5 Minutes and 42 Seconds (13 page)

 

D
ream Janea
Montavia Hamilton!” I yell again. “Dream, I know you hear me! You get an attitude about this lil nigga you got sniffin' after your pussy and you gonna just let the house burn down! I know you mad 'cause I told you he wasn't no good, but damn!

“Dream! Don't play this hide-and-seek shit wit' me. I know you in here somewhere. Dream!” I yell so feverishly the smoke I take in causes me to cough. I continue to look for Dream, but become distracted by the fire alarm still blaring in the background. Whiffing away at the smoke, I climb on a stool and take out the batteries.

The phone rings as soon as the alarm stops. I hear it but let it continue. As I get down from the stool, preparing to lay into Dream, the answering machine comes on.

“Pick up. Yo. It's Smokey. Pick up. It's important, yo.”

Fearing the worst, I rush to the machine quicker than I had run to the garden just seconds ago. Out of breath, I grasp my chest, and put Smokey on speakerphone.

“Smokey, what's goin' on?”

“I need to speak to Fashad. I need to speak to Fashad real bad.”

The sweat pours from my face as my heart skips a beat. How was this possible? I had just spoken to the cops earlier that day. I told them
I
was going to call them, that I was going to let them in without a warrant as long as they waited for my call. Yet here is Smokey calling to trigger the drill, telling me the feds are on their way. My heart races even more as I grapple with the possibility that Fashad really does have an informant, and knows what I've done. Knowing Fashad doesn't love me is one thing, but is he ruthless enough to go on the run, and leave me with nothing? My heart pounds in my chest faster than it ever has before. I grasp at it, as if I can physically hold it in place, hoping my children won't become orphans. In the midst of worrying for my wants, and my children's needs, I know I'm supposed to be doing something now, but I can't remember what.

“Here,” says a voice.

“Here,” says the voice again.

I look up and see my daughter holding the trumpet, drenched in sweat as if she'd been the one whose garden was on fire.

“What you waitin' on? Blow it!” says Dream with an urgency in her voice that makes me think
she might not be so ungrateful after all.

I narrow my eyes and grit my teeth. If Fashad knows I've betrayed him, then my only chance at survival is to hide the money and get the feds here before Fashad has a chance to hide the drugs himself—or, worse, take the money and leave me with nothing.

I snatch the trumpet from my daughter, and blow louder than I've ever blown before. The trumpet resounds throughout the house, sounding the way it does in the commercial. “This is not a test!” I yell, and blow it again.

Hearing the pitter-patter of footsteps upstairs, I know the boys are doing their jobs. I look over at Dream, expecting to have to encourage her to do hers, but before I can speak Dream is on her way into the garage to get the chain saw. I run to the kitchen to make sure the cocaine I set aside for the cops is where it's supposed to be. In Fashad's plan I am supposed to go upstairs to make sure the boys are properly getting rid of his stash, but that was when the plan was to help Fashad stay out of jail—a cause to which I'm no longer willing to lend my support. I pull the suitcase from inside the television, then yank the clothes blocking the space for the trap door from the closet.

“Cut,” I command, pointing to the “X” Fashad had marked inside the closet for when the time came.

“Ain't you sposed to be upstairs?” asks Dream snidely.

“Just cut—and hurry,” I command. Dream places her hand on her hip and stares at me defiantly. I don't have time for my daughter's power trips. All of our lives are on the line.

“Move out the way. I'll cut the damn closet my goddamn
self,” I say and snatch the chain saw away, nearly cutting her leg off in the process. “Dream, watch out before you get hurt!” I warn.

It seems like it takes hours, but it only takes a few minutes. “Hand me the suitcase,” I say without looking back at my daughter, huffing and puffing from stress and anxiety. “Hand me the motherfuckin' suitcase!”

“You ain't got to cuss at me.” Dream throws the suitcase so roughly it almost knocks me over, but I am so tense with fear I barely notice. I push the suitcase into the compartment I've created with the chain saw inside the closet.

