somebody who just loves to burn
Mom loves the both of them
You see it in the blood
Both kids are good to Mom
Blood thicker than the mud . . .
It’s a family affair.
What do these words tell me about my brother? Why did he share them with me? One reason may be his dissatisfaction with the picture of him I’d drawn in the first draft of this book. There will necessarily be distance, vast discrepancy between any image I create and the mystery of all my brother is, was, can be. We both know that. And he’ll never be satisfied, but he’s giving me the benefit of the doubt. Not complaining overtly, but reminding me that there’s more, much, much more to know, to learn. He’s giving me a song, holding open a door on a world I can never enter. Robby can’t carry me over to the other side, but he can crack the door and I can listen.
Robby refuses to be beaten down. Sly said in another song that everybody wants to be a star. That wish contains the best of us and the worst. The thrust of ego and selfishness, the striving to be better than we are. If Robby fell because the only stardom he could reasonably seek was stardom in crime, then that’s wrong. It’s wrong not because Robby wanted more but because society closed off every chance of getting more, except through crime. So I’m glad to see Robby’s best (worst) parts have survived. Can’t have one without the other.
I let Robby know I’ve rewritten the book, virtually from start to finish. Plenty of blurred, gray space, lots of unfilled gaps and unanswered questions and people to interview, but the overall design is clearer now. I’m trying to explain to Robby how I feel released rather than constrained by the new pattern beginning to emerge. The breakthrough came when I started to hear what was constant, persistent beneath the changes in his life. The book will work if the reader participates, begins to grasp what I have. I hadn’t been listening closely enough, so I missed the story announcing itself. When I caught on, there I was, my listening, waiting self part of the story, listening, waiting for me.
Yet I remained apprehensive about the prison section of the book. Robby wouldn’t be able to help me as much in this last section as he had with the others. The method we’d evolved was this: Robby would tell his stories. I’d listen, take notes, reconstruct the episodes after I’d allowed them time to sink in, then check my version with Rob to determine if it sounded right to him. Letters and talk about what I’d written would continue until we were both satisfied. We’d had lots of practice performing that operation and I was beginning to feel a measure of confidence in the results it eventually produced. “Doing Time” was a different matter. The book would end with this section. Since I was writing the book, one way or another I’d be on center stage. Not only would the prison section have to pull together many loose ends, but new material had to surface and be resolved. Aside from logical and aesthetic considerations, finishing the book as object, completing the performance, there was the business of both rendering and closing down the special relationship between my brother and myself that writing the book had precipitated. All the questions I’d decided to finesse or sidestep or just shrug off in order to get on with writing would now return, some in the form of issues to be addressed in concluding the book, some as practical dilemmas in the world outside the book, the world that had continued to chug along while I wrote.
Robby was still a prisoner. He was inside and I was outside. Success, fame, ten million readers wouldn’t change that. The book, whether it flopped or became a best-seller, would belong to the world beyond the prison walls. Ironically, it would validate the power of the walls, confirm the distance between what transpired inside and outside. Robby’s story would be “out there,” but he’d still be locked up. Despite my attempts to identify with my brother, to reach him and share his troubles, the fact was, I remained on the outside. With the book. Though I never intended to steal his story, to appropriate it or exploit it, in a sense that’s what would happen once the book was published.
His story would be out there in a world that ignored his existence. It could be put to whatever uses people chose. Of course I was hoping Robby would benefit from a book written about him, but the possible benefits did not alter the fact that imprisonment profoundly alienated him from the finished product of our collaboration.
Simple things like sharing financial profits could be handled; but how could I insure a return on the emotional investment my brother had made? Once I’d gotten the book I’d come for, would I be able to sustain the bond that had grown between us? Would I continue to listen with the same attention to his stories? Would he still possess a story? Much of what he’d entrusted to me had nothing to do with putting a book together. Had I identified with him because I discovered that was the best way to write the book? Would the identification I’d achieved become a burden, too intense, too pressurized to survive once the book was completed? Was the whole thing between us about a book or had something finer, truer been created? And even if a finer, truer thing had come into being, would it be shattered by the noisy explosion (or dull thud) of the book’s appearance in the world beyond the prison walls?
Some of these questions could be asked outright. Others were too intimidating, too close to the bone to raise with my brother. Yet we had to deal with all of them. In the world and in the prison section. The book, if there was to be a book, must end, must become in some senses an artifact. I wanted to finish it but I didn’t want to let it go. I might be losing much more than a book.
