Malcolm Isn’t Going to Be a Plumber

I’m starting to realize that my love for Eleanor isn’t really love. I mean, I love her and she’s beautiful and she’s so smart and she wants to be Jamaica’s first female prime minister. I love all of that. I love her bracelets and her ankles and her eyes. I love her jokes. I love how she’s got all these plans but still has that relaxed Jamaican no-problem attitude. But for all that love, I’m really just looking for a way out of where I am. She deserves better. She’s a human, not a door.

This week she brings her big sister, Judy, with her everywhere. I like Judy, but she makes me feel inferior—more inferior than usual. Could be because she’s twenty. Could be because she’s already married and has a kid. A life. Here in paradise.

“You staying longer than a few days this time?” Judy asks.

“I think we go back Friday,” I say. “Longer than usual.”

“You’re lucky you get to travel so much!”

I look at Eleanor. “Does she know what’s going on?”

Eleanor nods.

I look back at Judy. “He’s not getting better.”

“I know,” she says. “I’m sorry.”

Eleanor reaches out for my hand and holds it. I want to tell Judy about my plan to live here and be a beach bum and help out in any way I can, but I don’t. It’s laughable, really. All of a sudden, it’s just laughable.

“Whatchya going to do when he dies?” Judy asks.

I take a few breaths. No one has ever asked me this before. People usually tell me what I’m going to do when he dies. “I don’t know. I want to move here. Never leave.”

“You’d move from America to here?”

“Yeah.”

Eleanor says, “He’s not like the tourists, Judy. I keep telling you that.”

“Whatchya going to do here, though? You fish? You build? What skills do you have, you know?”

“Haven’t thought of that yet,” I say. “I could take over my dad’s business, maybe.” It just came to me. I don’t mean it.

“You could always learn a trade,” Eleanor says. “Judy’s husband is a plumber.”

Judy smiles with pride.

“I don’t know,” I say again. I’m not going to be a plumber, no matter how much I love the flush toilet.

I want an older sister like Judy. I want someone to challenge my dumb ideas and tell me to shut up when I sound stupid.

I excuse myself while we approach the resorts and I run into the water. Negril beach is shallow for a long time before you get to a place you can really dive in. I run to it until my quads burn and then dive. I open my eyes underwater and let the salt rinse them. I love the stinging feeling. Clears my sinuses. Clears my ears. Clears my head.

I picture Dad’s memorial service and who’s really going to be there, you know? Me. Me and who? Marla and Gottfried. And maybe my nightmare aunt. Dad doesn’t talk to his other siblings. Told me two of them disappeared from the family decades ago. What a waste.

If I had a brother, I’d call him every other day. If I had a sister, I’d call her on the days I didn’t call my brother. Just for the connection. Watching Eleanor and Judy—even when Judy tells Eleanor that she’s doing everything wrong—makes me see how alone I’m about to be. Eleanor knows how to tell Judy to hush up and leave her alone. Probably knows how to hug her and help her when she cries, too.

I’ll never have that.

I love Eleanor because I’m alone in the world. And that’s no reason to love anyone. I need someone my age to share the burden. It’s such a big burden and no one over thirty can seem to see that I walk around with it every single day. So concerned with my grades or my eating lamb chops to stop and really think about what it’s like to have the only living human I’m connected to dying, right in front of me.

You wonder why I’m so uptight about entitled white culture? It’s not just that I live here half the time and see real poverty. It’s not just the snack baskets in first class. It’s because entitled white culture encourages those inside it to never look outside their own fucking worlds. We blow everything off because we’re so concerned with looking good we can’t just feel. My own fucking grandparents can’t stop for a minute and understand what I’m going through.

You can’t fill that hole with a fucking lamb chop.