” she says. “My number’s written on the back,” she continues. “Call me from Canada. If you make it, that is.”
Smokey smiles as he passes her the little bit of money he has, and takes the ticket with the number he knows he’s never going to call, whether he makes it or not.
The adrenaline high of running from the cops numbed the shock of the day’s events, but when the train leaves the station it all comes back to him in a rush. He sees Fashad begging for his life, he sees Dream in the street holding out the bologna hoagie, he sees the nasty magazines, and, worst of all, he can still feel Fashad inside of him. He begins to squirm in his seat trying to shake the queasy feeling. Gladiators don’t get fucked up the ass…
He begins to cry when he thinks about the detectives finding Fashad’s body at his house. What if they do DNA or something? What will they find? Will they know he fucked me before he died? Will they laugh?
Yes.
Smokey begins to cry so hard the other passengers turn to look at him. I’m not a gladiator. I ain’t got no money. They gonna find me. They gonna put me in jail forever. And I snitched. I snitched like a little faggot. I’m not a gladiator, I’m a faggot. Even if they don’t know—I will. Forever.
His skin feels dirty, itchy, and slimy. He starts clawing at himself but can’t get any rel
ief. Finally he pulls a strand of his unbraided hair. He balls it up in his hand and throws it to the ground. He pulls another strand, and feels better. Then another, and another, and another, and another.
XANDER
Knowing Fashad likes to sleep where his money is, Xander stays up all night waiting for him. He hears gunshots around seven but doesn’t think the news crew will get there in time to show it at eleven, and so he doesn’t watch. There is a restless feeling in his stomach nagging him like hunger around midnight. He does a crossword puzzle at one. Then he plays spades on the Internet; he listens to music; he calls a friend. But the feeling’s still there. Around two in the morning, he shudders at the possibility that Fashad may not be coming home at all.
There are hundreds of niggas in this city who could have been shot instead of Fashad, so why isn’t he here, then?
Xander’s eyes open to another possibility that could be even worse than the prior. He’s gone back to her.
Xander grabs his coat and runs to his car, thinking: That’s it. If he’s gone back to her, I’m going to tell her everything. It’s my turn. If he won’t leave her voluntarily, I’ll make her leave him. I’ll show him I can be Pie. I just have to get her out of the way.
By the time Xander arrives at Cameisha’s, he has his plan completely worked out. I’ll tell her I heard Fashad was gay. I won’t tell her I’m the one he’s been sleeping with. I won’t tell her anything more than what she needs to know to leave us alone for good.
Cameisha opens the door and falls into his arms.
“Oh my God, Xander. I don’t know what I’m going to do. How am I going to tell the kids?” she cries, dazed and out of sorts.
“What happened?” asks Xander, genuinely concerned. Cameisha is the mother of Fashad’s son, and if there is something wrong with him then that would explain where Fashad is.
She walks back into the door, takes a deep breath, and asks, “You haven’t heard?”
“No,” says Xander, becoming worried and feeling guilty for being on the warpath his entire way over. Whatever the problem was, it was clear Fashad had a very good reason for not coming home and sleeping in what had just become their bed.
“Fashad’s dead,” says Cameisha, slowly, as if the words alone bring her pain.
Her words strike him like a blow—visceral and direct. He trembles, and his chest heaves, his lips quiver. He struggles to speak but can’t for a moment. “What?” he manages to ask finally.
“Fashad was killed,” she says, still dazed and staring at the floor. “He was murdered at Smokey’s house.”
Xander begins to pant, and has to place his hands on his knees for support. The gunshots at seven. The room is spinning a mile a minute, and he wants to think: No! There must be some mistake!
“How do you know? Maybe he just wants you to think he’s dead because he never wants to see you again after you betrayed him like that?”
Cameisha gasps. “Xander, why would you say that? How could you say that now?” she says, genuinely astonished by his lack of compassion. Her stare turns to a scowl as she points a finger in his face. “Fashad is—Fashad was my husband, and I love him!” she says without blinking. “We spent twenty years together and he meant more to me than you’ll ever know.”
“So much that you tried to send him up,” Xander scoffs, turning away from her, trying to hide his tears.
“Xander!” Cameisha yells. “I couldn’t go through with it.”
“What?” says Xander skeptically.
“I couldn’t go through with it. They came and I told them to go. I told them I loved my husband.” She moves to the space he’s staring into and reiterates. “I loved that man with all my heart.”
Xander’s eyes swell up because he can see she’s telling the truth. She did love Fashad—every bit as much as he did. Sure, she thought about sending him up, but Xander himself had planned on outing him, which would have been worse than sending him to jail. Maybe worse than killing him. Xander wipes his face full of tears and turns back around. He knows it’s easy for people to slip and think about themselves for a second. It doesn’t mean they love any less. The thought of Cameisha loving Fashad as much as he does shakes him, and he tries to change his course of thought.
“Cameisha, you still never told me how you know.”
