by Pearl Cleage
His hand hesitated above the page. The result of what? The facts, he reminded himself. Just the facts.
“…the result of me being jealous over a woman named Brandi Harris.”
Another pause. He had to make it clear that none of this was her fault. He wrote a little faster.
“Miss Harris was not involved in any way. Neither was…” What should he call Kwame? The accused? “Neither was Kwame Hargrove. He is innocent of all charges against him.”
Was that enough? He wanted it to be enough. He wanted this to be the end of it. If he confessed, they didn’t need to have a trial and Juanita could continue to rest in peace without their business being dragged through the streets of Atlanta.
“I swear on the Bible that this is my true and real testimony,” he wrote, more slowly now, wanting to get it right. “Nobody is forcing me to say this.”
He signed his name at the bottom and put his address and phone number like he was filling out a job application. Then he put the pen down and looked up. Although he hadn’t heard him approaching, Blue was standing there watching him, and for the first time that night, General saw a flicker of empathy in his eyes. He so wanted to see it there. Blue was as close to a brother as he had ever had and he loved him. He knew what to do. Tearing the page carefully away from the pad, he folded his confession neatly and handed it to Blue, who slipped it into his left breast pocket without a glance. In the silence, the plane’s engine hummed.
“I got one more thing to say,” General said.
“Go ahead.” Blue stood there looking down at him.
General took a deep breath. “I was in love with Juanita for twenty years. No other woman ever meant a damn thing to me. She made me promise not to tell you, but I don’t want any more secrets between us. I loved her, man. I always will.”
“She loved you, too,” Blue said quietly.
General’s eyes filled with tears for so much wasted time. “You knew?”
Blue nodded. “I always knew.”
The peace that comes with no more secrets washed over General like a warm dip in the Caribbean Sea.
“We’ll be there in under an hour,” Blue said. “Why don’t you get a shave before we land?”
The suggestion might have seemed a little odd, except the shaving kit was sitting right there. General picked it up. He felt very old and very tired.
“I think I will.”
Blue nodded. “Good.”
“I love you, man.”
“I love you, too, brother.”
The night was clear and the small plane was cruising effortlessly along toward Atlanta without even a hint of turbulence. General stepped into the bathroom, twice as large as the ones on most commercial planes, but still cramped quarters for a man his size. He closed the door and that same world-weary brother who had gazed back at him in Vegas had beat him to the mirror and was looking back with what seemed to be a new expression on his face. Was it resignation or relief? General couldn’t tell. Maybe a little of both.
Of course there were razor blades in the shaving kit. He pulled one out and laid it gently on the edge of the sink. He took off his jacket, hung it on the door, closed the top of the commode, and sat down. It was a squeeze for such a large man in such a small room, but he didn’t seem to notice. He turned on the hot water and let the sink fill halfway as he rolled up his sleeves carefully. The mirror was clouded with steam, but he had no more interest in his own face. The face he wanted to see next was the face of God. And then Juanita. He drew the razor three times across each wrist quickly. The blade was as sharp as a surgical scalpel and for a second he just watched the six cuts as they began to ooze crimson. Then he plunged his arms into the hot water and closed his eyes.
By the time the captain came on to tell them to fasten their seat belts for landing, General was gone.
EPILOGUE
Regina was waiting for Blue. The others had already gone back to the house to prepare dinner, but she wasn’t ready to go in yet. The sound of the gulls following the shrimp boats in soothed her as she walked, at peace for the first time in a long time. Driving to Tybee from Atlanta, Blue had called a few hours before with the news that the suspects in Abbie’s case had made bail two days ago, stolen a car that same night, and been killed instantly when they crashed it against an antiterrorism security barrier three blocks from the White House. Abbie offered a prayer that in their next lives the two young predators would get to come back as human beings. Peachy said amen, and Regina offered up a silent thank you to her husband for being everything he was.
Their little group had been holed up at Tybee for almost six weeks. Aretha and Joyce Ann were there, too. General’s confession stood up in court and Kwame had been cleared of all charges, but Aretha wasn’t ready to see him yet. She needed time to deal with everything that had happened. Her friends understood. They gave her space when she needed it and company when she wanted some. Blue came down every weekend and spent hours walking with her on the beach. They didn’t talk much, but Regina could see Aretha getting stronger as the days went by.
The mayor had announced a citizens’ committee to begin looking into allegations of police involvement in the city’s cocaine trade and named Precious Hargrove to head it up. Just yesterday, Abbie’s apprentices had called to report that they had cleaned her house from top to bottom and installed a set of sky-blue burglar bars that, according to their report, didn’t look the least bit prisonlike. They had also burned enough purifying sage for a thousand Thanksgiving turkeys. Abbie thanked them and promised she’d be back soon. She wasn’t ready yet, but every night she spent sleeping beside Peachy and listening to the ocean made her know she would be ready soon. Her dreams had already returned. She knew the visions would be next.
