“Lead The Way” by Ofelia Brooks
I’m in Chicago, two hours ahead of my twin brother, Christopher, in California. At eleven at night, I brush my teeth and get into bed. Then our nighttime routine begins.
I keep myself awake for the next hour by scrolling through Twitter. Christopher settles on his couch and also scrolls social media. He itches and needs to distract himself. He plays a word in our game of Words With Friends.
It’s now midnight in Chicago. I listen to a podcast to stay awake and play Words With Friends back with Christopher. I flutter my heavy eyes and play a word. I keep refreshing to see when Christopher plays one back. He’s refreshing, too, playing word after word instead of succumbing to the itch.
I spend another hour alternating between fighting the sleep, losing, and waking up again. I’ve got to stay awake for Christopher.
Around two in the morning, my time, I can’t take it anymore. I give in to the slumber.
Back in California, it’s midnight. When the plays from me on Words With Friends cease, Christopher takes a scratch. He pours himself a small glass of Jameson and sugar-free ginger ale. He sips while he listens to a podcast and ignores his thoughts. He finishes the drink by the podcast’s commercial break and pours another. He’s finished that glass by the next podcast break. He can still hear his thoughts, so he pours another. He flutters eyes that have grown heavy.
Christopher feels warm and numb. He’s had enough when he passes his litmus test of no longer hearing himself say he doesn’t deserve nice things because he’s an alcoholic. He feels calm and safe when he hears nothing but his deep breaths.
He spends another hour watching thoughts come in and out but not stick. Then he gives into sleep.
Twins are supposedly bound more tightly than other siblings. That was true for Christopher and me. We were linked by the same birthday, interests, friends, teachers, classes, and bedroom far past an appropriate age. Since I can remember, I felt bound to take care of Christopher. I was the older twin by one minute. Protecting him was my job as firstborn.
I took this responsibility seriously. When we were in the second grade, our teacher summoned our mother, who’d immigrated from Belize, to a parent-teacher conference. She left work right away, worried we were struggling in school.
Thankfully, it wasn’t about our performance. Christopher and I were hitting all the benchmarks. It was me. I was doing everything for him, coddling him, stifling him.
We were linked by the same birthday, interests, friends, teachers, classes, and bedroom far past an appropriate age.
The teacher’s efforts to address my behavior had failed. She separated us since sitting beside each other made it too easy for me. “I’ll tell them to turn to a page in their poem books,” the teacher said to our mother, “and your daughter will turn her page and then turn her brother’s. Christopher’s not learning.”
But the distance didn’t stop me. When the teacher moved my seat across the room and told us to turn to another poem, I turned my page, walked to Christopher’s desk, and turned his. I huffed back across the class to my seat. I waited for the next instruction minutes later and did the same thing.
“It’s very disruptive,” the teacher pleaded. “Please tell your daughter she can’t do everything for her brother. Your son has got to learn to do things on his own.”
My mom waited until we got home and pulled me aside. She acknowledged that independence wasn’t valued in our Yoruba culture as much as it was in the States. But, she asked me to let him figure things out himself. Let him turn his own pages, write his own chapters, live his own life. I didn’t grasp what she meant, but I told her I’d try.
I winced when I looked across the classroom at Christopher rifling through the pages of the poem book. The teacher’s glance implored me not to get up. I remained seated and stared at the floor, unable to bear seeing whether Christopher had succeeded.
Later that year, school got out early for an administrative day. We sat on a blue bench in front of the building. It was a hot day in Southern California, so we picked the only bench in the shade. Soon, all the other kids had been picked up, but there was still no sign of our mother.
The teacher peered down at her watch every so often. Christopher and I sensed her impatience. She muttered about getting to her meetings.
“Don’t worry, we can make it home, Miss,” my brother assured.
It was the early ‘90s, and, apparently, that was all the teacher needed. She released us.
“I don’t know how to get home,” I whispered as we walked away, not wanting to expose us.
“I do,” he took my hand. “I’ll lead the way.”
I squeezed his hand, and we embarked on our journey home.
