Autobiography of My Dead Brother

by Walter Dean Myers

  “What’s up?” I asked again.

  “He said he wants to talk to you, and it’s something serious,” she said, still half whispering. “Are you awake enough to hear me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Some boys were shot on 144th Street,” she said. “Two died and one is in bad condition. They want to question you about it.”

  “I wasn’t on 144th Street,” I said. “Me and C.J. passed it on the way home and saw the police cars and everything, but that’s about it. They weren’t even letting people walk down the block.”

  “Your father thinks we should get a lawyer anyway,” Mom said.

  “What for? I didn’t do anything,” I said.

  “No one is accusing you of doing anything,” Mom answered, patting me on the shoulder. “But we’re your parents, and we’re a little …” She was holding on, trying not to cry.

  “Yo, Mom, you don’t have anything to worry about,” I said. “I didn’t do anything. When me and C.J. came home, we saw the police cars tearing up the streets. When we got to 144th we saw all the commotion. No way we were involved in it.”

  The door opened and Dad came in.

  “What he say?” Dad stood in front of the door. He looked enormous.

  “He said that he and C.J. were walking home and just saw the commotion when they passed 144th Street,” Mom answered. “Did you call Joe Charles?”

  “Yeah. He said not to say anything,” Dad said. “Look, Jesse, you got to go downtown with Sidney. But don’t say nothing to him. Nothing. If he ask you what day it is, don’t say nothing! Joe’s on his way.”

  “You understand that, Jesse?” Mom asked. “It’s not about whether you did anything or not. It’s that we’re dealing with the system, and we have to understand their rules. If you don’t say anything until Joe Charles talks to you, you’re going to be better off. You have to trust us on this one, baby.”

  She was crying. Tears were running down her face, and she was breathing hard, as if she was having an asthma attack or something. I knew I hadn’t done anything, but I was getting scared.

  “Yeah, okay. I won’t say anything.”

  “Get dressed,” she said. “We’re going down to the precinct with you.”

  She left the room to get dressed, and Dad sat on the bed. His face looked puffy, and I knew he was scared, too. I put on my pants and a T-shirt, slipped into my sneakers, and started to the bathroom. Dad came out with me. On the way, I saw Sidney sitting at the kitchen table. He looked exhausted, and I felt a little sorry for him.

  “I understand you told him not to speak to me.” Sidney looked tired as he spoke to my father. “And that’s fine with me. But he has to ride in the car with me, because I’m bringing him in on official police business.”

  “Don’t say anything to him,” Dad said, his voice loud and aggressive. “If he asks you how you feel, don’t even answer!”

  I looked at Sidney and he looked cool with it.

  In the bathroom I looked at myself in the mirror as I peed. I wasn’t worried or anything, but I decided to be sure not to speak to Sidney.

  We went downstairs, and I saw there was his car plus a police car and a police emergency vehicle in front of the house. Sidney raised his hand and signaled one of the officers leaning against the car that everything was all right. I got into the back of his old Taurus. As soon as the door closed, I wanted to talk to him, to tell him I hadn’t done anything.

  “Your folks are looking for a ride,” Sidney said. “Let me get them something.”

  He got out of the car and asked Dad if he wanted a ride in the police car. I could see Dad shake his head no and start looking for a cab. Sidney got back into the car with me.

  “As far as I can tell, there were two meetings called tonight,” he said, looking at me in the rearview mirror. “You guys were down at Earl’s. C.J. told me and so did Gun.”

  “I didn’t know anything about two meetings,” I said, wondering why I was talking after promising Mom and Dad I wouldn’t. “We just sat around and talked. It was me, C.J., Rise, Gun, and a girl. I don’t remember her name right now, but Earl, the guy who owns the shop, saw us there and everything.”

  “Junice.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “And I don’t remember when we left, but I know we were walking up Lenox Avenue—not all of us—”

  “You and C.J.,” Sidney said. “By the time you guys left Earl’s it was all over.”

  “Then how come I’m getting arrested?”