It was a time for healing and they all knew it. They needed these six peaceful weeks to find a way back from the places their lives had taken them. They needed time to understand the price of freedom, the inevitability of pain, and the presence of lies from which there can be no turning away.
But lots of things are stronger than lies, Regina thought, watching the sand crabs emerging from their holes in the deepening twilight. A new baby on the way is stronger. A little girl for Aretha to raise is stronger. A love that found itself that night Abbie finally poked her head out and saw Peachy waiting to take her back to the beach before she missed one more sunset was stronger. Last night there had been the sound of laughter in the house again and this afternoon, dozing in her favorite chair, Regina had had a sudden vision of her daughter, a chubby chocolate drop of a girl, standing by the window, watching for her daddy. When she turned to smile at her mama, her eyes were cornflower blue. Regina smiled to herself, remembering. She couldn’t wait to share the news with her husband.
That’s when she’d turned toward the house and there he was, standing on the deck, gazing in her direction. She raised her hand in a welcome-home wave and started walking quickly toward him in the growing darkness. The waiting was over.
“Come on, baby girl,” she whispered to her daughter. “Daddy’s home!”
A CONVERSATION WITH PEARL CLEAGE
Q: Baby Brother’s Blues has the same strengths of your previous novels: the compelling drama, sharp insights, strong characters, and almost mythical romantic optimism against a backdrop of harsh urban reality. Yet in this book, you move from the first person to third person point of view, and heighten the drama with more of a taut, thrillerlike plot and more immediate personal consequences for your main, recurring characters. What brought you to this place in your fiction, and will you hang with this writing vibe in the foreseeable future?
Pearl Cleage: It was a big change for me to write in the third person, but this story didn’t lend itself to one narrator. With first person, the writer and the reader can see only what the main character sees. This story had lots of activity that took place when nobody was watching so I had to become the all-seeing eye that could take the reader into each thread of the story until they all come together
.
It was challenging because I had to go to places where I wouldn’t have gone in first person. None of my female narrators would have been caught dead in Montre’s, and they definitely couldn’t have been where Blue and General were working out their questions. I think going to the places where the men go made it grittier. It was great fun for me, although nerve-wracking at times until I got comfortable with it!
I now feel like I’m comfortable writing in first person and third person, which is wonderful for me as a writer. It gives me more tools to work with whatever story I’m telling. My new book, The Return of the Amazon Queens, is sort of a combination of the two. I’m using two narrators whose stories overlap. The narrators are Flora Lumumba, who was the founder of the West End Growers Association, and a new character in West End, Josephine Evans, Zora’s grandmother, who has been living in Europe for almost thirty years and has just decided to come home.
Q: This novel seems to be about war on many levels: personal, societal, political, and moral. The wars within and the wars outside of us that affect us so deeply. What moved you to explore this landscape of such profound inner and outer conflict?
PC: I am in great distress about the state of the world around us. Our country is engaged in so many violent conflicts around the world and nobody seems to know how to bring the conflicts to a peaceful end. I thought by having a character like Baby Brother, who was directly involved in the violence but had no political point of view, I could take a look at how that conflict evolves from a global level to our personal lives.
I don’t think we can continue to perpetuate violence around the world and think that it won’t affect our citizens and how we act toward one another. I am also always asking readers to think deeply about the role Blue Hamilton plays and how we feel about the code of honor that he obeys. I want us to think about whether or not violence is ever justified and if it is, when and why?
Q: As a black woman who has said and written that you have been in love all of your life, what are your thoughts about and reactions to the down-low dynamic? What effects do you see it having on sisters, on brothers, on how we relate to one another in intimate relationships?
PC: I think the problem with being on the down low is not a question of love or sexuality. It’s a question of lying, and lying is always wrong. When Precious tells her son, Kwame, that the problem is his lying, not his sexuality, she is really saying what I believe. If Kwame had told the truth: to himself, to his mother, to Aretha, he could have lived the life he wanted. But he was afraid, so he lied, with disastrous consequences.
I think lying is the death of love. You can’t love a person and lie to them.
Q: If you could be any character in Baby Brother’s Blues for a day, which would it be and why? What would you want to learn, experience, and/or accomplish as that character?
PC: I think I’d have to be Abbie doing that cartwheel on the beach! I’ve wanted to do cartwheels all my life and I can never get it right. I’d want to accomplish one perfect cartwheel!
Q: You write about many of the harshest realities in our country in general and the African American community in particular: domestic violence, street dangers, stripper culture, the down-low phenomenon, human trafficking, and, of course, the war. Yet you manage to instill a kind of hope in your characters and your readers. How do you maintain your own sense of hope amid the madness?
PC: I love that quote from Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl that says “In spite of everything, I still believe in the goodness of people.” She wrote that just days before the Nazis came and took her whole family to a concentration camp! I share that belief. I think that most people are basically good and want to raise families, do good work, fall in love, and grow old in peace surrounded by family and friends.
