“We are all that we’ve got!  If I don’t do for you, who else will?  The world?  They wouldn’t piss down your throat if your guts were on fire!” 

Those were words my normally silent maternal grandmother lived by.    I’ve oft sat in my cell and wondered at the cruelty – the experiences – she must have endured.  What had been done to that sweet southern girl to bring such a harsh reality?  And had those deeds matriculated into the truths that colored my thoughts and actions, the reality of my life thus far?  If you are what you eat – how about what you’re fed?

My grandmother didn’t give birth to my uncles Benni and Squeaky (Victor and Richard, respectfully), but she raised, loved, fed, nursed, and fought for them, just as she did her own.  They slept in the same beds, bathed in the same tubs, were hugged by the same arms, but I imagine it was tough for them.  Their birth mom was a heroin addict who couldn’t care for them but for her addiction.  Their father was the father of five of my grandmother’s eleven children.

Now, my Uncle Benni was slightly ‘swish’ in his gayness.  He was called ‘Benni’ after the classic Sir Elton John song, Bennie and the Jets.  Growing up, he was more apt to be found with his sisters doing each other’s hair rather than running with his brothers.  It was braids, barrettes, and clothes verses bats, balls and the hustle of the streets with brothers who clowned, taunted, jeered, and refused to show love.

“We are all that we’ve got!”

I always loved my Unc.  Yeah, he was gay, a bad thing from the way it was thrown in his face, but I didn’t know what that was.  All I knew was that he loved us and paid attention to us.  I remember once seeing the flash of anger in his eyes upon realizing we hadn’t been anywhere since the last time we saw him – five and a half months earlier.

He grabbed a newspaper and in a flurry of ironing, braiding, and cocoa butter, we were off on some adventure – the movies, a radio sponsored jam session in a far away park, the carnival, the swap meet.  Hot lines, jojo fries, cold cream sodas!

I was still just a short stack when my lil’ sister and I heard the knock at the front door at 2 a.m. one night.  We were still young enough to share a bed.  Then we heard the familiar voice that had us out of that bed in a flash!  Looking in the window, my Uncle Benni told us to open the door.  Seeing him through the window, we didn’t bother to turn on the lights in our excitement, and when we opened the door, there was snow on the ground and the air was sharp.   My grandmother sharply asked who we’d let in her house at that hour, and Unc answered to keep us out of trouble.

“It’s just Benni, Mommy, I lost my key,” he slurred by way of explanation.

We didn’t care that he was drunk.  He often came home that way. Benni’s lifestyle saw him in a lot of bars and gay clubs.  He was a performer.  He used to dress up like Diana Ross and sing in shows.  Us kids had found photos in the single bag that he kept in an upstairs closet as if it were his refusal to give up on a people who didn’t really want him around – not the gay version.

So, he lived his life mostly apart from us.  We had no idea where or how he lived, other than the shows, no idea who his friends or loves were.  We just knew he could vogue and dance his ass off.

“If we don’t do for each other, who else will?”

My sister and I took him by the hands and guided him up the stairs in the dark, where he changed into his floral muumuu and climbed into our bed.  Just as he’d shown up without warning, Unc often left in the same fashion, so we always wanted to keep him close.  The rank alcohol smell was a price we’d pay, willingly just to keep the magic of him near.

But when the two of us climbed into bed next to his already sleeping form, it was wet!  Was he so drunk he’d peed the bed?!  Finally, we turned on the lights in the room and were greeted by the horror of blood!  There were pools of it where he’d stood and sat, hand prints on walls and dressers where he’d braced himself.  Blood pooled around his still body and made the thin gown stick to his slender frame.

We tried to wake him, but he was far beyond our childish ability to help or revive him.  We didn’t know what it was to be gay, or why it was bad, but we’d seen people die before.  Uncle Benni was dying.

“The world!?  The world don’t give a damn about you.  They wouldn’t piss down your throat if your guts were on fire!”

It seems that two guys accosted him outside of a gay bar with large knives, thinking that intoxication and queer equaled soft, easy money.  They call it ‘rolling fags’.  They were wrong.  Benni still had a bloody bottle opener in his pocket and a blood soaked wad of cash, two hundred and eighty some odd dollars.   You see, he’d promised my sister and I that he’d take us to the carnival on the waterfront and didn’t want to let us down.

He came home from the hospital with bandages everywhere and more than three hundred stitches.  My grandmother had his brothers place him on a couch she’d made up for him in the living room.  She walked him to the bath when he needed, changed his bandages, and took care of him like he was who he was – her child. 

My other uncles were proud of him, and I noticed that their jokes included him after that.  Things had changed.  The rest of the family could see that there was more – a lot more – than being gay to the loved one lying on the couch all cut up.  It’s a shame he had to be cut open that bad for them to see what was inside, how special he was to us.

Victor ‘Benni’ Deloney would pass away in his sleep from pneumonia in a room full of family and friends, none of which ever knew him.  I got this time and never got the chance to say good-bye.  I have no idea just where his spirit is today, but I promise that he’s putting on one hell of a show.

I also have no idea why we, with all our flaws, sins and contradictions, are so quick to place conditions and labels on those we set out to love, as though who someone else is constitutes an attack on us.  My glory and my sins are my own.

I don’t think my uncle Benni was looking for agreement when he would stay away for so long, alone in the world.  I remember the force of his smile on that couch.  He loved his family who loved him back, at least on that day.  No, I think he stayed away looking for clan, kin, la familia.  He tramped home on that cold winter’s night so he could die among his people because we were all he had.  I was happy we could all be there for him.  If not us, then who?   I just hope we were enough, that he knew he was more than that for my sister and me. 

Mr. Jones has served 32 years for a crime he committed when he was seventeen years old, a juvenile. He can be contacted at:

DeLaine Jones #7623482
82911 Beach Access Road
Umatilla, OR 97882