Nothing looked familiar on our route. Not the streets, houses, or businesses. With each turn, Christopher said, “Almost there,” to allay me. He led us from road to road, through crosswalks and neighborhoods.
Her look of horror caused me to let go of all of the tension I had been holding.
As we weaved around another corner, and I was sure we’d never make it, I saw, then, the blue and white garage door of our house at the end of the street. I squealed.
“See, told you we’re almost there.” Christopher hurried us along.
We scurried to the front door and rang the doorbell. My mom opened the door.
Her look of horror caused me to let go of all of the tension I had been holding. I peed all down my legs, drenching my overalls and socks.
My mother dropped down to embrace me. She removed my shoes and soggy socks, hoisted me by my armpits, and brought me inside. Christopher walked in calmly, giggling at my mess.
The power of experiencing formative events exactly when another person does is unique. As a twin, you are alone in nothing. You have a lifelong consultant for every rite of passage and milestone. When Christopher and I turned ten, we confided we were not excited to be big kids in middle school that fall. When we turned sixteen, we wished to win the high school basketball championship blowing out the candles on our joint birthday cake. On our twenty-first birthday, we did what I thought was both of our first shots of cheap tequila. And at thirty, we wondered if we’d ever own a home.
For our thirty-fifth birthday, I went to visit Christopher in California. We had each married a few years earlier, but our spouses were away at work. Decades had passed since it was just us. I returned to my childhood routine and responsibilities. I looked around my brother’s apartment for confirmation that he was well. Lights were on, so bills were paid. The refrigerator was full, so he had disposable money. He looked thin, but not too thin, so I thought his health was fine.
As a twin, you are alone in nothing. You have a lifelong consultant for every rite of passage and milestone.
He put the grocery bag he was carrying on the kitchen counter. A 200-milliliter bottle of Jameson fell on its side.
“Oh, is that for tomorrow’s birthday festivities?” I inquired.
My brother didn’t look at me while answering. “No. That’s to get me through tonight.”
He said it so casually that I thought I had misheard him.
I asked him to repeat himself. He did and added: he was an alcoholic, had been for 15 years, started binge drinking to cope with being racially profiled on his lily-white college campus, and never stopped.
We talked for a couple of hours while I peppered Christopher with questions. He answered them with the same nonchalance. No, he didn’t drink and drive. No, he didn’t drink at work. No, I didn’t need to stop drinking around him. No, he didn’t drink all day. Yes, he did drink from nine at night to one in the morning because it helped him sleep. Yes, he was going to keep drinking. No, he didn’t think that was a problem.
I acted calm while sinking deep into my chair.
I returned to Chicago feeling heavy. So much for a special twin connection. I’d failed at the first job I ever had.
Without thinking, I switched into caretaker mode. Christopher claimed he didn’t want to get sober, but surely he didn’t mean it. I browsed articles with headlines like “How to Help An Alcoholic Stop Drinking,” but none of the advice seemed applicable. The reports described Christopher as high-functioning, a personality trait that would make quitting hard because drinking worked for him. He had a good job, owned a house, appeared happily married—why stop drinking when things were going well?
So, I came up with the Words With Friends solution. Since bedtime was most acute, I stayed up with Christopher, hoping to keep him focused on something other than drinking for as much of the night as possible. Fewer hours and drinks remained between him and falling asleep. I didn’t need to sleep; I needed to ensure we reached the rest of life’s milestones together. I panicked, thinking of turning forty, fifty, or sixty alone. Every night I stayed up was another chance at another night in our old age together.
Scientists love to study twins. Identical twins are the most coveted, but fraternal twins of different genders present a unique opportunity to tease out the influence of the environment on life outcomes. Christopher and I were a useful experiment. Besides gender, we shared everything else. I could see the future study: What happens to first-generation Black girl and boy twins brought up in the same immigrant household?
The Black girl develops the tenacity she sees in her mother. Her mother, very familiar with racism, taught her how to fight it. She thrives. She graduates high school as valedictorian. She attends Ivy League schools and, already used to defending herself, pushes against racism at every turn. At every school, in every job, in every relationship.
