Brother, I'm Dying - Edwidge Danticat [43]
“What would you do if you weren’t driving a cab?” I asked, watching his grip tighten on the wheel.
He stared ahead at the busy street as though it were a screen onto which he could project his life. Had his parents wished him to be a doctor, lawyer or engineer? A farmer? A fighter? Had he nursed some other dream for himself?
“If I could do something else,” my father finally said, “I’d be either a grocer or an undertaker. Because we all must eat and we all must die.”
PART TWO
FOR ADVERSITY
A friend loves at all times,
and a brother is born for adversity.
PROVERBS 17:17
Brother, I Can Speak
In the summer of 1983, when I was fourteen and Bob was twelve years old, Uncle Joseph came to New York for a medical checkup. Knowing that we couldn’t wait to see him, my father took Bob and me to the airport to meet him. My mother had insisted that we wear our crisply ironed new clothes, a bright orange sundress for me and a pair of dress pants and an immaculate white T-shirt for Bob. It seemed to me that my parents wanted my uncle to see us at our best, perhaps even to show him that they were taking good care of us, that they’d washed the proverbial part of us that he and Tante Denise might have left dirty. As we stood in the waiting area, I shifted my weight nervously, all the while wondering whether my uncle wanted to see us as much as we wanted to see him.
Emerging from Customs and Immigration, Uncle Joseph looked slightly different than I remembered. He’d gained some weight, and his rounded belly made him appear shorter. Bob and I both ran to him and wrapped our arms around his body. I was nearly as tall as he was now and it felt odd to reach his shoulder, to look him so easily in his eye. He tapped our faces and smiled, then pointing to our father, who was standing a few feet away, walked over to say hello.
My father wrapped his arms around my uncle’s shoulders, embracing him, then he took a few steps back to formally shake his hand. Grabbing Uncle Joseph’s suitcase, Papa commented that it was heavy.
“I’ll let Bob take care of it,” my father said. “He’s nearly a man now.”
My uncle nodded and put his hands together, confirming that it was a good idea. The suitcase had a long strap and our father handed it to Bob, who, gawky but strong, pulled it forward easily. As Bob managed the bag, I found myself walking between Uncle Joseph and my father, with both their arms around me as if it were the most normal thing in the world.
“How’s Denise?” my father asked.
My uncle mouthed, “On ti jan malad.”
I was amazed that I could still read his lips more easily than my father could.
“What did he say?” asked my father.
“Tante Denise is a bit sick,” I said.
“She functions,” my uncle mouthed, “but struggles with the diabetes. And now her blood pressure is high too. Like mine.”
“Why don’t you bring her to see a doctor here?” my father asked.
“Li pa vle,” my uncle said.
“She doesn’t want to,” I said to my father.
“She relies heavily on her herbs,” my uncle said. “Her country medicine.”
It was a humid afternoon. When we reached my father’s cab, Bob, sweating, stopped and waited for Papa to open the trunk. I stepped aside, joining Bob by the car. My father paused and looked into my uncle’s eyes.
“Do you see your children?” my father blurted out as though he’d been waiting a long time to say it. “Do you see how much they’ve grown?”
My father decided it was best that I take my uncle to his appointment at Kings County Hospital the next day. Unlike anyone else, I could now doubly interpret my uncle, both from silence to voice and Creole to English. Sitting next to him in the packed waiting room of the ear, nose and throat clinic, with the glossy posters of decaying necks and lungs looming over us, I saw his cancer come to life in the men and women around us. Some, like him, had had radical laryngectomies and couldn’t speak at all. Others had had partial laryngectomies and spoke in breathless whispers by pressing fingertips against various points along the neck. Leaning