5 Minutes and 42 Seconds (12 page)

I
sit at the computer
with a pen and pad, trying to recall all the places Erica Kane has been. I remember the wedding in Paris, and write it down. I go to a website, then book a ticket on the first flight I see—without looking at the price.

“Momma, Momma, Momma, Momma, Momma,” says Taj. He won't quit until I finally give in and tear my eyes away from the screen.

“
What
, Taj?”

“I learned something in school today,” he says, and he's grabbing my arm and jumping up and down.

I hear him but am too busy planning an itinerary for my tour of Europe to listen. “Okay, Taj, that's great,” I say, snatching my arm away from him.

“Did you know? Did you know that…that…”

I sigh in exasperation. “Spit it out, Taj!” I yell, slamming
my pen down on my pad. Impatiently, I fling my hand out to the sides, as if to say “Hurry up,” because I sure can't finalize my travel plans with a five-year-old stuttering nonsense in my ear.

“Did you know…that…that every time an angel sings, a bell rings?”

“It's every time a bell rings an angel gets his wings,” I corrected.

“Yeah,” he affirms. “Every time an angel gets his wings, a bell rings.”

He's still wrong, but I don't have the patience to correct him. “And people don't know that for sure,” I continue. “Can't nobody know that but God. Everybody else is really just guessing.” I put my reading glasses back on and pick up the pen, ready to write down my notes on Rome, before noticing he's still standing next to me. “Is that all?” I ask, still sounding exasperated.

He looks off into the distance, and I can tell he's deep in thought. I sometimes wonder if he's autistic, and this is one of those times. I turn and snap in his face. “Taj!” I yell, snapping again. “Taj! You hear me talking to you?”

He snaps out of his trance and looks at me with the same wonder and contemplation he stared off into the distance with. “Momma,” he says, “what happens when a trumpet sounds?”

 

D
ream pulls into the driveway,
feeling a sour mix of regret and joy. Regret for what she has to do, and joy for the reason she has to do it. She's finally found someone who
will love her, someone who listens, someone who makes the past okay, and the future even better. Someone to love, honor, cherish, and obey. What if there is no one else? What if she lets Smokey go, and dies a virgin? What if she leaves this world having been nothing more than a fat, ugly virgin, just what the kids who teased her always said she would be. She can't take that risk. Still, she wonders what if everyone's right. What if Smokey is using her. She thinks on it for a moment before getting out of the car. She decides that a relationship without trust is no relationship at all. That if she's ever going to be truly loved, then she needs to learn how to truly trust.

She looks to her family's home. Three floors of cookie-cutter suburban elegance, with a three-car garage and a beautiful garden. It is all wonderful, majestic, almost perfect; the problem is, it doesn't belong to her. This is the home her mother built. Every woman has to make a home of her own. Dream thinks it's time for her to do just that, and she knows what she has to do to do it.

When she walks through the front door, Cameisha's in the room with the money, typing intently on the computer, and taking notes. Taj is playing with his imaginary friend on the coffee table next to the TV that isn't really a TV. JD is nowhere to be found. Dream was hoping her mother wouldn't be there. She was hoping her betrayal wouldn't have to be so in-her-face. That Cameisha could go to the bathroom, take a shower, or fall asleep for just long enough. If only Smokey had given her more time. She could have switched the suitcases overnight, when nobody was awake to catch her. But now there isn't any time. Her man needs
her now, and she has to make a choice between Smokey and her mother—her old home and the one she hopes to make. She remembers she's already chosen Smokey, but doesn't know if she has the guts to do as she's been told. All her life she's been Cameisha's girl, but in just a matter of hours she's become Smokey's woman.

She stands around the corner, spying on Cameisha and her little brother, hoping they'll leave so she won't have to go to extreme measures. For thirty minutes she stands. The only one who leaves is Taj. Cameisha is still typing away on the computer, a half-empty bottle of champagne at her side, looking for all the world like she's not going to get up anytime soon. Dream takes a deep breath, trying to numb herself to the heartless, ungrateful act she feels she has to resort to. Smokey told her to distract Cameisha the best way she knew how.

