About That Time at Van Cortlandt Park, and Other Bricks in the Wall…

28 Monday Sep 2020

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, Christianity, culture, Eclectic, eclectic music, Hebrew-Israelite, High Rise Buildings, Jimme, Marriage, Mount Vernon New York, music, My Father, New York City, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Religion, Youth

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"And The Beat Goes On" (1979), "Another Brick In The Wall (Part 2)", "Good Times", "Love To Love You Baby", "Rapper's Delight", "Take Your Time (Do It Right)", 616, 616 East Lincoln Avenue, Autocracy, Barbra Streisand, Chic, Donna Summer, Frank Sinatra, Friendships, Kool and The Gang, Luther Vandross, New York, Oppression, Pink Floyd, Queen, Repression, SOS Band, Stephanie Mills, Sugar Hill Gang, Teddy Pendergrass, The Clear View School, The Whispers, Tré

Van Cortlandt Park screen shot (parade grounds, cropped), June 4, 2020. (https://www.thisisthebronx.info/a-van-cortlandt-park-living-room-picnic/).

I don’t consider myself to be a seer. Not exactly. I might have gotten a thing or 1,000 predictions correct in my life. But since I usually prefer to expect good outcomes, I do not indulge the dreams I have of destruction, or the muses who conjure the possibilities of apocalypse, whether for me, my family, or at larger scales.

But the last half of 1980 was different for me. I’d come into my own as a kid. I finally had a posse of classmates and friends, between the two Joes, Starling, Chris, Ronald, Vanessa, Eric, Ray Ray, Sean, Lajuan, and Dahlia, among others. I was kicking ass academically, and was on the verge of discovering other talents, including writing. After my last summer camp with Darren at Clear View, and rereading the late Lerone Bennett Jr.’s Ebony Pictorial History of Black America, I understood my Blackness, really and truly, for the first time.

But I chose to see the glass as half full, both for myself and for Black folk in the US. Why wouldn’t I have? Somehow, in the middle of what I call “deep summer,” when the previous school year and the start of the first day of the next school year are about equally far away, it happened. My stepfather Maurice got a call from his music-obsessed friend Dennis (who was also a professional musician, by the way) in the middle of a Sunday afternoon in mid-August about going to some concert in the park in the Bronx. There was no mention of who the headliners were. I just remember playing Peanuts Land with my Matchbox cars and driving down along the shoppes in the nightlife district of the city underneath my bed when Maurice came in and rushed us to get dressed.

Mom, Maurice, Darren, little Maurice, and me. We piled into a cab over to Van Cortlandt Park, where we met Maurice’s friend Dennis. He knew a couple of the headlining people who were playing. I don’t recall tickets, but I do remember flyers everywhere. It seemed like this was a spontaneous gathering, where people somehow knew where to go and where to gather. I remember it being sometime around 7 or 8 pm when the jamming began, with all the music of the late-1970s and 1980. It was mostly an MC mixing a string a songs together, between Chic and “Good Times”, The Whispers’ “And The Beat Goes On,” and Michael’s “Off The Wall.”

But maybe 45 minutes in, three guys got on the stage to do their performance, Sugar Hill Gang, and the crowd of hundreds erupted into a roar as they rapped to “Rapper’s Delight.” They did a bunch of songs beyond the “a hip, hop/the hippie, the hippie/To the hip hip hop/a you don’t stop…” I was into it like everyone else, doing my terrible version of a Michael Jackson dance routine while clapping my hands to the beat. Sometime between 10 and 11, we left, I think, between a cab and Dennis giving Maurice and Mom and little Maurice a ride home. Even Mom looked like she had a good time. It would be just about the last good time we would have as a sort-of-family.

But the music didn’t stop with Van Cortlandt Park or the Sugar Hill Gang. The spring and summer of 1980 was the transition to a new decade of music, as homophobes from New York to Detroit and L.A. had spent the past year killing disco by smashing vinyl and smashing in Toyota Corollas and Datsun Zs. (By the way, for those who are still kicking and screaming over Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s “WAP,” go on YouTube and listen to the late Donna Summer’s “Love To Love You Baby“. It’ll probably make you question the meaning of your false sense of morality.)

