Edward Derbes

Death Sentence

In the summer of 2004, while my girlfriend Gina was at work, I went over to Freddie’s place to get high. There were already a few people scattered around Freddie’s living room. Sarah’s new boyfriend, Tom, was there. He nodded on the couch with drool dripping down his chin. As soon as I showed up, Freddie told me to come outside. He bummed a cigarette off me on his porch. He told me to make sure I kept my needle away from Tom’s needle because he just found out that Tom had Hepatitis C.

“Jesus Christ,” I said. “Sarah needs to break up with him. You told her, too, right?”

“No,” he told me. “It’s not our business. Don’t tell anyone else.”

“Well,” I said, “someone needs to tell her to use a condom, at least.”

“You don’t get Hep C from sex,” Freddie said. “You got to share needles or get a tattoo from a sketchy place to catch that one.”

But what did he know? He wasn’t a doctor.

It didn’t matter, anyway. Sarah overdosed and died a few weeks later.

*

On the morning of her funeral, I went to The Free Clinic because some of the track marks in my arm looked infected and to get tested for Hepatitis. I thought maybe Sarah had given it to me. Or, worse, I thought maybe I gave it to her. We had slept together once, over a year earlier, when she was still dating Stephen, my best friend. It is the worst thing I have ever done. The Free Clinic is like a bakery. You take a number and wait your turn. You sit in this big room with dozens of chairs all facing a couple of TVs up front. When I was in there, they were showing some cartoon movie about fish. A woman who was spun out of her head on crack or meth or something took the seat next to me. She laughed at the movie even though they played it without any sound. She was missing teeth and she laughed so loud. I thought this was what the end of my life was going to look like: laughing when I couldn’t hear the joke.

It took them an hour to call my number. I went in with the nurse and showed her my arm. She put Neosporin on it, but she said it didn’t look infected.

“Test for the Hepatitis, too,” I told her. “It’s been going around.”

“Okay, we’ll draw some blood. We’ll also test for H.I.V.”

“You think I have AIDS?”

 “It’s not called AIDS until you have it for a long time. It’s called H.I.V.”

“Jesus,” I said. “When will I find out?”

“We’ll test you today and call you if anything turns up. If you don’t hear from us, the results are negative. No news is good news. ”

I waited in a different room for thirty minutes for another nurse to draw my blood. When she came in, she told me not to worry. She said that there was a chance that I had caught H.I.V. because heroin addicts are “at-risk.” But, she said, what’s done is done. She said to put it out of my head for a few days, and wait to see what turns up.

“Plus,” she said, “it’s not the death sentence that it used to be.”

“Does that mean it’s still a death sentence?” I asked her.

“No,” she said. “I just said it’s not the death sentence that it used to be.”

“So, then, it’s still a death sentence, just not like it used to be?”

“Just wait for the results,” she told me.

When I got home, Gina was wearing all black and waiting for me to go to Sarah’s funeral. She said, “You can’t keep leaving without saying anything.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just had to get out of the house for a bit.”

“You can go wherever you want. You just have to tell me.”

At the funeral, Gina cried in front of the coffin. Gina knew Sarah from around, but she didn’t know Sarah like I knew Sarah. All she knew was that Sarah, Stephen, and I had lived together. I never told her that I slept with Sarah. All Gina knew was that   Stephen,  Sarah, and I hadn’t talked since we were evicted because we had fought over money and drugs. Stephen shot himself in the head six months after Sarah died. Nobody knew that part yet.

When I looked down into Sarah’s coffin, I wondered if her skin had turned blue when they found her. I hear that’s what happens when you go under. Someone had powdered her face bright white. Standing there, listening to Gina cry, I got an image in my head of Sarah from back when we used to live together when we're all high on dope, and Sarah had her eyes closed just like they were now. Stephen nodded out next to her, and her head flopped over on his shoulder. Back then, I wondered what it would take to steal her away from him.

In front of the coffin, Gina buried her head into my shoulder. She cried louder and louder.

“Why are you crying?” I asked her. “You barely knew each other.”

“Shut up, please,” she said.

I knew crying was not a crime;  I also knew it didn’t fix anything. I put my arm around her. “I’m sorry,” I said. “This is just too much for me. We used to be such good friends.”

I hoped to see Stephen at Sarah’s funeral, but he never showed up. I wanted to tell him that I might have caught AIDS. For months after Stephen and I had our falling out, I thought I saw him on street corners and at people’s houses. Later, I thought I saw him around the city even though he was dead. I don’t think he ever knew that Sarah and I slept together, but I think he always knew that I was in love with her. He even joked one time, saying that if he OD’d and died or if he got shot scoring dope, he expected me to take care of her, to marry her, to make sure she was alright for the rest of her life.

And I said, as serious as possible, that I would do that for him.

