I WATCHED YOUR BACK until I squeezed a mere figment of you with my eyes. I wanted, too, more than anything, to go town with you, but mummy said, “Not today.” So I had to send you away all by yourself. Did you feel a kind of way about it? I felt bad about the whole situation and I wondered about you and, as I did so, mummy caught my cherry pout, pricked her ears when my teeth gnashed and grunted at me to show her disapproval. So I folded my arms in defiance and that made her even more furious. The woman proceeded to pack me up with all sorts of chores that did not keep my mind off the fact that she wouldn’t allow me to gallivant but made me want to trade her in for your mother.
Your mother wasn’t as tight as mine. She made sure your pocket was flush. You didn’t even spend a bad cent. Something you always boasted—Metna taught me well; a pinch here and there for ground provisions, herbs and spices, fresh fruits and vegetables, meat and fish. And if you stretched Metna’s money the right way, we had enough crisp Elizabeths and change left over for one ten-dollar fried rice, two orange Fantas and the snow-cone vendor.
I hope you binged for two in my memory as I pined without you. The very thought of what you could be eating made me resent mummy even more. I was stooped over a tub like some blinking washerwoman.
I couldn’t help but think of our walks up Scott’s Row—so many windows to shop with our own eyes, longing for what we couldn’t afford. We’d drool over the shimmering treasures in velvet boxes and test almost all the scents in psychedelic bottles. And the latest clothing and shoes…oh my goodness! Couldn’t help ourselves at all, and sighed aloud to each other every time, “Boy, when I start working.” But you, Brandon, you would say, I’ll buy you so and so for your birthday, with the kindest of smiles on your face. You know—the one where the eyes sparkled like the sea in moonlight. That alone told me you meant what you said. And when you could afford to, you always came through for me. Otherwise, you knew a plain old card would suffice. That was the kind of friend you were.
*
We were tighter than a pair of leggings. So much so that that same night when you became sick, I came down with a roasting fever. I guess I was delirious, because I thought you were with me in the shower, skinning your teeth at my nakedness. Mummy couldn’t hear you giggling at me, and even though I complained to her about your presence she didn’t seem to care that you were there. And she kept saying to me when I pointed you out in the corner, “Hush, nuh, gyal! Stop your foolishness right now. Brandon home in Metna’s warm bed.” But I knew you more than she! I knew myself that I smelled Metna’s perfume on your skin. For the life of me, I could never mistake your bony structure, butter skin, those yellow eyeballs, or those lean, freckled cheeks, either.
We skylarked with one another in the shower while mummy sobbed at my delirium. Every time I talked to you, she shoved me under the cold pipe water, trying hard to shut me up. But I did not know then that her mind was on you, too. And when the strobe lights from the screaming ambulance flashed through the bathroom window across our faces, mummy whispered a prayer, holding my hands in hers. You departed right then just the way you came and my fever, too, subsided.
I didn’t know then why you came to me at that jumbie hour, when I was naked and rambling, except for the fact that you once teased that you kept late nights like Dracula.
Morning came, though, and I discovered the reason behind mummy’s long face and wet-stained eyes. Daddy didn’t bawl, but his nose ran. You were like a son to them—a brother to me. Little wonder why I buckled under the news of your passing. Mummy told me everything, from when you came to when you left last night.
Metna cried, too. All those times she nearly strangled you for one thing or another, like any good mother, was so you could do better than she had in life. She told me so after I lambasted her in my grief.
I know now that you came to say goodbye, to play one last prank, to crack up yourself at my expense before you left. Gwan!