  “You’re not arrested,” Sidney said. “You’re being picked up on suspicion of being involved in the setup. But I think you guys were the ones really being set up.”

  “I shouldn’t talk to you, man, but what you talking about?”

  “I won’t ask you any questions,” Sidney said. “But there were apparently two meetings set up. The Counts, at least the ones who showed up, met at Earl’s. The Diablos were sent to an address on 144th Street. The Diablos said it was a meeting of the top six Diablos and the top six Counts. It was supposed to be a discussion of territory. Who controlled which blocks. And a reporter from the Amsterdam Newswas going to mediate the whole thing.”

  “Get out of here!”

  “Somebody had figured the Diablos would go for that,” Sidney said.

  What had Rise said? That the Diablos just wanted their names in the papers. I knew I had better keep my mouth shut.

  “Mom said two people were killed,” I said. “Is that true?”

  “Two gone, one on the way,” Sidney said. “It’s serious.”

  The cars in front of the precinct were parked facing the building, and Sidney eased his car between two black-and-white police vehicles. On the sidewalk two cops were trying to get a drunk up the stairs and into the station house.

  The precinct on 135th Street was always busy. Sidney brought me in and said something to the desk sergeant. The sergeant asked me if I needed anything to eat, and I said no. Then Sidney took me into a back room. C.J. was sitting on a couch with his mother and a man I didn’t know.

  C.J. was looking miserable, as if he had just been caught doing something big-time, and that made me smile a little.

  “Yo, C.J., you look like a hood,” I said.

  “This is very serious, Jesse,” C.J.’s mom said. “Some children have been killed.”

  “They got Gun, Rise, and that girl in another part of the precinct,” C.J. said in a hoarse whisper.

  I knew it was serious. C.J.’s mom didn’t want him here waiting to see what was going on. This was the kind of thing you read about in the paper, something that happened to somebody else.

  There was a voice in my head that kept repeating that me and C.J. didn’t have anything to worry about, but there was nothing in the room except worry.

  Mom and Dad came in. The first thing that came out of Dad’s mouth was whether or not I had said anything to Sidney.

  “I just asked him what happened,” I said.

  C.J.’s mom introduced the man they were with as her brother, and he and Dad shook hands. Then Dad came over and put his arm around me.

  There was a low hum from the soda machine against the wall. On the right side of the machine, next to the coin slot, were two red lights and a green light. There was an automatic coffee machine on the table next to the couch we were sitting on, but the cord was unplugged. Three empty Styrofoam cups were lying in front of it. I wondered how many people had sat on the couch during the day looking at those cups.

  The walls were gray on the bottom and yellow on top. The gray paint looked okay, but the yellow on top was in bad condition.

  “I wonder why just the yellow paint is peeling,” I said. I didn’t know why I said it, or why I had even noticed it.

  Mom looked at it and smiled, started to say something, and then looked away.

  I thought about what C.J.’s mom had said, that some children had been killed, and wondered where their parents were and what they were doing. Were they holding each other and crying? Were they askin
g the police what had happened? And how about the kid who wasn’t dead?

  I thought about him in a hospital room somewhere, trying to keep his heart going, maybe trying to breathe, to stay alive.

  The whole scene was just so messed up. It could have been me or C.J. just as easy as it had been the Diablos. The colors didn’t matter. Bullets didn’t know nothing about good guys and bad guys.

  It was another fifteen minutes before Joe Charles came in. He was wearing jeans and a light jacket. He asked who everybody was and got introduced all around. C.J.’s mom asked if she needed to call a lawyer. Mr. Charles said that he had spoken with Sidney and there didn’t seem to be much of a problem.

  “What they’re thinking is that the boys were being used to provide an alibi,” Mr. Charles said. “Still, we don’t want to get involved in answering a lot of questions. I’ve known Sidney a long time, and he’s a good man, but he’s not the only one involved in this case. When this hits the papers tomorrow, I know the mayor’s office is going to be involved. Three young men killed in a single night is just terrible, but—”

  “The other one didn’t make it?” Mom’s voice was almost a shriek.

