My Brother by Jamaica Kincaid

something everlastingly bitter and awful; I know this, the taste of this awfulness, this bitterness, is in my mouth every day.
    Feeling, then, that my son—my children—needed to see me as vulnerable to someone as they are to me, I took them with me on the next visit I made to see my brother, which meant being in the company of my mother. They loved her; my children loved my mother, especially my daughter. My daughter asked her to come and eat with us, to come swimming with us, to come and sleep with us. She wanted to see her grandmother all the time. My son felt the same way, except he complained that he didn’t like the way my mother pinched his cheek when she asked him if he was really her little grandson. They ate whatever she cooked for them. I would say to her, They have no appetite, they never eat anything, and she would say they ate everything she had put on their plate. This was true. It amazed me the amount of food they ate when my mother cooked for them. My mother, looking at my children, told me that they loved her (“Dem lub me. Dem lub me a lot, you know”), and there was something strange in this, as if in time they would come to love her more than they loved me, and there was something boastful in it, as if to say that everyone eventually loves her, as if to say that anyone who loves me will love her, only more so. I told her only that this was true, that they did love her; I did not tell her that loving your grandmother a lot was to be expected, that it was something common, like standing in the open anywhere in the world and looking up and seeing the sky. My brother when he saw my children asked if I had brought them to see him before he died (“Yu bring dem fo’ see me before me dead”). He said it sharply, he said it directly, he actually looked me in the face. I thought he might laugh, I thought he might cry. I did not answer. I did not say that had not crossed my mind.
    My brother looked well, very very well. He said he felt well, very very well. I thought, He may be dying, but he’s not dying as rapidly as he was before; I may be dying much more quickly than he; I could cross the street and a car could run over me; he may outlive us all; anything could happen. I wanted then to call some of the people who had been kind to him and helped him when he was sick. I called a man who would come to the house and give my mother a ride to the hospital for her second visit of the day every day. This was extremely kind, the sun would be at its hottest then. I thanked some other people. I called a woman, a social worker, who counseled families in which a member was HIV-positive. When my brother first took sick, someone had told me to get in touch with her. When my brother first met her, he denied to her that he was HIV-positive. It was after many visits with her that he began to say of himself that he was infected with the HIV virus, or that he had AIDS, though he still called it “the chupidness.” For him to face honestly and straightforwardly his affliction was thought to be a good thing, because it meant then that he might somehow begin to understand what was happening to him and try to cope with this stage of his life and so live as long as possible. When my brother asked me if I had brought my children to see him before he died, that to me was evidence that the work she had done with him was a success. And so I called and thanked her. I asked her how she thought he was doing. She said he looked well, but she did not like the tonic he took because the main ingredient in it was alcohol, she had asked him not to take it, he did not need it, Dr. Ramsey had given him vitamins in tablet form that were more than adequate; he took this tonic not in the measured, prescribed amount but from the bottle itself. She was annoyed, I could tell. I said I was sorry. She said there was more. She was gloomy now, I could tell. She had come to visit my brother one day, and a girl from