CHARLES STEPHENS
The Etiquette for Grieving Men
The limo pulls up to the church with just the two of us seated in the back. No words or glances are exchanged between us. I told him, my father, that I could drive my own car, but he insisted I ride with him to the funeral. This is the first time I have seen him in 2 years. He looks out the window. And I look at emails from work on my phone. I reach for the door, but he does not budge.
“Service starts at 11,” I say.
He turns toward me.
“For a long time I thought you must have put me down,” he smiles. “But you wouldn’t do that? Would you?”
“Put you down?”
“Like, you gave up on us.”
I got the call Monday. That was when dad told me Jimmy had passed. “I’ve been trying to get you,” he said, which was how he began all of our conversations, needing to remark that we were not regularly in communication. He waited for me to ask how, and realizing that I would not, continued, his voice lowering. “Heart attack.”
My earliest memory of Jimmy, before things fell apart, was one day he found me playing with these two old Barbie Dolls that I stole from my neighbor next door. I was 5 then, and he was 16. He kneeled down in front of me and took one of the dolls from my hand.
“Hey little brother. Whatever you do, make sure dad doesn’t see you doing this.” This was our first secret as brothers.
I was 10 when everything came undone. I was at my father’s shop answering the phone, when I heard them come in arguing.
“Negro, turn around when I’m talking to you.”
Though he was talking to Jimmy I also turned around.
“You a damn alcoholic. Showing up here like this. Disrespecting my place of business.”
“I’m not drunk”
“Don’t lie to me boy. I bust my ass trying to keep this shop going. And this what you do?”
Jimmy turned around to look at my father. His eyes were small, red and tired. They both wore the same dark blue uniform with their names in cursive on the far right side. My father’s nostrils flared and his chest bumped against Jimmy.
“I’m not lying. You always coming down on me. You treat everyone around you like you some kind of God and we should tremble in your presence. Well, you ain’t my God.”
“I don’t know where you came from. You didn’t take nothing after me. And you certainly don’t take after your mother.”
“Fuck you.” Jimmy said. “Fuck you.”
My fingers gripped my chair. The two of them faced each other. Then my father grabbed him by his collar like he was going to hit him. But Jimmy was too fast and he shoved him onto the ground. Before my father could get up, Jimmy broke off into a run.
“If he comes back around here, I’m going to kill him.”
The last time I talked to Jimmy he asked if he could borrow 20 dollars. He was staying with dad in the house we grew up in. He waited for me on the porch, smoking a cigarette. I had not seen him in over three years. Though he was only 37 he looked closer to 50.
“Thank you for doing this little brother.”
I reached into my pocket and fished out 2 flimsy 10-dollar bills. He put his cigarette out and stuck it between his left ear like a pencil.
“It’s no problem Jimmy,” I said. “Just take care of yourself.”
As I stepped off the porch to walk toward my car, he started back up.
“I love you Brian.”
I stopped.
“You know dad never told me he loved me. I doubt he told you that either. I guess he wanted to make us strong. Make us tough.”
I started to speak, but he cut me off.
“What he used to say to us? I have to be hard on you so the white folks don’t get you. It’s ok little brother. You don’t have to say ‘I love you’ back.” He pulled his cigarette from his ear and lit it, and I watched the smoke float from his mouth and into the sky until it disintegrated into nothingness.
The crowd starts to scatter around the entrance of the church. A flock of aunties adorned in their black hats to match their black outfits try to look inside the limo to see what we were doing. One begins to tap on the window.
“Dad,” I finally say to him, “you squeezed us too hard. Jimmy was split wide open. It was too much. That is why I stayed away.”
My pen slides out from my right pocket. I grab it and tuck it behind my ear. My father turns toward me. He looks uncertain.
“Ain’t easy for a black man in this world. I wanted you to survive.”
He pulls a handkerchief from his pocket and wipes his eyes. I look away as if I’m witnessing something indecent.
“Dad, I think, I think I’m going to head inside.” I extend my hand toward him as if I will pat his shoulder but my hand falls just before I reach his arm.
I step outside the limo and steady myself as I walk onto the curb. The aunties swarm toward me. I get about half-way to the entrance to the church before I turn around and see the door still closed. I walk back toward the limo and open the door and sit back down.
“Jimmy knew I loved him, didn’t he? He knew?”
I nod my head.
“I believe he did. In his own way. Deep down. I believe so. He knew.”
Then my father opened the door, and the two of us walk into the funeral, father and son.
Charles Stephens is an Atlanta-based writer and founder of The Counter Narrative Project (CNP). He is the co-editor of the anthology Black Gay Genius: Answering Joseph Beam’s Call (Vintage Entity Press) and co-editor of the forthcoming collection Race, Justice, and HIV: Visions for a Society Without Bars (Springer Press). He has been a 2022 Tin House Winter Workshop and 2022 Hurston/Wright Workshop attendee. His writings have appeared in the anthologies For Colored Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Still Not Enough: Coming of Age, Coming Out, and Coming Home and If We Have to Take Tomorrow. He has also contributed to Atlanta Magazine, Lambda Literary Review, Advocate, Creative Loafing, Georgia Voice, and AJC. In 2017, he was a recipient of the Christopher Hewitt Award for Drama. Stephens is a graduate of Georgia State University.