by J. C. Burke
Billy was nodding. But he wasn’t nodding at me, he was staring at our mother. She nodded too, cleared her throat, then leaned over the table, finding my hand and taking it in hers. ‘Now that we’re here, just the three of us, sitting quietly, it’s probably time to—’
‘Billy’s sick too, isn’t he?’ I blurted out. ‘That’s why we have all these new rules in the house. Billy has AIDS, doesn’t he?’
This time Billy looked straight at me. ‘I don’t have AIDS,’ he replied. ‘But I’m HIV-positive.’
I didn’t cry. I’m not even sure I made a noise. I think I’d been waiting for this moment. I had sensed the inevitable was rolling towards us and now it had arrived in the kitchen on the second Sunday in May when I was wearing my 501s and a tight black jumper.
I thought back to all the times I had been told there was nothing to worry about because Saul and Billy were different. They were ‘an old married couple’, my family’s favourite line. But even that hadn’t protected them and now everything I’d been afraid of was right here in my home.
Billy started to explain that his T cells were good and that he hadn’t had any opportunistic infections.
Mum added that not everyone would be kind and understanding. That we could lose friends and people might judge us.
But I stood up and asked if I could leave the table. I was tired. I wanted to be on my own. Mum had taken over as Polly Pessimistic and up to five seconds ago I’d never heard of T cells and opportunistic infections. I knew I’d get to know about them though. In a few weeks’ time, I bet the words would be rolling off the tip of my tongue.
I asked Mum if I could make a phone call in her room, and said goodnight.
Her clock said it was 8.21 p.m. I decided that at 8.30 p.m., I would make the call to Andrea. It was pointless putting it off any longer. Andrea would most likely be pissed that I hadn’t told her anything before.
You are the wind beneath my wings! I could imagine her saying. I am your best buddy. It’s my job to know everything about your life.
But 8.30 p.m. passed and I still wasn’t ready to dial Andrea’s number.
I wasn’t scared. In fact, I felt strangely calm. It wasn’t like I didn’t know what to say. There was a good chance, I estimated it at a one-hundred-and-ten-per cent possibility, that Andrea would be shocked. But she’d get over it.
For me, the real thing stopping me was the thought of having to speak those words: Saul died of AIDS. Billy’s home and he’s HIV-positive. Saying those two sentences out loud would give it life, make it real. That’s what telling Andrea really meant.
In Year 8, when Andrea confessed that she had her moustache waxed, she’d laid down a rule. I wasn’t allowed to ask anything about it. ‘It’s off limits,’ Andrea told me. ‘If I decide to tell you I’m having it done again, or if I want to ask you if you think it needs doing, then I can. But you can’t mention it. At all.’ I told her I understood and that I thought it was a fair rule.
Perhaps I could make some rules? I could talk about Billy or Saul whenever I wanted. But she couldn’t. Not unless I brought it up first.
Yes, I decided. These would be my terms and conditions. I would need them to survive, because Andrea had the potential to turn the news about Billy into the biggest catastrophe of the century.
Billy was going to be okay and that was that. Tomorrow I would ask him about his cell count and whatever those infections were called. I’d seen people on talk shows who’d been HIV-positive for years and hadn’t become sick. Justin had even told me about that.
Plus there was always talk about a cure being just around the corner. My biology teacher, Mr Curtain, had mentioned it the other day in class when we were learning about the eradication of polio.
The clock read 9.37 p.m. In twenty-three minutes, Andrea would be tucked up in bed starting her eight hours of beauty sleep as prescribed by Elizabeth Taylor.
I picked up the phone and dialled her number.
‘Hello? Andrea beaking.’
‘You sound terrible.’
‘I know. I hab a cold. Probably got your germs, Mub reckons.’
‘Huh?’ I had momentarily forgotten about my fake sickness.
‘Mub says you probably breathed on be or sneezed in by face.’
‘Gee, tell Constable Germ Patrol, thanks,’ I said. ‘Anyway, I’m all better now.’
‘Lucky you. By nose is so blocked I can’t even breabe.’
‘Do you want me to bring you over a magazine after school tomorrow?’
‘Baybe.’