“How I know what?”
“That Fashad was killed.”
“I identified the body,” says Cameisha.
“You…you…you…,” says Xander, falling to the floor. With each “you” Xander thinks something else will follow from his lips. Something to clear up this misunderstanding.
“He’s dead,” she says, pulling her fingers through her messy hair.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. Don’t nobody know,” says Cameisha, joining him on the floor. “They can’t find Smokey, either.” She hugs him and rests her head on his breast. He can tell she thinks he’s grieving for her. Grieving because she lost the man she loves, rather than grieving for the man he loves. Xander wonders if he’s not doing both.
She wraps her arms around him, and finally Xander understands what she feels. Love is far too complex to be broken down to competition. He wants her to understand him as well—to know that he lost something special too, that his life will never be the same, either.
Although it’s the toughest thing he’s ever had to do, he lets her cry on his shoulder. Out of loyalty, he stays the night—without saying nothing about nothing.
XANDER TO FASHAD
His voice is broad and boastful, reminiscent of every pastor Xander has ever heard. “In closing I would like to read from First Corinthians, the fifteenth chapter, fifty-second verse. ‘In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.’”
As they begin to lower the casket, Xander turns away. He rubs Cameisha’s shoulders as she screams in horror, and the pastor begins singing about amazing grace. When he finishes, Dream and JD manage to carry Cameisha back to the limo, and the others disperse shortly after, leaving Xander alone in the cemetery with only words he hopes Fashad can hear to comfort him.
“It sure was a nice funeral. I mean, it wasn’t ghetto, like most funerals. It was real classy. Your mom looked pretty. She still kept calling you Façade. Right until the end. You looked handsome as always. Yeah, I know you hate it when I say stuff like that, but it’s the truth. Cameisha was there, of course. You should have seen how low her dress was. I know I’m not supposed to talk shit about Cameisha. It’s just weird now, because you ain’t here to stop me.
“I’m so angry, Fashad. I’m so angry, I don’t know what to do. Why did God take you away from me? What happened? Why did Smokey shoot you? They still ain’t found him yet.”
Xander looks back and sees a car driving past the grave site.
“I can’t stay too long. People might get suspicious, and I know how you hate that. I want you to know that I love you, Fashad. I never said it, but I do. You never said it, but you loved me too. Maybe in another lifetime.”
The funeral has already proceeded from the burial ground back to Cameisha’s house, but Xander stays to tend to Fashad’s grave, brushing dirt off the grass and cleaning smudges from the tombstone. He picks a flower from the grave site and places it in the breast pocket of his suit, next to the handkerchief, on top of his heart.
“I’m going to California,” he says aloud. “I always wanted us to go there. I’m broke, but broke ain’t so bad. We can’t buy the world, Fashad. I know you never figured out how to live in your own skin, but you inspired me to learn how to live in mine. I’m going to live in it for the both of us.”
When Xander finally arrives at Cameisha’s house, cars are parked all the way down to the streetlight now void of workers because it was never really broken. Once parked, Xander takes out his pen and a one-dollar sympathy card that reads simply: SORRY FOR YOUR LOSS. On the inside he writes:
; I only wanted his heart.
Love,
Her
He pulls the suitcase, wrapped in gift paper, from the backseat of his car and rolls it to the front of Cameisha’s house.
As he leaves, he sees Cameisha crying alone in the garden at the side of the house. He knows how alone she feels, because he feels it too. Dream comes out to comfort her, and he smiles for the first time since he heard the news last week. Looking down at the flower in his breast pocket, he adjusts it to make sure it stays there forever. Smiling, he takes one last look at Fashad’s home. And never returns.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The people who made sure this novel hit the shelves: my diligent editor, Dawn Davis, for her meticulous readings; my wonderful agent, Luke Janklow, for getting it, and making sure everyone else did.
The people who inspired my writing: Virgil Mann, Jennifer Stepleton, Dr. Valerie Smith, Dr. Noliwe Rooks, and Dr. Cornel West.
The people who keep me sane: David Kaverman, best friend and chief critic—you’ll never let my head get (any) big(ger); Kamara James, friend and Olympian, who reminds me that anything’s possible; Connor Ross, for his biting yet silent critiques; Toni Seaberry, for to this day being the only person I’ve met who is fluent in the Ivy-ebonics I consider my first language; Aliya Sanders, for always being there; Greg Pitts, a reluctant, but nonetheless inspiring muse—there’s always something with you.
The people who have known me forever…and are probably shocked right now: my thugged-out brother Edmund, who keeps the family’s street cred intact; too many others to list, so let me get hood now and throw out some shout-outs: Melanie, Adaora, Trina, Ebony, Elyse, Andrea, Nicole, Tony, Tank, Aunt Valerie, Aunt Sharon, Aunt Maggie, Aunt Wilma, Aunt Caroline, and everybody else who didn’t ask for a shout-out, but can get one next time.
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