STRONGER (13 page)

Chapter Six

“HIV is a death sentence. She might as well not even try anymore.”

I barely heard that last part. I was ripping my pajamas off my body as quickly as possible. How could I escape this skin? How could I escape this life?

All I knew was one thing: I had to flee before Brenda and Jeff threw me out. I couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t stomach the idea of Maggie witnessing it. No. I just had to leave.

I pulled on a pair of jeans and a sweater before stepping into a pair of sneakers. Out of habit, I grabbed the satchel that functioned as my purse. It had everything I was proud of—including my license and GED certificate. Brenda and Jeff had teased me, asking if I carried it around so I could show it to everyone I met.

I shuddered. Only rage—and despair—was driving me. I was exhausted, beaten, broken, and dirty. I had to get out of here. This wasn’t my home. I would never have a home.

I eased my door open and stepped quickly down the hall. A footstep behind me when I reached the front door made me cringe.

“Minnie? Where are you going?”

I turned to see Maggie, and held a finger to my lips.

“I have to leave,” I whispered. “What was the time we had the most fun together?”

“The time we went caroling,” the little girl answered immediately.

I smiled and almost laughed through my tears. The entire family—and I, at the time when I believed I was a part of it—had gone caroling around the neighborhood during the holidays. When we performed “Jingle Bells,” I realized that Maggie had been singing different lyrics.

“Jingle bells, Batman smells, Robin laid an egg,” she belted out, her face angelic.

I had begun laughing and singing her version, remembering it from my own schooldays. Soon, we had the rest of the family singing the incorrect lyrics, and more than a few doors slammed shut on our performance.

“That was my favorite, too,” I told the little girl, who stood in confusion in front of me. “I want you to always, always, always remember that time, no matter what.”

I left without hugging her. By that time, Brenda and Jeff’s words had invaded my body, making me feel more infected than my actual diagnosis. What if I would infect her? I could never live with myself.

I ran as if I could outpace my feelings, my past, and my apparently doomed future just by moving my legs faster. My satchel slapped my back almost painfully, driving me on.

I didn’t care that my legs burned, or that my lungs struggled to get air. While my body labored, my mind had to focus entirely on forcing it to perform. I didn’t get a spare second for thinking.

How long had I been running? It seemed like my whole life. My mother and I had run from insurmountable bills. I’d run from Jack and certain death. I’d run from Mama and a life of prostitution. And now I was running from Jeff and Brenda and their certainty for my future-less life.

The road ended in a parking lot, and I realized that I could hear the crashing waves of the ocean. My breath was coming in ragged sobs, my already shaky knees knocking against each other.

I remembered coming here with Jeff, Brenda, and the girls. We’d bundled up against the biting wind and walked along the shore, picking up pretty seashells and squirreling them away in our pockets. I still carried one of them in my satchel, one with a delicate curl and speckled on the outside.

Those days were over, the days of going anywhere with anyone. I couldn’t do that anymore. I was sick. I was going to die.

Stairs led to the beach below the bluffs from the parking lot, but I walked over to the cliff face instead. A sheer drop-off led straight down to the waves. They crashed and roiled as I stared down at them. The shore was nothing like it had been the day I’d come with the family. The sun had warmed our faces and the sea had been playful and blue.

Now, the water was black, mirroring the hardness of the steel gray sky. There was nothing friendly about the sea today.

Why had I never been in control of my life? Even when I was living on the streets before Mama found me, I’d been living on everyone else’s terms. The only reason I ever darted left was because someone was approaching on my right. I turned into a shadow to make sure no one saw me.

How could I take my life back and do things on my own terms?

I stared out over the drop off, watching the waves slap against the rock bottom of the cliff.

Brenda had said that HIV was a death sentence and that I shouldn’t try anymore. I didn’t have the strength to try anymore. All I’d been doing was trying to survive—trying to come out alive on the other side of everything that anyone had ever done to me.

But why should I have to continue existing with a death sentence? Couldn’t I take matters into my own hands? Couldn’t I leave this life under my own terms?

I stared down at the black water, kicking a pebble off the edge. It was a long way down.

“You going to jump, or what?”

I whipped my head around and squinted. A tree with bare branches shook and shivered in the wind, buffeted in its precarious position at the top of the cliff. At the tree’s base, a figure sat, leaning against the trunk.

“Excuse me?” I asked, narrowing my eyes and approaching. As I got closer, I could properly see the man sitting there, dressed in a puffy jacket and beanie, an open notebook balanced on one knee.

“I asked you if you were going to jump,” he said again, almost cheerfully. His gray eyes mirrored the color of the clouds. “I can’t sit here all day and wait for it, you know, if you’re going to do it.”

I stood and looked down at him in absolute shock, my mouth opening and closing again.

“You know, I don’t think that fall would even kill you,” he continued, putting a pencil in the notebook to mark his place and closing it. “But the bluff on the other side of the beach has all these great boulders at the bottom. That would be a sure shot. Wanna walk over there and check it out?”