She tiptoes back out the front door without making a sound. She walks into the garden, remembering all the hours she and Cameisha had spent caring for it together. All the times her mother had told her how important it was to have a garden. How that garden
was
important to both of them.

She remembers being in the garden when she was still in middle school. Fashad and Cameisha had just had a fight, and her mother went to the garden as she always did when Fashad yelled too loudly, or said something that crossed the line. When Dream joined her, Cameisha neither looked at her nor smiled. She simply warned: “Dream, for everything a woman wants in this world, there is at least one man who will give it to her.” She paused to rip out a single red rose
and savor its single smell. “But, Dream,” she continued mournfully, “no man can ever give you what you
need.
If you trust him to do that, you belong to him.”

Dream shakes her head at the memory, and at the accompanying warning she can't heed. She already belongs to Smokey, and now she has to trust him, and him alone, to take care of her needs. She bites her lip as she pulls out a set a matches. One by one she sets each row of the garden on fire.

 

I
casually walk back to my sofa,
fondling a glass of champagne. Something big is going to happen in ten minutes, but for a moment I can't conceive of what that something is. Ten years ago it would have been Fashad coming home. Ten years was a lifetime ago. Yesterday it would have been Oprah. Now, looking at the bags from my shopping spree earlier, I
feel
like Oprah.

“To Fashad,” I declare aloud, like Judas toasting Jesus at the Last Supper. I take a gulp of champagne and pause a moment to reminisce on the good times. The night he took me to the nice spot in the center of the city, and we dressed up and danced like white folks in a movie, him doing both better than me. I remembered how caring he seemed when he stopped to give me his suit jacket because it was chilly. How he covered my eyes before we reached the garden the first time he brought me to the house. “This is for us,” he'd said. That night we'd planted the roses together in the front yard and promised each other we'd take care of them until the day we died. It was all so perfect, like scenes from
a movie. Fashad swept me off my feet, and placed me on a pedestal. But bit by bit, year by year, he took me down, one peg at a time, until I was farther down than I was when I met him.

Before I can afford a scrap of time to savor the good times, my mind is flooded with the bad. The night I came home and found the roses gone and two condoms in the garbage was just the tip of the iceberg. Blaming myself for my own stupidity, I see the rest of my time with Fashad flashing before my eyes. I see the times he was “visiting his momma” and his momma called and asked to speak to him. I remember all the times he “worked late” at the record company that has yet to produce one record. I remember all the times I wanted him to hold me, and he was off with
her.
I take another gulp to numb the pain and almost stumble as I swallow it because I'm so drunk. I decide not to think about Fashad for now, to just think about the money, and the great things I'll do with it. I see myself in London, wearing white gloves to tea parties, a dashing young man from old money standing at my side. I see myself in Paris, using my
je ne sais quoi
to woo an artist half my age.

Closing my eyes, I give way to my first dream in twenty years. But before I can enjoy it, I am awakened by the faint smell of smoke, which gets more definite as the seconds pass. I sniff and smell it even stronger. Not seeing any fire, I get up and frantically search the house for the source of the smell.

As I near my front door, the smell becomes undeniable, and I wince at the thought of smoke coming from upstairs,
where my children are playing. “Taj! JD! Y'all all right?” I call out.

When they don't answer, I begin to worry. I sprint up the stairs, the odor growing faint, but clouding my lungs nevertheless. I reach the bedrooms and see the boys in JD's room. “Why the hell ain't y'all answer me!” I chastise, taking my fear and nervousness out on them.

“We ain't hear you,” answers Taj, grasping the controller to his Xbox like a race-car driver grasping a steering wheel, and not bothering to look away from the screen.

“I asked y'all did y'all smell that,” I say, snatching the controller away and standing between JD and his XBox.

“Smell what?” asks JD, his tone indicating he believes I have but a slight grip on reality.

“We don't smell nothin', Momma!” says my youngest child, Taj, with a fear in his voice sincere enough to make me back off.