“Help me put these clothes back in,” I command.

“Do it yourself,” says Dream

That is it. “Dream Janea Montavia Hamilton, you have lost your mind! You either help me put these clothes back or get out of my house,” I say, not stopping to so much as glare at my daughter as I quickly pick up a handful of socks.

“Bitch. Don't nobody want to live in your goddamn house any goddamn way.”

My mouth flies open in shock. Not just because of my daughter's words but because of the hatred and audacity in her eyes. Dream was never a respectful child, but she wasn't a bold one, either. That nigga-whoever-he-is had finally come between us.

“Yeah, you heard me. I said don't nobody want to live in your goddamn house no more,” Dream repeats in my face.

“Well, then, get the fuck out, bitch,” I say, picking up the last bit of clothes on my own, too scared of Fashad to worry about my daughter's idle threats.

“Fine,” says Dream with a sneer. Rolling her eyes as she walks toward her car in the garage. I ignore her and check the watch. Five minutes and forty-two seconds. I check for Fashad's car outside. If indeed he has been tipped off, he'll be here any moment, looking for his money. I see a Mercedes but it's not Fashad's, it's Dream's, and she is boldly holding up her middle finger as she drives into the distance.

I sneer and curse my daughter, then run to the telephone. I continue to keep a lookout for Fashad as I press seven on the speed-dial—the number of years Fashad and I have been married.

“Hello, it's Cameisha Douglass…I mean, it's Fashad's wife,” I say.

“Is it time?” asks the voice.

“Yes!” I say. “I think Fashad knows what's going on here. You have to hurry!”

 

D
ream pulls into the gas station
satisfied that she's fulfilled her end of the deal. The money is in the trunk, that's what Smokey wanted. Now it's his turn to come through for her. “He better show up with a wedding ring,” she says aloud to no one. The truth is, she's wondering if he'll even bother to show up at all. What if this is just a trick of some sort, an elaborate taunt like the kids at school used to concoct? She'd renounced her mother for him, and left her home. Smokey is all she has. She wonders if she can believe in him, she wonders if she can absolutely assure herself that everything will work out, but she knows for a fact that all she can do is wait and see what happens.

 

B
efore I can hang up the phone,
I hear sirens moving toward my home and think,
It can't be them already.

It is. I thank God that the cops beat Fashad to the house, knowing he won't risk coming home to get his money if it means getting caught, especially since I'm sure this stash of cash isn't his only stash.

I skip to open the door with a mischievous, celebratory smile on my face believing I've won the strange war of wits and greed Fashad and his mistress have waged on me.

“Good evening, officers,” I say, draining the ghetto out of my voice, dramatically tilting my head with each word, and feeling alive for the first time.

The officers don't respond. “We're here to do a search, ma'am.”

“Yes, I know.”

Two men move past me. One of them is black and cute. I glance down at his sexy rough and rugged size-fifteen boots and smile, imagining him in my bed with them on. I unbutton a few buttons on my blouse, exposing my bra and making sure he brushes up against me as he passes. When he looks back, I wink.

I still got it.

“I believe you'll find what you're looking for in the lower-right-hand cabinet by the sink. It's in a flour package, but it's not really flour.” I follow the two men into the kitchen and seductively pose in front of the refrigerator, covering up the picture of me Taj drew in school yesterday.

My eyes are planted firmly on the broad-shouldered, six-foot-something black man going through my cupboards like a man who hadn't been cooked a good meal in a long time. “Would you like for me to cook you something?” I ask.

“No thanks. I'm sure my wife has something waiting for me at home.”

I swivel my hips like a runway model, seductively placing one foot directly in front of the other, moving toward him with sex in my eyes. I bend down and lean my breasts on his shoulder. “If you eat here, your wife will never have to know.”