Check it out? Son of a bitch.
Son of a bitch.

“Son of a bitch!” I shouted. “You clueless asshole! You have no idea what has happened to me!”

And so I told him. Every gory detail. The fact that I was homeless and had never truly understood a concept of home or family where I could belong and be secure. I started with my life of poverty with my mother. That hadn’t been so bad, of course, except for the fact that it had driven us into the arms of a psychopath. Said psychopath had made me flee into the streets, where I’d dodged humanity until I started eating out of dumpsters.

That was where the madam of a glorified brothel had “saved” me and pretended she was family until she started selling my body to the highest bidder. Another monster tortured me and violated me in ways I was only just beginning to comprehend. And then I sought help from two Christians who turned against me because of an illness that was apparently going to kill me.

“And no one ever even called me by my real name this entire time!” I yelled. “I’m Jasmine, not ‘slut’ or ‘Jazz’ or ‘Minnie.’ It’s Jasmine, the sick girl, the one who has HIV.

“That’s right,” I said, building to a furious crescendo, “I have HIV. It’s a death sentence. I don’t have any more reason to be here. I shouldn’t even try to keep going anymore. Because every time I try, something else drags me down. I was going to have a future, in spite of everything. But now I have this disease. It’s robbed me of my future. I’m dead already.”

I had half expected for the man to flee during my tirade, but he sat calmly, giving me his undivided attention.

When it was apparent that I was finished, he cleared his throat.

“Feel better now, Jasmine?” he asked, smiling.

I sank to the ground, my legs unable to support me any longer. The funny thing was that I really did feel better, but I wasn’t about to admit it.

“You know what else has a death sentence?” he said conversationally. “Life. Everyone’s going to die. That’s a simple fact of existence. Everyone has to die of something.”

He was right, of course, but I shook my head stubbornly.

“I want to die of old age,” I said, “not HIV.”

The man’s laugh infuriated me, but my body was cashed out. I couldn’t get away from him even if I wanted to.

“You don’t know a damn thing about HIV, do you?” he asked.

“I know it’s going to kill me.”

He shook his head. “No one dies of HIV. HIV is only a precursor to AIDS. And nobody really dies of AIDS, either. It only weakens your immune system, so you usually succumb to something that your body would normally be able to fight off.”

“So that’s all I have to look forward to?” I asked. “My HIV turning into AIDS and something stupid like a cold offing me?”

“I don’t know where you’ve been getting your health information, but you have a lot to learn,” the man said coolly. “Maybe that would’ve been true decades ago, but with advances in medicine, you’ll likely never get AIDS. You’re going to have to be taking pills every day for the rest of your life, but you’ll probably still die of old age if that’s how you want to go.”

“But I don’t want to have HIV for the rest of my life,” I said, my lips trembling from the weather and my emotions. “I just want to be normal.”

The man leaned forward suddenly and covered my hand with his. “I’m sorry, but you don’t get to be normal anymore, Jasmine. Who wants to be normal, anyway?”

I jerked my hand away from his. “I want to be normal,” I said. “My life has never been normal. And don’t touch me. Aren’t you afraid that you’re going to get HIV?”

He laughed like I’d just made a hilarious joke. “Didn’t anyone tell you how this works?” he asked. “Or did they just tell you that you had HIV and turned you out the door?”

My stony silence told him everything he needed to know.

“Well, it shouldn’t have been like that,” he continued, nonplussed. “You can get HIV several different ways, none of which include touching an affected person’s hand. Sharing needles is one way, and you don’t look like an addict to me. Unprotected sex is the most likely culprit—you said yourself that you were basically a prostitute at that nightclub.”

I inhaled sharply through my nose. Unprotected sex. Of course. None of the customers at Mama’s nightclub had ever worn condoms during their time with me, no matter how hard I tried to cajole them. Had it been Don Costa—the mob boss who had taken my virginity? Or what about Lamprey—the limp wealthy noodle who could only get it up while touching something that had once belonged to the Don? Surely it hadn’t been Tracy, the murderous old pervert who’d probably ruined me for life on sex. Or maybe it had been. Maybe it had been all of them, all of the men who’d paid Mama for the pleasure of my company and the use of my body.

“Maybe I’ll just get hit by a car,” I said glumly. “That would be better than having HIV for the rest of my life—thanks to some jerk-off.”

The man wrinkled his nose in mock distaste. “Hit by a car? That’s so …
normal
.” He said “normal” like it was something distasteful. “Can’t you think of anything more exciting?”

A helpless smile made my lips twitch involuntarily. “Falling out of an airplane.”

“Boring.”

A giggle escaped from my mouth before I could clap a hand over it. “Struck by lightning?”

“Happens more often than you’d think. Next.”

“Eaten by a shark.”

“Now you’re talking,” he said. “What else you got?”

“Victim of an ancient curse,” I said, not believing that I could possibly be laughing over weird ways to die.