Keeper of Keys Page 4

  I look over my shoulder to make sure that Alice is occupied and then I look back at them because I think I hate them at this moment. Them and the money I gave them, them and their perfect health. I hate them all.

  "I have AIDS," I say as simply and as calmly as I would have announced a cold or a headache.

  I think I see a nervous smile move like a shadow across Sherry's face and I think maybe there is a laugh creeping up her throat, but the laugh never comes and the smile disappears and her eyes move to her two children the cheeks I kissed earlier.

  Poor Boys mouth turns into a thin line and his eyes narrow. He thinks what I've said is a joke and he waves a hand and chuckles before reaching for the last chicken wing.

  "Jolean's cousin had AIDS, he died last year. Got pneumonia or something and it took him out just like that!" Precious advises us all and snaps her fingers on the last word. "Do you have it for real?" She sings this question as if what I have is remarkable, as if having AIDS is like having a brand new fifty-six inch color television.

  "Yes."

  Sherry is sure that I'm telling the truth this time and the glass she's just pulled from the cabinet, slips from her hands and goes crashing to the floor. I realize that Precious is beautiful, but stupid and the intelligence she has is about as wide as the gap between her teeth, because I could see from the look on her face that she does not know that AIDS is a death sentence.

  "How?" Is all Poor Boy could say.

  I don't answer him, because how is my business, but I would sure appreciate it if someone could tell me why.

  This man who could recite my mother's favorite poem, The Negro Speaks of Rivers as if it was his national anthem did not turn his back on me when I told him that I have AIDS or that I loved Alice from a distance after that.

  "I was afraid to love her too closely, afraid to hug her before she went off to school or when she came home in the afternoons." I said to my hands, too ashamed to look at him.

  "Why?" This man with the name that describes life and every footfall it takes to get through it, asked.

  I tell him that I was afraid that I would die suddenly and then she would have to miss me all at once. With me pulling back early, she would miss me in bits and pieces and when I was finally dead and gone there would have been so much emptiness between us that she wouldn't miss me at all.

  Journey smiled at me, leaned in and kissed me on my lips, even though I had AIDS in my body and tons of medication on my nightstand.

  He always kissed me and unlike Sherry, he does not wipe away my kisses when my back is turned.

  "Tell me when it changed, when you started loving Alice up close again." He asks as he examines the new windows he installed a few weeks ago. The rain is coming down now. We love the rain and each other and so he curls up with me in my bed and pulls me close to him.

  "It changed when you came." I tell him as he slides his face against mine.

  This story is like a fairytale to him. Something he will tell our children at bedtime, the children we plan to adopt after the wedding, children that Alice will call brother and sister and help them with their homework and surely take them to the ice cream shop where I began loving her up close again.

  She had begged and pleaded for me to go with her to the mother and daughter ice cream party. I didn't want to, since I hardly ever left the house.

  "Can't Meredith take you?"

  "No, it's a mother and daughter thing."

  "I can't. I'm too sick."

  She began to cry then. It was something she hardly did. Her tears broke my heart. I conceded and took her to the ice cream shop, where fifteen pairs of mothers and daughters stood around sipping egg creams and coke floats. Very few faces were familiar to me, although they all knew Alice.

  "Mom, it's four-fifty a piece," Alice said as she hooked her arm through mine and waved at someone across the parlor. I looked down at her and she beamed up at me. She looked so proud.

  I handed the man a ten and he gave me back a dollar, which I crumpled and stuffed into my purse.

  "It was nice wasn't it?" Journey asked.

  "Yes," I said. "It was very nice."

  Alice never let go of my arm, not once and she never stopped smiling. She introduced me to everyone. All of the teachers and all of her friends who called the house on a daily basis. Everyone.

  "Get to the good part." He teased and pulled me into him, holding me tight around my waist.

  Alice and I were seated on the bench outside of the ice cream shop. We were waiting on Meredith to come and pick us up. Alice had a little ice cream stuck to her chin and she looked so much like my mother at that moment. I mean my mother was always happy and smiling and there she was all over again in my child and for the first time in a long time I felt very lucky to have her.

  I reached into my purse for a piece of tissue so I could wipe the ice cream off of Alice's chin and pulled out the crumpled dollar instead.

  Journey would start smiling at this part of the story and I could feel his heart thump against my chest.

  "Mom, that's money not a tissue," Alice laughed, pulling her face away.

  "Oh," I thought it was funny too and had laughed along with her, but then I smelled coconut and I think Alice smelled it too, because she made a face and kind of wiggled her nose at the air.

  I looked down at the dollar for a long time before I began to open it up and smooth it out.

  "There was writing there?" Journey asks like he hasn't heard this story three hundred times.

  "There was writing there," I say like I haven't told it three hundred times.

  "What did it say?" Journey just wants to hear me say it, because he likes the way my voice shakes when I do, even though I'm now able to control the tears.

  I love you always,

  Mom

  I see those words on that dollar and I know for sure it's the same dollar my mother gave to me before she died because no one writes like my mother, Alice.

  In between my tears, I tell Alice the story about the Banyon trees, the ceiling clouds and the Alice she was named after. I tell her the story of the Hawaiian Islands and the disease that lives inside of my body.

  I apologize for pushing her away for so many years and promise that things will change from that moment on and I let her know that she does not ever have to go out looking for love, love will find her and besides, she will always be well loved by me.

  "Both of us." Journey adds to the end of my story.

  The dollar is framed and hanging on the wall of Alice's bedroom. She says she will give it to her child and even at the young age of eleven, she is sure that she will have a girl which she will name, Kaialice. She says she will cover her daughter's nursery walls with Banyan trees, smiling tigers and juggling bears and she will paint the ceiling sky blue with clouds and the sun that rises over Hawaii.