  “No,” Mr. Charles said. “All three of them are gone.”

  Mom started crying really hard and Dad took his arm from around me and turned to her. But the way Mom was crying, her body moving as she sobbed, it held him back. He turned toward the middle of the room, like he didn’t know what to do, and I could see how upset he was. Joe Charles knelt down in front of Mom and held her hands.

  It was terrible to see Mom crying like that, and to know why she was crying.

  The whole room was filled with the sounds she made—almost grunting sounds—as if she was in a lot of pain. For a long time it was just those sounds and the humming of the soda machine, and then her breathing and the humming. I wanted to go over to the machine and pull out the cord. I didn’t.

  “Jesse talked to that detective,” Dad said. “I don’t know what all he said but he talked to him even though we told him not to say anything.”

  “It’s okay. Ninety-nine percent of people want to present their side of the issue,” Mr. Charles said. “If they pursue this end of the deal, it’s going to be in the direction of a conspiracy charge, and that won’t happen.”

  “What deal?” C.J.’s mom’s voice was flat and hard.

  “What they’re looking at is the possibility of a drug war between an out-of-town drug group—gang, cartel, what have you—and the Diablos. All the victims were Diablos. A bunch of wild kids standing off against a sophisticated group with the weapons and the muscle to mess them up.”

  “You hear that, boy?” C.J.’s uncle gave him a mean look. “This is what I’ve got to be taking time off from work to deal with!”

  “What’s going to happen next?” Mom’s head was down.

  “They’re going to let everybody go home tonight,” Mr. Charles said. “The police uptown have made some arrests, but it won’t have anything to do with these kids. If the police call you and ask you questions, call me, just to be on the safe side. I don’t think anybody has anything to worry about except if the mayor’s office starts putting pressure on these cops to make a lot of quick arrests.”

  “They need to stay away from each other?” C.J.’s mom asked.

  “No, they haven’t done anything,” Mr. Charles said. “They can just go on and live their normal lives. They need to know that somebody they both know, at least according to Sidney, a Rise Davis, is under suspicion and his name was mentioned when they made arrests uptown. And the most important thing they need to know is that even though they are completely innocent, and I’m sure they are, this is a serious issue. We’re talking homicides here. This is nothing to brag about, nothing to take lightly.”

  “They need to stay away from Rise,” Dad said.

  “I would,” Mr. Charles said. “If he calls, I’d be busy, and I think you need to let him know that you want to stay away from him. Don’t be shy about it.”

  Sidney came in and said we could go. He said that he would let us know if anything developed, and would let Mr. Charles know, too.

  When we got home, the sky was gray with streaks of sunlight breaking through. Mom wanted us to pray together, and I could see Dad didn’t want to—he wanted to be tough because that’s what he understood. I hadn’t known that about him before, because he didn’t act that way usually.

  We sat together in the living room and Mom prayed. She got real emotional, crying and everything. She even prayed for the families of the Diablos who were shot. I got emotional too.

  Chapter 22

  My drawing pad was on the dresser. I threw it on the bed and took my shirt off. Mom came in and gave me a hug, laying her head on my shoulder.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said, looking up at me and smiling. She sounded sure, and that made me feel better. I realized that’s why she had come into the room.

  When she left, I lay across the bed and started looking at the drawings I had done of Rise. I stopped at one drawing—I had tried to have him looking out of the page at me—and tried to read the face I had drawn. This wasn’t the Rise I had grown up with, the one who had put his arm against mine as we mingled our blood. That Rise had died somewhere in the past year, perhaps even the past few weeks. The Rise I knew could not have set anyone up to be shot, to be killed.

  What had happened, what I felt, was that the old Rise, the Rise with clear, wise eyes and an easy grin, had crossed over into a different landscape and what we were doing, Rise and me, was trying to create someone new. The new Rise would be able to look at people and see ways to make himself important, and to believe the things he needed to believe to walk the streets he walked. I wasn’t angry with Rise, although something told me I should be. But I didn’t understand him anymore.

