The Prettiest Star

by Carter Sickels

And what do you know? This morning I opened the Columbus paper, which my parents get delivered on Sundays, and there it was: front page news. There were no pictures of me and they didn’t print my name, but still—people know.

  Stories from Boone County don’t usually make it in unless it’s something big, like a murder or major drug bust.

  Or a man with AIDS descending into the town swimming pool.

  July 21, 1986

  In the darkest moments, it’s hard not to blame past lovers. You want to lay blame. You want to feel innocent. I probably was infected one of the first times I had sex—maybe that first guy, even. There is no reason that explains AIDS, Shawn told me, You’re not being punished. But it’s a hard thing to let go—you hear all the shit people say, like Jerry Falwell gloating that homosexuals will be annihilated and there will be a celebration in heaven. I’ve heard, more times than once: AIDS is a cure for fags.

  Guys try to go back home and their parents turn them away. Hospital beds hold skeletons of men who the nurses and doctors do not want to touch. Even after we die they don’t want us. Bodies in morgues that parents will not claim. Bodies disposed of in garbage bags. People afraid our AIDS-bodies will contaminate the ground. I heard about a funeral where they sealed the body under glass. It’s absurd, but still stings—they don’t want to touch us when we’re alive or when we’re dead. “Dropping like flies” is an ugly expression I’ve heard more than once. All these young men dying, and nobody cares.

  First guy I knew was Alex Morales, who shot these amazing weird photographs of potholes, crumbling buildings, trash. One night in 1983 we all went out and he said he was feeling funny, couldn’t get his breath, his chest felt tight. Next night he was at the hospital. Two days later, he was dead. Pneumonia. He was thirty years old.

  People think death is this peaceful glow, softness, dreamlike, but it’s ugly, dirty, smelly, lonely, painful. I don’t want to suffer, who does?

  You hope it’s painless—go quietly, die in your sleep during a dream, loved ones gathered around you, all reconcilement and forgiveness. But, the truth is, AIDS is never painless. And there is nothing profound or beautiful about death.

  I can’t picture my own. There is no way to understand how it will look or feel. I don’t know how to imagine it because I’m still alive.

  July 22, 1986

  There is something hard and complicated between me and my sister now, a tangled knot of confusion. She knew all this time. Today, I was watching one of her ocean programs with her, like we used to, and I felt spacey and relaxed, even if Jess didn’t want me there. Back when I was a teenager, I used to get stoned and watch hours of TV with her, and that’s how I felt—my body slowed down and my mind opened to the dazzling images.

  A man in scuba gear, looking like an alien, descended into turquoise waters, bubbles rising from his mask. Neon fish exploding around him like thousands of butterflies. A silver tuna, as long as the man, swam under him, disappearing into the dark.

  You would want to do that? I asked, trying to get Jess to talk to me. If she hates me, I don’t blame her—she’s the one who has to go back to school and face these assholes every day.

  She shrugged. Her chin jutting out slightly. She’s got our mother’s heart-shaped face. The slightly pointy chin, our father’s full lips. She’s growing her hair out, and when she wears it down, it hits just below her shoulders—the way I used to wear mine, enraging my father.

  I tried to talk to her, probably sounded like any adult, saying something like, Jess, I know this is hard.

  I’m trying to watch this, she said.

  And, that was that. Fine, we didn’t talk. We watched the TV screen. The camera switched to the ocean’s surface. Blue and sunlight. A fin cutting the water. The shark, all muscle, zipping through, goes in for the kill. The narrator describing the scene in a calm, comforting voice, like he’s telling a bedtime story.

  As bad as it was, the humiliation, the embarrassment, there was also this: for the briefest, sweetest of moments, when I was floating on my back in that swimming pool, looking up at the perfect blue sky, my own heartbeat thudding in my ears, I was alive, and happy. Everything was quiet and light.

  A panoramic view of a sparkling sea. Then a cloud of blood.

  Jess

  On the roof outside my window, I suck in the weedy backyard night smells, wishing the woman’s voice would fade away, but I can still hear her.

  “You’ll pay for what you’ve done,” she said.

