who only know how to die, not at all how to liveâit must have been such a man that my mother knew of when she communicated to me the grave danger to myself should I allow such a person to know me too well, communicated this to me so strongly that I grew up alienated from my own sexuality and, as far as I can tell, am still, to this day, not at all comfortable with the idea of myself and sex. And so too, it must be this sort of man that my brother was who accounts for the famous prudery that exists among a certain kind of Antiguan woman (the English-speaking West Indian woman, as far as I can tell; I do not know about the other women who speak the other languages). Such a woman will live for a long time; not so the Guianese girl who waited outside the gate for my brother to return from some outing or other.
Who is he? I kept asking myself. Who is he? How does he feel about himself, what has he ever wanted? Girls to take off their clothes when they hear him sing? What could that mean? He doesnât make anything, no one depends on him, he is not a father to anyone, no one finds him indispensable. He cannot make a table, his father could make a table and a chair, and a house; his father was the father of many children. This compulsion to express himself through his penis, his imagination passing between his legs, not through his hands, is something I am not qualified to understand. One afternoon I had taken him to swim at a place where when I was a child many church picnics were held. It is now a beach with a hotel for tourists; he was swimming with my mother and they looked so beautiful, the water parted for them in ripplets, forming fat diagonal lines on either side of them, the two of them, one black, one gold, glistening, buoyant, happy just then, within speaking distance of each other but not speaking to each other at all. I could see them, I was standing on the sand, the beach, my children near me building structures out of the sand, structures that they had to protect from the waves since the tide was changing. This was my mother and this was my brother, my motherâs youngest child, her last, and I can remember thinking at his birth (I was thirteen at the time) that his arrival marked a change in her, a change in her relationship to his father, a change in her relationship to the world. She became bitter, sharp; she and I quarreled all the time, she quarreled with everyone all the time. Her features collapsed, she was beautiful in the face before, really beautiful, everyone thought so, really thought so, even she did, but that wasnât true anymore after my brother was born. That afternoon they were swimming together; without speaking, they were swimming, still without speaking. My brother, seeing some European women who were swimming together and sharing conversation and laughter, swam up to them and said things that I could not hear and they responded with words that I could not hear. I donât know what they saw in him, this man so beautiful in the face, too thin in the body, but they indulged his flirtatiousness, perhaps enjoying this moment with a man they would have found dangerous in their own native surroundings just because of his complexion, this moment so free of friction, in the hot sun. And I donât know what he really saw in them, they were not beautiful in face or body, by the standards of European or Other, or what he expected of them; it was only that he could not help himself, he had seen some women, he had made himself seen by them; the outcome would always be the same: sometimes women had sex with him, sometimes they didnât.
My mother came and sat next to me, and as we were sitting on the sand watching my children, my mother told me that God would bless me richly for bringing my brother the AZT, but I do not believe such a thing, because why would God suddenly enter into it now, when the time to have entered into it was to stop such a thing as this virus from occurring at
Who is he? I kept asking myself. Who is he? How does he feel about himself, what has he ever wanted? Girls to take off their clothes when they hear him sing? What could that mean? He doesnât make anything, no one depends on him, he is not a father to anyone, no one finds him indispensable. He cannot make a table, his father could make a table and a chair, and a house; his father was the father of many children. This compulsion to express himself through his penis, his imagination passing between his legs, not through his hands, is something I am not qualified to understand. One afternoon I had taken him to swim at a place where when I was a child many church picnics were held. It is now a beach with a hotel for tourists; he was swimming with my mother and they looked so beautiful, the water parted for them in ripplets, forming fat diagonal lines on either side of them, the two of them, one black, one gold, glistening, buoyant, happy just then, within speaking distance of each other but not speaking to each other at all. I could see them, I was standing on the sand, the beach, my children near me building structures out of the sand, structures that they had to protect from the waves since the tide was changing. This was my mother and this was my brother, my motherâs youngest child, her last, and I can remember thinking at his birth (I was thirteen at the time) that his arrival marked a change in her, a change in her relationship to his father, a change in her relationship to the world. She became bitter, sharp; she and I quarreled all the time, she quarreled with everyone all the time. Her features collapsed, she was beautiful in the face before, really beautiful, everyone thought so, really thought so, even she did, but that wasnât true anymore after my brother was born. That afternoon they were swimming together; without speaking, they were swimming, still without speaking. My brother, seeing some European women who were swimming together and sharing conversation and laughter, swam up to them and said things that I could not hear and they responded with words that I could not hear. I donât know what they saw in him, this man so beautiful in the face, too thin in the body, but they indulged his flirtatiousness, perhaps enjoying this moment with a man they would have found dangerous in their own native surroundings just because of his complexion, this moment so free of friction, in the hot sun. And I donât know what he really saw in them, they were not beautiful in face or body, by the standards of European or Other, or what he expected of them; it was only that he could not help himself, he had seen some women, he had made himself seen by them; the outcome would always be the same: sometimes women had sex with him, sometimes they didnât.
My mother came and sat next to me, and as we were sitting on the sand watching my children, my mother told me that God would bless me richly for bringing my brother the AZT, but I do not believe such a thing, because why would God suddenly enter into it now, when the time to have entered into it was to stop such a thing as this virus from occurring at
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