Baby Brother's Blues

by Pearl Cleage

  She didn’t know if this thought comforted or depressed her. What she did know was that when she opened her back door the house was empty. It was midnight.

  14

  Zora Evans got on the northbound train to New York City at eight o’clock. By nine-fifteen, she had eaten a delicious dinner of roast chicken and mashed potatoes and shared a heartbreaking conversation about the war with a couple from Slidell, Louisiana, whose only son was currently serving in Iraq. When she told them she was a student at Spelman College on her way to D.C. for a meeting with other student activists who were questioning the war, the father leaned across the small dining-car table as if he had a secret he wanted to share.

  Taking a deep breath, he assured her that his son was not a coward, but lately the boy’s letters had become increasingly desperate. The last few had so upset his mother that they were on their way to see their congressman to demand some answers. The woman was thin and sallow with a pinched, worried expression that softened only when she showed Zora a photograph of her son, a freckle-faced redhead with big ears and the barest suggestion of a mustache.

  They hugged her at the end of the meal and told her they knew their son and the other boys and girls over there would appreciate what she was doing and to keep up the good work. She watched them walking out of the dining car, holding on to the seat backs to keep from stumbling as the train rocked its way toward their nation’s capital city, and rededicated herself to being a force for peace in the world.

  When she got back to her little roomette, Zora pulled out her pajamas, brushed her teeth, splashed some water on her face, hung her clothes on a hanger in the narrow closet, and slipped into the bed that John, the sleeping-car attendant, had made up while she was at dinner. Train travel was too slow for most people, but she loved it. Something about being on the train made her feel connected to America in a way she rarely did at any other time. She propped herself up on the two pillows in their crisp white cases that John had stacked neatly at the head of the bed and smiled to herself as she pulled out the letter that had arrived at her apartment this morning. The pale violet paper smelled like violets, too, and her mother’s slightly loopy handwriting filled the page completely.

  Dearest Girl of my heart, her mother wrote in silver ink:

  I’m so happy that you are going to be a part of this gathering of young people who are going to stop the war and change the world. I’m proud of you, baby. As you know, D.C. can be a strange and terrifying place sometimes with all the weird energy and habitual lying that goes on there every day the goddess sends sunshine. So I thought as you start your trip, it couldn’t hurt to focus a little energy on keeping you safe and peaceful in an environment that is usually neither.

  Zora loved her mother’s letters and she always obeyed the handwritten instructions that came with them.

  This particular spell does not require an audible, as the football guys say. Just put your hand over your heart to affirm that you will be fully present in the moment, thank the goddess for this journey, and bring back tales of Amazonian adventures to tell your mama! Listen hard! Think hard! Speak up! Be safe! (If you have sex, that is, which is not required!!) Love you madly!

  Zora carefully refolded her mother’s letter, put it under her pillow, and turned out the light in her tiny sleeper. She snuggled down under the thin, pink blanket the railroad provided, glad she’d brought her favorite flannel pajamas to keep her cozy. Suddenly the train rounded a gentle curve of the track and the full moon came into view outside her window. It looked so big and impossibly bright she almost felt like she could reach out and touch it. She could just imagine her mother, wrapped up in her favorite shawl, standing on the porch, soaking up the moonbeams and whispering her favorite prayer into the wind.

  Zora laid her hand on her heart like she used to when she was a Brownie scout and they were ready to take the Brownie oath, but this time she wasn’t going to pledge or promise anything. She was simply going to share the prayer her mother had told her would suffice even if she never learned another.

  “Thank you,” she whispered softly, watching the moonlit countryside flying by outside her window and realizing that even though she was on her way to talk about protest marches and petition drives, she had never felt more like an American in her life. She knew she was earning her membership in a long line of outspoken women and passionately committed men who understood that loving your country meant speaking up as loudly when it was wrong as you cheered when it was right. She was grateful for the chance to be in their number.

  “Thank you,” she whispered one more time, and then she slept.

