by Kia Corthron
I stared at my partner. His words had never occurred to me, and yet they suddenly felt so blatantly, undeniably true. And then the tears in my eyes flowing hard, and we held each other a very, very long time.
At sixty-nine Lem still does a little running every morning, and while he’s out Dawit stops in briefly with Safiya to see how I’m feeling, the both of them off to some demonstration, his sign saying “Close Guantánamo Now!” and hers “WikiLeaks Don’t Lie!” I realize I’d forgotten to tell him about the play Lem and I saw a few weeks ago, an off-off-Broadway production written by a friend and focusing on a young gay soldier in Afghanistan, a gung-ho American boy who comes to see the dismal pointlessness of it all after some confrontations with local civilians. I expect my son to reassert his well-established own low opinion of the war but instead he grins: “Oh, so you all had a date night.”
Lem returns in time for a quick hug as they’re leaving, then makes us an omelet brunch before going to our bedroom to check his email. In the living room we have a few extra picture frames in a drawer, and I find one for the note from the Coatses, among the last friendly faces Eliot ever saw, and two more for the photos Liddie sent, of Eliot and me in our precious boyhood, which Lem has already scanned on his machine—the copies I’ll send to Rett. I place the newly framed portraits on the coffee table next to one of Rett as a child, the resemblance between father and son astonishing. My solemn nephew Everett, conceived just days before his father’s unimaginable end.
I hang the note near the framed sketch I’d sent to Didi in ’85, six years after the promise I’d made at Max Williams’s law school graduation to send her a work of mine. There are no photographs of her and Eliot together so I imagined one, drawing them both smiling, nearly laughing, him seated and looking down at a document he holds, her just behind him and looking over his shoulder. I still have her thank-you letter somewhere. She said when she opened the package, she had to quickly move away to prevent marring the sketch with her tears. It was in her will that the illustration be sent back to the artist upon her death.
The living room wall is also graced by the two paintings of Keith’s from my San Francisco apartment, Keith’s apartment. Those shattering days when my beloved companion had been such a comfort in my harrowing grief, and later transformed into the scapegoat for all my unleashed fury. My brother’s senseless death set in motion a slow killing of myself for twenty-one years, and it took my best friend’s senseless death to resurrect me.
“Chilly out, D,” Lem says, coming out of the bedroom. “Grab your jacket.” He goes into the bathroom, brushing his teeth. As much as I may scoff at the determinism of Lem the preacher’s son, I must admit to my own moments of embracing something like destiny. Did my mother plan it? Could something in her being have arranged it so Eliot and I would have to come together for her funeral? So that, when Eliot’s grief broke, we would have that one night of brotherly reconciliation before he was abruptly and terribly gone?
The problem with this theory would be the implication that Eliot’s death was inevitable. It most certainly was not. But too many decades I’ve wasted in screaming at the universe, demanding answers. My profound bitterness was justified, but what good did it do? In my old age I ponder: What if, instead of focusing on the potential of a life of greatness and graciousness being so appallingly cut short, I could have beheld the greatness and graciousness Eliot had already given the world? Winning the case for Mr. Daughtery, the police brutality victim. Laying the groundwork for the release of the little boys. And all the lives he’d touched personally: Andi, Didi, Beau, Winston Douglas, the other gentleman from his office who’d sent that lovely condolence card, lonely old Miss Onnie, little Jeanine and cousin Liddie and Parker the Cat and the Coatses and Rosie from Alabama in the brief time he knew them. And my mother, father, and me. My book-smart, hyperactive, aloof, annoying, mysterious, justice-seeking, huge-hearted baby brother.
Lem goes back into the bedroom to grab something before our stroll. I gaze at the pictures on the table once more, the gallery of our history. A baby shot of Dawit, a studio sitting of the three of us when our son was an adolescent. The picture of Eliot smiling that last year, the one we were fortunate to have after my mother made him stand still for it on Christmas, the one my father and I sent to the police during the investigation and which appeared in the papers. Hard to believe half a century since my brother has walked this earth, since I’ve seen him, held him. I’m blessed to have had the family I was born into and to have the family I made. And now I glimpse the photo of the four Campbells at Eliot’s law school graduation, him beaming in cap and gown, and I’m catapulted back to that spring evening of ’58, our family celebratory restaurant dinner. Mom had recently taken up Aunt Beck’s habit of scolding Dad for his salt intake—his perennial high blood pressure leading us all to believe he would be the family member we’d lose first—and Dad grumpy about the chastening, and as they lightly bicker my brother and I exchange glances, secret smiles, as if we’d never had a conflict between us in all our lives. Eliot, Eliot. Forever twenty-six.
**
My brother is dead. His right hand clutching my left has gone weak, and now his left hand feeling my right for the signs has slowly slipped away. I lay it down next to him.
I don’t understand his last words. I don’t know who Emily was, or Roger, though the latter seems to ring a distant bell, from when we were both very, very young. I gaze at his blind eyes. After my first visit three days ago, I found on my shelves my old book of Helen Keller writings, the one Abigail the librarian had recommended to me so long ago and which I eventually purchased. “I, who had thought blindness a misfortune beyond human control, found that too much of it was traceable to wrong industrial conditions, often caused by the selfishness and greed of the employer.” Now, as in the minutes Randall spoke his last words, his eyes have settled into a soft contentment. I gently close them.
