Most Beautiful

  I woke up and though I did not dare say it, I was surprised to be alive. I pulled back the curtain to look outside, but the light hurt my eyes. Putting the curtain back in place I began to say my prayers.

 "More prayers to your new God Alika?" asked the unfeeling voice behind me.

 "New?" I asked wondering what my sister meant.

 "Yes new, I mean you never prayed before. You never went to church but now that you're dying, or will be any day now, you've found God. You have rosaries around your neck when you're not even catholic and you mutter prayers with ever breath you take. What's the matter darling, have your old Gods of debauchery abandoned you? They've run off to find younger, healthier playmates haven't they?"

 "Is there something you wanted Margaret, something other than to torture me?" I asked.

 She slammed down a tray in front of me forcing me to abandon my prayers. "Mom fixed it for you," she said.

 On the tray lay a large array of pills and a glass of water, most of which had spilled out onto the tray. I quickly swallowed the now soggy pills. She was almost out the door when I said, "I told mom that she didn't need to do this, tell her that I'll handle it myself."

 "You can't really blame her for not believing that can you? After all look at what happened the last time you tried to handle things yourself," she said before leaving with a smirk on her face.

 I tried to continue my day as if she had not interrupted which meant avoiding my family. I lived my life in sheath mode. I had become efficient at avoiding my family, which comprised of my mother, father and oh-so-loving older sister.

  My parents had taken to treating me like some mixture of child and ghost due to my illness. When they were not trying to feed or dress me they were referring to me in the past tense. Recently my mother looked up from her quiet musings and said, "Alika used to be such a beautiful young woman. I wonder if that's why this happened...maybe it would have been better if she was plain like Margaret."

 Margaret happened to be in that room and as a result her animosity towards me seemed to be a little worst than usual these days.  She had hated me from birth and she was determined not to let it go just because, as she so bluntly put it, I went out and got myself AIDS.

 Out of the house at last I stopped a maxi going to San Fernando and got in. I took a seat in the back next to a young man. He was tall, handsome and for some reason staring at me. I wished that his eyes, which were still fixed on me, would stop lying to him. They were telling him that I was a healthy young woman whose biggest concern was which shoes to wear.

 "Hey listen my friends and I are going out tonight and I was wondering..."

 "No," I said quickly.

  He said something foul about me and then turned away.

 "Just saving us both some time," I said as gazed out the window. This was a game I'd played too many times before, one which always ended the same way. I would try to win his heart by being charming and delightful before revealing the truth about myself at which point he would suddenly become a magician and disappear.

 The world went by my window in a blur as the vehicle sped along the road into the city. The sounds of city were sometimes maddening to me. This was the world that had shut me out. Now and then I caught glimpses of the youths of my nation. They were everywhere. They walked and talked, as I once had, as if they were invincible. Once a part of this world, I was now in exile. I had lost the key; innocence, freedom from thoughts of pending death and that blissful ignorance of youth.

 The man next to me was staring at me again but now there was a look of contempt in his eyes. I felt awful about it but what else could I have done. It wasn't that I didn't want to be with someone. I wanted that more than anything.

Death was a frightening enough prospect without knowing that you would have to face it completely alone. Thoughts like these were dangerous. Once you started thinking about them it was hard to stop. Now all types of horrible thoughts were fluttering around in my head. I was dangerously close to having a panic attack when I saw that I was passing the doctor's office.

I had almost missed it. I stopped my mental break down or at least put it on hold long enough to push the buzzer and get out of the maxi. I crossed the street and headed up stairs to find my doctor.

Dr. Mohammed was a middle aged, balding man with an ugly comb over. What I liked about him was that he lacked that eternally cool composure that most doctors had. I liked the fact that my pending death disturbed him, if only a little.

Giving me the bad news he spoke in terms of CD4+ T cells and opportunistic infections about the war my cells were waging inside my body. He told me that my T cell count was down. He spoke about the addition pills I would have to take and what side effects to expect.

The visit ended earlier than expected. It was usually a whole day full of poking and probing. Fully expecting this I had taken the day off from work so with nothing to do and nowhere to go I wondered around the city aimlessly. I drifted in and out of store after store while people surged around me.