Kool and The Gang had crossed over with “Ladies Night,” and were about to walk the fine line between success and selling out with “Celebration.” All summer on the bus back and forth from Clear View with Darren, SOS Band’s “Take Your Time (Do It Right)” was on at least once a day. There was also Teddy Pendergrass, the one, the only, and emerging, Luther Vandross’ “Searching” (yes, not his official solo debut, but), and of course Stephanie Mills with “Never Knew Love Like This Before”. And all that because my father had introduced us to Toni, a new drinking budding of his, herself a professional singer. Not to mention, a couple of bartenders in Mount Vernon and in the Bronx who didn’t mind a 12 and a 10-year-old sitting around on off nights in July and August.

On the AM side of things with 770 AM WABC radio, there was still Billy Joel, Kenny Loggins, Barbra Streisand and her collabs with The Bee Gees, “Guilty” and “Woman In Love.” Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York” was the second half of the summer of 1980, old and yet new, at least to me.

But as that summer moved into fall and 6th grade, I sensed something was changing, and not for the better. I sensed it in music, more than I did with Jimme’s alcohol abuse and fewer visits, more that even in Mom’s inability to keep food in our stomachs or in her failing marriage with Maurice. The music seemed more sinister, less hopeful, darker somehow. Queen’s “Another One Bites The Dust” somehow conjured “No mas! No mas!” and Roberto Duran giving up against Sugar Ray Leonard that November, the same month Reagan beat a beat down, haggard Jimmy Carter in the 1980 election. The beginning of four decades’ worth of hollow promises to White Americans, millions willing to sell the rest of us to Hell for their macabre pleasure and some tax breaks.

But no song signified the transition of the US for me in 1980 more than Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall”. It was likely the first true music video I ever saw, courtesy of my 616 friend Tré, who lived on the second floor. I spent a lot of time hanging with Tré, his older sister Renee, and her friend Stephanie (who I had the tiniest of crushes on, but I digress). It was during the months after Maurice and Mom had separated, with him taking the TV and a month’s supply of mail-ordered meats out of our two freezers. Tré, Renee, and their mother made me feel welcome between that first Saturday in October and when the Hebrew-Israelite bullshit began six months later.

“We don’t need no education. We don’t need no thought control…” It was about much more than strict teachers and social control over students. It was a prediction of a future, my future, our collective futures. That’s what I thought about this time 40 years ago. I had conversations with my classmates about this, about Reagan, about double-digit inflation and unemployment, about the Iran hostage crisis, about the rumors that the US had given Israel nukes, and Israel had, in turn given nukes to apartheid South Africa. “You’re so weird!” they’d say. Or, more often, “You worry too much, Donald!” Only Starling understood. But he expected me to “become one with Jesus,” as if Jesus alone could stop me from worrying about the future.

In short order, the Reagan Years came and gutted the relative economic security of the US, disrupting the shaky gains Blacks had made in the years between 1946 and 1980. Mark David Chapman murdered John Lennon to ring in the holidays, and Blondie’s Debbie Harry badly rapped her way through their January 1981 hit “Rapture” while Mom began to talk about being raptured up for the first time. My family was at the edge of an abyss, a mini-apocalypse that would ultimately transform all of us. It would certainly sidetrack me from my calling as a writer for years to come.

But the world didn’t stop spinning. Nor did life stop handing me days of happiness, of contentment, of miracles and even some joy. It just meant that I would be more cautious, anxious, depressed, worried, on edge. Because America believes itself above reproach, even as it deals in shit and blood, and drags the rest of us into the burgundy-soaked muck with it. The distance between 1980 and 2020 might be 40 years, but with Trump and his army of minions, I might as well be in the same moment. Only, I’m 50 now, and I know much better about listening to my inner voice and my muses.

Aside

Brotherly Love

12 Wednesday Aug 2015

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, High Rise Buildings, Jimme, Mount Vernon High School, Mount Vernon New York, My Father, New York City, Pop Culture, race, Sports, Youth

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Bronxville, Brother-Brother Relationship, Chester Heights, Competition, Darren, Eastchester, Internalized Racism, Jealousy, Jump Shot, Lessons, Mental Disability, Mental Retardation, Self-Discovery, Self-Loathing, Shyness, Sibling Relationship, Sibling Rivalry, The Clear View School

Not quite the courts at Chester Heights (aka, Bronxville/Mount Vernon border), but more or less what would've looked like 30 years ago, Eastchester Playground, Capitol Projects, Bronx, NY, August 11, 2015. (http://www.nycgovparks.org/).