He had a good job, owned a house, appeared happily married—why stop drinking when things were going well?
The Black boy doesn’t think his mother’s tenacity applies to him. He has no idea how to fight off racism. It bothers him, but he feels resigned, powerless to escape it. He graduates high school with okay grades and gets into an okay college. But the racism there intensifies and infuriates him. To his fortune, the college’s binge drinking culture is the perfect coping mechanism. Most nights, he disappears at dorm room parties into a boozy nirvana. Soon, he measures his days not from waking to sleep but from yesterday’s drink to tonight’s. He marries his high school crush, who didn’t balk at his disclosure that he’s an alcoholic. She was raised by alcoholic, high-functioning parents and is accustomed to living with substance abuse. She doesn’t enable Christopher, but she doesn’t encourage him to seek recovery on his own, either. He gets a sales job where he can’t ignore the racism; he just takes it. Then he drinks every night to forget.
One weekday several months after our birthday, I called Christopher. It was part of our new routine. We talked once a week for two to three hours. I liked to keep Christopher talking, hoping he’d offer some clues about how to help him stop drinking. But he usually didn’t talk about his substance abuse.
Two and a half hours into this phone conversation, Christopher asked, “How come you’re not like me?”
I didn’t understand.
“Like, why aren’t you an alcoholic?” He sniffled. “We had the same childhood. How come I’m the only one who’s like this?” His speech was slurred as he choked up. “I don’t deserve to be happy. I’m an alcoholic who deserves to suffer.”
I hadn’t seen or heard my brother cry since we were small. I didn’t even recognize it until his sniffling became sobs.
I wasn’t prepared for this to be the entrée into talking about Christopher’s alcoholism. There was no time to pull up the websites on how to respond. I spoke from the heart.
“There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re doing your best with what you’ve got,” I said.
Truth was, I didn’t know why I didn’t abuse alcohol or some other substance. My best guess was that I was fortunate enough to not be a Black man in the U.S. I’d never had to appear less scary or threatening. I’d never been asked why I was in this store, this car, this neighborhood. I didn’t have to drink away those indignities to make it to the next day.
We got off the phone. Hours later, we did our bedtime routine. I struggled to stay awake to play one more word, to keep one more sip at bay. At midnight Central and 10 p.m. Pacific, I drifted to sleep.
My mother told me recently that she’d had a separate conversation with Christopher that afternoon when our second-grade teacher called her to school.
She asked him if he was having trouble in class. My brother said he wasn’t. Then why did his sister have to turn the pages in the poem book for him? Did he have a difficult time finding the poems?
“No,” my brother had told her. “I know how to do it myself. But Sister likes doing it for me. I want to make her happy.”
It all became clear.
In Yoruba culture, the second twin is considered the elder twin. According to the Yoruba, the second sends the first twin to judge if the world is fit and beautiful before the second twin descends.
Here I thought I was the elder twin responsible for the caretaking. But Christopher was the older one, and he’d also been taking care of me.
I called Christopher back right away. “You deserve happiness, whether that’s sobriety or something else for you. I won’t try to do it for you—not like I could, anyway. You are capable on your own.”
That night, I fell asleep earlier than usual and missed the bedtime routine.
I dreamt Christopher and I were on a tropical beach. We looked older. Christopher’s salt and pepper beard matched the strands of silver at the roots of my hairline.
Here I thought I was the elder twin responsible for the caretaking.
Christopher dipped his toe in the crystal blue water. He flinched at its warmness. He was used to the cold, choppy waters of addiction. He’d been treading water for so long that he didn’t realize how much it took to keep from drowning. At least he was alive.
He walked farther and farther into the water, mesmerized by its glorious warmth on his skin. He’d thought there existed only chilly, turbulent seas.
He’d never experienced anything like the balm of the ocean. He kept walking until the water reached his neck. His feet ceased to touch the ground. He didn’t struggle to stay up. He was buoyant.
I followed him out into the water, a few feet behind him, and yelled, “Lead the way.”
