This Side of Providence (22 page)

Arcelia

T
hey finally agree to let me out of this dump, just in time for Christmas. First I gotta go to an appointment with discharge planning, where a lady who looks like she don't know how to laugh gives me a bunch of papers with names and addresses of agencies I know I won't visit. The first name on the list is AIDS Care Ocean State, some place that helps people with AIDS get housing, free food, and clothes. I ask her if I qualify, even though I only have HIV.

“Yes, of course,” the lady says without looking up.

“And they can get me an apartment?”

“They'll put you on the list right away. Depending on what you need it could be a month or several months before they find you something. Do you have anywhere to stay in the meantime?”

“I can stay with my cousin for a while. He's been watching my kids.”

She nods and writes something down in my file. “Sounds good,” she says after being quiet for a really long time.

The lady gives me the name of a doctor I'll be seeing at RI Hospital, a different one from the guy I'm seeing in here. She tells me he's used to the same population—IV drug users—as if that means we'll understand each other. The card she gives me has his name and address printed on the front, and the date and time of the appointment written out neatly on the other side. It looks like she tried to write it out as clear as possible, so she won't get in trouble if I don't show up.

She hands me three small bottles of pills, a one-week supply, and tells me that I have to fill my prescription as soon as I get out.

“They warned you about med adherence, right?”

“Yeah. But what's that mean again?”

“That means you have to keep taking your meds, even though you feel fine, because if you stop and then try to get back on, they could stop working for your body.”

“It's medicine. I thought it either works or it don't.”

“It's not that simple, Arcelia.” She checks the clock on the wall. “You can ask the doctor about it if you have more questions. Our time here is almost over.” She looks through the rest of my file. “What are you planning as far as work?”

I shrug. “I don't know yet.”

“Do you have any job experience?”

“I got lots of experience, lady. But maybe not in the right kind of jobs.”

She stares at me like she hates her job. “Okay,” she finally says, putting her hands flat on the desk. “What did you do before you came here? Aside from what you got arrested for.”

“I was raising my kids. I've got three of them. That's triple the experience, right?”

She bites her pencil. “Child care is probably not going to work. They want your record to be crystal clean. But what about food services, have you ever been a waitress?”

“I used to work at a 7-Eleven.”

“Okay. Are you still in touch with them? Anyone that could give you a reference?”

“I got fired. Plus, it was like five years ago. In New York.”

She shuffles some papers on her desk. “I think they've got some space in a janitorial training site in Cranston. Cranston or Warwick, I can't remember which. Do you have a means of transportation?”

“A what?”

“A way to get there?”

“All I got is my legs.”

“Well, your case manager at AIDS Care should be able to get you a bus pass. I'll jot down a note about it in your file. You
might want to mention it yourself, though, just in case. Sometimes the files get held up.”

She writes something down on a Post-it note and sticks it in the file. I know right now if it ever gets lost, I won't say anything.

“Okay, that pretty much wraps it up for us. Do you have any other questions?”

She looks at me, while questions go off in my head like gunfire.

How am I going to feed my children?

How will I stay clean on the outside?

How sick am I?

How much time do I have?

What do I do if I miss the life I had in here?

But I don't ask any of them out loud. I shake my head and walk out of her office, jamming the papers into my back pocket like a dirty rag.

The night before I leave, I pack my things into a small duffel bag Kim and Chino brought me the first time they visited. It's weird that I can pack up all my crap in three minutes, even though I lived here more than six months.

Candy comes by earlier than usual, right after lights out, and slips into bed with me for the last time. We fool around a little, but halfway through she stops and hides her face in the pillow and starts to cry. I don't know what to do, since Candy isn't the type of girl who usually cries, so I ignore it at first, hoping she'll stop on her own. When she don't stop, I put my arm around her and hold her as tight as I can and tell her that everything is gonna be fine and that soon she can go home like me.

A while later, with her back against me and her knees curled into the cement wall, she finally speaks.

“Why didn't you ever tell me you were positive?”

I was gonna tell her a few weeks earlier, when she saw me standing in the med line, but I never thought of a good way to bring it up.

“Is that why you're crying?”

“Yes,” she says, wiping her nose on the sheet. “Not because
you have it. Because you didn't trust me enough to tell me.”

“Sorry,” I tell her. “I thought it was too much.”

She hugs her knees, rocking like a baby. I wonder if Trini still rocks like that.

“Everything is too much in here,” she says. “It's not like one thing is going to make a big difference.”

“But it's a big thing.”

“Why? Because you're sick?” She finally turns over to look at me. “We're all sick. And we're all going to die eventually. What's the difference if it's next week or next year? Nobody's going to outrun death. Especially us.”

I close my eyes and bury my head in her chest. I breathe her in—a mix of hair oil, vanilla, and cigarettes that's become as familiar as her face in the dark. She rubs the back of my neck with her fingertips. I pull up her skirt and kiss her naked belly. Goose bumps spread over her skin as I touch it. She pulls my head to her breast, guiding my mouth to the stiffness of her nipple. It softens against my tongue as she raises her chest to me. As soon as I hear her moan I know I been forgiven. If only it was this easy to wipe away all my sins.

Later, when she's almost asleep, I ask her a question I been thinking about since we met.

“Why Candy?” I whisper into her ear.

“What you mean?” She pulls away from me to look at my eyes.

“Why not Caramel or Cocoa or Cinnamon?”

She laughs, coming back to kiss me. “Candy's not a stage name. It's short for Candace.”