He said, “You’d probably do it if I was alive, too.”

Sarah’s new boyfriend, Tom, was at her funeral, too, wearing a suit. We all moved to the back of the church. I could see his disease. His eyes were sunken and hollow. I wanted to ask him how much longer he had to live.

“I’m so sorry, man,” I told him. “I heard y’all were dating.”

Gina kept on crying, and she hugged him.

“It’s how it goes,” he said. “She went too far. I told her she was going too far.”

“She was one of my best friends,” I told him. “Let me know if you need anything.”

“Thanks,” he said, “but I’m pretty sure she was fucking somebody else.”

“You shouldn’t say that,” Gina said. “You shouldn’t say that about someone who just died.”

But who was Sarah fucking? That’s what I wanted to know. First, I thought it was Stephen. Or, maybe, it was Freddie. He told me he had seen her around. Did they wear condoms, whoever it was? Did she spread the Hepatitis? Maybe she was fucking someone else and maybe Gina was fucking someone else, too, and maybe we all had the Hepatitis now, maybe we all had the AIDS now.

We stood in the way back of the church, as far away from Sarah’s family as possible. These people, my friends, were diseased. I could see their bodies turning green. I didn’t want any of them to touch me. I didn’t want to catch whatever they had. I know you can’t catch anything just by touching, but in my mind being close to them was a death sentence.

*

We went to Freddie’s house after Sarah was buried—me and Gina and Tom and a couple of other people. Freddie hadn’t even been at the funeral, but that’s where we went. We shot up and drank beers and talked about Sarah and talked about how we should all get clean. I nodded out pretty good. When I came to, everybody else was already awake.

“Does Stephen know?” I asked. “Does he know that Sarah is dead?” I realized that question might make Tom uncomfortable, but Stephen and Sarah had once been in love.

“He knows,” Freddie said.

“How?”

“I saw him the other day. He didn’t look good, man, but I told him about Sarah.”

“What do you mean, didn’t look good?”

“He was walking on the streetcar tracks over on St. Charles. Right by the park. I think he might have been sleeping there. He was dirty. His arms looked like shit, like they were infected.” 

I held up my own arms and asked, “Like this?”

“Drew,” Freddie said. “Shut the fuck up about your arms. His arms were oozing puss.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Freddie said. He shrugged.

Gina said, “Oh my God. That sounds so horrible.”

“What do you care?” I said to her. “You barely know him.”

“You’re such an asshole,” she said.

I said, “I’m sorry.”

Later that night, after we had gone home, I told her I was sorry again. I said that with Sarah dead, I was in a bad headspace. I told her I shouldn’t take it out on her, though, and that I was so sorry and that I would be nice from then on.

“You had better be.”

“I will.”

“No,” she said. “Look at me. You had better be.”

*

The day after Sarah’s funeral, I went to Audubon Park to find Stephen. There were a lot of homeless people in the park, but no Stephen. I  sat on a bench by the golf course and thought about a time, two or three years before that he, Sarah, and I were all at the park. We were tripping on acid and we followed a swan for a long way around a lake. We went over to this little stone bridge and the sun was shining and it was just like we were living in a fairy tale. It was one of the happiest days of my life.

I spent a long time remembering that day as I sat there, looking for Stephen, until I realized that didn’t happen at Audubon Park. That happened at City Park, during Mardi Gras. I had been thinking of the wrong place the entire time. Sarah was dead. Stephen would probably die soon if I couldn’t find him. I would be the only one left who had any of these memories, and I was getting them all wrong. I made it all the way to the zoo with the image in my head of me running into him and pretending like it was an accident. I almost cried thinking about it. But he wasn’t there. Gina was all I had left, and I may have given her diseases. I started shaking. I needed to know right now if I had AIDS or Hepatitis. Gina had the right to know right now. I left the park and spent my last dollar taking the streetcar across the city to The Free Clinic.

I told the woman at The Free Clinic’s front desk that I just wanted to see my results. She said that she didn’t have access. “Well,” I asked, “who does?”
She said, “You need to take a number and wait your turn.”

An hour later, when they called my number, a guy stood in the doorway waiting for me, a guy just a few years older than I was. He smiled and shook my hand. He said that he was the social worker, and he took me into his office. He sat there behind the desk and he waited for me to talk and I waited for him to talk.

He asked me, “What can I do for you?”

“I told the woman out front,” I said, “that I got tested for AIDS yesterday, and I wanted to see if my results are back yet.”

“Yesterday? It takes at least three days.”

“That’s what they told me,” I said, “but I just wanted to see if y’all got them back early.”

“No,” he said. “I doubt that. Why do you think you have AIDS?”

“Heroin,” I told him. “I have a girlfriend. I may have given it to her.”

“Do you use condoms?”

