Who Asked You?

by Terry McMillan

  When I pull up to baggage claim I see what looks like the shell of my brother. He’s smoking a cigarette. He’s also shrunk. Those jeans look like they once belonged to somebody else. He’s like a blast from the past, as my son, Max, would say because he’s wearing Reebok Pumps but the white leather is cracked and wrinkled at the toe. And even though it’s dusk and the concrete overhead is casting even more of a shadow, his skin looks like a russet potato. What’s left of his hair is thin and straggly, like some old hippie. I don’t see any luggage but he’s wearing a backpack that looks too heavy because it’s hanging low on his back when he raises his hand up and waves. I was hoping to hate him, for all that he and Clay have tried to do to me to make me feel like Sister Dearest, but when I roll the window down and say, “Hi, bro,” and he smiles at me as if I just rescued him from harm, my heart becomes a warm cushion.

  He takes a long, final drag from his cigarette and then flicks it to the curb and doesn’t notice how disgusting this is to the folks standing next to him. He’s got too many bad habits. “Thanks for picking me up on such short notice,” he says, and tosses his backpack on the backseat after he gets in. He acts like he wants to kiss me but isn’t real sure if he should or not. So I bend over and give him a peck on the cheek, then squeeze his meatless shoulder. “So, this is my very first visit to the City of Angels.”

  “Welcome” is pretty much all I can think of to say. All I’m wondering is if I really just picked my brother up from LAX after not seeing him or Clay since Ma died a year after Daddy, which is going on five years. That’s a long time not to see a sibling, but they didn’t want to see me and threatened to disappear if I were to show up unannounced. I have never been one to go where I’m not welcome.

  “I hope you’re not upset because of my coming here this spontaneous and all, Tammy, but I needed to get away from Billings.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I got myself in a little trouble.”

  “Can you be a little more specific, Jackson?”

  He seems to suddenly start hyperventilating or something and then he calms himself down and while looking out the window says, “Would you mind if I smoked?”

  “Yes, I would mind. You can’t smoke anywhere near me the short time you’re going to be here.” This of course is better than a hint.

  He does that “church is the steeple and this is all the people” thing with his fingers, which is giving me the heebie-jeebies, but I just wait to hear the latest episode of the ongoing saga that happens to be his life. You would think he would have changed the channel by now. “I owe some people and I don’t have it and they’re looking for me and I had nowhere else to go.”

  “So, you decided to come see your little sister for emotional support?”

  He nods his head in slow motion. “Sort of.”

  “Are you some kind of drug dealer, Jackson?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t know if I believe you.”

  “Then don’t.”

  “You are already trying my patience, Jackson. I mean, after years of trying to sue me and make my life miserable even though I gave you and Clay more than Ma and Daddy even left you now you call me out of fucking nowhere and ask me to pick you up at the airport when you have never so much as picked up the goddamn phone to say, ‘Hi, Tammy, we miss you’ or ‘How you doing?’ or ‘Would you send us some pictures of your kids and are you still married to that nigger?’ No, you call me from the fucking airport and ask me to stop doing whatever I was doing to come pick you up and here I am and you sound and look like a drug dealer who’s fallen on hard times.”

  “I can’t help how I look.”

  “Well, how is Clay doing these days?”

  “Not so good.”

  “What is that supposed to mean, Jackson?”

  “There was a fire in our house, Tammy.”

  “And what’s that supposed to mean? Did Clay get hurt or something?”

  “He set it.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “He’s been depressed a long while and he didn’t try to get out.”

  “Didn’t try? Or didn’t get out?”

  “The fire department got him.”

  “Are you sitting here telling me that our brother is dead?”

  He nods again.

  I say nothing. I am trying not to picture the house we grew up in up in flames and my—our—brother inside it. I roll the window down so I can breathe. And then start pounding my palms on the steering wheel so hard it hurts. When I stop, I hear myself say, “When did all this happen?”

  “Four days ago.”

  “And you’re just now telling me?”

  “It was too hard to say over the phone, Tammy. I had to leave before those folks got hold of me. Which is why I’m here.”

  He starts crying. Hard.

  This feels like somebody else’s nightmare I’ve been dragged into. A couple of hours ago I was planning on having a nice family sit-down with my daughter, who’s six months pregnant, and the love of her life to tell them they have become a financial burden and are going to need to start thinking about making other living arrangements if at all humanly possible before that little girl arrives, because they have violated the terms of our agreement and I feel like they are taking advantage of me, and I don’t appreciate it. But now, all I’m thinking is life is like a baseball game, and sometimes you can’t see a curveball let alone trying to hit it.

  “Where is he?”

  “In my backpack.”

  “In your . . .” I turn to glance at that grungy backpack leaning sideways against the door and I turn away, unable to imagine my brother, Clay, six feet tall since he was sixteen, inside it. I don’t realize I’m wailing at the top of my lungs until I feel Jackson’s hand rubbing my right shoulder.