Not quite the courts at Chester Heights (aka, Bronxville/Mount Vernon border), but more or less what they would’ve looked like 30 years ago, Eastchester Playground, Capitol Projects, Bronx, NY, August 11, 2015. (http://www.nycgovparks.org/).

This is a Boy @ The Window story, one that occurred a little more than thirty years ago, and so typical of my experiences growing up with my older brother Darren. Nothing I ever did to help my older brother seemed to help him overcome the trap of going to The Clear View School, a school for the mild to severely mentally retarded (of course, we say mentally disabled in 2015), although Darren was never such. He, in fact, had taught himself to read at the age of three, and taught me to read on my fifth birthday. Darren’s issue was severe shyness, and between my Mom, my father Jimme, and the good White liberals and moderates at The Clear View School, the trap for Darren’s potential genius had been set by the summer of ’74. By the time I was aware enough to say anything about Darren’s predicament, it was already too late.

But say and try I did anyway. Everything from sharing music to talking to Darren about our futures and my escape-Mount-Vernon-for-college plans. I shared books, and tutored him through algebra and geometry and US history.

I even tried playing sports with Darren, including basketball, which in the summer of ’85 was only my third favorite sport. As I wrote in the memoir

“Darren played at the center spot on Clear View’s basketball team, which made sense since he was already between six-three and six-four at seventeen. Of course they crushed every team they played. It was truly unfair. Darren towered over his classmates and his opponents, and being the only non-mentally retarded person on the floor, he could run rings around folks.

Still, Darren could knock down any jump shot within thirty feet of the hoop. His shot was smooth, like Isiah Thomas’ or Bernard King’s. It was the kind of shot no one on MVHS’ basketball team had at the time. Knowing this, I wanted to — no, I had to play my brother to see this shot up close. There were two well-maintained courts near 616, one in Pelham near its main street of Fifth Avenue, the other a longer walk in Chester Heights. We chose Chester Heights for most of these battles. Their court felt like a good outside court should, surrounded by trees, with level, quality-painted asphalt, and bright-white mesh nets.

The first few times we played that summer, Darren just killed me. Every time I left him open for a jumper, he buried it. It was obvious I hadn’t touched a basketball other than in gym class since I was ten. I didn’t have a jump shot, had never worked on my footwork, and could dribble only moderately well with my right hand. Forget about using my left hand! I was so afraid of hurting my two crooked fingers that the left hand’s role for me was to block shots, not to catch passes or take shots.

“Nothing but net” (in context of UPS/NCAA March Madness cross-promotional ad), March 2012. (http://compass.ups.com/).

My semi-buried competitive nature got the better of me. I knew I couldn’t beat Darren in a shootout. But I knew I was quicker than my taller brother. So I decided after another embarrassing performance (I lost 23-2!) that it would be easier to play defense and try to steal a few balls to keep the next game close. Amazingly, the plan worked! It worked so well that I took Darren completely out of his game. After three blocked shots and a couple of steals, I discovered that Darren couldn’t play me one-on-one if I drove hard for the hoop, that I could beat him with my first step. So every time I got the ball I attacked the rim. The last two games we played I won by a combined score of 50-18. I started feeling bad when Darren started forcing long jumpers. After a while, he just gave up. I wanted to win, but I wanted it to be competitive, too.

Darren was so upset that we didn’t talk on our way back to 616. He then walked to the back of our apartment building and threw his basketball down the garbage chute. I wanted to continue to play because I thought it would make both of us better and give us something positive to build on in our relationship. Instead it just made Darren mad and made it even harder for me to talk to him about what was going on at 616.

Standard New York-area garbage chute door, June 2009. (http://theferrisfiles.com/).

