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Baby Brother |
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| This Portrait is very mosaic-like isn't it? Red face, blue sleepers, black hair; that's all I remember of my baby brother. He brought a lot of body and soul to our thinning bones and empty cupboards; and warmth to the freezing cold hallways that lead to unhinging storm doors. We could barely even afford the milk and sugar that coated our bread for the first few years of our lives. But little Gerry's heart and soul bore the riches of heaven to us. Then Sudden Infant Death Syndrome proved stronger than his sore eczemic body. He died in March of 1978 at the age of eight months. A friend of the family, totally grey from sniffing so much glue (a popular pastime on Prescott Street in the seventies), came over to smash his crib down to wooden bars and mattress springs. The painful sight of it withered my mother to tears. |
Mom never liked the way the police handled him. They whipped his small body out of the crib like a rag doll and threw him in a potato sack. His little head slapped against the floor with a dehumanizing thud. *Hey mister! That's a human being you're mishandling there, my little brother.* We don't know where he's buried. We couldn't even afford a headstone. But we know exactly where his heart and soul are.
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