The problems begin when we try to force other people to believe what we believe, or when we feel entitled to their resources simply because we are strong enough to take them. I think the challenge we face now is not to give up hope and abandon the struggle for peace and truth. If we do that, the bad guys will win and then where will we be?
These days when I start to feel hopeless and depressed, I try to spend time with my two grandchildren. Being with them makes me want to rededicate myself to the struggle and to find peaceful solutions to the problems we face. I think I owe them that much.
Q: Tell us about the power of the storyteller, the novelist, and the playwright to share their vision with the world, and which vision you are most committed to sharing with your readers.
PC: I think storytelling is an ancient art that has survived because it’s through our stories that we reveal who we truly are as a community of people. I want my stories to be able to stimulate a vision in people of a different way for us to live together.
I think that one of the most important things a writer can do is to create characters that let us look at how we can be the best possible human beings. That doesn’t mean every character should be perfect, but I want my overall vision to be optimistic because I believe we are capable of “fixing what’s broke.”
Q: What have you learned from the characters in Baby Brother’s Blues?
PC: I learned that men’s lives are very, very different from women’s lives! I guess I knew that already, but writing a novel in the third person and living in the heads of the men in the book really made me aware of how differently men and women approach the world. It was challenging, but I learned so much and I truly value the experience.
Q: What does Wes Jamerson, aka “Baby Brother,” represent about Black life in America today? How did you feel about him as you were writing this book? Did your feelings change as the story progressed?
PC: Wes Jamerson is a lost soul. He has a tremendous feeling of entitlement and no feeling of responsibility. It is difficult to deal with people like this because they never feel that they are responsible for their actions and the consequences of those actions. I felt sorry for him, but he is never a person who is going to be a contributing member of any group, so he kind of had to end up the way he did.
Q: Kwame is living a life of deception. Is his wife, Aretha, deceiving herself as well?
PC: I don’t think Aretha was deceiving herself. She had no idea her husband was living a double life. His lies were so complete and her trust in him was so absolute that she had no idea that he was having affairs and seeking out the company of strangers. I think she was deceived, but I don’t think she was deceiving herself.
Q: Do we all deceive ourselves a little when it comes to love? Or is there room for absolute honesty with oneself and one’s partner in a relationship?
PC: I think there is room for absolute honesty and that not only is there room for it, it is necessary if the love is going to last. I don’t think that there can be lies and deception between people who say they love each other. What is the reason for lying to loved ones? I firmly believe that truth must be at the heart of any real loving relationship. Think how different Kwame and Aretha’s relationship would have been if he had told her the truth.
Q: Blue is driven so strongly by his sense of ethics, yet it led him to be unforgiving of his best friend, General. Is their friendship a casualty of an ethical war? And will Blue regret being so hard on General?
PC: I think Blue is consistent. That is part of his personality and part of what makes him able to play the role he plays in West End. You can’t hold the power of life and death over people and be wishy-washy. You have to have a strict code of ethics, honor, and conduct and stick to it.
General knew the rules. He knew he broke the rules, not about Juanita, but about Baby Brother’s murder. If Blue had forgiven General, then what message would that send to the community about Blue and his men? Allowing General to kill someone—even an undesirable someone like Baby Brother—would undermine everything Blue has built. He didn’t kill General. General recognized his error and took his own life. He knew there was no other honorable choice. I think Blue will miss General, but I think he knows there was no oth
er choice.
Q: Aretha and Regina are friends. Has Regina had any trouble staying sober after her recovery from the cocaine addiction that she overcame in Some Things I Never Thought I’d Do? Does Aretha know about this aspect of Regina’s life?
PC: Regina never had a problem with alcohol and drugs again. After she got over breaking up with Son and with Beth, she became stronger for the struggle. Regina and Aretha have probably talked about this many times. They are close friends and during the time they spent at the beach together after the murder of Baby Brother, I am sure they talked about everything!
Q: The character Brandi was very realistic, as were your descriptions of her work at the strip clubs. Have you been to a strip club? Have you known any women who do that type of dancing? Is stripping a form of exploitation, an empowered life choice, or something else altogether?
PC: I have never been to a strip club, but I’ve seen enough of them in movies, videos, and on television shows that I felt I could re-create the ambience in a believable way. I know one woman who worked in a strip club while she was in college. She didn’t particularly like it, but it paid good money and she quit as soon as she graduated.
I don’t think of working in the sex industry as an empowering choice as much as I think of it as the lesser of the evils many women face when looking for employment. Since the sex industry usually involves physical intimacy with other human beings based on an exchange of money, not an exchange of emotions, I think it has the potential to cheapen those emotions and make it difficult for the sex workers to be involved in other human relationships. There is also the question of violence and sexually transmitted diseases. It’s dangerous, dehumanizing work in most cases, and not a life I would recommend.