I had developed a fear of begin around too many people. I saw them all watching me with hate in their eyes. They all knew and hated me for it. I was sure that this was all in my mind until I saw a familiar face full of hate looking at me. This was a face from my past not from my imagination.

Years ago when I made my first venture into the world Sharina and I had lived the same apartment building. We were good friends. I babysat her child, always for free. Whenever there was a problem between her and Roger, who played the part of both deadbeat boyfriend to her and deadbeat dad to her daughter, Nikki - I was there.

 When I found out about the virus I told her, since we had been so close I thought she would understand. She was the first person I told and after what happened with her I'm amazed that I got up the courage to tell anyone else.

I broke it to her like a joke at first then while she was still laughing at the thought that I could have AIDS, I told her that I wasn't joking. Her face turned serious as I sat there trying to explain it as best I could. I told her she didn't have to worry because she couldn't get it form touching me or anything like that. She said nothing. She merely sat there. I noticed later that she didn't even finish her drink.

She didn't come over for the next couple of days. Weeks passed before I realized that she had hired another babysitter. I came to the slow realization that she no longer wanted to be near me. I got the feeling that she was afraid of me. This suspicion was confirmed one day when I open my door and saw Nikki outside playing. Without thinking about it I picked her up in my arms and hugged her.

"Hi sweetheart," I said.

"Hi, why'd mommy say not to talk to you anymore?" she asked.

I fought the urge to burst into tears. I was about to put Nikki down when Sharina came storming out of her apartment and saw me with her child. She ripped Nikki out of my arms.

"I don't want you touching her, you hear me. Stay away from us," she said to me and then to her child, "Didn't I tell you not to go over there?"

"I was just talking to her."

"Well don't ever talk to her again," she said. She went back inside slamming the door behind her shutting me out of her life.

 In a misguided attempt to fix things I downloaded a bunch of material off the Internet on AIDS. I put it in a manila envelope and pushed it under her door. I hoped that she would see that see that there was no real risk. I found the pages scattered outside my door the next morning. On them she had written 'Alika has AIDS stay away' in bold letters with a red marker. Everyone who passed that morning saw them and those who didn't soon heard about it.

 All my remaining days in that building were met with frosty if not down right hostile greetings. A few of my more enlightened neighbors took to pitying me instead which was of course just as annoying, if not more so. To this day I'm under the impression that a party was thrown the day I moved back in with my parents.

Now she and Nikki walked by stirring up unpleasant memories. All the time we had spent together, everything we once were had been washed away. Nikki watched me still confused hoping for answers she could not yet understand.

 I had managed to sneak back into the house to get some sleep before my support group meeting. I opened my eyes later that afternoon to a bright yellow haze. The afternoon sun flooded the room with light.  I tried to get up but I could barely see. The images in the room had blurred and run together like a watercolour painting that had been left out in the rain.  I had to wait until my sight returned before I could leave.

When I arrived the meeting had already started. I took my usual seat in the back to listen. Someone was speaking, "How can you say that you thought you were safe because you live in Trinidad? The Caribbean is not exempt. It's a pandemic; you had to have know that"

"I knew that but it was just one in a barge of facts that every modern being is faced with and as a result it sunk into the background. You can't think about these things all the time - you'd go crazy, so you go on and live your life but sometimes the facts you chose to ignore come back glaring like neon lights," said another voice to which there were mutters of approval.

 Susan, the woman who had spoken first was already mounting an argument. She was the self designated leader of the group and believed that there was only one right opinion – her own. She spent most of her time arguing but one could tell that her attitude was a recent development, adopted to deal with her situation.

Everyone knew her story because she had told it so many times. She had gotten HIV when a partner failed to mention that he was infected. It simply slipped his mind, she had said. She was my opposite in the group as loud as I was quiet. I never spoke during the meetings. Several attempts had been made but in the end I was left in peace. What I got from the meetings was something finer, to be surrounded by people who understood what I was going through. What I lacked was the need to dissect my own feelings upon that stage.

 Before that meeting was over I left. I knew that if I lingered they would be tempted to coax me out of my silence. I had been making my way down stairs when I was knocked down. Looking up I saw the culprit a man holding one too many craft projects.

