Read Online My Brother by Jamaica Kincaid - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Jamaica Kincaid
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had told me of a plan she and he had to build another little room, right next to her bedroom, for him to live in. I did not say, You canât afford to do that, save that money for a time when it might be needed for medicine, taxi fares to the hospital, just save that money. I also did not say that my mother must have felt compelled to build my brother something at this time in his life: three months ago she was sure it would be a coffin. The room to be built would be small, the size of an ordinary tomb.
My brother and I walked up to the botanical gardens and found they were closed for repairs; they had been neglected for many years, many specimens had died, but now someoneâmost likely a Canadian, because they are so generous to the self-destructive of the worldâa Canadian had given money to have the botanical gardens restored. We walked around the perimeter, and using a book on tropical botany that I carried and also relying on our own knowledge, we identified many plants. But then we came to a tree that we could not identify, not on our own, not from the book. It was a tree, only a tree, and it was either just emerging from a complete dormancy or it was half-dead, half-alive. My brother and I became obsessed with this tree, its bark, its leaves, its shape; we wondered where it was really from, what sort of tree it was. If it crossed his mind that this tree, coming out of a dormancy, a natural sleep, a temporary death, or just half-dead, bore any resemblance to him right then and there, he did not say, he did not let me know in any way. We walked on, past the botanical gardens, and we came upon some tamarind trees with ripe tamarinds on them; the tamarinds were hanging very high up on the trees and so my brother picked up stones and threw them at the fruits, hoping to knock some down, the way we would have done if we had been schoolchildren. He succeeded, we ate the tamarinds; they were not good, they were not bad, they were just tamarinds. We did not say anything then. We walked past the jail; he did not tell me if he had been in it, that time when he had been in trouble. He did not seem to notice it at all. We walked over to the grounds of his old school. It did not seem to have any memories for him; he noticed that it was dilapidated, he wondered why children were sent to a school with holes in the building. It was there he found the fruit of a mahogany tree, something we had both seen before, the fruit of a mahogany tree, but it was a marvel to us then, so perfectly shaped like a pear, the Northern Hemisphere fruit, not the avocado pear, but hard like the wood of the tree from which it comes. I brought it back to the Vermont climate with me and placed it on a windowsill, and one day when I looked, it had opened quietly, perfectly, into sections, revealing an inside that was a pink like a shell that had been buried in clean sand, and layers upon layers of seeds in pods that had wings, like the seeds of a maple. I did not know until then that the seeds of the mahogany tree were like that. We then walked past the Recreational Grounds, the public grounds where major public events are held. He pointed to a pavilion and told me that when he was a student at his school, he and a friend used to take girls under there and have sex (âMahn, me used to bang up some girls under thereâ). We walked back to my motherâs house.
I returned to my own home in Vermont with my children. I spoke to my brother, the one who was sick with HIV; I spoke to my brother, the middle one; I spoke to my mother. I never spoke to my oldest brother; there is no clear explanation for this, his story is another big chapter and he, too, can neither speak it nor write it down. My youngest brother, the sick one, had moved into the little room that had been built for him; my mother was very pleased that she had built it. He got stronger and stronger. Over the telephone my mother told me that he was very well, so well he might go to
My brother and I walked up to the botanical gardens and found they were closed for repairs; they had been neglected for many years, many specimens had died, but now someoneâmost likely a Canadian, because they are so generous to the self-destructive of the worldâa Canadian had given money to have the botanical gardens restored. We walked around the perimeter, and using a book on tropical botany that I carried and also relying on our own knowledge, we identified many plants. But then we came to a tree that we could not identify, not on our own, not from the book. It was a tree, only a tree, and it was either just emerging from a complete dormancy or it was half-dead, half-alive. My brother and I became obsessed with this tree, its bark, its leaves, its shape; we wondered where it was really from, what sort of tree it was. If it crossed his mind that this tree, coming out of a dormancy, a natural sleep, a temporary death, or just half-dead, bore any resemblance to him right then and there, he did not say, he did not let me know in any way. We walked on, past the botanical gardens, and we came upon some tamarind trees with ripe tamarinds on them; the tamarinds were hanging very high up on the trees and so my brother picked up stones and threw them at the fruits, hoping to knock some down, the way we would have done if we had been schoolchildren. He succeeded, we ate the tamarinds; they were not good, they were not bad, they were just tamarinds. We did not say anything then. We walked past the jail; he did not tell me if he had been in it, that time when he had been in trouble. He did not seem to notice it at all. We walked over to the grounds of his old school. It did not seem to have any memories for him; he noticed that it was dilapidated, he wondered why children were sent to a school with holes in the building. It was there he found the fruit of a mahogany tree, something we had both seen before, the fruit of a mahogany tree, but it was a marvel to us then, so perfectly shaped like a pear, the Northern Hemisphere fruit, not the avocado pear, but hard like the wood of the tree from which it comes. I brought it back to the Vermont climate with me and placed it on a windowsill, and one day when I looked, it had opened quietly, perfectly, into sections, revealing an inside that was a pink like a shell that had been buried in clean sand, and layers upon layers of seeds in pods that had wings, like the seeds of a maple. I did not know until then that the seeds of the mahogany tree were like that. We then walked past the Recreational Grounds, the public grounds where major public events are held. He pointed to a pavilion and told me that when he was a student at his school, he and a friend used to take girls under there and have sex (âMahn, me used to bang up some girls under thereâ). We walked back to my motherâs house.
I returned to my own home in Vermont with my children. I spoke to my brother, the one who was sick with HIV; I spoke to my brother, the middle one; I spoke to my mother. I never spoke to my oldest brother; there is no clear explanation for this, his story is another big chapter and he, too, can neither speak it nor write it down. My youngest brother, the sick one, had moved into the little room that had been built for him; my mother was very pleased that she had built it. He got stronger and stronger. Over the telephone my mother told me that he was very well, so well he might go to
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