  I’m not supposed to answer the phone because of the prank calls. But I wanted to know what people were saying. I picked up on the first ring and was surprised to hear a woman’s voice. I was expecting a man’s. She didn’t sound like an old lady, not a girl either. Someone my mother’s age. Maybe a mother herself. “Sinner,” she said.

  Moonlight shivers on the silver leaves. I hear the squeak of the back door. My mother walks out to the middle of the backyard where it’s flat and exposed. She’s been doing this all summer, coming out to smoke when she thinks we’re all asleep. The hem of her sleeveless nightgown touches her knees. She’s barefoot, and she doesn’t look anything like the mother I know. She’s a wild woman who lives in the woods. She gazes up at the sky, then suddenly drops her head and hunches over. At first I think she’s fallen or she’s hurt, but then low guttural noises tumble across the night, and I remember Brian’s moans echoing through the house. I feel a sudden rush of adrenaline and fear, catching my mother at this—alone and sobbing in the dark.

  I don’t know how much time goes by. Not much. She pulls herself together. When she stands up, a cigarette still burns in her hand. Clutching her side, like she has a runner’s cramp, she walks back toward the house.

  If Josh Clay hadn’t been at the pool, would anyone have noticed Brian? It’s my fault for telling. But other people already knew, like Brett Wilson. Now everyone knows. The woman’s white-hot voice echoes in my ear. Sinner. When I try to imagine what she looks like, all I can see is an angry red mouth—lips curling, daggered teeth.

  I close my eyes and wish I wasn’t in Ohio but on a boat rocking on the ocean’s waves, and that the noisy crickets were actually giant, ancient blue whales singing to each other for miles, moving underwater towards each other and coming for me.

  Brian sits at the kitchen table with the paper spread open, like this is just any normal day. He looks rough, like one of the Dennisons next door—raggedy hair, and glassy eyes downcast and hooded like he’s trying to hide something.

  “Pool’s back open,” he says.

  “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

  He knows as well as I do that things have changed for good. After I lace up my tennis shoes, I go out the front door, bracing myself—for what? A crowd? Reporters? Boys laughing? It’s not like that. It’s quiet, for now. The sky squats low—gray and thin, the air surprisingly cool. The pool opened back up but the heat wave is over. People will be pissed we took away their best swimming days.

  I stretch in the front yard. My father has fallen behind on the mowing, and bees thread through the long grass, bumping into shoots of clover and dandelions. As I look up from touching my toes, the Pentecostal sisters walk out to their driveway. They don’t pay me any mind—they’ve already decided I’m going to hell. Two of them stand at either end of a jump rope and turn it in big, lazy loops; the third girl jumps in. I haven’t jumped rope since I was in elementary school. They’re chanting, but I can’t make out the words. Probably something religious. They wear long old-fashioned dresses, and colored pompom footies peek over the edges of their cheap white tennis shoes. At school nobody talks to them. The religious wackos. The rope snaps against the cement. They don’t care about friends, they have God.

  There is no way I can go back to school in the fall. And I’m the girl whose brother has AIDS. I can’t go back. I won’t.

  I head in the direction of Buckeye Creek. I forgot my Walkman so I have to listen to myself breathing through my mouth. The short hot huffs make me sou
nd like an animal—I am an animal—and the insides of my thighs burn. The pain feels good. I want to see Nick, but I’m scared of what he’ll say.

  At the high school, I run out to the baseball diamonds and across the yellowing field where we played softball. How many days did I stand out here missing ball after ball? My parents and grandmother, watching me strike out. I never want to play again. After, my father would buy me ice cream, no matter if we won or lost, like the coaches used to when I was a kid. “Next time,” he’d say. I wish Annie was still here—she’d know what to do.

  I collapse in the outfield. Stretched out on my back, I close my eyes and purple dots shoot behind my eyelids. It’s hard to get my breath. It’s the smoking. I could get lung cancer. Maybe I’m dying too.

  Drops of warm rain land on my face. I fold my arms over my chest and try not to move. The tips of grass blades scratch my legs. If someone saw me out here alone in the field, in the rain, they might think I was dead. I remember my mother bringing home a magazine from the dentist office last year, Time or Newsweek, that had a story on AIDS—pictures of a ravaged man with tubes sticking out of his skeleton body, his face melted away to sharp, ugly bones. The article said nobody was safe.

