My Brother by Jamaica Kincaid

his life. I went to the grocery store in the little village to buy something, and when I told Pete, the grocer, that my brother had died, he told me how sorry he was and he said that he was sure that his wife, Debby, would be sorry to hear it, too. Everyone I told that my brother had just died said how sorry they were, they would say this, “I’m sorry,” and those two words became so interesting to hear: everyone tried to say them with an emphasis that they hoped would convey the sincerity of their feelings; they really were sorry that this person they did not know was dead, that this person they would not have liked at all (I knew this, for they would have found him charming, he was so good-looking, he could remember to have good manners when it suited him, when he wanted to get something, but really in the end he would have found their devotion to the routine, the ordinariness of pure, hard work, devoid of satisfaction, yet he would not have quarreled with them, he would only have done everything he knew how to accentuate to them the futility, the emptiness of the thing called life, the thing called living—they would not have liked him). But these words, “I’m sorry,” which sometimes are said with a real depth of feeling, with true sincerity, sometimes just out of politeness, are such a good thing to hear if you are in need of hearing them, and just then I was in need of hearing those words, “I’m sorry,” “I am so sorry.” I did not love my brother, I did not like my brother, I was only so sorry that he had died, I was comforted to hear other people say that they were sorry that he had died. And I was full of admiration for the people who could say this: “I’m sorry,” for they said it with such ease, they said it as if they were only breathing.
    When I saw him for the last time still alive, though he looked like someone who had been dead for a long time and whose body had been neglected, left to rot—when I had last seen him and he was still alive, I had quarreled with him. I had gone to see him one weekend, leaving my family to spend the Thanksgiving holiday by themselves. My brother, the one who is a merchant on Saturdays in the market, had called to say Devon was not doing very well, Devon was sinking, Devon was going down. That was just the way he said it: not doing very well, sinking, going down. For the sickeningly floriferous thrush growing in his throat, a doctor had prescribed something; the pharmacist placed thirty tablets of it into a bottle so small I could hide it in the palm of my hand and the bottle could not be detected; the bottle of that medicine cost so much that I could not pay for it then; nor could I pay for the other medicines I needed, medicines for pain, not medicines to ease pain but medicines to make you not feel anything at all. I could not pay for any of it with cash, I could pay for it only with credit; and in that way, though not solely in that way, his illness and death reminded me again and again of my childhood: this living with credit, this living with the hope that money will come reminded me of going to a grocer whose name was Richards, not the one who was a devout Christian whom later we went to, for the grocers named Richards, whether they had religious conviction or not, charged us too much anyway and then forced us to pay our debts no matter how unable my parents were to do so; my parents had more children than they could afford to feed, but how were they to know how much food or disease, or anything in general, would cost, the future never being now; only it actually comes, the future, later.
    And when I saw my brother for the last time, alive, in that way he was being alive (dead really, but still breathing, his chest moving up and down, his heart beating like something, beating like something, but what, but what, there was no metaphor, his heart was beating like his own heart, only it was beating barely), I