  15

  Baby Brother was feeling no pain. He had drained three Heinekens, smoked two joints, and was watching Jason roll another. The wide-screen television blasted the latest rap videos from BET, at Baby Brother’s request, and his friend knew a twenty-four-hour place around the corner that would deliver what he described as top-quality Thai food whenever they wanted dinner. All they needed now was some women. Baby Brother hadn’t had sex since he’d gone to Iraq eight months ago. The locals were off-limits unless you had a death wish, and while there were always a lot of female soldiers around, most were too busy concentrating on staying alive to consider having sex. There was a lot of masturbating going on, and, in a pinch, there was always some guy who was open to oral sex if you knew how to keep quiet about it afterward.

  Those guys always told themselves it wasn’t about being gay. It was just about finding a way to relieve the almost unbearable tension they were under twenty-four hours a day, every day. Nobody needed to explain. For Baby Brother, one mouth was as good as another. When he closed his eyes, he could imagine it was a beautiful woman on her knees with her head in his lap, instead of a frightened young soldier, a long way from home.

  That was how it had been with him and Jason, although as he looked around at his friend’s nicely furnished apartment with its leather couches and glittering electronic gadgets, it was hard to believe those moments had ever passed between them. Tonight, Jason was eager to catch up on the news of the guys in their outfit, good and bad, and prepared to give a friend a place to crash, but nothing in his manner suggested anything more. That was fine with Baby Brother. The war was the war, but back on the mainland, that fag shit wasn’t part of the program.

  On the big screen, a dancer was shaking her behind and smiling over her shoulder like she shared the viewer’s presumed pleasure in her ability to jiggle first one cheek and then the other in perfect time to the song’s thumping bass line. On either side of her, young black men in baggy jeans and oversize white T-shirts, flashing diamond-encrusted gold teeth, pulled off crisp new bills from a roll of hundreds and tossed them in her direction while leering into the camera.

  Baby Brother missed the life he’d had before the army. He missed the clubs and the women, the fellas and the drugs. Sometimes he even missed his old hardheaded sister. He’d had a good life and had thrown it all away for nothing. All those people who kept telling him he had a great future ahead of him might have been right after all. He wondered if it was too late for him to go back and mend some of those bridges he’d been so quick to burn. It hadn’t gotten him very far, he had to admit. The truth was, he might not live to see twenty, fighting a war he didn’t understand against some people he wasn’t even mad at.

  He drained his beer as Jason twisted up the ends of the joint and flipped it to Baby Brother.

  “Fire that shit up and I’ll get us another couple of beers.”

  “Cool.” Baby Brother did as he was told and inhaled deeply, letting the acrid smoke fill his lungs. Vietnam vets were always talking about the amazing dope they had smoked over there. No such luck in this war. He had heard there was lots of heroin in Afghanistan, but in Iraq, there were no drugs on the base or on the street. Where that Marine had scored LSD was a mystery.

  Jason handed him another cold beer, took a long swallow of his own, and picked up the remote. “I have to cut away to the news, brother. Part o
f my job is to brief the boss in the morning on who said what about who else. In this town, all that shit changes so fast, you better pay attention if you’re going to keep up.”

  “No problem,” said Baby Brother, passing the joint and listening to his stomach rumbling. “Where’s the menu for that Thai place?”

  “Next to the refrigerator.”

  Jason was an associate with a big D.C. lobbying firm and he was eager to make up the time he’d lost in the army, when his reserve unit was called up for active duty, by being the best junior executive they’d ever had. At twenty-eight, Jason was ambitious, attractive, and hardworking. He was on his way up the ladder, but he knew it would take a lot of work. That’s why his love life was, as he put it, shot to shit.

  “Women don’t want to come second to a brother’s job,” he explained. “But they want that bling bling lifestyle, so what are you supposed to do?”

  “Lie to them,” Baby Brother said. “Tell them you are whoever and whatever they want you to be to get that pussy.”