I really did feel awful about how Darren felt after the game. I had shattered confidence in one of the few areas in his life in which he had any. I had humbled a star basketball player at his own game, a game I’d yet to learn. I’d given my older brother yet another reason to be jealous of me. It was shocking to watch him throw the basketball away. I really didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry, Darren, for beating you two straight games, for making you look bad at your favorite sport?” I guess I could’ve said that. What fifteen-year-old with as much on my plate as me would, though, especially in an environment as competitive as ours when it came to basketball? It made me pity Darren for his situation at Clear View, but also left me angry with him. I was trying to help him, after all, not break his spirit. The incident left me shaking my head.”

I didn’t play basketball with Darren again until the spring of ’97, during my Teachers College interview/PhD graduation week. By that time, Darren’s jealousy and stubbornness had pretty much forced me to give up on my reclamation efforts. But, when left open, Darren could still nail a twenty-four-footer with ease.

Dwayne and Cindy

09 Monday Dec 2013

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, Mount Vernon New York, Pop Culture, race, Youth

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616, 616 East Lincoln Avenue, Art, Black Identity, Black Male Identity, Comic Strips, Creativity, Depression, Genius, Identity Crisis, Infantilization, Mental Retardation, Potential, Reading, Sibling Relationship, Sibling Rivalry, The Brady Bunch (1969-75), The Clear View School, What's Happening!! (1976-79), Writing

My older brother Darren, with nephews Roshad and Noah (my son), Mount Vernon, NY, November 23, 2006. (Donald Earl Collins).

My brother Darren turns forty-six years old today. With all that’s happened in our lives, it would be easy for me to forget that Darren’s my older brother, that he learned how to read on his own at three years old, that he taught me how to read right around my fifth birthday. Yet if I go back in time far enough, I can still see the Darren that was before his fourteen years at a school for the mentally retarded in Clear View at Briarcliff Manor had permanently screwed him up.

Between the ages of ten and sixteen (or, between late ’77 and early ’84, my brother worked on his own personal comic strip series, one he called Dwayne and Cindy. I guess he got the character names from two of his favorite shows, What’s Happening!! and The Brady Bunch. Darren started slowly at first, figuring out how to draw his characters. They were both Black, kids that were about the same age as we were. They were best friends who went outside to play, went on walks or otherwise hung out at Dwayne’s place playing or watching TV.

So when Darren added his bubble captions to tell his stories, they were simple strips about life in the suburbs, about going for walks to the store, about school and homework and how their parents were always too hard on them. As with all things that required creativity, Darren drew from what he knew from living in Mount Vernon and going to school at Clear View, which back in the late-’70s was in Dobby Ferry, and not so Bruce Wayne-stately-manor-looking as it is today.

What's Happening!! (1976-79) screen shot, December 27, 2011. (http://www.sitcomsonline.com/whatshappening/whatshappseason3-1%20(Small).JPG). Qualifies as fair use -- low resolution pic without alternative image.

What’s Happening!! (1978) screen shot, December 27, 2011. (http://www.sitcomsonline.com/whatshappening/whatshappseason3-1%20(Small).JPG). Qualifies as fair use — low resolution pic without alternative image.

As Darren got older, he fleshed out Dwayne and Cindy some more. They had similar personalities, where they used each other to escape what seemed to be a harsh world outside of their bubble. But Darren would never draw nor talk about this harsh world in his strips. He wanted them to be funny and goofy, after all, not just a reflection of everything that was going on at 616 and with our parents/idiot stepfather.

At the same time, though, Darren as a comic strip writer hadn’t grown to the point where he could capture more complex issues in his form. I said as much when he asked me to look at a more mature version of Dwayne and Cindy in ’82. “Why do Dwayne and Cindy say the same thing all the time? Don’t they grow up or think about other stuff?,” I asked with some impatience, hoping that Darren would want to talk about race, or growing up, or make Dwayne and Cindy into teenagers.

And on this one, Darren didn’t immediately give up. For two more years, until the beginning of the summer of ’84, he did try to make Dwayne and Cindy more mature. But between the loss of our bedroom to younger siblings and then the whole Balkis Makeda affair in ’84, combined with the completion of the institutionalization process at Clear View, Darren no longer had the creative spirit. His psychological reserves to see himself as normal, as a whole human being, as a young Black man, were all but gone, and have never returned.

I sometimes think that Darren had a window of opportunity to pull himself out of the psychological hole that my Mom, my father and Clear View put him in between ’74 and ’88. And he did. Through me and through that Dwayne and Cindy comic strip of his. In so many ways, his was a genius with the potential of an Aaron McGruder, some of which did rub off on me.

