Short Storyland: "Witness" by Jamel Brinkley

Jamel Brinkley

Perusing Twitter I saw someone posted a tweet complaining of disappointment endings to short stories.  I thought it was fair insight as I think of the short stories of Ernest Hemingway and some other writers of the genre.  Well, it's not a genre exactly -- well anyway, I found a modern short story in Paris Review that had a good ending.  The title and writer are shown above.  So what's the story?

In its most basic sense, it's about Bernice, Dove, and the narrator.  The narrator is Bernice's sister -- she lives in a tiny New  York City apartment.  Her brother, the narrator and writer presumably, comes from somewhere small to make it in the big city like his sister.  He has to sleep on the couch; there's only one bedroom of course.   Narrator can't find a job, not until the end, but that's only a side trip.  

The basic theme of the story is that brother and sister get alone just fine until Bernice meets a "dude" named Dove who hustles  a living as a DJ.  Bernice is a bit frivolous, given over to following her impulses.  Dove has a certain kind of mouth move that appeals to her and she marries him.  Yeah, that makes three in a tiny NYC apartment. 

Okay so,  if this short story is any indication, Jamel Brinkley is a talented writer who can get into your head with his internal reckonings.  He and his sister love and understand each other in a kind of intimate Frannie and Zoey way, with lots of inside humor, and crackling wit.  

Narrator looks down on Dove and with some reason. He's a vapid shallow character who doesn't have the depth of understanding that Bernice needs.   You do wonder why she married him.  The only thing I can figure is that she's a bit loose in her associations, and maybe she's become desperate to marry.  She has some kind of illness which comes into play later.   Tiny apartment also  plays a part as the writer/narrator reviles poor Dove every chance he gets.

What makes it particularly sad is the Dove is the kind of guy who sometimes doesn't understand he's being whipped.   Narrator seems to think that perhaps he's not whipping Dove hard enough to make an impression.  Narrator exhibits a persistent and increasing cruelty to Dove right up to the end of the story when Bernice becomes ill and dies. 

It's only at that point that Dove understands how deeply reviled he is, not only by the narrator/writer, but also by the mother of Bernice and her brother.  

The mother appears only intermittently;  there's no mention of a father.   I get the impression of a hard childhood somewhere far uptown.  I'm guessing her irrationality, wild accusations, and need to blame someone for her daughter's death serves to explain narrator/writer's cruel streak but who knows?

There's a slight racial component to the story but it's not preachy or didactic and it's really not about that so much as it is about who the main characters are, what they think, what they feel.  

Okay so back to the tweet about insufficient unsatisfying endings.  This one has Dove not going to Bernice's funeral.  There's a final encounter where narrator/writer "reaches out" to Dove, inviting him back to the apartment to get his crates of vinyl records.  

There's no great battle climax and that's to the good, just the  steady quiet decline of relationships that should have been better from the get-go and gradually got worse.