There was a click on the other end, the sound of someone picking up the phone. Then Billy’s voice came through the receiver. ‘Oh, Gem? Sorry.’ He hung up.
Andrea suddenly squawked, ‘Was bat Billy?’
My eyes were shut. This wasn’t how I wanted it to go.
‘Gemma! Was bat Billy?’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ I answered, pressing my fingertips into my forehead. ‘He just got home this afternoon. That’s what I was ringing to tell you.’
‘How cub he’s hobe? Gebba? Is Saul there too?’
‘Hang on a sec.’ I placed my palm against the mouthpiece, pretending someone was speaking to me. ‘Yeah, okay,’ I was saying to the imaginary person. ‘I have to go, Andrea. I’ll pop by your place tomorrow. Bye.’
I threw the phone off the bed like it was contaminated and bolted into my room.
Had my life suddenly become like Ferris Bueller’s, except that I couldn’t figure out how to fix mine? Because I didn’t want to have one of those lives. I wanted my old one back.
‘Can I come in?’ Billy was at the door. ‘Gem? Hey, are you okay?’
‘Sort of,’ I answered, trying to focus on the figure walking towards me.
‘Sorry. I didn’t know you were still on the phone. I hate that. When Dad started getting suss about me and Matt, he used to try and eavesdrop on us all the time.’
‘That sucks.’
‘Shove over,’ Billy said, squeezing next to me on the bed. ‘How are you, really?’
‘I feel kind of weird.’
‘Fair enough.’
‘I knew you not being HIV-positive didn’t make sense. I just really hoped you weren’t.’
‘I know, baby girl.’
‘I was so sad about Matt. I know that’s how he died. Not that Mum ever said anything to me.’
‘Poor darling Matt,’ Billy answered. Yet his voice sounded like it did the day he told me about his friend from the country who’d died. Sad but matter-of-fact. ‘It’s like all my mates, all these men I’ve loved, are dying at the same time. There have been days when I’ve almost been too scared to walk down the street in case I bump into a friend who tells me someone else has died.’
‘That’s horrible.’
‘It’s like I’m in this really bad dream,’ Billy said. ‘That’s what it feels like.’
‘I can’t believe I’m never going to see Saul again.’
‘Get under the rooster’s wing,’ Billy told me, lifting his arm so I could snuggle up under it. It always felt safe under Billy’s wing.
But tonight, he felt smaller. Like he’d shrunk. My brother, who’d been a swimmer, a fifty-metre champion whose big lungs and strong shoulders had carried him down the pool in state-record time, now felt like he’d deflated. Just a little. As though someone had pricked a pin into his chest and the air was gradually escaping until there’d be nothing left.
‘I’m sad,’ I whispered.
‘Me too.’
‘You must miss Saul so much.’
‘It’s like I’ve had my leg amputated. I still think it’s there but it’s not,’ Billy explained and I tried to imagine what he was feeling inside, right at that very second. ‘I wake up or I walk into a room and I expect Saul to be there and he’s not. All our dreams are gone. Just like that.’
‘What were your dreams?’ I asked.
‘A house in the Hamptons,’ Billy laughed. ‘That was the big one. We’d even picked the street in Monta
uk. But that wasn’t going to happen until his parents dropped off the perch. Doesn’t seem too big a bet, does it? They’re in their late sixties, Saul was in his early thirties. Who do you reckon is meant to die first?’ I wasn’t sure if they were questions Billy wanted answers to. I suspected they weren’t. ‘This goes against all the laws of nature. That’s what’s so punishing about this disease, Gem. I know a guy in New York who’s been to nearly thirty funerals in the last eighteen months. Every single corpse under thirty-five years old!’
I started to wiggle out of his wing. I suddenly didn’t like this conversation.
‘Sorry, Gem,’ Billy offered. ‘You don’t need to hear that.’
I nestled back under. If I wanted to know stuff then I had to show Billy that I could handle it. Even if it was slightly freaking me out. ‘You can talk to me about anything, Billy.’
‘And you can ask me anything too,’ he answered. ‘All the cats are out of the bag now!’