I DRAW COMICS sketchbook, September 2012. (Matt Marrocco via http://www.kickstarter.com).

But being around the severely mentally retarded and a group of teachers and psychologists who coddled and infantilized the toughness out of him, the toughness Darren needed to succeed as well as survive our ordeal at 616. That, more than anything, extinguished Dwayne and Cindy and his chances at a rich life before he was old enough to vote. Which is why on every ninth of December, I’m so sad, for him and for me. Yes, I feel guilty, and yes, I know it’s not my fault, but I still miss the promising version of my older brother. I wish that Darren could’ve published Dwayne and Cindy, even the simple versions he began to draw and write thirty six years ago.

Summer Camp

20 Saturday Jun 2009

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, eclectic music, Jimme, Mount Vernon New York, music, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Youth

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Darren, Development Disabilities, Karen Holtslag, Mental Retardation, Psychological Abuse, Psychology, Summer Camp, The Clear View School

I’ve had more than a few friends ask me, “Are you sure your doctorate’s not in psychology?” over the years. I usually laughed it off, saying that well-heeled historians are ones that can look at the human condition through a variety of disciplines. But that’s hardly the whole truth. I have a lifetime of experiences that have enabled me to play the role of pop psychologist and psychiatrist, mostly because of Darren and issues related to him.

For example, if this were any summer between ‘77 and ‘83, these would’ve been years I could’ve gone with my older brother to his summer day camps at The Clear View School in Dobbs Ferry, upper Westchester County. For four summers I did go with Darren to his private school for the mentally retarded and developmentally disabled, between ‘77 and ‘80. It was a strange experience, but I learned a lot about diversity, the human psyche, and perceptions of intelligence. I hardly realized how much until much later, in my years in the workforce and in grad school.

The first two summers at Clear View were a blur for me. I remember a few things. Like going to see Star Wars for the first time. Or going swimming, learning how to ride a bike, bowling, and lots of other fun activities. In that sense, Clear View was a fun place to be. I picked up a bunch of things there that I would’ve never learned at 616.

It wasn’t until my third summer there, the summer of ‘79, that I noticed the distinct differences between myself and Darren’s friends and classmates. Not to mention between Darren and them. It came as a bit of a shock to realize that Darren simply didn’t belong at a school for the mentally retarded — he was acting out at times in order to get whatever he wanted. As for me, I seldom had any lengthy conversations with the other kids. Not for lack of trying, though. It was the summer between fourth and fifth grade for me, and I’d already become used to talking politics and pop culture with a few kids my age.

I ended up talking mostly with staff, summer staff or regular staff. It didn’t matter. Even as socially awkward some of the teachers were, it was far better than forcing a conversation with a kid who might’ve had the equivalent abilities of Noah at two and a half or three years old. I had nothing against the kids at Clear View. They obviously suffered from Down’s syndrome, autism, bipolar disorder, severe brain injuries and so on. But at nine years old, I recognized the differences, and they were in stark contrast to anything I’d ever seen from Darren. I knew by the middle of that summer that my older brother wasn’t mentally retarded. I also knew, deep down, that staying at Clear View would do permanent damage to his psyche and destroy his best chances at living a normal life.

A visit to Mrs. Holtslag’s (Darren’s psychiatrist’s) Hastings-on-the-Hudson home in ’79, in which the front sat on a hill, the back on stilts, all overlooking a pale sandy-rock beach and the Hudson River below, was further evidence of both his relative normal-ness and of what bothered me about Clear View. This was my first experience of visiting anyone from an affluent or upper-middle class background, and certainly anyone White. A bunch of kids were there, including Darren. My older brother’s well-practiced autistic behavior — similar to at least three of his friends — was what bothered me about the visit. That, and being in a house I’d only seen before in a Hollywood movie. Wow, I remember thinking. Psychiatrists must make a ton of money.

I learned about other things affluent and White through my summers at Clear View in ‘79 and ‘80. That Darren’s initial diagnosis had changed, from “mildly mentally retarded” to “emotional mentally retarded.” That Clear View’s tuition was $33,000 a year – about $55,000 in today’s dollars. That New York State was paying for all of the tuition. That our group of healthy-eating White counselors thought that a cottage cheese and cucumber sandwich on whole wheat was a normal lunch. And that they were moving in ‘81 to a lush private campus in Briarcliff Manor.

