Ugly p 29

Weeks passed, Miles didn't return. Strange how you half want them to. Just to prove to yourself they loved you somewhere deep in side. I became sometimes melancholy about the whole thing. I had a child with him. It hurt more to think he never cared about either of us. So many thoughts can go through your head. When Kim was an idea. The idea of one of my kind, a new man, a new hope of moving forward made it so easy to kick him away to make room for something better, something new. But it turned out I was jumping from wild horse to thin air. Now I feel like I am hitting the ground. Hard. Very hard.

I tried not to let it show too much around Kim.

"Ya know, Emma, when ever we brake up with someone good or bad for us it hurts just the same. If they are bad for us, we have the deadly 'whit ifs' and we ask why we weren't good enough to make them right. If they are good we wonder why we weren't better to keep them. It's bollocks either way, luv." Kim said over the breakfast table, which for us, breakfast is at noon. But eggs and chips it is.

"I don't know why you are bring this up, I am over that loser." I lied as I cleared the table.

"That tosser's Freedoms biological father. That leaves a connection, tis harder to break. "

He was right.

"Another tosser will come down the bus route any time here. The world is full of them. Me Gran always told my baby sister 'there is always enough time to wait for the right man, but it is always too soon to settle for the wrong one'."

"Your Gran is wise."

Days passed and I kept playing the words of Kim's grand over in my head over and over. Even when singing too many Janis Joplin songs about men leaving.

Kim made sure I was registers for collage. He made sure I went. He said he would watch Freedom while I took classes.

Eric is getting scarcer nowadays. The boys are staring to get sick, whispers of plague that hits only gay men. The boys who come from New York with the Broadway plays to Boston, some of them have spots on their bodies, get very skinny, and now it starts to spread here. Eric spends time taking care of the boys believing that is Indian magic will spare him.

I saw him in the park on the way back to the flat that afternoon.



"Whoa Eric, have you gained 50 pounds?"

"Blunt as always, sweetheart. That is why I love you."

He looks so drawn. He is not his chipper self.

"what's wrong? Where's me bouncy Tiger?"

"I went to three funerals this week. The boys are dying. They get really skinny, Auschwitz skinny ,before dying. I will have a buffer when my time comes. I have an excuse to eat all the ice cream I want." He is holding back so many tears, I think he is all cried out. It breaks my heart. I start crying. " Ronald Rayguns is office
and his press secretary is joking about it. The gay disease. The preachers use it to preach hate. Don't they know?"

"Don't they know what?" I go to hug him.

He puts up his hands to stop me. "What effects us, effects them. We are humans. We are all humans. Though I wonder about these hate stirrers." He shakes his head." They are not human any more."

I go to hug him again. Again he refuses.

"I can't chance it, not with you and little Freedom. Not with you. Don't they know how many married men come to the truck stops. How many closeted men out there with families. And a woman married to a gay man, you don;t think she wont go get something on the side too? HA! it is only a matter of time before they are all dying too. Baby stay celibate, don't touch anyone, don't use public restrooms, don't get blood, it is tainted, no-one is safe. No-ONE."

My heart is breaking for him. My heart is breaking and he is not there , nothing much behind the eyes, like a soldier in war who has seen too many dead bodies. I don't know what to do.



The walk home was long. I stopped to use the public restroom, freaked out about everything Eric said, what if could be spread this way. I hoovered over the seat. I see the writing on the wall "If AIDS is god's curse on gay men, then lesbians must be the chosen people."

I open the door to to the old Victorian, grab the mail, head upstairs to my flat.

"Hey I'm home!"

I toss the mail on the coffee table. Kim comes out holding Freedom, freshly washed. "Look who's home from school? Tis right, ya mum."

I take Freedom from hm and start giving her butterfly kisses all over her face she giggles little baby girl giggles. "Mail's on the table. what's for lunch?"

Kim didn't answer back, usually I get some sort of answer I have no clue what it is. A curry this a curry that a vandeloo. But silence.

I dress Freedom and put her in her crib with her favorite toys. she makes cooing baby happy noises.

I walk into the living room.

Kim is holding an envelope. "This is it."

"So what are you going to do? This is what you wanted."

"If I don't open it , everything can stay the same. If I open it everything might change."

"No matter what it says, Kimble, we will be friends. That wont change."

"Oh child, I have heard that too many times to ever believe that again."

"I never said it to you." Now I am a little hurt.

"Everything changes, everything. But blood is stronger than water, enit what they say? Nothing can brake that bond."

"It is what you came and sought me out for. Open the damn thing."

He just stares at it for a few more moments.

I grab it from him. "In for a penny, in for a pound. I fear no piece of paper."

I open it quick and look at the many numbers and words that make little scene to me.

Kim smiles like the sun.

"I don't see what si so funny, no-one but a DNA scientist could read this gobbly gook."

HE starts laughing at the. Actually laughed at me.

"I don't know what is so funny! Your MUM should get her money back."

"She don't need to, sis." He gets up and hugs me, "You were looking at the wrong side of the paper. You made me read it first anyway. I see you will definitely be a hand full. "

He put me down. I look on the other side. The results are 99.75 that we shared the same father.

Luke was my father. Kim is my brother.And god sometimes answers prayers.