The fears I could put into words I tried to share with Robby. He nodded, clenched and unclenched his big hands, smiled at the funny parts, the blackly comic pratfalls and cul de sacs neither of us nor anybody in the world can avoid. Yeah, shit’s gon hit the fan. Yeah, sounds like it might get rough . . . but then again . . . what can you do but do? Many of my worries clearly were not his. I was the writer, that was my kitchen, my heat. He’d thought about some of the stuff worrying me but I could tell he hadn’t spent lots of time fretting over it. And wouldn’t. Many of the troubles I anticipated were too far down the line to tease out Robby’s concern. In prison he had learned to walk a very fine line. On one side of the line was the minute-by-minute, day-by-day struggle for survival to which he must devote his undivided attention. On the other side his vision of something better, a life outside the walls, an existence he could conceive only if he allowed himself the luxury of imagination, of formulating plans in a future divorced from his present circumstances. The line was thin, was perilous because any energy he squandered on envisioning the future was time away, a lapse in the eternal vigilance he must maintain to stay alive in his cage. Yet the struggle to survive, the heightened awareness he must sustain to get through each moment, each day made no sense unless his efforts were buying something other than more chunks of prison routine. And plans for the future were pipe dreams unless he could convince himself he possessed the stamina and determination to make it step by step through the withering prison regimen. These options, realities, consequences defined the straight and narrow path Robby was forced to tread. Like Orpheus ascending from Hades or Ulysses chained to the mast or a runaway slave abandoning his family and fleeing toward the North Star, my brother knew the only way he might get what he desperately wanted was to turn his back on it, pretend it didn’t exist.
Walking the line, leaning neither too far to the left nor too far to the right, balancing, always balancing the pulls of heart and head in one direction against the tugs wrenching him in the other—that was Robby’s unbearable burden, made more unbearable because to escape it all he had to do was surrender, tilt one way or the other, and let the weight on his shoulders drag him down.
The source of my brother’s strength was a mystery to me. When I put myself in his shoes, tried to imagine how I’d cope if I were sentenced to life imprisonment, I couldn’t conceive of any place inside myself from which I could draw the courage and dignity he displayed. In prison Robby had achieved an inner calm, a degree of self-sufficiency and self-reliance never apparent when he
was running the streets. I didn’t know many people, inside or out, who carried themselves the way he did now. Like my mother, he’d grown accustomed to what was unbearable, had named it, tamed it. He’d fallen, but he’d found the strength to rise again. Inch by inch, hand over hand, he’d pulled himself up on a vine he’d never known was there, a vine still invisible to me. I knew the vine was real because I’d watched my brother grasp it, because I could feel its absence in the untested air when I thought of myself in his situation. To discover the source of my brother’s strength I found myself comparing what I’d accomplished outside the walls with what he’d managed inside. The comparison made me uncomfortable.
I didn’t envy my brother. I’d learned enough about the hell of prison life not to mistake what I was feeling for envy. No, I wouldn’t trade my problems for his. I’d take my chances on the outside. Yet something like envy was stirring. Worse than envy. The ancient insatiability of ego kicking up. Why hadn’t I ever been able to acknowledge a talent, success, or capacity in another person without feeling that person’s accomplishment either diminished me or pointed to some crucial deficiency in my constitution? What compound of greed, insecurity, and anger forced me always to compare, compete? Why couldn’t I just leave myself out of it and celebrate Robby’s willpower, his grace under pressure? Why couldn’t I simply applaud and be grateful for whatever transformation of self he’d performed? Were my visits to prison about freeing him or freeing myself from the doubt that perhaps, after all, in spite of it all, maybe my brother has done more with his life than I’ve done with mine. Maybe he’s the better man and maybe the only way I can face that truth about him, about myself, is to demystify the secret of his survival. Maybe I’m inside West Pen to warm myself by his fire, to steal it. Perhaps in my heart of hearts or, better, my ego of egos, I don’t really want to tear down the walls, but tear my brother down, bring him back to my level, to the soft, uncertain ground where my feet are planted.
If somebody has sung the praises of a book or movie, I go in looking for flaws, weaknesses. No matter how good these books or movies, my pleasure is never unalloyed because I’m searching for the bad parts, groping for them even when they’re not there; so I usually come away satisfied by my dissatisfaction. I’m stuck with a belief that nothing can stand too close an examination. The times when I experience the world as joy, as song, some part of me insists even in the midst of the joy, the song, that these moments will pass and nothing, nothing promises they will ever come again. My world is fallen. It’s best to be suspicious, not to trust anything, anyone too far. Including myself. Especially the treacherous, layered reality of being whatever I think I am at a given moment. It’s a fallen world. My brother is rising from the ashes but because he is my brother, another fall is as certain as this rising and my particular burden is to see both always. I can’t help it.
Does what he’s achieved in the narrow confines of a cell mock the cage I call freedom? What would I do in his place? How would I act? Are the walls between us permanent? Do we need them, want them? Is there a better place without barred windows and steel doors and locked cells where there’s room for both of us, all of us?
What it comes down to is saying yes. Yes to the blood making us brothers. Blood bonding us, constraining us to the unspoken faith that I’m trying to do my best and he’s trying to do his best but nothing we do can insure the worst won’t happen so we keep at it, as best we can, doing the book and hoping it will turn out okay.