“Candace,” I repeat it slowly, like a foreign word. “I never heard that name before.”

I hear her yawn. “Well, it's mine.”

Something changes after that. Knowing her name makes everything we're doing suddenly real, and it scares the hell out of me. I don't want to be real to her. Most days I think the people we are in here don't really exist, we just make up a person we think can survive this. Once I get out, I figure I can make up a brand-new person, some lady who's totally different from who I been. And who knows, maybe it will be the person I really am.

The bus they put me on is supposed to take me straight to Kim and Chino's place, but I get off on Pocasset Avenue so I can stop at the CVS, instead of using Anthony's in my old neighborhood where everybody knows me. I drop off my prescriptions with a lady in a white lab coat who looks like a teenager, and while she's filling it I look around the store for Christmas presents. They gave me fifty bucks to spend, which seemed like a lot at the time, but I know I have to be careful with it if I want to get something for everybody, even Kim. They sell some T-shirts, but nothing as nice as the stuff at the flea market in Atlantic Mills, so I decide to pick up a snack for now and get the real presents later.

I buy a package of Skittles for Luz, red licorice for Cristo, SweeTARTS for Trini, a king-sized chocolate bar for Chino, and Cracker Jacks for Kim and her son. I buy a box of Sugar Babies for myself and suck on them as I wait in line, hoping all my teeth won't fall out. My tongue finds the gap where my cracked tooth used to be and gently tests the gum. I wince from the pressure. It's been two months but it still hurts to chew on it. The Sugar Babies get stuck in my teeth and I need help getting them out. They don't have any toothpicks, but the lady at the checkout counter gives me a book of wooden matches to use. I feel kinda dumb, but I figure it's worth it. After six months inside, it tasted like sunshine on my tongue.

When I walk back to the pharmacy it's suddenly crowded. A pregnant lady with a baby on her hip is talking to the pharmacist, asking why her insurance won't cover her baby's medicine, and a man with yellow skin coughs into the sleeve of his canvas jacket. Two teenage boys joke in front of a rack of condoms. When one of them sees me looking at him, he raises his eyes and I look away. The clock behind the counter says 4:15—I still have ten minutes before the lady said it would be ready. I been waiting six months to see my children, what's another ten minutes?

I sit in the pickup area to wait, but when it's not ready in
thirty minutes, I get antsy and end up walking out of that CVS with only my duffel bag, ten dollars' worth of candy, and a promise that I'll come back later in the week. Now that I'm free, I figure I got plenty of time.

I walk all the way to Kim and Chino's instead of taking another bus because I want to feel my legs move. It's cold outside, and it's almost dark, but I walk as slow as I can. The pavement feels good under my feet. I smile at the wind, even when it almost knocks me into a parked car and makes my eyes fill with tears. I take the long way, walking through the heart of Olneyville—past the Rent-A-Center, the D'Angelo's, and the car wash—instead of up Manton Avenue and over to Mount Pleasant, even though it adds almost twenty minutes to the walk. I don't want to see my old neighborhood just yet. My corner. My Dunkin' Donuts. My Laundromat. In fact, I wonder if I'll ever be ready to see those places again.

When I get to their street my heart starts to pound and all of a sudden I have to go to the bathroom. I walk up to the porch and stand there for several seconds, trying to catch my breath. Finally, I ring the doorbell. I see my reflection in the living room window and for a second I don't recognize myself. My hair is longer now—past my shoulders—and all the dye is gone. I haven't had brown hair since Trini was born. I'm probably ten pounds heavier than when I left, and my skin has cleared up. And I'm clean. For the first time since I started to use, I'm clean.

Kim opens the door and hugs me like I just got back from war. It feels weird to be held like that, especially by her. Luz stands as stiff as a pencil when I hug her, and I'm scared I'm gonna snap her in two. I see her notice the gap where my tooth should be, but she doesn't say anything. Sammy waves at me from the couch and don't get up. When Cristo sees me he freezes. Then he runs straight at me and tackles me in the middle of the room. He wraps his legs around me and we fall onto the carpet together, rolling around and laughing like we're both kids. I don't let go of him until he lets go first, which feels like a pretty long time.

When I ask to see my baby everybody gets real quiet. Kim
tells me to sit down at the kitchen table. Then she brings me coffee and tells me how Scottie came and took Trini when the kids were alone after Lucho left, and that he moved in with his sister so she could help. She tells me that Cristo and Luz see her once a week now—when they go by his sister's house on Sundays—and she's pretty sure that he's fed up with taking care of her.

“Now that you're home I bet he's gonna make things right.” She squeezes my arm and gives me another hug.

I nod my head and act like I understand, but inside I feel the anger coming. I want to start yelling, but Cristo and Luz are looking at me and I don't want to lose it in front of them. I just keep nodding my head.

Kim orders pizza and when it comes I offer to pay for it but she won't let me.

“What kind of family would I be if I made you pay for dinner on your first night home?” She pays the delivery guy and sets the box on the table. “That's some wack shit, Arcelia.”

“Come on, money must be tight since Chino moved out.”

“Course it is. But I'm okay. Plus, he still helps out with rent and my car payment. He's a good guy like that. Even if he did mess around—”

She stops herself, since the kids are right there. We give them a whole pie to split and send them into the living room, since there's only two chairs in the kitchen. I take a slice from the second box and eat all the pepperoni off it before I take a bite of the crust. They had pizza inside, but never any good toppings. The sauce is so hot it burns my mouth but I don't care because it's so good.