Brothers and Keepers

by John Edgar Wideman

  So it gets worse every day. Harder. We more and more in love but that thing’s between us getting deeper and deeper. I can’t hurt her. Can’t watch her coming apart again. She might leave here and do something crazy and I can’t handle that. I’m in a bind. Damned if I do. Damned if I don’t. I been needing somebody to talk to bout this stuff. It’s messing wit my sleep, my studies. I know I got to tell her. Swear to myself I’ll tell her next time she comes. Then she’s sitting beside me looking good and I just can’t do it. Like I got iron on my tongue. Then I try to write a letter, but the pencil just sits there in my hand. Keep seeing her face and thinking how good she makes me feel and I’m scared of losing her. Cause I love that lady and she loves me and I’m scared of hurting her but I’m more scared of losing her, so I don’t say nothing.

  She’s depending on me for the truth. That’s what makes it so bad. Makes me just like them jive dudes she been dealing wit all her life. The ones been hurting her. Spozed to be her man and saving her and getting her straight but I’m lying to her. I know it but I can’t do nothing about it.

  * * *

  What can I say to my brother? Yes. I know exactly where you’re coming from. Matter of fact I was in the same place recently. Dealing with the same dilemma. Living a lie. Damned if I came clean, damned if I didn’t. Should I tell him I failed Judy more drastically than he’s failing Leslie? Say, Yes. I understand because I’m in love but I’ve also tainted the waters. I’ve hurt my woman doubly by doing wrong then holding back the truth. My betrayal was worse than my brother’s because I initiated the deceit, the lies. I didn’t get trapped by somebody else’s lie. I was responsible for the whole, rotten mess. Nobody to blame but myself when I saw in Judy’s eyes the depths of the trust I had violated, the depth of the pain that would fill her eyes if I told her the truth.

  Judy had counted on me, not leaning like your Leslie but just as vulnerable in her own way. Judy’s been lucky. Loved and supported all her life. Born into a financially secure family. She’s gifted with the good looks and intelligence you’ve discovered in your woman, and Judy’s white in the only way that matters in our America, certified white through and through so she’s never had to face the horrors Leslie’s white exterior brought down on her. Judy stands on her own two feet. Part of the beauty of living with her has been my gradual, inch-by-inch recognition—with years sometimes between the inches—of who she is, of her need to be who she is in tandem rather than behind or above or below what I am. But none of that helped. The rug can be pulled out from under two feet as easily as one and Judy’s had less practice than Leslie at falling.

  I could say to Robby: Yes. We’re brothers sure enough. And I do say: Tell Leslie the truth. Right away. Don’t let it slide a day longer. Things only get more complicated the longer you wait. Nothing gets better. Time passes and you can get busy with something, you can distract yourself and pretend things will sort themselves out, but that’s bullshit. All you insure by putting off the moment when you tell the truth, the whole truth, is that things will get worse. The hurt you inflict deepens. Your inner turmoil grows more disruptive, bitter. Waiting opens the possibility of losing control, of allowing what you won’t disclose to come to light in another fashion. And that’s fatal. You lose once and for all the small consolation that a voluntary confession might have brought. You’re a thief caught in the act and nothing you say can change that.

  I let Robby know I’m speaking from experience and that’s why I’m preaching at him. I’m telling him to act in a way I didn’t. I didn’t confess. I got caught cheating. So I’m a witness. I can authenticate the terrible cost of holding back the truth by describing the chaos of my life, the troubles I must return to when I pass out of the prison walls. Procrastinating, rationalizing, letting things sort themselves out, waiting for a mythical “right time” when telling the truth won’t exact too awful a price—that had been my way. And the shit had sure nuff hit the fan.

  Brothers. Robby says he knows I’m right. He says he’s come to the same conclusions and knows what he should do but he just can’t quite bring himself to say what has to be said to his woman.

  I needed to talk to somebody, man. Needed to hear somebody say the things I been saying to myself all along. I know you’re right, Bruh. And I’m sorry you having trouble at home. I hear you talking and I know what’s right.

  But if she did something bad to herself. If I lost her, man . . .