  “I feel bad telling you this way. I feel bad that our brother did this to himself.”

  “Who made the decision to have him cremated?”

  “Me, I guess. I didn’t have much choice, Tammy.”

  “He could’ve been buried, Jackson. There are always remains.”

  “Nobody woulda showed up to Clay’s funeral, Tammy, and I didn’t have that kind of money and it was for the best.”

  “The best.”

  I put the car in drive, then slam on the brakes.

  “How in the hell do you know who would or wouldn’t show up to his funeral?”

  “Because he didn’t have any friends. And you know we don’t have any relatives left in Billings.”

  “Where in the hell were you when the house was burning, tell me that?”

  “At a bar. Word got to me pretty fast.”

  I pull out of the parking space and probably accelerate too much, because Jackson grasps the armrest. I feel like slamming on the brakes but I don’t. “Why did you come here, of all places?”

  “Because you’re all I’ve got left.”

  “I’m really sorry to hear about your brother,” BJ says.

  “Me, too.”

  We are getting a manicure and pedicure and not because we need them, but because we both needed to get out of the house. BJ took the day off, something she hardly ever does, because the boys just left for overnight camp. They’ll be gone a week. I personally think two would’ve been much better since Venetia offered to pay. But BJ wasn’t sure how they would handle being away from home for that long. You never know until you try was my attitude but I didn’t say it. Since the boys have been there, BJ hardly ever gets ten minutes to herself, except when they’re asleep. I’m starting to know exactly how that feels.

  “So how long is he going to be staying?” BJ asks, considering he’s already been here two whole weeks.

  “I don’t know. He doesn’t have anywhere else to go.”

  “He seems nice enough,” she says, and takes a sip of her iced coffe
e.

  “It feels like I’m grieving more for him than my dead brother, who just evaporated. Jackson is a loser. And he knows it. I can’t even pretend I know how to save him and I don’t know how to tell him, BJ.”

  “Does he have any skills?”

  “None that I know of. But that’s beside the point.”

  We both lean our heads back in the pedicure chairs that are massaging us and doze off.

  “All finished!” the Vietnamese girl says after tapping me on my leg. I look over at BJ, who just opened her eyes and looks like she has no idea where she is. She needed this.

  We put our feet in the paper slippers they give us and walk over to the manicure stations.

  “We need to do this more often,” she says after picking out her color. She chooses tangerine. I choose light pink. I don’t know why, because I don’t like pink.

  “So, you want to hear the latest?” I ask her.

  “Yep. And then you have to hear mine.”

  “Wait. It’s not bad news, I hope?”

  “It depends on how you look at it. I’m listening.”

  “Tanna has asked if she and Trevor can stay until after baby Clementine is born and—”

  “Hold on. I know they’re not really going to name that baby any Clementine.”

  “It’s already a done deal, BJ. I personally don’t like it because it reminds me of a cartoon I can’t remember the name of for the life of me, and of course this is due to my disappearing hormones, which you know something about, but anyway back to the point: Trevor has gotten a real job with no future but a guaranteed weekly salary and he is studying to take the real estate exam like every other human being in Los Angeles who has no legitimate plans for their life, but at any rate, they have agreed to pay me a pittance while they save up and so they have bought four more months, I guess, but I don’t know what it’s going to be like having a screaming baby in the house or what I’m going to do with my chain-smoking, ale-drinking brother.”

  “This is like As The World Turns, isn’t it?”

  “One more pop-up and it’s going to be more like General Hospital.”

  “Does your brother want to go back to Montana?”

  “He has nothing to go back to. That’s the problem.”

  “How old is he again?”

  “I’m forty-six, so he has to be forty-eight or forty-nine.”

  “Well, Dexter’s coming home soon and I can’t lie, Tammy, I am not looking forward to seeing him. I know that’s sad to say.”

  “No, it’s not. It’s not like he’s been on vacation all these years, BJ, and you’ve already got a house full of people you’re taking care of. The last thing you need is another dependent.”

  “You don’t have to tell me. Plus, I don’t know him.”

  “I don’t know Jackson either. But what I do know is I’m being forced to embrace him like a family member since he is a family member but I almost feel like his aunt and not his sister.”

  “So what are you going to do about him, Tammy?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, guess what’s going on across the street from you? I’ll answer that. Nurse Kim is leaving. She got accepted into that traveling nurse program.”

  “Shit.”

  “It’ll be all right.”

  “How soon?”

  “Seven or eight weeks.”

  “Wow. Where’s she going?”

  “She has no idea. And I don’t think she really cares. She’s still young enough to take chances, and if I was in her shoes, I’d be on a plane right now.”

  Arlene

  You mean now that he’s finally getting out you’re going to let him live with you and those kids for the next six months?”

  “He’s my son and he doesn’t have anywhere else to go.”

  “What happened to halfway houses?”

  “They cost money.”

  “Oh, so you have to feed him, too?”

