A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry

My Brother Jay, A Trilogy

187 It Kept on Burning My Brother Jay, A Trilogy Nagueyalti Warren I. In the Eighties, My Brother Jay Mamma says the worst has happened. It’s morning and daddy is fixing his eggs in the little black skillet. Mamma’s eyes are red and swollen. She has not combed her hair. She looks like she doesn’t care. Frying eggs spit grease on the chrome stove. Daddy’s jaw is set. His ears go back. Deserved it, daddy says. Damned son-of-a-bitch! Mamma drops her juice glass, crashing, blue splinters on the floor. That’s my child you talking ’bout. My son, and I ain’t no bitch you son-of-a-bastard. They don’t see me standing near the toaster in my flannel teddy bear jammies granny sent. I’m shaking and start to cry. Boy made his bed hard, now he got to lie in it, daddy turns from the sink, pops pepper on his eggs. Jimmy that’s your son you talking ’bout. He ain’t in the damn bed by himself. We in it too. We all affected. Mamma’s crying, her nose dripping. The hell you say. Daddy’s temple veins thump on his head. Mamma sobs, It’s a death sentence. It shouldn’t be a death sentence. Daddy slams down his fork, He sinned. Mamma shouts, We sinned too, but we didn’t die. We just got pregnant and got married. Is Jay dying? My voice shakes and they both jump and turn around to me. James died a long time ago, daddy mumbles, but mamma sighs and she pulls me to her coffee breath, He’s sick baby. I’m seven, my big brother is nineteen and daddy says he cannot come home and mamma says we 188 A Face to Meet the Faces are going to get him and bring him home and daddy can take his ratty ass and go straight to hell. We take the Greyhound to San Francisco through that gate that isn’t even golden but red, red as blood Jay spits when he tries to eat, like red snot running from his nose when I give him pepper pot soup. Daddy stays in the house but will not talk to Jay. Mamma says pay him no mind. Jay’s tears slide from his long black lashes. They look like jewels on his face. His cracked lips do not smile and he can’t sing songs off the radio, not even Rapper’s Delight. At night he sweats. I wipe his face with my Cyndi Lauper cloth until mamma makes me go to bed. I pray that Jay won’t die because he is gay. Daddy says all gay men die and go to hell. I think heaven is the happy place. Maybe I’m confused like when I thought the wafer was the white skin of Jesus and refused to eat it. The last day of school I come home to see Jay loaded into an orange and white ambulance, red top rolling round, doors slam, and it screeches away down Imperial Highway. Mamma crying, daddy holding her up but she sees me and grabs my hand. Get my keys. I’m going with my baby. Come on, mamma says. Daddy won’t come. You old stubborn fool! May your soul rot in your pious shit. Mamma backs out the truck and we follow the siren’s whine to the emergency room door. Mamma running almost falls but I catch her arm and we have to wait for Jay to get a room and daddy comes and we are waiting and Jay’s friend Jerome comes. Daddy jumps up and socks him in the mouth knocking out his front teeth and blood and the police take daddy away and Jerome is crying and mamma is crying and I am crying and Jay slips away at eight fifty two p.m. when it just starts to rain and lightning streaks the hospital windows, thunder rumbles, drowning out my mamma’s screams. 189 It Kept on Burning II. In the Eighties, My Son Jay He looks me dead in my face, my man face and tell me he don’t like girls except to be his good friends, hang out in the mall and all. I’m not seeing what he means, not knowing what the hell he is saying to me...