And an ancient memory comes flooding back, something I haven’t thought of in decades. My little brother, a thirteen-year-old child teaching me the manual alphabet. Teaching me to read. Introducing me to the library. There were signs I’d created to communicate my basic needs to my family, but even the most rudimentary complex thought was out of reach until I learned language. Once there was a shoe, and a stove, and a brother, but Randall walked me through a door and on the other side was integrity, and logic, and justice. My mother gave me life, and when I was eighteen my little brother Randall gave me the world. I realize now, looking down at the empty corporeality of him, I never thanked him for that. I lean over and kiss his forehead, and I stay here a very long time. When I lift my face, I wipe my tears from his eyes, his cheeks.
I walk out into the corridor. I should probably tell someone at the nurses’ station that my brother has passed, but I imagine that will activate all sorts of complications and I want to leave the hospital now. He’s not going anywhere. They’ll find him and get in touch with Leslie Jo who will get in touch with me and I’ll cross that bridge then.
Outside I put on my reading glasses to text Iona. She had some shopping errands to do in Manhattan and told me to let her know when I was finished with my visit so she could pick me up. We take turns every Sunday. Last week she and her family had dinner with me in Harlem, and today I’ll ride with her to the ’burbs.
My brother’s confusion regarding my mortality brought me back to a spring night in ’81. April May June and I had been invited to the birthday party of her old Gallaudet friend Marielle. I never became comfortable at parties and my wife had long stopped cajoling me on such matters, so as always she went alone. I helped my eight-year-old daughter with her homework and after I put her to bed, I thought I’d catch up on some bills but had trouble locating a pen. In my search I opened April May June’s desk drawer, found a ballpoint and inadvertently noticed near the back a ragged composition book. How I’d missed her sharing her stories with me! In the three years since my near-death, I noticed
my wife had ceased to write. When I mentioned it once she became defensive—her time consumed by the need for her to work outside the home since my hospitalization (only part-time), having to take Iona to her musical events (a task we shared), helping Iona with homework (ditto)—so I dropped the subject for the time being. But this evening I sat rereading the narratives, indulging once again in her words and her worlds. The latter tales became wildly creative, her earlier concerns about not having the imagination to craft anything but autobiography having long been put to rest. “Deaf Baptist Revival,” among my favorites, was followed by one final work, a lengthy untitled piece I’d never seen before. It was the chronicle of a deaf couple, a black woman named Paulina and a white man named Orville. They met on a subway platform.
When April May June returned close to midnight, all lights were out in the apartment save the small lamp near my chair in the living room. She walked in smiling and tired. Then she spied the notebook on my lap, and froze. She came to me, falling on her knees, putting her face into her hands and on my lap, weeping. After a few moments, I began stroking her many braids which had grown halfway down her back. She looked up, her forty-three-year-old face still so young, and she saw that my eyes were soft.
It was after the dream. The dream I wrote about in the story, I was sitting in your hospital room and I fell asleep and I dreamed you were reading Madeline to Iona. When I woke, I thought you were gone. Your chest wasn’t rising anymore. I thought you were gone.
She waits for me to respond. I don’t, but my gaze encourages her to continue.
I brought the notebook with me to the hospital that day. I don’t know why, I had a feeling. I woke up that morning with the feeling that it would be your last day. Our last day. I wanted to bring it.
But I didn’t die.
I thought I’d lost you. But then you began to breathe, shallow breaths. And I sat down and wrote it. Our lives. I wrote everything, up to my dream. And then, I guess. I guess I needed to go through it. Your passing. I needed to go through it so I would be ready when it happened. So I imagined it. I imagined it and I’d just finished writing it when I looked up. A woman standing in the doorway. A strong-looking woman, staring at you. Then she turned to me. She walked in the room and handed me a note: I’m Deb Ellen, B.J.’s cousin.
For a moment our hands were still.
You need to submit it. It’s a good story, my love. You need to send it out.
She was agape. I never intended to submit it! I just. I wrote it because. Because—
My right fingers softly touching her hair.
You need to submit it.
She looked down, unsure.
Just please, please, don’t write about Randall and Mr. Campbell. You have a wondrous imagination. You can invent something else.
Of course! she had said, upset I would suggest such a thing, I would never. She didn’t finish the sentence, but gently repeated: Of course. A tear rolling down her lovely cheek.
We were living in the church then. It took a long time for me to convalesce after my leukemia, the rigors of tending to the needs of a six-floor walk-up and all its residents beyond my capacity for quite some time, so we weren’t surprised when the president of the co-op board came to our door, delicately expressing the necessity to replace me. By the greatest stroke of luck, an old Gallaudet acquaintance of my wife’s told her he had an uncle in Harlem, the minister of a Baptist congregation, and connected to the pastor’s church was a two-bedroom apartment reserved for the church’s caretaker: once again a janitorial position in exchange for free rent! I’d just started getting up and around by then, and the three of us went to be interviewed by the preacher. He seemed most interested in having people he liked living in the church, my experience as a superintendent merely being a plus. As an employee of a nonprofit organization my pay was minimal, as was the workload: no longer constantly on-call as in a residential building. April May June continued with her part-time proofreading during Iona’s school days, and when I grew stonger I contacted Joy, the principal from the private school, to ask if I might have my old job back. She was delighted, and while her curtailed budget allowed for only one class, within two years finances had been restored and I was able to teach a second.