I drop the controller and walk away. I reach the hallway and hear something. The sound is quiet, but I hear it distinctly. I expect to see something sinister. I grew a second nose back in the ghetto, in another lifetime, and it smells something fishy. Someone's in my bedroom.

I walk slowly to my bedroom and peek around the corner, giving a sigh of relief when I see it's just Fashad. Recalling my plan, I smile. Once he leaves, I can blow that trumpet and hide my money. Then I can signal the police to come for the cocaine he left in my cabinet.

Without saying anything to Fashad, I begin to walk back down the stairs, the smell of smoke getting stronger with
every step. I get to the bottom and suddenly the smoke becomes visible. My scream synchronizes with the fire alarm, which starts sounding from the kitchen. I race toward the sound, but when I see Dream sitting serenely on the couch in front of the TV that's not really a TV, I stop.

“Your garden's on fire,” states Dream as she calmly pours herself a glass of champagne, more like a forty-year-old woman than the twenty-year-old girl she is.

My eyes flare. It could have been anything. The stove, the microwave—hell, it could have even been Fashad, but not the garden. Not the garden. The garden has been the only thing I've been able to give nurture to, and to receive from it in return. The garden is the only thing in my life that has ever turned out the way it was supposed to. Not the garden—anything else.

I throw the wig to the ground. “Somebody help me,” I plead, pulling at my own nappy hair in desperation. “Why you just sittin' there? Why you ain't doin' nothin'!” I scream at Dream, who is filing her fingernails and ignoring me, along with the alarm, the smoke, and the garden. I'll tell Dream off later. Right now I have to save the garden.

Reaching the bold flames, I gasp in horror. “Fashad!” I yell. “Fashad, help!” I yell again. I knows he's there, but receive no response. “Typical,” I say aloud. “I got to do everything myself!” I scream, hoping he hears me. I run to get the water hose and start spraying. The first thing I spray are my potatoes, because they're thick and filling. A family can live off of potatoes if they have to. I know for a fact, because me and my sister did when my father left and my mother disappeared for a week.

Taj and JD run into the garden with basketballs in their hands. “Mommy, what happened?” asks JD.

“Nothing,” I say. “Stay back,” I warn. “Get your brother and go inside before I have to get a switch.”

I praise God when the fire on top of the potatoes subsides. Next I hose the tomatoes, because my tomatoes are the thickest, juiciest tomatoes I've ever seen. The tomatoes had to be saved. Just because I am going to Paris doesn't mean I am going to give up having the best tomatoes in Detroit.

I praise God once the fire no longer threatens to kill my tomatoes. Next I hose the garden in its entirety. I've cared for this garden for seven years. Even when I am in London, or Paris, I have to know that my garden is safe.

I praise God when the fire subsides, then walk into my house, ready to whoop somebody's ass. “Dream!” I scream, struggling to be heard over the piercingly loud pulse of the fire alarm reverberating throughout the house.

 

A
s soon as Cameisha runs
for the garden, Dream slams down the glass of champagne she was only pretending to sip and runs to her car in the garage. With an adrenaline rush surging through her body, she pulls out the empty suitcase with ease.

If someone else is in the TV room she won't be able to hear them over the blaring of the fire alarm, so she leaves the suitcase just outside the garage and slowly enters the house. Crouching down as low as she can without scraping her knees, she peeks around the corner to make sure the
coast is clear. The smoke is thicker than it was when she left, but she's sure she sees a figure in the hallway. Realizing it's Fashad, she shrieks, and hopes he doesn't hear her over the ungodly sound of the alarm. To her surprise, Fashad looks back at her but doesn't bother to ask what's wrong, or why she shrieked. Seemingly in a hurry, he quickly walks out the door, leaving Dream to wonder if he's been tipped off.

Once Fashad's gone, she goes back for the suitcase, and begins dragging it in. She reaches the TV with ease, but struggles to pull the heavy suitcase out from inside of it. She grunts as she pulls like she's never pulled before, and the suitcase hits the ground with a plop. Just as she's replacing it with the suitcase Smokey gave her, she hears Cameisha calling her name.