  “That ain’t me, man,” Jason said, laughing at his friend’s directness. “I’m not trying to trick anybody out of anything. I’m looking for a voluntary exchange.”

  Before Baby Brother could respond, their attention was drawn to the story that led the news. An Arabic-language website had broadcast a video of a suicide bomber packing his trunk with explosives, driving down the busy highway to his destination outside the American green zone, and detonating a blast that killed a dozen people and sent a huge fireball leaping into the air. The size of it and the absolute premeditation of the act rendered them both speechless.

  Baby Brother set down his beer and leaned back against the soft leather of the couch. Jason quickly changed the channel back to BET, regretting the intrusion of the grim reality to which his buddy was returning in just a few days. On BET, there was no war news, only one more voluptuous, half-naked dancer and another gaggle of wannabe thugs flashing their gold teeth at the camera, oblivious to the world falling down around them.

  “Sorry, man,” Jason said, tossing the remote down on the table then reaching to relight the joint. “I know that’s the last shit you need to see tonight.”

  Opening his eyes, Baby Brother took the joint, inhaled deeply, and held the smoke as long as he could before blowing it out in one long stream. “Fuck it, man. It ain’t nothin’ I don’t see over there every damn day of every damn week.” He sat up and took a swallow of beer, enjoying the cool of it going down his dry throat. “How long you been gone? Four months?”

  Jason nodded. “Give or take.”

  “Well, it’s a lot worse than it was when you left. They got us doing shit now we ain’t even trained to do. They’re sending reserves over who ain’t been in shape in twenty years. Big, fat motherfuckers, been working behind a desk or some shit. They sent a damn fifty-five-year-old woman over as infantry. She was so scared, all she could do was look at pictures of her grandkids and cry.”

  Baby Brother ran a hand over his face and rubbed his eyes. He hadn’t meant to start talking about all this stuff, but watching that explosion had opened the floodgates. He took a deep breath and tried to calm down, but he couldn’t.

  “You know what they had us doing last week?”

  Jason shook his head.

  “Searching for roadside bombs and defusing them.”

  “When did they train you for that?”

  “They didn’t! That’s what I’m trying to tell you. They just called us in one day and told us that was our new job. They had some sergeant show us the kinds of explosives these guys usually use and talk about how it could be in a car, in a truck, all by itself, just waiting for one of us to drive by or step on it. They even wirin’ animals and dead babies and shit, but they didn’t talk about that, so we weren’t ready for it.”

  “That’s some wrong shit.”

  “Tell me about it. The next day we rolled up on this old guy layin’ across the road like somebody shot him and just left him layin’ there. We didn’t want to drive around him because that’s where they put the shit, by the side of the road, remember?”

  “I remember.”

  “So, the lieutenant told one of the new guys to go and drag the body out of our way. This brother was one of the reserves, hadn’t been there two weeks. He didn’t know no better than to jump down, run over there, and grab the dead guy’s feet so he could move him.”

  Baby Brother shook his head as if to clear it of the pictures his own words had conjured up. “Motherfuckin’ body blew up in his face, man. Literally. Took his head right off and we’re sitting there watching it. The bitch with the grandkids really freaked out, but it didn’t even surprise me. Nothing surprises me anymore.”

  His own voice was so sad and empty it frightened him to hear it. What if he didn’t survive this shit? And if he did, what was he supposed to do with all the stuff he’d seen and heard and felt and done? Where was he supposed to put all that once he got home?

  “You okay?” Jason’s voice almost got lost in the intricacies of the latest Missy Elliott video. He reached for the remote, hit the mute button, and repeated his question. “You okay?”

  In light of what he had just described, the question was ludicrous, and Baby Brother’s attempt at a rueful laugh came across more as a choking gurgle. He cleared his throat, looked at his friend, and stole a line from Pulp Fiction.

  “Naw, man. I’m pretty fuckin’ far from okay.”

