The night my big brother died I dreamed I was arguing with him. In my dream he was telling me, “Sis, you’re blowin it!” and I said, “No, I’m not blowing it! You are!” Then he said, "No, you are!" and I shouted back, "No! You are!" It sounded like a couple of children bickering. But it didn’t feel like children and it didn’t feel like a dream. It felt so real that when I woke up my cheeks were flushed with frustration. Once again I was being lectured by my big brother. I shook my head and muttered, “I’m not blowin it! He’s the one who’s blowin it. He never listens to me.” Then I got my coffee and started my day. An hour or so later, I got the call. He had died that night, about the same time he entered my dreams. It’s just like him to get in the last word and leave me with a riddle I can’t solve. I spent the next few months with that argument playing on a loop in my head, silently quarreling with my dead brother. In the meantime I picked fights with the living. I launched a tirade at the cable company and berated the UPS delivery guy just to name a few. I thought if I could just be mad enough it would numb the pain. But anger as an anesthetic never really works. Eventually the pain crept in and it would surprise me when I least expected it. A trip to the doctor’s office triggered a flood of hot tears and a television commercial had me sobbing. Today I cried over burritos, my big brother Eddie’s burritos.
Of all of us, my brother was probably the best cook. He mastered “noodle soup” when he was just a kid and got better with age. When he was only eight, Eddie became chief cook and bottle washer for Kitty and me when our parents separated. We left our father behind in North Carolina and moved to Detroit with our mother. She wanted to find a factory job but the GI’s coming home from the war had taken those jobs. All she could find was a job as a waitress at the Yacht Club on Belle Isle. She worked split shifts, working a few hours at lunch then returning later for the dinner crowd. In between shifts she would “rest her eyes” on the sofa. Eddie’s job was to look after his sisters while Mom worked and to keep us quiet while she slept. He had his hands full with Kitty and me because at four and six years old we were pretty rambunctious. He got exasperated but never lost his temper. In all my life by brother never raised his hand to me or even his voice.
We lived in an apartment over the bar where Mom’s boyfriend worked. It was across the street from Belle Isle, a thousand acre park on an island in the Detroit River. We could see the park from our living room window and sometimes the temptation was just too much to resist. We’d sneak out and escape to Belle Isle while Mom was sleeping. We had to cross East Jefferson, which is a major thoroughfare that runs all along the Detroit River from St Clair Shores to Trenton. Eddie would skillfully navigate the busy street, dragging his little sisters behind him till we were safely on the other side. Next we crossed a long bridge before we reached our favorite spot, the fountain. The first time we saw it we were mesmerized by the majestic cascading water works. We'd never seen anything like it and we never got tired of looking at it. At the center of a huge marble pool, a circle of sea turtles gushed streams of glistening water at lions who sat perched on smaller bowls stacked above. Behind the lions was a cylindrical pool topped by cherubs riding dolphins. Held aloft by the cherubs was the centerpiece which sprayed water one hundred twenty five feet in the air. Everywhere streams of sparkling water spilled over the sides and sprouted from the mouths of sea creatures. Eddie would lift us up to sit on the rim and we’d splash in the water and stick our feet in the cool fountain. The water spray was everywhere and for three hillbilly kids on a hot summer day, it was heaven.
Some days we’d find our way to a building called the Aquarium that had carvings of strange sea creatures and two pretty maidens at the entrance. Inside it was like an underwater cavern, covered in iridescent, sea green glass tiles. Tanks filled with exotic fish lined the passages. It made you feel that you were actually swimming underwater with the fish. Eddie played tour guide reading the plaques on the displays to his wide eyes sisters. Next door to the Aquarium was a building that looked like an enormous bird cage called the Conservatory. It had rooms filled with strange and wonderful gardens. Some of the gardens were hot and tropical. Some were like the desert and some were filled with blossoming flowers that exploded in vibrant colors. Eddie loved explaining the different flowers and plants to his awestruck sisters. He loved leading us on adventures and his little sisters loved to tag along. He called us the Three Musketeers and it wasn’t till much later I found out that he wasn’t calling us candy bars.
Mom didn’t make a lot of money as a waitress and some days there just wasn’t enough left for food. On those days Eddie would take his shoe shine kit down Jefferson Avenue and shine shoes. Folks would say, “He sure knows how to put a shine on leather” but mostly he could tell a good story and put a smile on the customers’ faces. He’d come home “Proud as a Rockefeller” with his collection of coins and sometimes even a paper dollar. Then we’d all go down to the corner store for noodle soup and white bread. We’d eat real good that night and there would be no crying little girls to cajole. Maybe later we’d watch the Three Stooges on television and then we’d tidy up and wait for Mom to come home. We’d get her chair all ready and put her slippers next to it. Eddie found a little bell that we sat on the table. “Ring bell for service” the note he printed said. He had a way of making Mom smile even after a split shift and ten hours on her feet with heavy trays.