  “First of all, Arlene, can you honestly sit here and tell me you wouldn’t do the same for Omar?”

  “Omar would not do anything that would land him in prison, so I can’t even entertain the thought. I’m also standing, not sitting.”

  “The only reason I agreed to meet you for these nasty tacos is because you said you had something you wanted to tell me. I don’t know why you couldn’t tell me over the phone.”

  “Because ever since you’ve had those kids, we never seem to spend any time together anymore. Besides, some things are better said face-to-face.”

  “Like what, Arlene?”

  “Can we finish our tacos first?”

  “Let me say this, since it’s been bothering me. You haven’t seen the kids in months and when you call you don’t even ask how they’re doing.”

  “How are they doing?”

  “They’re doing just fine, since you asked. Luther might get to skip third grade. He’s bright. And Ricky is doing much better all around. He can draw anything.”

  “Is he still taking that medication?”

  “Yes, he is. But he might grow out of it. Okay, Arlene, you’ve managed to show some interest in my grandkids, so tell me what you have to tell me.”

  “Wait a minute, would you? See how impatient you are? Who’s watching them right now?”

  “What?”

  “Who’s watching them while you’re here with me?”

  “Why?”

  “I’m just curious.”

  “Montana. Tammy’s daughter.”

  “Do you pay her?”

  “That is none of your business. Why are you so nosy?”

  “I’m not being nosy. It’s called curious. No harm done. Anyway, have you heard from Trinetta or am I getting too personal?”

  “No.”

  “Have you managed to get any help from the county yet?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s too complicated and they make you fill out form after form and still make you wait.”

  “So wait.”

  “Wait a minute. Let’s back up. Who told you Dexter got paroled, Arlene?”

  “He did.”

  “I know damn well you didn’t write a letter for him?”

  “Yes I did, Betty Jean.”

  I can tell she’s shocked. I take a sip of my Pepsi. The only reason I did it was because Dexter had been in that place so long and he had written letter after letter begging and pleading me as his auntie to write to the parole board on top of telling me how no one believed in him, that he had no family support, that he’s not young and stupid anymore, that people do change and he didn’t want to have to spend another year behind bars for a crime he didn’t commit. So I agreed to do it and lied to the parole board about how remorseful he is and how eager he is to rejoin us in the outside world and make a contribution to society, and that, in fact, he is ready to reinvent himself. I was somewhat impressed by his vocabulary and his knowledge of the law, but other than this, I didn’t have a clue about what he was really capable of doing once he got out, and I still don’t know. My hope was that he might be able to help Betty Jean with those kids until Trinetta brings her stupid ass back home and finishes raising them. Dexter failed to mention that he was planning on moving back in.

  “You never told me you were in touch with Dexter, Arlene. Why didn’t you ever bother mentioning it?”

  “Because Dexter asked me not to. Just in case things didn’t work out again.”

  “But you never liked him.”

  “I never said I didn’t like Dexter. I said I didn’t like some of the things he’d done. But people do stupid things when they’re young. And they can change. He sounds like he’s paid in years lost for a crime he still swears he didn’t do. It was no big deal, really. I just wish he didn’t have to live with you.”

>   “You and me both. But thank you, Arlene.”

  “You’re welcome. So, Omar has made some dramatic changes.”

  “Don’t tell me he’s finally moving out?”

  “No. But he’s lost about forty pounds. And counting.”

  “So he did get that Lap Band?”

  “Who told you he was getting it?”

  “I thought you did. Didn’t you?”

  “No, I did not. It had to be Venetia with her big mouth.”

  “Was it supposed to be a secret or something?”

  “No. When I told Venetia, I didn’t know he was actually going to do it. But he did.”

  “Isn’t that expensive?”

  “Insurance covered it.”

  “Well, good for Omar. He’s a good-looking young man. This should do wonders for his self-esteem.”

  “What makes you think he doesn’t have any self-esteem?”

  “I didn’t say he didn’t have any. I just meant that with a few less pounds he’d probably feel better about himself. You knew what I meant, Arlene. Damn. Is this what you wanted to tell me?”

  “That’s one thing.”

  “What’s the other one?”

  “Have you talked to Venetia lately?”

  “Not in a week or so, why?”

  “Rodney’s gone.”

  “Gone where?”

  “Where do you think, Betty Jean?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. He’s always gone. Wait. You mean to tell me this time he’s not coming back?”

  She reaches in her purse for her cell phone but I press my hand down hard on her forearm to stop her from bringing it up to her ear.

  “Why didn’t she tell me when she told you?”

  “Well, she didn’t exactly tell me herself.”

  “Then who the hell did? Not Rodney.”

  “Lauren called to tell me Venetia was having a hard time and the reason why.”

  “Why didn’t she call me, too?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “When the hell did all this happen?”

  “Almost two weeks ago.”

  “Whose bright idea was it to keep me in the dark all this time?”

  “Mine.”

  “This was not your damn call, Arlene. Why do you always have to play Oprah?”