‘I do have one question,’ I said. ‘Is that why Saul didn’t come out last Christmas? Because he was sick?’
‘He wanted to spend Christmas with his family and he also had quite a lot of work on. I think he probably knew something was up, but he didn’t want to say.’
‘Was it … ?’
‘Two nights before I flew out he got a temperature. We were walking home from the movies and it was maybe two degrees outside and Saul started ripping off his coat and scarf.’ Billy paused. I could feel my arm across his chest rise and fall with his breath. ‘I realise now that was the beginning. But you just don’t want to know. So you keep the idea as far away as you can.’
‘Did you know he was HIV-positive?’
‘We found out we both were, about eight months ago. We kept putting the test off, like lots of couples do.’ Billy pulled me in tighter. ‘Sorry I didn’t tell you, Gem. It’s hard enough trying to digest it yourself. And then there’s all the blame stuff.’
‘Like who gave it to who?’
Billy nodded. ‘I don’t want to talk about that.’
‘All right.’
I thought maybe that’d ended the conversation. But Billy kept going. ‘We didn’t even tell all our friends we were positive because we knew it would freak them out. Everyone’s terrified they could catch it. But they don’t want to say anything so they just start avoiding you.’
‘I wondered if something was wrong last Christmas,’ I told him. ‘You were quiet. But I just thought you were missing Saul. It makes sense now.’
There was a long, slow silence. The seconds crawled on their hands and knees and I watched the clock take forever before it changed from 9.57 to 9.58. Then Billy sighed and I felt his chest go still as he held his breath. ‘I was missing him,’ he sighed again. So sad was the sound. ‘But it was more than just missing him,’ he continued. ‘When I spoke to Saul on the phone his voice sounded different and I knew there was something wrong. I just knew.’
‘I get that feeling all the time.’
‘I know you do,’ Billy answered. ‘But I’m not a thinker like you, Gem. You spend hours doing it. I like to keep busy.’
‘Believe me, thinking keeps you busy. It’s a full-time job.’
‘Not my sort of job. But you’re right. I was quiet at Christmastime. I think I sensed something was wrong.’
‘You just get a feeling sometimes.’
‘The day before I flew back to New York, January sixteenth to be exact, Saul found that deadly purple spot on his chest. Actually, it was almost smaller than a spot, more like a dot. Then they just started spreading.’
‘Poor Saul,’ I whispered.
‘Yeah, he looked terrible. But he was still my beautiful Saul.’
More slow, sad silence. I wondered how I would be if every day I had to look at a face that had changed like Saul’s had. Could I still think a person like that was beautiful? Was that how you measured and weighed love?
‘I wish I’d seen Saul properly,’ I whispered. ‘Just one last time.’
‘Gem.’ Billy squeezed me. ‘I’m glad you didn’t see him in real life, baby girl. You saw how he didn’t look good. I promised Saul not to tell you he was sick. I had to make him many promises and that was one of them. It was hard to keep, too, because I knew you’d want to know. I knew you’d feel left out.’
‘What were the other ones?’
‘I promised him that he wouldn’t be alone.’ Billy swallowed hard. ‘At the end. I promised I would be there. And I was. And it was peaceful. I promised him that too, but I wasn’t sure if I could deliver on that one.’
‘But you did?’
‘Yeah,’ he whispered. ‘He was peaceful. It was like he’d slipped off to some other land.’
11
22 weeks to formal
ON MONDAY I WAS DRESSED AND OUT THE door to school like usual. Like it was a normal day in the normal life of a normal girl called Gemma Penelope Longrigg. Not a girl who had an HIV-positive brother at home.
If you saw me walking down the street, my bag slung over my shoulder, my fluoro green scrunchie in my hair, you’d think I was a dinky-di suburban girl without a worry in the world. Smiles and cool bananas all round. I wanted people to think I was this person. So I made my strides longer and my grin bigger and when I saw Louise Lovejoy waiting at the pedestrian lights across the road from school, I called out to her in such an extra loud and bouncy tone that I wondered for a second whose voice it was.
‘You’re all better?’ Louise asked me.
‘Just peachy,’ I replied. Peachy? Did I really just say that? I’d never used that word in my life. I hated that word.