In our interview with Reverend Shriver, he admitted that our deafness was an advantage: previous custodians had trouble adjusting to the noise—choir practice, Wednesday evening services and twice on Sundays. He was concerned about Iona, however, as were her mother and I, but our daughter loved the apartment (as we did) as well as the enticing idea of living in some hidden cranny of a church, and she begged us to accept the position. Mercifully the worship activities neither disturbed her sleep nor her homework. On the contrary, the sweet sounds she absorbed sparked my child’s love of music. For a while she sang with the children’s choir, and April May June and I would attend services when they performed, sitting close to observe the joy in our daughter as her mouth made huge forms around the words. By her teenage years she’d quit, not being about to reconcile her love of the hymns with her doubts regarding the church’s political conservatism, but ever-generous Reverend Shriver allowed her access to a piano when it was not employed by the congregants. She taught herself to play.
My daughter was gifted, and this is not just her father’s opinion. She was giving a full scholarship, all expenses covered, to Spelman College. And she excelled until her last semester, her mother passing on two months shy of her graduation. She was given incompletes in all her courses, ultimately passing her exams in the fall, but she declined to participate in the closing exercises the following spring, having missed the chance to walk with her own classmates and feeling heartbroken that her mother would not be there. I respected her wishes but my own heart was broken, not to see the dean hand her that degree. I, with not a day of former schooling and my daughter a college graduate! So for me she rented the cap and gown, and when I came to Atlanta to pick her up I took photos of her all over campus. I snapped dozens, and this before the days of digital cameras.
I was fond of Dex Ryland, whom she’d been dating since she was a sophomore and he a Morehouse junior. Dex had grown up in the Georgia countryside but was committed enough to their relationship to move with her back to New York. An economics major, he landed a job at the United Nations that he loved while Iona struggled with temp jobs. When she became pregnant at twenty-three, I worried whether it was the right choice to have the baby as they were barely making rent on their tiny Queens studio, then I worried about their choice to jump into marriage, so many huge life decisions at once! But they did it, a courthouse ceremony with me as sole witness in the tradition of her mother’s and my wedding (though, at the insistence of Dex’s family, they wound up flying to Georgia for a second more elaborate observance). Fifteen years later my daughter and son-in-law are still very good friends, the only displeasure I ever hear from Iona related to the bit of weight she gained with the babies, and even then she usually laughs about it, occasionally starting a day with a diet that lasts until after-dinner dessert.
When Fela April was two, the family moved out to the grass of New Jersey. Iona began teaching music part-time in the secondary schools, and she still composes and occasionally performs in small venues. Her vocal specialty is jazz, and I can see it in the way she forms her lips around the notes, though she likes to play around with traditional African rhythms as well, and has experimented with all sorts of indigenous sounds, Mayan flutes and Tuvan throat singing. She sees how I’ve aged—so much weight of a tall man on these old bones (I take the bus now rather than attempt those subway steps), a bit of arthritis in the legs (but mercifully not the hands, my language) as well as the backaches after decades of leaning over to converse with the shorter rest of the population—and she’s told me she would happily present for me private recitals in my home but I haven’t yet been able to give in to this, not when I see her face beaming at me with every public performance. She’s recorde
d four CDs with a small independent label and I play them frequently, my hands on the speaker to feel the beautiful vibrations of my daughter’s creativity.
In 1993 as I was turning seventy and April May June was just beginning to take ill, I decided it was time to retire, to stay home full-time to care for my wife, to nurse her back to health. I’d been lucky so many times in my life: the superintendent job, the teaching job, the church caretaker position, and now a couple at the church who’d always been fond of us offered a one-bedroom at the top of their Harlem brownstone at a very reduced rent. Of course most lucky of all was my running into April May June on the subway platform so long ago, and her choosing to ask me for directions! So perhaps I’d gotten cocky about my fortune and heartily believed my wife would kick the diabetes, even as it had already claimed the lives of her father and three siblings, including Ramona, the sister she most cherished. A year later when Iona was twenty-one, the amputation of her mother’s right leg still very fresh for all of us, April May June’s condition suddenly took a crucial turn and she was gone. It was without a doubt the most devastating day of my life, and it had had some pretty stiff competition for that inimitable spot. I was fourteen years older than my wife. How could she possibly have gone before me? I should have died in ’78! I bitterly cried, If only Deb Ellen hadn’t come through with the bone marrow! The thought of enduring life without April May June was unbearable, and I seriously and selfishly considered not. Then I looked into the eyes of my barely grown daughter and was reminded that I wasn’t the only one broken. And joylessly forced myself to carry on.