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I didn't know my mother was dying, even after I called home and talked to Grandma. For the last two years Mom had been in and out of hospitals, whenever her AIDS got really bad. But she had always recovered. Just a week earlier she had been hospitalized in Virginia, where she was visiting my aunt, which should have meant she'd most likely be okay for a while before the disease came around and hit her again. Maybe I should have been more worried -- in Virginia she had almost died. But I talked to her the day she got back and she sounded pretty good. So I wasn't expecting her to have to go back in anytime soon. But when I called home Grandma told me she was at Woodhull Hospital and she was pretty sick. That I should go visit.
On Sunday my uncle Osie picked me up at my place in Harlem in his little red Toyota. As we drove we exchanged a few words, mostly about my new computer security job with one of the city's largest brokerage firms. But it was pretty subdued. We'd both been through a lot of hospital visits and we were psyching ourselves up for this one. I was thinking how much I hate hospitals. I'd rather visit someone in jail ten times than go to a hospital once.
At Woodhull we went in past the security guards and took the elevator up. Walking down the narrow corridor toward the room I saw a guy lounging against the wall with two or three of his friends. Neighborhood thugs, same as the ones I'd been seeing all my life. Woodhull's in the Bedford Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, next to three different projects, Marcy, Tompkins, and Tilden, where a lot of tough-guy rap artists and big-time drug dealers come from. Home of the famous saying "Bed Stuy, Do or Die." Not far from Grandma's house, where Osie and I both grew up.
Osie and I walked by, almost brushing them -- this hallway was a kind of narrow side corridor, not one where you could make a wide detour around someone. Glancing into the open door of the room opposite, I noticed three or four other guys inside, visiting. They all looked like hoods.
On the car ride down from Harlem I had prepared myself to be encouraging. Mom was sick, but I planned to put on a happy face and try to help her make the best of it. The moment we walked into her room I saw I had been fooling myself. She was lying in bed with the sheets tangled around her thin, haggard body. As Osie and I stood there, she kicked feebly at the top sheet, as if she was trying to get it off her. She didn't look quite alive. Her eyes were closed and sunken. She seemed to drift in and out of consciousness. When we came up to the bedside she opened them halfway, but she wasn't looking at us or at anything else in particular either. I was thinking, This isn't really her; she's already gone. Her legs were moving again, trying to kick the sheet off. She was murmuring something in a low, hoarse whisper. When I put my ear down close to her I could hear her saying, "Mommy, Mommy."
I tried to talk to her. "This is Ejovi, Mom. It's Ejovi, your son." She seemed to understand. She asked us to take her to the bathroom. They had her wearing an adult diaper, but she wanted to go to the bathroom. We couldn't, though, she looked on the edge of death. We thought that if we tried to pick her up she would just die in our arms. Seeing her like this was enough to break your heart.
I watched, thinking to myself, This isn't really my mother I'm looking at. This isn't her. I was near tears. I always tell myself, You have to be strong. You can't show weakness. The moment you show weakness is the moment you become vulnerable. But I could feel the tears coming, so I walked to the entrance of the room, trying to look casual, my back to my mother and my uncle. And I started crying. I held my fisherman's hat to my eyes to wipe the tears, hoping Osie wouldn't notice.
Finally I turned back around and walked toward the bed. I'm sure Osie knew I was crying, though he didn't look at me or say anything. Instead, he had his head down near my mother, talking to her. She seemed to be listening, but she wasn't able to respond. I looked down, then had to turn and walk back to the door. She had been so beautiful, my mother. In high school she was a dancer and an actress. If she hadn't had me when she was sixteen maybe that's what she would have become. When I came back to the bed we talked for a while, Osie and I did. I knew she understood we were there and who we were, but all she could say was that she wanted to go to the bathroom. She was moving her arms and feet, kicking off the sheet we kept putting back. When finally we said we had to leave, she said, "No, no."
Osie is a quiet man, the kind who keeps his emotions to himself. Maybe we both have those genes. Somehow we both got it ingrained in us that there's no point in displaying your feelings, especially low feelings, the kind that will bring other people down. I was thinking, I can't stand seeing my mother like this, in this awful place. I was in a state of shock, numbed. But Osie's grief was coming out in anger ...
Excerpted from Hacker Cracker: A Journey from the Mean Streets of Brooklyn to the Frontiers of Cyberspace by David Chanoff, Ejovi Nuwere All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