‘How was your weekend?’
I found out my brother’s HIV-positive. Instead I said it again. ‘Peachy.’
‘My weekend was boring,’ Louise moaned. ‘My mum was away and my dad and my brother hogged the TV watching sport.’
‘How old’s your brother?’
‘Nathan’s twelve, but he’s almost six foot.’
‘Just like my brother,’ I told her. ‘His foot was size thirteen when he was fifteen.’
‘Did he play sport?’
‘He was a swimmer. He broke a state record once.’
‘And then became a hair and make-up artist? Whoa, that’s a 360-degree head spin.’
‘I know,’ I chuckled, because that’s what all our friends and family had thought when Billy announced he was going to hair and make-up school in the city.
‘My mum’s heard of your brother,’ Louise said. ‘She delivers magazines to doctors’ surgeries. She said she’s read about him before.’
‘Probably in the Women’s Weekly.’
‘She went totally mental when I told her he was going to do my hair and make-up for the formal.’
Suddenly, an alarm started up in my head. Whoop-whoop-whoop, like that noise an ambulance makes before it drives away. The warning sound that tells everyone beware, watch out, get out of the way because there’s a disaster up ahead.
I actually had to stop and crouch down, pretending my shoelace was untied. Eye contact and conversation would only make the alarm louder. I needed to think.
Billy was still doing our hair and make-up for the formal. Wasn’t he? So much had happened that I’d completely forgotten about it. But of course he was. He’d promised.
The bell was ringing and I was starting to cause a bit of a traffic jam, crouching smack bang in the middle of the school gates. A sea of black shoes and hairy ankles and socks in every variety of white were stepping over me and across me. Someone even squeezed in a sneaky kick.
‘Oi!’ I shouted, scrambling to my feet to see if I could spot the offender.
‘We’d better get out of the way.’ Louise took my elbow, steering us away from the crowd. ‘It’s a stampede!’
‘I don’t know why they’re all in such a rush to get to class,’ I grumbled, smoothing down my school skirt and dusting the gravel off my knees. ‘I could’ve been squashed to death.’
‘Imagine that,’ Lo
uise said. ‘Like those soccer fans in England last year.’
‘Or the students in Tiananmen Square who were run down by the army tanks.’
‘I think I’d prefer dying like that. At least it’d be quicker.’
‘If I had to pick a way to die I’d go for drowning or freezing to death,’ I told her. ‘You just fall asleep when you freeze. That wouldn’t be so bad.’
‘Oh my God! Why are we having this conversation, Gemma?’
Now we were both laughing. Actually Louise had stopped because it wasn’t really that funny. But I was still going and it was triggering a switch inside me that I knew if pressed could turn this laughter into crazy, rib-cracking hysterics.
‘Are you okay?’ Louise was asking me, a trickle of a giggle still in her voice, even though it sounded awkward. ‘Gemma? What’s so funny?’
‘Ah, nothing,’ I answered. ‘Nothing at all.’ But Louise was looking at me and I suddenly felt caught out. Or maybe I needed to tell someone because I heard myself saying, ‘Actually everything’s wrong, Louise. Everything.’
Louise and I wagged first period. We went behind the gymnasium because there was always a sewerage stink hanging around, which made it teacher-free. Yet it was the exact spot the teachers should be patrolling because it was the place to wag, smoke, get off with your boyfriend or, for some, find a moment of peace. I wondered how many times Louise had taken refuge here.
Louise lit up, blowing out a perfect chain of smoke rings that she stuck her fingers through before they curled away and disappeared.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked me. ‘Were you really sick? Oh God, you’re not …’
‘I’m not pregnant if that’s what you’re thinking.’
‘Phew!’
‘Yuck!’
‘Well, you do look pale and you’ve got dark rings under your eyes.’
I was edging towards the far end of the building because only a few metres away a couple were pashing and clawing at one another. They certainly looked occupied but it still didn’t feel safe talking here. Louise followed me.
Our bums had barely hit the ground and I was saying those two sentences. ‘Saul died of AIDS. And my brother’s HIV-positive.’ I heard the words come out of my mouth like I was listening to a report on the radio.