  “I heard that,” Jason said. “But you ain’t there now, so leave it alone.”

  “How the hell am I supposed to do that?”

  Baby Brother’s voice suddenly had an edge of aggression that was not lost on Jason. Since there was no real answer to the question, any response would be the wrong one.

  “What the fuck, man? How am I supposed to know?”

  Glancing at his friend, Baby Brother stood up and walked over to the window. The quiet street was empty and Iraq seemed like a bad dream. Maybe that’s all it was, a bad dream, from which he had finally awakened.

  “Well, I know one thing,” he said softly.

  “What’s that?” Jason was pleased to hear the calm return to his buddy’s voice.

  Baby Brother turned and looked at Jason. “I’m not going back.”

  “Now you just talkin’ crazy.”

  “I’d be crazy to go back there.” The idea was growing on him, taking hold, gaining credibility. “Maybe this is my mama’s parting gift to her long-lost son, a chance to get my black ass out of there before I get my head blown off, too.”

  “You’re not serious, so squash it.”

  “Do I look like I’m playin’?” Baby Brother spread his arms wide as if to issue a challenge.

  “You can’t just quit the army in the middle of a war.” Jason frowned. “That’s desertion. They get to shoot you for that, remember?”

  “They can’t shoot me if they can’t find me.” Baby Brother began to pace in front of the window, suddenly filled with the possibilities of this new idea. “I’ll go to Canada or some shit like that. They still got people over there from the sixties. They don’t even mess wit’ ’em.”

  “You’re not kidding, are you?” Still not believing what he was hearing, Jason was repeating himself.

  “Damn, man, what I gotta do? Open a vein? I’m serious, okay? I’m done with all this shit as of now!”

  Jason looked at Baby Brother like he had lost his mind. “What are you going to do, man? Just run away from the shit? Let everybody in your outfit down? Leave those guys even more shorthanded than they already are because you’re too scared to be where you promised to be?”

  “I didn’t promise shit.”

  Jason stood up. “Yeah, you did. You volunteered. There ain’t no draft. You stepped forward of your own free will and said ‘I do.’ It’s too late to back out now. That’s why they’re calling up the reserves in the first place.”

  He was getting more worked up by the minute. “If I had to do my service for eighteen months,
you have to do yours, too. End of story.”

  Both men were aware that this was a dangerous moment. The positions they were staking out had no middle ground, and if they were going to spend the night under the same roof, they needed to find a compromise fast. Baby Brother blinked first. That wasn’t surprising since he had the most to lose in the exchange. An argumentative houseguest is as unwelcome as a summer cold and it was too late to make other plans.

  Looking at Jason’s angry face, Baby Brother hoped he hadn’t already gone too far. “Listen, man, I’m trying to tell you this shit is all wrong. It ain’t about nothin’ and it don’t mean nothin’. I didn’t promise to give my life for some bullshit.”

  Jason snorted contemptuously. “Don’t try to make this something it’s not. This is no political protest and you’re no conscientious objector with a righteous cause. You’re a punk. I got buddies over there that are never coming home, but at least they died like men. If you do this, you’re a disgrace to everything they stood for.”

  Baby Brother saw no need for further discussion. Nobody could make this decision with him or for him. It was his choice and his alone, but right now it was time to go. He’d worry about where later. He reached for his jacket, knowing how little protection it would provide from the wind outside.

  “Thanks for the beer.”

  “Fuck you.”

  He let himself out and heard Jason slam the door behind him. Fuck you, too, he thought. Because your buddies didn’t make it, I gotta shed my blood? It don’t work that way.

  It was after midnight and the temperature had dropped significantly. He didn’t have enough change for the metro, so he started walking back toward Dupont Circle in the hope that his uniform might generate a contribution from a patriotic citizen encountering an unlucky soldier on leave to bury his mama. It was a good plan, except that it was late and cold and there was no pedestrian traffic. Even the prostitutes had given up for the night.