"I'm so sorry. I knew my sister's art was ugly but I never thought that it was this dangerous," he said. He helped me down the remaining stairs. "I didn't notice you in there," he said. I knew that he was confusing me with the people taking an art course on the third floor but I said nothing.

Once under the lights of the parking lot I was able to see him clearly. He was very handsome and was giving me the most charming smile.

 "I'm Jason and I'm so sorry about the accident that I insist you have dinner with us," he said.

"No that's okay, I'm fine really. I'm tired...I should go home."

"You'd be doing me a favor. Please save me from becoming the third wheel. My sister and her husband are newlyweds who'll ignore me all night," he said.

"I don't know..."

"Well I do. You said you felt tired that's probably because you're not eating enough."

I was ushered to a car, driven to a restaurant and before long eating a sumptuous dinner. Sometime during the meal the annoyingly affectionate couple managed to acknowledge our presence.

"So Alika, that's an interesting name, does it mean anything?"

"It means most beautiful," I answered.

"Wow even your name has got an ego," said Jason.

"It's not like I choose it," I said.

"I'm joking. I think it's the perfect name for you. I can't think of anything else you should ever be called."

The rest of the evening was spent having a good time. I even laughed something I thought I had forgotten how to do. The evening drew to a close despite my protest. When the bill came I felt the end drawing near. As we headed towards the car I told him the truth. He seemed to take it well and when he dropped me off at home he said that he'd call me later that night.   

"Alika phone call," said Margaret as she entered my room. "It's a boy, I hope you told him about you condition," she said into the mouthpiece before she handed me the phone.

"Hi it's Jason..." said the voice on the line.

"Hey could you hold on for a second?"

"Yeah sure," he said. I stuffed the phone under a pillow and went after her.

"Why do you hate me so much? Why would you do that? I really like this guy what would have happened if he didn't already know?" I asked.

 "Calm down, it's not like I said what the dreaded condition was," she said. She started walking away but I grabbed her arm and held her back.

"What have I ever done to make you hate me so much?"

"Let go," she said.

"No for once stop being so passive aggressive, do something. Tell me why you hate me so much?"

"Because you were born... do you even know how horrible things were when dad lost his job," she said.

"Yes I know things were bad, we were poor," I said in a bored voice about a past I felt must have been exaggerated.  

"Shut up. You wouldn't say it like that if you had to live it. I grew up with nothing but by the time you came along things were already looking up. Soon we moved to a place where there was more than one bedroom and where the roof didn't leak when it rained. So do you know what they did? Instead of trying to make it up to me they decided to make sure that you never went through what I did. They spent months researching a name for you when I'd been named so very quickly after Aunt Margaret, the one with the moustache and missing teeth. So why spend months on you... because you had to be the most beautiful, the most perfect, and ultimately the most disappointing.

"You got to be the fun one, the party girl. You have no idea how much we invested in you. You had the life that I should have had and you wasted it. You're mad if you think that I can forgive that. I refuse to invest anymore time on you and I don't think anyone else should either." She left with tears streaming down her face.

 This wasn't the explanation I had hoped for. I wanted something simple like a favorite toy I had broken, some thing that once spoken aloud would be revealed as ridiculously easy to fix. How could I convince her that my birth had not robbed her of the life she deserved? 

I went back to my room where I sat dazed for the longest time. I realized that there was no way back for us and even if there was it would only be back to a place where her hatred was a little less intense.

Then I remembered the phone. Would Jason still be there I wondered. I knew that I was probably reading a little too much into it. Maybe the chemistry I felt at dinner was the work of an overactive imagination, or perhaps my revelation had cooled things down a bit. They all seemed minor points to me because he had called and would cease to matter if he was still on the line.

"Jason?"

"I was about to hang up. What took you so long?" he asked.

"Life," I said.

"Oh well I heard that can be complicated," he said.

"Just a little but what's a girl to do the alternative is a bit scary."

© Keisha L. Grant, 2006

Author: Keisha L. Grant

Previously entered in the Amazon shorts Short-Form Writing Competition.