On nights when there was no noodle soup he tried to teach us, as my father taught him, to be good soldiers. But we were poor recruits. He’d try to soothe us by putting us to sleep with dreams of a feast. I can still hear him say, “You’re not really cold, tired or hungry, you just think you are. We’ll just make a game of it. We can pretend life is good. We’ll imagine that we’ve had a big dinner. We’ll pretend that we’re rich. We’ll pretend that we don’t have to be afraid.” My big brother, when there was no money for noodle soup he fed us on his dreams. He was the eternal optimist who thought he could charm the danger away. I thought he could too but he couldn’t. Our world was full of danger and there was plenty of reason to be afraid. Life took him away and I always felt less secure when it did.
Eddie didn’t like the city much. He didn’t like shoes or being inside all day and he missed the wildness and the freedom of the mountains. At school he got teased about his accent and often came home with a bloody nose. Then school sent both of us to something called the Open Air School where there were other hillbilly kids. To get there we had to ride a special bus past the Wonder Bread bakery and the Vernors factory. Early in the morning, the smell of the fresh bread mixed with the ginger of the ginger ale filled the air and the combination was oddly delicious. As we rode Eddie would entertain me with epic tales of heroic deeds. He treated me more like a little brother, teaching me how to be brave, how to hide my fear and how to hold my ground in a fight. I loved taking the special bus with him and being his co-conspirator. But even at the new school, Eddie managed to get bloody noses. He never started the fights but he never backed away from them either. Finally the school told my mother, “A boy needs his father” and my mother’s boyfriend, the bartender from the bar downstairs, agreed. That’s when they sent Eddie to live with our father, leaving little sister Kitty and me without our big brother. Years later when Eddie returned we had moved from the city to the suburbs and Mom had split with her bartender boyfriend and married my step-father. A few years after that Eddie was sent away again, only this time it was by the courts and Uncle Sam.
married a man who wore a suit and tie to the office. Shortly after the wedding vows he lost that job and bought a gas station. A decision Mom found intolerable. My step-father married a woman with two little girls but shortly afterwards he met her teenage son who challenged him for the role of man of the house. My step-father assumed that my brother would be the dutiful son and come to work at the gas station after school. But Eddie had other plans. He got a job at the local bowling alley where he was a celebrity after bowling a perfect game. He even went on the television show Bowling for Dollars. My step-father was a bowler and even belonged to a bowling league but he was not impressed with my brother’s accomplishments. I think he was jealous because Eddie was a better bowler and because he’d never bowled a perfect game. As punishment he insisted that Eddie pay for all his own expenses, even buying his own school clothes.
One night Eddie was out with his best friend and they saw a James Dean style leather jacket in the window of a dry cleaner. It was irresistibly cool. My brother wanted to be cool; He wanted to be part of the in crowd. But Eddie was wearing a coat that he’d outgrown the year before. The sleeves were too short and the shoulders too narrow. Eddie was humiliated and often went without a jacket rather than wear his old one. In a foolish moment they decided to steal the coat from the dry cleaners and were caught almost immediately by the small town police force. Eddie's friend was from a wealthy family and he got a wealthy person’s justice. His parents came to his defense and he was given probation. He went on to graduate from high school and attend college. My brother had no one to rush to his defense. Instead my step-father actually insisted on harsher punishment. My mother was overwhelmed by the situation and felt helpless to save her only son. So my teenage brother was given the choice of prison or military service. At seventeen Eddie enlisted in the US Army and at 18 he was in Vietnam.
After Eddie left Mom went back to working nights as a waitress. She never forgave my step-father for sending Eddie to Vietnam and home became an unhappy place. No one spoke about it but you could feel it in the air. That’s when my lifelong battle with “sick stomach” began. One day in 1964 the school nurse called and asked that someone pick me up because I had been vomiting. My brother was home on leave after Basic Training so he came to get me. I always felt safe when my big brother was home and I was relieved when I saw him pull up in front of the school. When I saw that he was driving my Mom’s old clunker I was embarrassed. Mom once had a fancy black 1962 Chevy Impala with red leather interior. But money was tight and my stepfather traded it in for an older model Ford that he was fixing up. The Ford had no heat and Mom nearly froze driving home from work in the icy Michigan winters. I quickly forgot all about being embarrassed when my brother stepped out of the car. He looked so handsome in his uniform that all the girls just swooned and no one noticed the car. I was anxious to talk to Eddie about things and the ride home would give me the perfect opportunity. I ran to meet him and climbed in the front seat. He said hello then asked me to duck down so that none of his friends would see me in the car. My feelings were a hurt but I ducked down and kept quiet. He was busy looking around at the neighborhood. He was smiling and waving at folks, showing off his uniform. He seemed to have forgotten all about me.
