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It was the middle of winter, the morning after an ice storm, my favorite time in Maryland. Ice encased bare oak and cherry trees, even the grass, the land as beautiful and fragile as crystal. Like most old-school professionals in my rural hometown, the dermatologist had converted a single-family house into an office. As soon I stepped into the waiting room, once a living room, I felt like I didn’t belong. I was the youngest patient by thirty years at least. The others sought treatment for melanoma, basal- or squamous-cell carcinoma.
One look was all the dermatologist needed. He fixed me with blue eyes and said, “You’ve had unprotected sex.” He didn’t give me a chance to deny it.
Wielding an aerosol can of liquid nitrogen, he froze the pustules off, saying, “You know, you’re lucky,” but I wasn’t really listening. The skin swelled and seared. Tears formed at the corners of my eyes.
***
“Sooo.” Queenie held the vowel sound, a Namibian intonation like a nod. “I’m not familiar with this, um, this … “
“Molluscum contagiosum. It’s a skin infection. The doctor said that it would’ve run its course even without treatment, with no lasting effects.”
“Some STDs increase the risk of HIV transmission. Were you tested before or after?”
“After.”
“Good. To whom did you turn for emotional support?”
I sat in silence.
“Anyone?”
I shook my head.
“Did you seek counseling?”
“No.”
“How do you feel about this now?”
Years later I still felt shattered. From the sex ed classes and the pamphlets taped to stall doors in my dormitory bathroom, I knew STDs existed, that twenty percent of sexually active adults had genital herpes. But my friends and I never spoke of STDs. They were taboo, not even to be joked about. I never dreamed I’d contract one. At first I couldn’t admit it to myself. Later, I’d fill my journal with I have an STD, I have an STD, I have an STD. I tore through Hemingway, the only writer I’d encountered who dealt with STDs and impotence. Had he contracted one? I wrote stories about characters who gave up on relationships after an STD infection, but I never showed them to anyone, lest they think I wrote about myself.
Finally, I ran away. Sure, I’d joined the Peace Corps for the adventure, to learn about other people and places, to help others, and to follow in my sister’s footsteps (she’d volunteered in Eastern Europe), but I’d also joined because I knew I needed something, anything — I wasn’t sure exactly what. Change? To learn to live with myself? To lose the feeling I’d swallowed glass? In Namibia my shame became guilt. How could I admit to Queenie that I was haunted by something as insignificant as a rash? Had I grown up here, I thought, I likely would’ve contracted HIV. Even my STD signified my privilege.
Queenie sympathetically clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. She said, “Let’s say that when you receive the results of your test, you learn you are HIV-negative. How will you protect yourself against future infection?”
I seized the familiar: I’d get tested with my partner before sex, speak honestly about my sexual history, and use protection. She asked if I’d done these things after I was diagnosed with the STD and I hung my head.
She said, “Let’s say your results come back HIV-positive. What will you do?”
“See my doctor about treatment.”
“Like you did before. Good. But now, to whom will you turn for emotional support?”
“I don’t know,” I said, shrugging. “My parents. I could tell them. Some friends.”
“There’s a big difference between having someone to tell and being able to speak. You understand?”
I nodded.
“Sometimes we have all the support we need, but we refuse to reach out. What do you expect your result to be?”
“Honestly, negative.”
“Why?”
What could I say? Because I’d been safe? I hadn’t. Because I grew up in the U.S., not Namibia? How elitist. Because I’d never had sex with a Namibian? How racist. Queenie’s eyes held no judgment. I wondered how many people she’d counseled who’d expected a negative result.
“Are you ready to have your blood drawn?”
I followed her down the linoleum hallway. Out of another door a woman appeared, Timo in tow, a cotton ball taped to the soft skin in the crook of his elbow. Like strangers we passed.
***
All that next week Timo and I acted as if nothing had happened. I taught during the day, shared a beer with colleagues after school, read by candlelight before bed. Timo studied and pulled pranks and played soccer. But a few times, as I chalked instructions onto the blackboard, I turned and found him studying me, head tilted just so, pen poised above his paper. Our eyes met, and his fell to his book. I watched him, too: on the soccer field, during the morning break, as he sat in class, resting his forehead on his fist, tracking his pen across the page.
Sometimes, in the quiet of tests, I looked at my students, forty heads bent over exercise books, and wondered. If the statistics proved true, eight of the forty would contract HIV. There was nothing to tell me if Timo was infected, and if he wasn’t, if one day he would be.
The next Saturday I woke before dawn, met Timo at the termite mound, sat in the same chair in the same room. This time all of Queenie’s hair was woven into cornrows. She touched a manila envelope that rested on the table between us and said, “Before you learn your results, let’s talk about what they could mean.”
She recommended that this be the first of regular tests every six months. She said that a negative result did not ensure I was HIV-negative, nor that I would remain so. If I’d been recently infected, these results would constitute a false negative. She said that if I tested positive, then I should see my doctor immediately. With proper diet and treatment, many people live for a long time — AIDS does not have to be a death sentence.
With each statement I nodded, clenching my jaw, dry-washing my hands.
On and on she spoke, revisiting our pre-test counseling, asking how I’d inform my previous partners, how I’d protect myself against future infection, how I’d talk to my future partners about our sexual histories and our expectations of sex.
Finally she said that whatever the results this was the first step in a healthy life, both physically and emotionally. “Alena,” she said, “you must find the strength to be open and honest and accepting.”
I tore open the envelope and scanned a sheet of heavy stock paper.
***
Timo and I stepped into a day so bright we stood blinking. Across the street a woman knelt beside a blackened cookpot balanced on cinderblocks. We smelled wood smoke and meat.
We ordered goat in a light gravy and a slab of oshithima, or millet porridge. When I spoke in Oshiwambo, the cook clapped her hands and exclaimed. She wore a brightly colored head wrap and a billowing frock that hung loosely from her thin frame. Shaking a finger at Timo, she asked him if he’d taught me Oshiwambo. Eyes on her feet, he shook his head and said that he was my English student.
“Aa-we,” I broke in, no. I joked in Oshiwambo that indeed Timo had taught me their language. “Right, Mr. Timo?”
“Of course,” he said, eyes brightening as he added, “sir.” The woman guffawed. With a broad smile she said, “Boy, you must teach your teacher more.”
With our right hands we rolled the thick porridge into balls to dip in the broth. We barely paused for breath as we grabbed hunks of meat. When we finished, we rested our elbows on our knees and licked our fingers. Across the road Queenie and the other counselors emerged from the center and sat on the porch. I watched her fan herself with a pamphlet.
