Angel Delara
The hard wood of the bench is uncomfortable. It feels unforgiving beneath my butt as I sit there, slouched forward so that my lower back is pressed against the gray, cement wall. On either side of me, my palms are flat on the seat, while my fingers are curled over its edge, gripping it not too tightly. Affixed to the wall above me there is a metal box with a metal cord attached to a large, plastic receiver. A phone. A sad, sad reminder to me of my brother Steve. I feel like I let him down.
323 – 335… As if by instinct, I start to recite Steve’s cell phone number in my mind, the first (and for a long time only) number I had memorized when I came to prison almost four years ago. But I stop. It’s too much. The desperate urge to reach up and dial, to feel the familiar bit of anxiety I do while the phone rings and I’m waiting for Steven to answer; the equally desperate urge if only to “Say (my) name after the tone” so at least he knows I tried. I can’t take it. Any of it. My dear older brother Steve is dead now, and the number I remember isn’t his any more. It’s no one’s. No one will answer. My stomach in knots.
Suddenly my fingers’ hold of the wooden bench tightens, my throat constricts and I can hardly breathe. I want to cry, but I don’t. Maybe I just can’t. Just as I have gripped the bench beneath me, shame has gripped me awfully tight at my core. I sit there, sad, lonely without my brother, and thoughts of him and me consume me. and for a while, I hang my head, wallowing there in regret that I wasn’t better – much, much better – to Steve, my brother.
He called me every day when I was home. At some point in my 50 years, though, I had become extremely self-absorbed, and didn’t appreciate those calls. Looking back, I’m not exactly sure how I got that way. Drinking and smoking PCP into my 40s didn’t help, I’m sure. Neither did my reckless insistence on sleeping primarily with married men because I feared commitment and heartbreak. Maybe growing up gay in a super-macho, gang infested neighborhood, feeling outcast, or the feeling of abandonment I experienced early on when my parents divorced, took a lasting toll on me. I don’t know. The only certainty I have about it today is that I’m sickened and ashamed of how I treated those calls from Steve, like they weren’t important.
The phone would ring, I remember. Without fail, I’d recognize my brother’s number on the caller I.D., and I’d answer. My eyes would roll as I brought the phone to my ear, usually not in the mood to talk about nothing. I really didn’t like talking on the phone as it was, and Steve, after checking on my well-being, mostly just wanted to gossip.
I’d feel annoyed, like my precious time was being wasted. So once enough time passed (a couple of minutes or so) that it didn’t feel rude, I’d make up some excuse to hang up. I’d say that I was cooking, that I was dealing with someone else on the other line, or otherwise too busy to talk. When actually, I was most likely in a rush to get back to “The Young and the (Goddamned) Restless.”
Steve bought me a cell phone once. I didn’t want it. I told him I didn’t want it. but he insisted. He argued at length that it would be good to have in case of an emergency, that he worries and should always be able to reach me, that the line was free on his plan anyway, and so on. So, I relented and accepted Steve’s phone.
I rarely used it to call anybody for any reason. The longer I had it, in fact, the more I wondered why I kept it. it was all but worthless to me, junk of as much value as a hat to a pig. For I didn’t appreciate then that Steve hadn’t simply given me a cell phone. With it, he was trying to tell me that he would always be there for me, never more than a phone call away, and that he loved me. He cared for me.
Sadly, though, I maintained my selfish ignorance of Steve’s amazing message until I came to prison. I was fifty-six years old, already an old man by many accounts, facing a decade behind bars. In the blink of an eye, it seemed, I was gone from my simple, quiet life of soap operas and Ninety-Nine Cent stores, and thrust instead into a living nightmare. By far, this was the scariest experience of my entire life. Not once before had I feared being beaten or stabbed or raped, like I did now. I also feared that, at my age, ten years could be a life sentence, that I was doomed one way or another to die in prison. My bunk felt more to me like a coffin than a bed. And when I lay down at night, my mind and heart each raced wildly, and I was startled by how hopelessly alone I felt.
323 – 335… The first time I dialed Steve’s number – merely days in – my fingers shook terribly with nerves. Thankfully, he answered right away.
“Hi, Steve,” I tried to sound normal. I tried not to cry.
“Angel,” he stated, his rough voice sounding beautiful to me, like music to a deaf man who can miraculously hear again. “Are you okay?”
I lost it. I broke down and wept, openly and hysterically, every tear, every drop, every ugly line of snot its own painful account of fear, shame, regret, and loneliness. My big brother, knowing the wretched throe of incarceration himself, stayed on the line to hear them all. And so I began to understand the tremendous value of even a quick phone call.
That day Steve protected me from feeling alone and forgotten. His great love continued to protect me in that way, in fact, twice a week for the next two years. Then he lost his long, arduous battle with Hepatitis. He died. Gone. Jut like that.
It strikes me now that Steve never heard me say I’m sorry – for cutting him so short in the past; for not appreciating him like he absolutely deserved; for failing to protect him like he protected me; for often ignoring (at times even denying) what I meant to him, and what he meant to me.
Neither did Steve ever hear me say that I get it, which I do. I finally get it that we always needed each other. Now that he’s gone, of course. Now that I don’t have the phone he bought for me to keep close to him. Now that I’m stuck with words I’ll never get to say to him, but I desperately wish I could. Words like “I’m sorry.” Like “I love you” and “Thank you for everything.” Words like “Good-bye, Steve. I’ll miss you,” and “You were always wonderful brother to me” Yes, I finally get it, now that it’s too late.
I lift up my head. Tears wet my face. My fingers loosen their grip of the bench, and I am aware again of the uncomfortable sensation in my seat. As I stand now, I breathe in deeply, cooling my lungs. A certain calm washes over me. For a quick moment I struggle to remember why I sat here under this phone in the first place, but I shrug the mystery off. Right now, I’d rather think about Steve. His gorgeous, smiling face, and those words I’m stuck with, all settle in to rest in my heart where I keep them for now, where they will stay until I see my Big Brother again. I’m in no rush, of course. Just hopeful that when my time does come, I’ll get to see Steve again. I’ll get to say everything I should have said before, and make things right with him. I’m hopeful that I’ll get to finally be the happy, loving grateful little brother in eternity he always deserved from me down here on Earth.