I did get something out of that summer. Another layer of eclectic-ness to add to my already eclectic music tastes. Donna Summer, meet Kool & The Gang. Billy Joel, meet Barbra Streisand. I did get to see Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. But I also saw affluent White parents who’d occasionally visit, sometimes with their “normal” kids in tow. It made me realize that despite all of the hardships of life, many of these mentally retarded and developmental disabled kids had it better financially than anything I would see for more than twenty years. That’s hardly to say that this wasn’t a hardship, either for the parents or the kids in question. It was something I noticed, an ironic twist between the psychology of race and class and the psychiatry involved in working with both.

I provoked my mother into at least thinking about getting Darren out of Clear View after my last summer there in ‘80, six years after my father Jimme had him placed there because of Darren’s shyness. Darren at twelve had been institutionalized long enough to become more comfortable around the mentally retarded than in mainstream settings. He threw a temper-tantrum, kicking and screaming on the floor of our neighborhood laundromat when my mother suggested that she should send him to our local public school. My mother gave up, saying that “Darren only listens to White people,” and Darren stayed at Clear View for another seven years. This was typical Mom, taking the path of least resistance when the best option was often the more difficult one. It’s sad, but I still haven’t given up, on Darren or my mother.

About My Brother

06 Thursday Dec 2007

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, Jimme, Mount Vernon New York, My Father, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Youth

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616, 616 East Lincoln Avenue, Brotherhood, Brothers, Clear View School, Darren, Darren Gill, Education, Internalized Racism, Jealousy, Mental Retardation, Psychological Abuse, Psychological Scars, Self-Hatred, Self-Loathing, The Clear View School

: A better picture of Darren and me, taken in April 1975, Sears, Mount Vernon, NY, July 6, 2006. (Donald Earl Collins).

: Darren Gill (cropped), Thanksgiving Dinner, Mount Vernon, NY, November 23, 2006. (Donald Earl Collins).

This Sunday, December 9, my older brother Darren Lynard Gill turns 40 years old. It should be a day of pride, of tears of joy and long-suffering, of wondering about entering the prime decade of his life and my soon joining him there. With our relationship and my older brother’s life as such, there is only the hope that both get better before it’s too late for us.

You see, Darren had both the blessing and the curse of being the first-born son of our mother and our father Jimme Collins (they weren’t married at the time Darren was born) when he was born in ’67. It was a period in which both of our parents were still people full of hopes and dreams. It when my father was nothing more than an occasional social binge drinker and my mother was on the verge of becoming a supervisor of Mount Vernon Hospital’s Dietary Department. Darren became the embodies of their hopes and dreams.

And it should’ve been obvious that at least one of their hopes in Darren came true during his toddler years. All during her first pregnancy, according to my mother, my Uncle Sam, and a number of my mother’s friends at the time, all my mother prayed about was for Darren to be healthy and brilliant. She got what she wished for when Darren turned three. Sometime in 1971, my brother had taught himself how to read. The story goes that Darren was sitting at the dinner table in our second-floor flat at 48 Adams Street while my mother and father and me were milling about. Suddenly, they noticed that Darren had picked up a box of Diamond Crystal Salt and began reading the words on the box. Not just the letter, the actual words “salt” and “diamond” and “crystal”! If he hadn’t been moving his finger from left to right as he was doing this, I don’t think my mother and father would’ve believed what they’d witnessed at all.

This story doesn’t exactly take Darren to the academic decathlon. There was something else Darren inherited from my mother and father besides a high capacity for analytical thinking. He was also extremely shy and didn’t like being around lots of people. For both of them, this shyness needed to be taken care of, as if being shy is some sort of curse. My mother’s solution was placing Darren in Headstart in ’73 and ’74 (delaying his start in public school a full year) so that the shyness issue wouldn’t be one when he started school.