  The rain comes down harder, pinging against the roof of the dugout, and I scramble up and run back home.

  My wet T-shirt and shorts cling, and my socks squish in my shoes. After I dry off my face with a dishtowel, I sit in Brian’s chair and look at the funnies. Garfield and Cathy and Family Circus and Blondie and Beetle Bailey. He used to read them to me when I was little. The drawings and black ink blur as water drips. I touch the cup of cold tea. The saucer with half a piece of toast. You can only get it from sex or sharing needles. I take a sip of the tea, lips touching where his were. What if it’s in our blood too—mine, my parents’, my grandmother’s? What if whatever made him gay is also in me?

  The rain stops and the light suddenly shifts, cutting through white-gray sky. A lily pad of gold blooms under the kitchen table. When we were little, Brian would drape blankets and quilts over the chairs, then turn off the lights. After we were safe under the ceiling of blankets, warm like the skins of animals, he would flick on a flashlight and we’d pretend we were at the bottom of the sea.

  “Jess. Can I come in?”

  I put down my book and take off my headphones, and my mother walks in, still wearing her office clothes. She sits on the edge of my bed, stink of cigarette smoke rolling off her crumpled shirt. I think of her smoking under the stars. Her desperate sobs.

  “Hey, kiddo.” She wraps her fingers around my ankle. “Is there anything you want to ask me?”

  “No.”

  My mother’s face sags, especially her eyes, the skin underneath them puffy and pink. Most of the perm has gone out of her hair, so that it lays against her head like the feathery wings of a chicken, looking flat and puffy at the same time.

  “Honey, I’m sorry that we didn’t tell you. We just thought it was best.”

  It’s hard to stay mad at someone who looks so weak.

  “The talk will die down. People know us. They know what kind of family we are. We’re not strangers,” she says, and holds onto my ankle like she’s anxious I’ll float away.

  “I want to move,” I say. I lower my hand over hers, fitting our fingers together like Legos. Our bones know each other, they come from the same place.

  Darkness sinks over Chester, except for the yellow globed street lamps attracting fluttering moths to their deaths, and a few TVs flickering alien-blue lights. Parked pickups and cars sit along the streets like empty husks of some giant land animals. Nobody sees me—I’m a shadow cutting through the night.

  When I get to the drive-in, I check the face of my glow-in-the-dark watch. Ten minutes past midnight. When I called earlier, he said he’d be here.

  Then I hear footsteps and see the tip of his cigarette burning red bobbing in my direction. When he’s standing in front of me—small ferret face, hair in his eyes—I want to crawl inside his clothes, feel him all around me. I’m surprised how much I’ve missed him.

  “Hey,” he says.

  “Hey.”

  Nick opens his book bag and pulls out two cans of Pabst. We sit on the merry-go-ground and crack our beers under the starry sky and don’t say anything for a while. I wasn’t sure he’d want to see me. But he reaches over and holds my hand. His skin feels warm and clammy. Nick Marshall, the hood. Am I his girlfriend? With his other hand he fiddles with his cigarettes, and shakes one out and puts it between his lips. Casually flips his Zippo. The orange flame waves in his eyes.

  “It was your brother, wasn’t it?” Nick says, matter-of-fact. “The dude with AIDS.”

  I pretend not to know what he’s talking about. “What?”

  “My dad told me.”

  The beer leaves a sour, bitter taste in my mouth. I tell myself to just get up and walk away. But he’s holding my hand.

  “How does he know it’s Brian?”

  “Guess he heard it from someone.”

  A million lies buzz on my lips. “I should go.”

  “Wait.” Nick’s little teeth crowd together, some of them pointy like a dog’s. “I know you can’t get it by drinking after him or anything. Or swimming in the pool.” He cracks his knuckles. “You don’t have it. Do you?”

  I can’t tell if he’s being serious or not. I shake my head. Nick guzzles the rest of his beer and tosses the can out into the field. Something rustles from the trees and I jump—has someone followed us? Nick assures me, “Probably a raccoon.”