He’s been thinking a lot about the time on the road, the three months as a fugitive when he and his partners crisscrossed the country, playing hide and seek with the law. He’s tried to write some of it down but he’s been too busy. Too much’s been happening. School. He’ll graduate in January. A little ceremony for the few guys who made it all the way through the program. An associate degree in engineering technology and three certificates. Rough. Real rough. The math he’d never had in high school. The slow grind of study. Hours relearning to be a student. Learning to take the whole business seriously while you hear the madness of the prison constantly boiling outside your cell. But I’m gon get it, Bruh. Few more weeks. These last exams kicking my ass but I’m gon get it. Most the fellows dropped out. Only three of us completed the program. It’ll look good on my record, too. But I ain’t had time to do nothing else. Them books you sent. I really enjoy reading them but lately I ain’t been doing nothing but studying.
* * *
It’s funny cause I really want to put some of the stuff about running on paper. Got it all right here in my head. I can see it, I can say it to myself but when I sit down with a piece of paper in front of me I can’t write a word. Doesn’t seem right. Don’t know where to start. But I been thinking lots about it. Been over it in my mind and it won’t be that hard to tell you. Maybe it’s just being so busy. School. And my job in the hospital. And this new lady, man. She’s really on my mind. What can I tell you? Like you mize well say I’m in love. Sounds funny, don’t it? Being in here and talking about falling in love. Talking about loving some lady. It happens though. Even in this fucked-up place, even to your fucked-up brother.
Don’t laugh. I see you trying not to laugh. Your baby brother, Rob, the ladies’ man. I see what you’re thinking. You know I always been innerested in the ladies. Love them to death. And they been liking me back, too. Ever since I was little. So what can I say? I can’t change. And the ladies still be liking me so I’m subject to falling in love.
Losing Tanya had me real down. Down as I ever been in here. Took me a long time to get her to see she was beautiful. Had to keep telling her she was somebody special. Teach her to see what I already could see. Wrote her poems. Got her reading some the books I was into back then. She took a new name. Atiya. I could see it happening, see her growing stronger, and it made me happy. Ain’t nothing never made me more happy. Like she started blooming. Coming out her shell. She really was a different person. For a long time Tia couldn’t see what I saw. She been lied to so much she believed that blond-hair, blue-eyed shit. She look in the mirror couldn’t see nothing but nappy hair, glasses, and ugly. Took a long time but Tia started changing, getting stronger. Seeing her change made me happy, but it worried me, too. I knew one day she wouldn’t need me to lean on.
It had to happen. She’d see how good she was and then she’d have to go off on her own. You know what I mean? Try out her wings. I knew it. And I didn’t want to stand in her way. But then I started losing her and I wasn’t ready. Tore me up when things started to go bad between us. Visits wasn’t so regular. Not answering my letters. Something missing when she did come to see me. Little ways she had of looking away, looking down. And when we be talking she didn’t bring up stuff like she used to. All them plans we had. Like she forgot about em. Wasn’t us and we and what we gon be doing together. She changed jobs. Was into seeing new people I didn’t know. What we had wasn’t going nowhere. Wasn’t nowhere for it to go with me locked up in here. She knew that and I knew that. But we been through so much together neither of us could say out loud what we both be thinking. You know. Like the Gladys Knight and the Pips jam: “Neither One of Us Want to Be the First One to Say Good-bye.” That’s the way it was. Saw it coming a long way off. Wasn’t no way it wasn’t gon happen. Still, when it hit me, I wasn’t ready. Couldn’t handle it Like a crazy man for a while.
Hey, Sister
I see you there behind your mask
Of powder and your store-bought hair
I see a light that shines as a star
That comes from over there
That place we were before we
Came over here
I feel the warmth that still comes from you
Though your emotions are freezing in white snow
Sister you can be a leader too
Wipe away your false colors
Wear your Blackness Queen.
My Woman
My Woman, Woman of my soul
You are the essence of true love
I fall
asleep at night searching for you
And awaken in the morning feeling
You were almost there
My Woman, Woman of my life
I long for the soft swell of your belly
The sweet aroma of your body
The warm press of your thighs
I long to sleep with you every night
Until life is nigh and re-creation is ours
My Woman, Woman of my heart
It is your love and trust
That makes me truly man
It is your love and devotion
That makes me the envy of every man
My Woman, Woman of my Blackness
You are the beginning of my family
The ending of loneliness and disillusion
I am you, you are me—together
WE ARE UNIVERSAL
Valentine’s Greeting
. . . Loving you is not just once a year
Loving you is always knowing you’re near
So I’ll say this now and in every way
I give you all my love, this Valentine’s day.
Atiya
You are me
You are the life of me
You are my guarantee for life
It is you who must preserve what I build
Protector of my haven
YOU
Overseer of my future
I pledge Love
My brown glow, my sunswept vision
Maker of my smiles, comforter of my frowns
You are my belief in forever
Forever is loving you for only a day
I found in you my reason for being black and a man
My golden lady with you I have realized my destined plan
Stay inside me pumpkin and together we
Will swell up and explode into new life
Let me stay inside you sunlight and I will
Protect our haven, your heart as long as
Brothers and Keepers Page 26
