Hi guys! I would be enternally grateful for some feedback on this short story for the HearMe! Project: The HIV/AIDS writing Project. The premise of the stories was personal vulnerability to HIV/AIDS in a fiction or non-fiction form.
Kaleidoscope
By:
Lauren Manzano
The stars were shinning tonight. They glittered like diamonds; a kaleidoscope of faceted light scattered across a panel of dark velvet stretched beyond the horizon. It was taut; the ripples that only you seemed able to point out were nonexistent.
They said it was a beautiful service…What do I care how beautiful it was? You’re dead and there’s nothing I can do to change that.
I don’t actually remember the service. I know I don’t have amnesia because I know you died and I know I attended the funeral. I know that the president is George W. Bush, two plus two does not equal 22 and that the sun will rise in the East tomorrow.
What I do remember is the sensation of the sun beating against my back, pummeling my head through my raven meshed hat. I remember the sickly odor of the white Easter lilies, so heavy I though I would be crushed and so sweet I thought I would be sick. I remember the silence as I stared ahead while she sobbed. I remember the gleaming and polished wood of your closed coffin as it captured the flaring sun’s rays and lashed out at me, blinding me momentarily. I remember the feeling of the cool earth that clumped in my sweaty palms. I remember the waltz that it danced between my fingers, losing dancers as the silent music played and leaving trails of gossamer kisses against my finger tips…phantom touches. All this I remember but I don’t remember the service.
What I don’t want to remember is the feeling of dread that threatened to overtake my sorrow when I looked into Elisha’s eyes. The dread of having to be here again –one year, maybe less? - with Elliot sitting in my lap as the scent of earth and flowers threatened to lull us into a trance. I pray to God every night that they’ll only bury one, not two. Not two.
The stars were shinning tonight.
Yes, I know about her. I know you tried with every resource at your disposal to keep the knowledge of Grace from me. Elisha told me the day she found out. She was a mess of tears and worry when I opened my door and found her on my doorstep. She cried for hours on my shoulder, cursing God, life, and you for her misfortune. She cried for the life she’d snatched from the child growing in her womb. Did the baby have it too? Would she bring a child into the world that would pay for the sins of the father and mother? I asked her about the divorce but she seemed to have forgotten all about her demand. It drove you two to the brink of separation but Grace reweaved your red threads of fate back together again. Never had I hated it more than before. It couldn’t keep you apart, it took you from me, and now it added to its list of sufferers an innocent. An innocent that would be entrusted to me.
The stars were shinning tonight.
I don’t know what’s worse: losing you to miscommunication or losing you to miscalculation. We were kids then –nineteen, twenty- and we decided that what we had as friends was too precious to risk in following what we both knew –or is it had known now?- was in our hearts…Or so the cliché goes. But it seems that fate has a screwy way of getting what she wants. After all, I would finally get what I have always wanted: a child from you.
I know you talked Elisha into signing me as Elliot’s legal guardian should a then hypothetical situation arise. She’s always been suspicious of our close relationship. For all her suspicion, there was never anything between us, no matter how much we both desired it. For all our love and yearning, you cared, maybe even loved Elisha. After all, you’re the one who said that there are different forms of love. You loved us both but you never told Elisha how you loved her. You could never hurt her but you hurt me… you could always hurt me.
They said you were fine. No need to worry. You yourself assured me that the patient hadn’t given it to you. The broken vial hadn’t cut deep enough nor was there blood to blood contact. How very wrong you were. I find it funny now that you attempted to reassure me more than your own wife. I’m sure many also found it funny, but in a different way, but not you. You always felt “married” to me since we saw each other everyday, working side by side for hours, saving lives together.
The stars were shinning tonight.
I won’t mourn for you. As cruel as it sounds, I won’t. I can’t. I know people will accuse me of being cold but nothing will change my mind. Because to mourn you is to mourn it and what it had done to you. No, I will celebrate. I will celebrate your freedom; your freedom from the guilt, from the shame, and from the unimaginable pain that racked your body daily. I was there on those bad days, at your bedside, holding your hand. Elisha was busy with her own treatments those days. I ignored my work but Ivan sympathized. He considered it part of my rounds and sometimes counted it as overtime. He’s always been an understanding department supervisor.
On those days when we sat in your ICU room, your body so sore that it hurt to move, you would tighten your grip on my fingers, dragging my attention away from whatever commercial was on the TV. You would turn your head ever so slightly so that your emerald eyes would meet mine. In voice so raspy and soft that it was almost unrecognizable to most, you would ask,
“Are the stars out tonight?”
That small voice, so uncharacteristic of you, I cherished more than anything else in the world. With a gentle smile, I would move to the window, move the blinds aside and look up into the night sky. Clouds. Every time. I would sigh and turn, meeting your eyes. We both knew that the answer was more than its face value. We both knew the real answer but it was in these times that we found ourselves escaping reality and pretending, if only for a little while.
I would sit on the edge of your bed, careful not to make it move too much, and hold your hand to my heart. We would sit in silence as we drifted into another world where everything was to our desire. No matter which fantasy we wandered into, there were always two facts that were always the same: we were together in some form and it, AIDS, didn’t exist. Gabriel, you didn’t suffer from it anymore nor did we have to treat its victims…We didn’t have to make a difference anymore.
A sudden beep from a machine would startle us back into reality and break the dream. I’d sigh, wiping away the moisture at the corners of my eyes and you’d smile. Leaning back onto your pillow, I would whisper,
“The stars are shinning tonight.”
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