  We can’t get any further. It’s a familiar place. A treacherous convergence of selfishness and caring for another and ego and wanting to be bigger, better than you are and valuing the truth and profiting from untruth and wishing for the best and dreading the worst; a welter of conflicting emotions, a nexus of irresolution and despair, of self-pity and self-disgust, desire and guilt. A place immediately recognized. A hard place because you can’t go forward and you can’t back off. It’s hard and familiar because I’ve been there before. I realize this predicament has something to do with who I am and how I live, choices made long ago. My limits are clearly reflected by the nature of the dilemma. Like here is my arm and it’s such-and-such a length and it’s my arm and always will be the length it is and that shelf I’ve never been able to reach will continue to elude me. No point in straining nor complaining. I’m never going to get at whatever it is up there on that shelf I can’t reach. No ladder in the world will lift me one inch closer.

  We walk to the vending machines. Feels good to stretch. Time goes fast when my brother and I talk. I forget how long I’ve been sitting listening, till I rise out of my seat. My body moans, Whoa. Take it easy now. Easy, easy does it. Much cracking of joints, muscles creaking, and joints popping—a clatter I think everybody within ten feet must hear. Even when I was in super shape playing college basketball, my muscles were stiff as boards before and after practice. It’s always taken me a long time to limber up. Lots of days touching my toes without bending my knees is out of the question. An aging jock’s hobble stylizes my first three or four steps up and away from a chair if I’ve been sitting any length of time.

  The rule is only visitors may drop coins into the vending machines. Money may not be passed to a prisoner; visitors must take the prisoner’s order, pull the knobs, and push the buttons, while the prisoner stands aside like a bewildered child or a mental defective. If the rules didn’t make the process so blatantly humiliating, I think Robby might eat and drink more. As it is, he usually asks for a soft drink, sometimes an apple. Except when the kids come and then it’s a party. They compete for quarters and the chance to buy Robby junk food so they can gobble it with him. When it’s a game like that, Robby orders everything and the kids troop back and forth to the machines till the coins give out or the squabbling gets too loud or one of the adults gets tired of the traffic and hisses, Sit down, youall, that’s enough.

  Once or twice Robby’s broken the rule. Taken change from me, inserted it, extracted the selection all by himself. Today, with the guard already in our face about the table and the history of ugliness between him and Robby, I do the purchasing while my brother stands by, the image of dependency and helplessness. The situation’s awkward for both of us. What should Robby do with his hands while I manipulate the machine for him? How should he reach for the paper cup of orange soda? What should he say when I pass it to him? Are the few swallows of sweet, bubbly orange yuck worth all the trouble? I tell Rob to watch me closely so one day when he grows up he can work the machine on his own. He shakes his head, attempts to smile, but it’s sickly sweet as the pop. He’s just trying to be nice to me. Joking doesn’t take away the sting, make this business any less of a slap in the face. But he appreciates the fact that I try. It lets him know I know what’s happening and we cross the lounge back to our seats.

  The room’s crowded now and noisier. I try to ignore other visitors, grant them the privacy I’m seeking with my brother when we sit down again on the little bit of turf we’ve claimed: two vinyl-cushioned seats with a low, eighteen-inch-square table between us. Som
e prisoners and their guests form huddles, some couples cling as long and hard as the rules allow, other groups sit three or four in a row, eyes front as if they’re staring at a movie on the far wall. Their lips move but what they say is lost in the general din unless your face is a foot from theirs. In this coffin-shaped room filled with chairs and benches, there’s no place to hide. People position themselves in various ways to steal a little privacy but nothing shuts out the strangers crowded into this space we all must share.

  Many more black faces than white. Most prisoners and the majority of their visitors appear to be under thirty. Lots of little kids. From time to time explosions of noise. A prisoner yells across the room for a cigarette or to greet another prisoner’s familiar guests. A racket of hand slapping, exclamations of surprise, happiness and Oh, my God when someone spots a person he or she had never expected to find in this place.