“No,” I said.

“What kind of birth control do you use?”

“None,” I told him.

“I’ll get you some condoms before you go. To be honest,” he said to me, “what we really need to talk about is drug counseling and birth control.”

“I’ll come back later to talk about that,” I said, “but I need to know if I have AIDS first.” 

“Did you see all those people out there?” the guy said. “You have to wait your turn. Let me tell you this, though. I got a lot of patients with H.I.V. Trust me when I say that these days having a kid before you’re ready is a bigger problem.”

I asked, “When will I hear back?”

“If you don’t hear anything in a few days, then you’re okay. Come back next week if you’re still worried about it.” 

I worried about it, but I never went back.

*

Gina broke up with me less than a week later. We  fought one night, high on heroin, and she said, “Say one more word, and I’m going to leave you.”

I said one more word, and she left me.

I thought she would be back the next day. We had broken up before, and she had come back. This time, she didn’t. I asked Freddie every day if he had heard from Gina. He hadn’t. Then Freddie got busted trying to buy heroin from an undercover police officer. He was gone for three months. I called Gina’s mom. Her mom told me to never call again. She said she would file a restraining order. She said Gina was better without me. She was right, I knew that, but I kept looking for her.

What else can I tell you? Everyone was gone.

I called Stephen’s parents’ house twice while Freddie was in jail. I wouldn’t tell them who I was. I deepened my voice and said I was looking for him. The first time they said he’s not home. The second time, they said they hadn’t heard from him in years, to please not call back.  For the most part, though, I was doing good. I still had my job working at the Big E-Z Donuts. With tips, I made enough money to afford the apartment by myself and my dope habit. I woke up in the afternoon and I went to work and came home at night. I called my heroin dealer when I got home. Every time, he said he’d be right there. Every time, an hour, two hours, three hours went by. I waited and waited and waited, pacing around in my apartment, unable to think, until his car finally pulled up out front.

What can I tell you? It was the loneliest time in my life.

*

Gina had been gone close to five months when Freddie got out of jail. His parents helped him get a new apartment, and I started going over to his new place. I asked him daily if he heard anything about Gina, but he always said no. One day, I went over to his apartment, ready to ask again about Gina, but the first thing he said to me was: “Bad news. Stephen’s dead.”

“Stephen?”

“Yeah. Shot himself in the head.”

“Why?” I asked. “When?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “But his funeral is tomorrow.”

We went together to Stephen’s funeral the next day.

In the church parking lot, Freddie and I shot a little dope in his car. We promised each other we would never commit suicide. We told each other we would always pick up the phone if the other person called, no matter what kind of falling out we had. Inside the church, fifteen or so people sat in the pews, whispering. Stephen’s coffin was closed. His mom stood up front by the coffin with his dad. Freddie pointed to an empty section on the far side of the church.

We started walking in that direction, but that’s when I saw her: Gina. She sat by herself, away from both groups. Her blonde hair hung over the back of her pew.

I backhanded Freddie and pointed at her. He looked and then turned back to me. He shook his head no, but then he took a deep breath. “Do what you’re going to do,” he said, “but remember where you are.” I worked out everything I was going to say. All the thoughts I had been waiting to tell her for months were flying past each other in my head. I searched for the perfect first line. I was going to tell her she needed to come see me. I was going to tell her that we needed to talk soon. I was going to tell her a lot of things, but she was pregnant.

I pointed at her stomach. “Whose?”

She nestled her hand under her belly. She looked up at me.

“Don’t worry about it.”

I worried about it. I knew I was the father. It was pretty obvious that Gina hadn’t used any dope in a long time. Her skin had cleared up. She wore a black dress that looked expensive. The last time I saw her, the day of our fight, she looked worn to hell. Her cheeks were all sunken and her face was covered in pimples and splotches.

At the funeral, she looked colorful and full of life.

“You should name him Stephen. In his memory.”

“That ain’t funny,” she said.

“It ain’t supposed to be funny,” I told her. “He was my best friend.”

“It ain’t even gonna be a him.”

“It’s a girl?”

“Yes,” she said.

I was twenty-four, the same age as my dad when he had me. I don’t know where Gina and the baby are now. But, at the funeral, my first child, my daughter, was growing less than five feet away in the womb of a woman who hated me.

“We need to talk about this,” I said.

She shook her head. “We don’t have anything to talk about it.”

“Alright,” I told Gina, told them both. “Just give me one minute. I’ll be right back.”

I went and sat next to Freddie. “Gina’s pregnant.”

He said, “I can see that.”

“She says it ain’t mine.”

“Good.”

“What if it’s mine?”

“Then that would be the end of Drew. You couldn’t even afford gummy bears last night.”

“It’s probably mine, isn’t it?”

“She says it ain’t yours,” Freddie said, “it ain’t yours.”

