The Blue Jacket
The Blue Jacket
Today is my brother Stephen’s birthday.
I close my eyes and feel the cold December breeze drifting through my open back door. For a moment, I imagine I am back—back 64 years ago in my mother’s kitchen.
I hear pans rattling. Aunty Stella calls out, “Pegotsa, come eat breakfast.”
But I’m five years old, and I don’t know where my mother is. How can I eat?
My father comes in. “Hey, Stella, I bought this for her so she won’t be jealous of the new baby,” he says, nodding toward me as he holds up a crumpled bag with his reddened, chapped hands.
For me?
I slip quietly into the next room and open the bag. Inside is a periwinkle-blue jacket with a fur collar, fur cuffs, and deep pockets. Wow, I think—so much nicer than the hand-me-downs I always get from Aunty Stella’s tenants. I rub the soft fur lining against my cheek.
Dad said I’d be jealous. Why would I be jealous? What does that even mean?
I find out a few days later when they bring home a cooing bundle with big blue eyes—blue like my jacket. A winter baby born to hibernate, sleeping long hours.
As we grow up, I cannot resist his charms. Jealousy fades; affection takes over. We become co-conspirators—sharing a couple of rooms upstairs, leaning out the window smoking cigarettes, laughing at the rain falling on us.
He never outed himself, but I always knew—the way you know things about the people you love. The signs were there: a party of beautiful gay men dancing together, joyful, untouched yet by what was coming.
Most of them are dead now.
1982. Just before the AIDS epidemic.
He got hepatitis in college and quit school. I never knew exactly why—maybe he didn’t fit in, maybe the world didn’t leave space for him to.
Then his friends began dying one by one.
He called me sobbing. “Jack died. He was buried in a rented coffin, in a rented suit, at the old funeral parlor in EB—the only place that would wake him. No church would hold a funeral. A priest had to come to the parlor to say Mass.”
I cried with him. It was the beginning.
“How about you? How are you feeling?” I asked.
“I am fine. Doing great,” he would say. His mantra for the next few years—a shield to spare me from the ugly truth until the ugly truth could no longer be hidden.
It revealed itself on his beautiful, flawless face: little eggplants sprouting. Kaposi Sarcoma.
“We have to talk,” he said.
He started chemotherapy. I sat by his side as the infusion dripped into his veins. We talked about gay rights, The Boys in the Band, prejudice, the world.
“Things will change because of this,” he said.
“Yes,” I answered.
“It’s a silver lining,” he told me.
A silver lining?
A year later, he was gone. March 17, 1995.
Triple therapy was released onto the market just five months later, in August 1995— Activists had pressed the FDA for years to move faster, to cut through the red tape, to recognize the emergency as it truly was.
If the drugs had been released sooner… would he be here?
Why him? Why did he go so soon?
Eyes closed, I ask, “Why did you go so soon?”
A whisper:
“I took one for the team.”
I feel again the soft lining of the blue coat meant to shield me from a winter I didn’t yet understand. I once thought the gift was the coat.
Now I know the gift was him.
Happy birthday to Stephen ❤️
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