Now that I’m older I understand that his world changed when he was ripped from the classroom and sent to prepare for war. He must have been wondering what is jacket stealing friend was doing. He must have been wondering where he fit in or even if he still fit in. Maybe he realized how much that jacket actually cost him. But fourteen year old me didn’t understand any of that, I only knew he was embarrassed by me and we didn’t talk that day. I didn’t try to talk to him again that trip. He came home once more before he shipped out for Vietnam and before he left he gave Mom the money to buy school clothes for me. I was starting my freshman year in high school and Eddie told my Mom that my first impression was important. After he left Mom took me downtown to Hudson’s and we spent the day shopping for clothes. She helped me pick out a couple of new skirts, sweaters, some wool slacks and a kilt. I’d never gotten so many new outfits in my life. It made all the difference my freshman year. For decades I had no idea that the money for my new wardrobe came from my big brother. That my big brother didn’t forget about me. But that was just like Eddie. He seemed embarrassed by his kind heart and kept his good deeds secret. The boy without a jacket made sure I was not embarrassed by my clothes.
I adored my big brother. I thought he was the smartest person in the universe. So when he told me that my chocolate pudding was made out of squashed worms, I promptly handed him my dish. I didn’t want any squishy worms crawling around in my stomach. When I asked him to protect me from the hornets’ nest under the front porch, he told me that all I had to do was ignore them and they wouldn’t bother me. I believed him until five hornets stung my armpit so many times that I couldn’t lower my arm. When I ran to him for sympathy, he just laughed and said, “Sis, you just got to stop being afraid of everything.”
After the bee incident I stopped listening to Eddie and for most of my life I was terrified of bees. When my daughter was just an infant a honey bee held me hostage all day until my husband came home from work. I sat motionless in on the sofa, my daughter clutched to my breast in absolute terror. To this day I believe that I instilled terror in my little girl that day. She struggles with fear that she can’t define and blames me. I know in my gut that it happened that day in the living room and a honey bee did it.
A few years later it was the bumble bees that tormented me. The Carpenter Husband and I lived for a few months in the hills of West Virginia. The bumble bees in West Virginia are as big as yellow Volkswagens and just as slow. It didn’t matter to me how fast they were, I was scared silly. One day while we were walking through the meadow, we had to stop to answer natures call. As soon as I pulled my pants down and started to pee, a bee stung me on my behind. It kept stinging and stinging and stinging. I was hopping across the meadow, trying to escape the bee in my pants and peeing all over myself in the process. The Carpenter Husband was doubled over laughing. History repeats and again I’m being stung again and again by a bee and a man is laughing at me. When it was all over, I realized that the stings were not nearly as bad as the years I’d spent dreading them. The terror had lived for decades but the sting was gone in a flash. After that, I stopped being afraid of bees. They buzzed around all summer. Bumble bees and butterflies filled my kitchen. Eddie was right after all.
Noodle soup wasn’t Eddie’s only dish. He could cook up some tasty biscuits and gravy and he was king of the BBQ but after decades of living in Phoenix his real talent was preparing Mexican food. Once while I was visiting and before Kitty moved to Florida, Eddie invited both of us along with our spouses and kids to his house for a Mexican feast. It was the last time our families were all together. He spent the entire day in the kitchen, boiling the chicken, shredding the beef, making his special Frijoles and Eddie’s Drunk Beans. Then we all sat down to a table filled with authentic Mexican dishes and lots of bottles of ice cold beer. We filled our plates and started to eat. Maybe it was the cold beer or the spices in the food or maybe it was just one of those rare moments but we were a family again that night. The food was so delicious that we couldn’t stop eating but so hot that tears were streaming down our faces. We didn’t care; we just drank more beer to cool down and filled our plates again. We ate, we drank, we laughed and we cried. We sat around the table for hours, my disconnected family and shared one wonderful night of friendship, food and laughter. Only one night after all those years of the three of us living like orphans, scattered across the continent. One night of shared jokes and memories all thanks to my brother’s Mexican food and Eddie’s Drunk Beans.
My brother died of kidney disease. He was on dialysis but he never acted like a sick person. The last time I spoke to him he was shooting pool in a bar. It was crowded and noisy and I was upset with him for being so reckless. He should be at home, listening to the meditation tapes I sent him. He should be taking better care of himself. He should be careful. I lectured him. He ignored me and went back to his busy, messy life. He loved noise and people and had a real talent for making everything a celebration. With him, a simple dinner became a feast, a shopping trip became an African safari and just plain living became the adventure of a lifetime. My brother wanted to enjoy life, every moment. He had given enough of his time to sorrow and tragedy. He wanted to squeeze every ounce of joy from life before he was forced to give it back. He was often impatient with me for holding on to petty things. I’m prone to brood and hoard my hurt. He’d say “Let it go sis” or “Don’t sweat the small stuff” but I never could.
It seems that for years I’ve been on the “white diet”: yogurt, oatmeal, boiled eggs, and boiled potatoes. I am afraid of food, afraid of spice and color. I am afraid of my own life. So the last time I spoke to my big brother, I was hiding out and telling him to be careful. I told him that being alive could kill you. In the end it did. But he was alive until the moment he died. I’ve been playing dead for too long. I have been blowing it. My big brother was right. We looked at life differently. I could never let go of the pain and he was always hoping for the best. I only remembered being hungry but Eddie always imagined a feast.
I’m going out in the garden and to hell with the bees.