“I got to get clean,” I told him. “I got to get clean and take care of my daughter.” I looked toward the casket. “Don’t you think it’s time we got clean?”

“We’re at a funeral, man.”

At the front of the church, Stephen was in the box. He had a hole in his head. He would see nothing but darkness forever. But what was Gina even doing here? She barely knew Stephen, not well enough to come to his funeral. Nor did she know where he had been the last few months. Did they know each other better than I thought? Had he been with Gina? Was he the father? And why did Stephen kill himself? Did he have Hepatitis? Did he have AIDS? Did he find out and get scared and then shot himself? Gina had the right to know if Stephen had the disease. I had the feeling that if I could see his face, even his dead face, I would know the truth. But, like I said, the casket was closed.

I asked Freddie, “You hear anything about Stephen and Gina?”

“Dude,” he said.

“Seriously. You hear something?”

“No,” he said. “I didn’t.”

“Cause if he had any disease, the baby needs to know.”

“Drew. Stop.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”

I crossed the back of the church. I crouched down next to Gina.

“Listen,” I said. “I’m going to get clean.”

“Okay,” she said. “Good.”

“Okay. Here’s the deal: I don’t care whose baby it is. For a while—until you can trust me again—until then, she can stay at my parent’s place on my days with her. They got an extra room, and she can stay there.”

“What?”

“I’m going to help you raise her. We don’t even have to do a paternity test.” 

“Drew,” she said, “you’re not coming anywhere near this baby.”

“I have rights. I don’t want to,” I said, “but I could make you do a paternity test.”

“Fuck you,” she said.

“Is it Stephen’s?” 

“Okay,” she said. “I’m going home.”

She got up and put her hand beneath her stomach. I watched her swollen body wobble away as she moved to the front of the church. She went up to the casket. She talked to Stephen’s mom. I have no idea what they said to each other. All I could see was that two mothers were talking. One who couldn’t really call herself a mother anymore. One who couldn’t really call herself a mother yet. When they finished talking, Gina went out the side door of the church, so she didn’t have to walk past me. I wanted to follow her out, but I went back to Freddie.

I said, “I can’t be here anymore, man. Let’s go.”

“You haven’t even talked to his parents yet,” he said.

“I feel sick.”

“What’s wrong with you? You can’t leave a funeral without paying your last respects.”

“They don’t want to see me,” I said.

“You have to.”

So I went to talk to them. Mrs. Cameron, Stephen’s mom, watched me walking up to the casket. She had tears in her eyes. “Drew,” she said. In high school, I used to go to their house every day, where Stephen and I got stoned in his room. Mrs. Cameron hugged me. Her tears wet my hair. “Drew. We haven’t seen you in so long.”

“I know. It’s been a long time.”

I shook hands with Mr. Stephen.       

“What is the last thing he said to you?” Mr. Stephen asked me.

“To be honest,” I told them, “we hadn’t talked in a while.”

Mrs. Cameron cried harder. Mr. Stephen put his arms around her shoulder. They hadn’t talked to Stephen in longer than I had. Mrs. Cameron turned her head into Mr. Stephen’s shoulder. He pulled her in tight.

“I just need to say something to Stephen,” I told them, “before he’s buried.”

“Okay, Drew,” Mr. Stephen said.

I put a hand on his coffin, but I couldn’t think of anything to say. Mrs. Cameron cried loudly behind me. I wanted to say something important to send Stephen off, but she was so loud. Everything that came into my mind was about Gina, but I was not going to accuse a dead man. Mrs. Cameron was just so damn loud. I couldn’t think of a single good thing to say. I had been to a few funerals by then, and the mothers always wail the loudest. They think if they get enough attention, it’ll fix them up. I turned around. I said, “Please stop crying.”

“What?” she said.

“You  have not got the right to cry.”

She hid behind Mr. Stephen, still crying.

“Jesus, our son is dead,” Mr. Stephen said.

“You fucking abandoned him.”

“He was out of control.”

“Fine,” I said, “but I’m just saying that if you two didn’t go and fuck each other in the first place, none of this would have happened.”

And then I left Stephen’s funeral.  You might think I went looking for Gina after this. I didn’t. I have never tried to find her again. But the fact that I never heard back from The Free Clinic is good news, right? That’s what they told me. No news is good news. The other thing they told me is that you can have AIDS for five or ten years without any symptoms. You’d never know you had it if you don’t get tested. That’s a long time to not know you have a disease crawling around in your blood. I hope that never happens to me. When I die, I hope that it’s instantaneous. I hope I overdose or shoot myself in the head.

—END—

Edward Derbes was a winner of the 2019 William Faulkner Literary Competition and a finalist for the 2019 Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival Short Fiction Prize. He lives in Philadelphia.