He glances at me the way the men look at the women on soaps. I imagine him having X-ray vision, going through my exterior directly to my soul, and liking what he sees. I imagine him being my soul mate and for a moment feel like a bird flying all the way to heaven. Until I see his wedding ring, and the fantasy ends as quickly as it started. Overwhelmed with empathy, I wonder if his wife has kids, if she has to slave at home all day, and how many tears she'll cry when she finds out her husband has a
her.

“Maybe something simple,” says the sex-struck detective, who has clearly had a change of heart.

In an instant the motivation behind my plan to be something more becomes clear. It was never about me—it was about
her.
It was a competition over Fashad at first, then Fashad became irrelevant. It became about dignity, about not letting
her
make me feel like less of a woman. Now, with the finest man I'd ever seen looking at me, asking me to fix him something to eat, I know I could be somebody's
her.
Suddenly the empty place inside of me where Fashad
used to sleep and the money was supposed to abide is filled with a smile and for the first time in my life I know I alone am enough.

The detective must sense my change of heart, because he quickly turns his head back to the cupboards and adds, “You know what, don't bother, it's too much trouble. I like my wife's cooking, anyway. I don't want to spoil my appetite.”

I nod my head. “That's the way it should be,” I say, buttoning up my blouse to the top and feeling ashamed. As I move away from him I look at his boots and hope he hasn't trudged mud onto my carpet.

The man comes out of the cupboards. “I don't see any package of flour here, ma'am.”

“Let me take a look,” I say, feeling like myself for the first time since the first trumpet sounded and Fashad commanded me to start the drill. “I know I put it down here.”

The man moves and I search the cupboards. First one and then another, until I see the flour lodged in the back of the cherrywood cabinet, between the cornmeal and the starch. “Here…,” I say, about to hand him the cocaine, but then the consequences strike me like a ten-pound weight to the forehead and I stop myself.

I see Fashad behind bars, his brown eyes glistening the way they did when he took me out on the town—my Fashad—the same Fashad I'd still like to cook for if he'd come home for dinner. I look up at the man, who was almost my
him.

“Well?” says the man impatiently.

“I can't!” I declare.

“What can't you do?” he asks.

“I can't find it,” I answer, trying to cover my tracks. “I can't find it. I must have put it somewhere else.”

“You seemed so sure it was there a couple of minutes ago,” says his partner.

“It's been a rough day. I must not have been paying attention,” I snap back.

“You were really sure,” says the man. His eyes are almost pleading with me.

“I'm surer now. It's in the bathroom,” I say, pointing toward the downstairs bathroom.

The two men look at me with uncertainty.

“It'll be right there, to your left,” I affirm.

As soon as the men disappear around the corner, I pull the bags of cocaine from the flour package and stuff them into my pockets.

“I have to go upstairs and check on my sons,” I call out to the officers from the hallway. “I'll be right back.”

Without waiting for them to answer, I race to the upstairs bathroom. I shut the door and stand over the bowl, clutching the yayo in one hand and my heart in the other, and as I flush every ounce of it down the toilet, the person I thought I wanted to be drowns right along with it.

I go back downstairs and see both men stirring in my living room. “It's not here,” I say, irritated by the fact that they are too close to Fashad's money.

“How would you know?” the black man's partner asks, challenging me.

The black man looks at him, then at me, and says, “Ma'am…?”

“My husband was here earlier. Maybe he took it. Maybe
what I thought was yayo was really just flour all along. I don't know. He really doesn't tell me anything, you know,” I say, opening the door for them to leave.

“Ma'am, you and I both know that's not very likely,” says the black man.

“Why isn't it?”

“Because your husband's one of the most prolific drug dealers in the state,” says his partner. The black man gives him another look telling him to let him handle this, and the partner throws his hands in the air and walks away.

“I don't know about all that. What I do know is that I was under a lot of stress earlier today. I've been having problems with my daughter. Fashad and I have been having problems too…”

“Ma'am—” says the black man.

“Fashad's not perfect,” I say, not letting him finish. “Nobody is, but he's mine.”