  Prisoners wear sky-blue tunics and string-ded trousers a darker shade of blue. Most are extremely fit. Lean, muscular, the pared-down, honed bodies of athletes beneath their baggy uniforms. Robby does one thousand push-ups daily in his cell. Took him six months to work up to the magic number. He also runs five or six miles a day in the prison yard. Staying in shape is more than recreation. It’s a necessity for survival. He’s told me I’m his measuring rod. Since I’m ten years older than Robby, he derives a little comfort from the fact that I still play basketball. He can imagine himself ten years down the road. If he stays in shape until he gets out, even if it’s not for another seven or eight years, he can at least look forward to having something left of his body. He sounds almost grateful when he says, You’re holding up pretty good. You don’t look that old and you’re forty-one, right? Ten years before I’m that old. Maybe it won’t be so bad. He’s teasing too. Makes it clear he appreciates the odds I’m fighting. An old guy trying to sustain a young man’s body. Well, he lets me know I’m doing alright. For an old dude.

  Robby’s played lots of basketball since he’s been in prison. Gotten serious about it. Serious enough to break his nose and strain ligaments and be confined to a wheelchair last spring. He has a ballplayer’s long feet and hands. When he was a kid I tried a couple times to teach him a little bit about the game. He possessed all the requisite natural talent. Quickness, good spring in his legs, coordination, foot speed. On the other hand, he had no inclination to learn the basics, no desire to invest time and energy improving his skills. He played occasionally but didn’t have an accurate shot or a sense of the total game. Basketball for him was half-court playground messing around, but every now and then he’d expose hints of unusual ability: a rebound snapped down from rim level, two or three breakaway strides carrying him past everybody else, a twisting, turning off-balance move to the hoop and a shot ricocheting off the board that shouldn’t go in but does. Never could get Rob to concentrate on fundamentals because his mind was on those games you play with people who have soft legs. I wonder how well he plays now. If he’s gotten his game together enough to compete on playground courts like Mellon Park where the real devils hang out.

  Playing basketball together, walking together along an ocean beach under a clear blue sky, a hot sun, waves pounding, not a soul in sight for miles. We must have done these things before because they’re sharply etched on my senses. The slap of the ball on concrete, the good sweat oiling face and arms, people sitting along the cyclone fence signifying, the rattle of the whole backboard shaking when somebody jams, salt taste on my lips, surf boiling, seamless blue arching over everything.

  I’d never spoken to my brother about walking along a beach or playing ball together. It would be too painful. I’d have to admit they weren’t scenes recalled from a life we’d shared in some better, cleaner world. I couldn’t spell out the reality of these moments without also revealing the yearning, the aching sense of loss that permeated them.

  Robby’s son, Omar, inherited his Daddy’s long feet and hands. My brother’s first marriage, the one that produced Omar, seems to have occurred several lifetimes ago. A healthy, handsome son, a good, loving wife, the sort of family unit and simple, everyday life Robby dreams of now, were once within his grasp. But it all came too soon. He wasn’t ready. He blew it. Not alone, of course. Society cooperated. Robby’s chance for a normal life was as illusory as most citizens’ chances to be elected to office or run a corporation. If “normal” implies a decent job, an opportunity to receive at least minimal pay-off for years of drudgery, delayed gratification, then for Robby and 75 percent of young black males growing up in the 1960s, “normal” was the exception rather than the rule. Robby was smart enough to see there was no light at the end of the long tunnel of hard work (if and when you could get it) and respectability. He was stubborn, aggressive, and prickly enough not to allow anyone to bully him into the tunneL He chose the bright lights winking right in front of his face, just beyond his fingertips. For him and most of his buddies, “normal” was poverty, drugs, street crime, Vietnam, or prison.

  I’d promised to bring Omar on one of my visits. Robby’s first wife, Geraldine, had remarried. Robby was part of an ugly past Geraldine would just as soon forget and have Omar forget as well. Robby hadn’t been there when she needed him. She’d struggled to make ends meet for her and her child. She was in no mood to share Omar now, just because Robby claimed to need him. And there was the problem of Omar’s relationship to his new father, the split allegiance and fuzzy lines of authority, the shadow over Om’s new life cast by the man in prison who was also his daddy. Understandably, Geraldine wanted to minimize potential trouble, protect her new life. She’d have to be convinced Om was ready and Robby was ready, so getting Omar to visit the prison was a complicated business. I hadn’t yet made good on my promise and felt guilty, and promised again, after I finished telling my brother all the news of his son, to try to bring Omar next time.