  I picked up the sketchbook and turned to a blank page and started drawing Rise again. I wanted to draw the old Rise, the one that I had trusted and loved. My memory of him didn’t work, so I took down one of the photographs I had stuck in the corners of my mirror.

  After a while there were marks on paper, but the image never came.

  The shootings made the paper the next day, and everybody on the block already knew I had been picked up. People I didn’t even know were asking me questions. It made me mad to think that my friends, kids and grownups who thought I was a nice guy one day, could think the next day I was shooting people in the streets. And in a way they wanted me to be involved in the shooting simply because it made it all more exciting for them. I asked White Clara if she didn’t feel sorry for the Diablos who had been shot, and she shrugged.

  “How you going to shed tears for somebody who wants to be in that life, yo?”

  When I spoke to C.J., he told me that his moms was trying to blame it on jazz.

  “She said if you give the devil a crack, he’ll slide on in,” C.J. said.

  “So what did you say?”

  “I told her if I was studying music like I wanted, I probably wouldn’t have time for gangs and stuff.”

  “She go for that?” I asked.

  “She’s thinking about it,” C.J. said, smiling.

  Sidney said that there had been some arrests made in the shootings. Some guys Rise had been dealing with uptown were picked up and charged, but he didn’t know if they could make anything stick. The story was in the papers for another day or two, and then there was a big scandal with a ballplayer being accused of a hit-and-run accident and covering it up in Los Angeles, and the paper was full of that and people began to forget about the shootings. But then it all came back, like something that had been there all along, just not finished.

  Rise called. I hadn’t spoken to him since the meeting at Earl’s. He told me that he had been held at Rikers for a week and now was out.

  “I’m moving out of the city,” he said. “Got to say good-bye to all my homeys and look for some greener pastures. This shooting thing messed me around a lot. I
realized it just wasn’t me to have to be ducking and watching my back.”

  What about the guys who were killed?

  “I sure don’t need that life,” I said.

  “Like my grandfather says, ‘There’s a time to gather stones,’” Rise said. “I’ll just slip and slide for a while and gather a few stones until I see what’s going down. You know what I mean?”

  No, I didn’t.

  I asked him what he was going to do, and he said he was going to Florida, some place called Liberty City in Miami.

  “Your folks okay with you splitting to Miami?”

  “Yeah, I guess,” Rise said. “Everybody knows this scene ain’t making it.”

  “Yo, Rise, you don’t sound like you used to,” I said.

  “I know, bro. That’s why I got to get into business someplace where the weather fits my mood,” he said, stretching out mood like it was cool or something. He said he was going to stop by in a day or two to say so long to all the fellows.

  “Yeah, I’ll take my life story down to Miami with me, let them know who I am,” he said. “You know you can publish your own book if you got the cash.”

  Yeah.

  When Rise hung up, I felt tired. I didn’t want to give him the pictures I had drawn, and I didn’t want to keep working on the book. I thought that if he just left and I kept them, there might come a time when it all came together for me and I would understand just who he was. Maybe.

  We had another week until school started. When I thought of that, I also thought about the guys who were killed on 144th Street. I wondered if they would have gone back to school.

  When Rise called to say he was leaving New York to live with relatives in Miami, he sounded really depressed.

  “I’m going to miss you, bro.” His voice cracked. “Guess we got to give it some time before we hook up again.”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “Look, I’ll be pulling out at noon,” he said. “Maybe you can give me a wave for old times’ sake.”

  “Yeah, I’ll see you then,” I said.

  I told myself again that I was just letting Rise go and moving on with my life. I took out the book I was doing and thumbed through it, looking at the photographs and the pictures I had drawn, thinking how hard it was going to be to say good-bye. Some of the drawings were good, really good. But after everything had went down the way it had, I wasn’t sure which ones looked like Rise and which were just images from my memory. I didn’t know if I liked it, and I wondered if Rise would after some time had passed. Then, suddenly, it came to me—the book was coming out wrong, and I knew why it was wrong. It was so clear that I felt myself getting excited, and I knew I would have to explain it carefully to Rise.