Jimme took this idea one step further and farther. He decided one day that Darren was too much like himself. After seeing an ad for a special school in Upper Westchester County called Clearview, he took us up to Dobbs Ferry (where the school was located at the time) so that Darren could be examined by a group of professionals. After a battery of psychological exams and an IQ test, they determined that my brother was mentally retarded. Darren would begin school in September ’74 at the Clearview School as a day student. Neither of our lives would ever be the same.

But before Darren became an institutionalized version of his shy and wonderfully intelligent self, he gave me the same gift he gave himself. I started kindergarten at Nathan Hale the same fall he started going to Clearview. I already knew and recognized my ABC’s, but couldn’t always make out or sound out words, and didn’t recognize them in sentence form. One afternoon between Christmas and New Years at the end of ’74, we sat down and went through sentence after sentence until I could recognize and read a sentence. He literally changed my life, and I didn’t even know it.

For years after that we remained close. We’d fight like all brothers fight. The main issue besides Clearview was my mother, who treated Darren as if he really was retarded while treating me more favorably because I wasn’t shy like Darren. Between my mother and father’s divorce in ’76-’77, my mother’s second marriage to Maurice, and the kids, poverty, abuse and bizarre religion that would come into our lives on the North Side of Mount Vernon, distance began to grow between us.

The key changes included a temper-tantrum that Darren threw in the middle of a Pelham laundromat in the summer of ’80, when my mother suggested that it was time to move my twelve-year-old brother into a “normal school.” It also included all of the abuse I took from my stepfather two summers later while Darren was off at Clearview’s summer day camp having the time of his life. By the time puberty struck, Darren was jealous of me and I was finding it hard to relate to him and survive 616 East Lincoln at the same time.

Darren would remain a student at Clearview until the year after I finished high school. For fourteen years, the state of New York covered his $33,000-a-year (in 1982 dollars) tuition, as he just slid under the public school accommodations radar for the mildly mentally retarded. I always knew that Darren wasn’t retarded, even though he now mimicked the severely retarded students he’d spent day after day with over the years. Through a dispensation granted by the Mount Vernon Board of Education, Darren graduated with the rest of the Mount Vernon High School Class of ’88, even though he had not spent a day in a public school.

From that point on, Darren was jealous of everything I did. I score a 5 on the AP American History exam, and Darren would take the CollegeBoard score sheet and dump it in the garbage. I get into the University of Pittsburgh, and Darren would enroll in college at home for a semester just to prove that he was just as good as me. If I said I was dating someone, Darren would stop talking to me altogether. Even during our Thanksgiving visit to Mount Vernon last year, Darren became angry with me because I offered and gave him a ride home in my family car, even though he wanted to walk in the pouring, freezing rain. I’ve never been able to have a normal conversation with him for fear of pissing him off or making him feel bad or him letting me know how much better my life has been compared to his.

The truth is, I do feel guilty sometimes about where Darren is in his life. For nearly twenty years, Darren has lived in a one-room flat, where he shares a bathroom and a kitchen in South Side Mount Vernon. His jobs have never paid more than $10 an hour. He’s often too afraid to say “Hi” to a woman he’s attracted to. He’s never learned how to drive and hasn’t taken a college-level course since the end of ’88. I’ve tried many, many times to reach out to him, to give him comfort and out of my hard earned wisdom and knowledge. I went through with my family intervention in ’02 in part because I wanted Darren to see what went wrong for our mother and Jimme as far as his education was concerned. Darren rejects almost all that I have to say and give him out of hand, with a smile of meanness that is praying hard for my failure in this life.

My wife says sometimes that she’s surprised that Darren hasn’t tried to kill himself yet. I’m not, if only because someone with Darren’s level of misery wants to see other people suffer with him, in this life, not in the next. That’s why he regularly visits our mother on Sundays for dinner, to remind her of one of the biggest mistakes she’s ever made. It’s why he regularly calls our father for money, to remind him of the idiotic decisions he has made on Darren’s behalf. It’s why Darren wears a permanent smirk on his face, to conceal his contempt for us all.

But I do want to remind him and anyone who knows either of us one thing. I wouldn’t be the intellectual I am today if Darren hadn’t taken the time to teach me how to read. He stepped in the breach to save me from years of catch-up in public school at a time when no one else in my life was willing or able to. Darren is a better person than me, because without him I wouldn’t be able to do what I do today. Happy Birthday Darren! I love you very much.