  I didn’t tell Robby it wasn’t so much a question of running up against complications as it was my failure to keep in mind the urgency of his request. I didn’t forget my brother’s need to see his son. A more embracing, profound forgetfulness was involved. A forgetfulness that had operated for years. In order to live with myself and manage my life in the intervals between visits I had learned to shut my brother out of my mind. I could deal with his plight only by brutal compartmentalization. I allowed the prison walls to perform their duty. Life goes on. . . . Shubby do. Shubby do. Mine couldn’t if I brought the prison world back out into the streets with me. I forced myself to forget, become as deaf and dumb as the blocks of stone walling him away.

  It was a trick I’d learned early on. A survival mechanism as old as slavery. If you’re born black in America you must quickly teach yourself to recognize the invisible barriers disciplining the space in which you may move. This seventh sense you must activate is imperative for survival and sanity. Nothing is what it seems. You must always take second readings, decode appearances, pick out the obstructions erected to keep you in your place. Then work around them. What begins as a pragmatic reaction to race prejudice gradually acquires the force of an instinctive response. A special way of seeing becomes second nature. You ignore the visible landscape. It has nothing to do with you; it will never change, so you learn a kind of systematic skepticism, a stoicism, and, if you’re lucky, ironic detachment. I can’t get to the mountain and the mountain ain’t hardly coming to me no matter how long I sit here and holler, so mize well do what I got to do right here on level ground and leave the mountain to them folks think they own it.

  You chop your world into manageable segments. You segregate yourself within the safety zones white people have not littered with barricades and land mines. Compartmentalization begins with your black skin, with your acknowledgment of racial identity, and becomes both a way of seeing and being seen. Blackness is a retreat to the security of primal night. Blackness connects me with my brother but also separates us absolutely, each one alert, trembling behind the vulnerable wall of our dark skins.

  Gradually, I’m teaching mysel
f to decompartmentalize. This book is part of the unlearning of my first response to my brother’s imprisonment. In spite of good intentions, I constantly backslide. In large matters, like arranging for Omar to accompany me on a visit, or small, neglecting to relay somebody’s greeting to my brother or a hello from Robby to some friend on the outside, I’ll revert to my old ways. My oversights embarrass me, shake me up, because I’m reminded that in crucial ways my brother still doesn’t exist for me in the intervals between visits. The walls become higher, thicker, unbreachable when I allow myself to be part of the conspiracy.

  When you’re in the prison visiting lounge, you never know who you might run into. It’s like returning to Homewood. I’d been away from my old neighborhood over twenty years, beginning in 1959 when I left Pittsburgh to play basketball at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Since then Homewood has been a place to visit, with visits sometimes separated by years. The visits have been more regular lately, a day or two at a time twice a year, usually at my mother’s house, visits taken up with family business and family socializing; so I’d lost touch with high school friends, the people in the neighborhood where I’d grown up. My parents had twice moved to other sections of Pittsburgh—East Liberty, Shadyside—before they finally separated, so my only constant link to Homewood has been my grandmother’s house on Finance Street.

  I’d never called my grandmother, Freeda French, anything but “Freed.” The house on Finance was always known by the kids in the family as “Freed’s.” Finance Street parallels the railroad tracks that form the southern boundary of Homewood. I’d logged many hours on my knees, leaning on the backrest of Freed’s overstuffed couch in front of the living-room window, gazing up the hillside at the trains passing through the sky of Homewood. Following the railroad tracks to Homewood Avenue would take me to Westinghouse Park, where there were swings, trees, open green space, and later a swimming pool, basketball courts, a ball field, and girls. I learned to daydream through Freed’s big window. Learned to play basketball during summers on the tiny, enclosed cement court adjacent to the pool I was never allowed to go swimming in because my mother believed people caught TB from the questionable water.