  He stamps out his cigarette, then pulls me closer. His beer-tongue wiggles in my mouth as his hands search for a place to hold onto. I still have my cigarette, and I smash it out on the metal, so as not to burn either of us. Nick knocks over the last of my beer and it trickles down my knee. The merry-go-round moves a little, and I dig my shoes into the ground to hold us still. Then Nick is on top of me, his mouth and tongue everywhere at once, all over my face. His hand slides under my shirt, strokes my chest. My boobs. They’re not big, but not so flat anymore either. I stay as still as possible. Animals rustle in the trees. A frog chirps. My heart beats.

  Then, a sudden rush of warm air and a wide empty space as Nick lifts off of me. He heaves big breaths. I straighten my shirt. He sits down next to me and rests his hand, always gray with pencil marks, on my thigh and it perches there delicately, a little sparrow that any second might fly away.

  “You’re a virgin, aren’t you?” he asks.

  “So are you.”

  He spits between his teeth. “No, I’m not.” He’s lying, but I don’t care. He unwraps a piece of Big Red. “Want one?”

  I peel off the silver foil wrapper and fold the stick of gum in my mouth. I don’t tell him how bad things are. The phone calls and newspaper articles. My brother getting thinner, sicker, weaker—dying. The old movie screen rises above us like a white whale in the sky, and the speaker poles glow under the moonlight like headstones.

  “I hate Chester,” I say.

  Nick chews his gum hard, popping and cracking it. “We could go somewhere,” he says. “We could leave, just like your brother did.”

  Sharon

  I thought by now the gossip would have died down. It’s been ten days. Just when it seems it’s going to, there is something else in the paper. An article about how the swimming pool has lost business—people don’t want to go anymore, anxious the water is contaminated. Stupid, scared letters to the editor, and nasty, hateful talk, lies spawning more lies. He bled in the pool. Peed in the pool. He went swimming with an open cut. He wants to infect people, he wants to infect children. He uses public restrooms, handles food in the grocery store, spits in water fountains.

  Even though the newspapers haven’t used his name, people know. At work, Marjorie, who was always so easygoing, hardly speaks to me, and she’s started wearing latex gloves all the time around the office, even when she’s not with a patient. Dave tries to act like everything is normal, but I
see him watching me like I’m a stranger, a crazy woman pretending to be Sharon. No one drops by the house or calls. I saw Liz at the post office getting in her car and I started to say hello, then realized she’d already seen me and was pretending she hadn’t.

  Even church, once my solace, has become unbearable. This past Sunday Travis and I went with Lettie, and friends flashed fake smiles or avoided us. Still, Lettie was hopeful. She had met with Reverend Clay to tell him how bad the situation was getting. As the service went on, I started to feel hopeful too. Dennis talked about the sin of judgment. He denounced gossip as unchristian. He never mentioned Brian, of course, or the pool—but we all knew what he was saying.

  After the offering, he invited Josh up to the podium to announce that the youth group would be raising money to go to a national Christian youth conference in Washington, DC. Everyone applauded, but not Lettie—her hands stayed on her lap, her mouth pinched. My hands came together lightly. I remember seeing him that day at the pool, arms crossed, watching, judging. The look of superiority on his face. And then feeling startled by my own unforgivable wish, that he was our boy—wasn’t his the life we had imagined for our son?

  After Josh returned to his seat, Reverend Clay delivered a sermon about God’s grace and forgiveness. It was all going fine until about halfway through. After a long pause, he said, “We should love the sinners, but that doesn’t mean we accept the sin. Make no mistake, homosexuality is a sin.” He looked sorry to be saying the words. “These men, that’s why they’re getting sick, you see.”

  As the church went silent—not a cough or a rustle of a bulletin—a shock of air lifted up under me, sweeping away the floor. Then Lettie slipped her hymnal in the slot on the back of the pew in front of her with a bang and fumbled for her pocketbook. She moved slowly, making a lot of noise. “Excuse me,” she said loudly. We stood up to let her by. All eyes on her, she walked down the aisle, straight-backed and determined, and pushed open the double doors—a whoosh, then the outside light vanished and she was gone. Travis sat down and opened his hymnal, and I took my place next to my husband.