Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson Page A

into the world two days before July ended but didn’t arrive until August. When my mother, crazed from her long labor, asked what day it was, my father said, It’s August . It’s August now. Shhh, Honey Baby, he whispered. August is here.
    You scared? I asked my brother, reaching across the table to touch his hand, remembering suddenlya photo we had back in SweetGrove, him a new baby on my lap, me a small girl, smiling proudly into the camera.
    A little. But I know with Allah all things are possible.

    We were quiet. Old white couples surrounded us, sipping coffee and staring off. In the back somewhere, I could hear men speaking Spanish and laughing.
    I’m too young to be someone’s auntie.
    You’re gonna be too old to be somebody’s mama if you don’t get busy. My brother grinned. No judgment.
    No judgment is a lie.
    Just saying it’s time to stop studying the dead and hook up with a living brother. I know a guy.
    Don’t even.
    I tried not to think about the return to my father’s apartment alone, the deep relief and fear that came with death. There were clothes to be donated, old food to throw out, pictures to pack away. For what? For whom?
    In India, the Hindu people burn the dead and spread the ashes on the Ganges. The Caviteño people near Bali bury their dead in tree trunks. Our father had asked to be buried. Beside his lowered casket, a hill of dark and light brown dirt waited. We had not stayed to watch it get shoveled on top of him. It was hard not to think of him suddenly waking against the soft, invisible satin like the hundreds of people who had been buried in deep comas only to wake beneath the earth in terror.

    You gonna stay in the States for a minute?
    A minute, I said. I’ll be back for the baby though. You know I wouldn’t miss that.
    As a child, I had not known the word anthropology or that there was a thing called Ivy League. I had not known that you could spend your days on planes, moving through the world, studying death, your whole life before this life an unanswered question . . . finally answered. I had seen death in Indonesia and Korea. Death in Mauritania and Mongolia. I had watched the people of Madagascar exhume the muslin-wrapped bones of their ancestors, spray them with perfume, and ask those who had already passed to the next place for their stories, prayers, blessings. I had been home a month watching my father die. Death didn’t frighten me. Not now. Not anymore. But Brooklyn felt like a stone in my throat.
    You should come out to Astoria for a meal soon, a clean meal. Alafia can sit at the table, just not allowed to stand at the stove and cook. But I got us. It’s all good.
    A minute passed. I miss him, he said. I miss you.
    In my father’s long, bitter last days of liver cancer, we had taken turns at his bedside, my brother coming into the hospital room so I could leave, then me waking him so he could go home for a quick shower and prayer before work.
    Now my brother looked as though he was seven again, not thirty-one, his thick brow dipping down, his skin too clear and smooth for a man.
    I wanted to comfort him. It’s good that he . . . but the words wouldn’t come.
    Allah is good, my brother said. All praise to Allah for calling him home.
    All praise to Allah, I said.

    My brother drove me to the subway, kissed my forehead, and hugged me hard. When had he become a man? For so long, he had been my little brother, sweet and solemn, his eyes open wide to the world. Now, behind small wire-rimmed glasses, he looked like a figure out of history. Malcolm maybe. Or Stokely.
    I’ll be by day after tomorrow to help you out, cool?
    I’m good!
    What—you got a man over there you don’t want me to meet?
    I laughed.
    Still doing the Devil, I bet.
    I slapped at him and got out of the car. Love you.
    Love you, too, August.

    On the subway heading back to the old apartment, I looked up, startled to see Sylvia sitting