My Brother by Jamaica Kincaid Read Free Book Online

nailed together with one opening, which was the door. The structure that my sick brother had lived in resembled an actual house; it had three windows and the windows had working shutters, it had a door that could be bolted. When my brother went to the hospital because he was so sick, the one living in the galvanized house immediately moved into the sick boy’s place and my mother could not and would not tell him to move back to his old structure. These two brothers did not get along; I was told this, they did not get along, as if it were an exception, as if usually the people in this family got along except for those two. It was my mother who told me that they did not get along, and she gave me an example of their disagreement. The brother living in the room made of old galvanize is an electrician and he has many valuable tools, which he kept in his room; at the height of my sick brother’s drug addiction, he would go into his brother’s room and remove tools, which he would then sell. My brother the electrician, after warning his brother not to steal from them. The middle grown-up male child no longer speaks to her; it has been years since he has spoken to her in even so much as the tone of voice he would use for giving directions to someone he just met on the street, someone he has never seen before. If he is forced to speak to her, his voice is full of hatred and despair. He has told me he does not recognize the sound of his own voice when he speaks to her. He calls me up to tell me he is sorry he never sympathized with me when I told him how awful she had been to me. He says to me, Mom is evil, you know, as if he had never said it to me before, but he says it to me every time we speak, as if it is a new discovery to him.
    After he was dismissed from the hospital my brother went back to my mother’s house and slept in her bed with her. He had no place to go, not even a bed of his own, and so he went to his mother’s house and slept in her bed with her. There was nothing wrong with that. It was decided that the son coming home from the hospital should move into her bed because his old house, which was behind hers, was too drafty. I could not understand this, because what kind of draft exists in a place that is hot all the time? There was another reason for him going to live with her. The oldest of her three sons had been living in the other shack behind her house, and his living quarters were really just pieces of galvanize all nailed together with one opening, which was the door. The structure that my sick brother had lived in resembled an actual house; it had three windows and the windows had working shutters, it had a door that could be bolted. When my brother went to the hospital because he was so sick, the one living in the galvanized house immediately moved into the sick boy’s place and my mother could not and would not tell him to move back to his old structure. These two brothers did not get along; I was told this, they did not get along, as if it were an exception, as if usually the people in this family got along except for those two. It was my mother who told me that they did not get along, and she gave me an example of their disagreement. The brother living in the room made of old galvanize is an electrician and he has many valuable tools, which he kept in his room; at the height of my sick brother’s drug addiction, he would go into his brother’s room and remove tools, which he would then sell. My brother the electrician, after warning his brother not to steal from him, ran a live wire around the perimeter of his room and did not tell anyone. A puppy that had been a parting present to my friend who was moving to St. Vincent ran into the live wire and was electrocuted. My mother said she was sure that one brother had not meant to kill the other, that he would not have used wires that carried current strong enough to do so.
    This was the home my brother was discharged to. He went