All That Is Bitter and Sweet_ A Memoir - Ashley Judd [79]
To get there we walked a narrow red dusty street lined with little shops selling small goods. The businesses here were tinier than the stands in American parks where you can buy a pop or snow cone, barely big enough for a person to work behind the rough wood counter. We found Annie sitting in a café patio. She was a tiny, lovely-looking woman, terribly frail and missing some teeth but quick to smile and giggle. She ordered a glass of milk and, speaking through Nouci, told me her husband was also infected, and they didn’t know who had given it to whom. Their kids were eleven and fourteen and didn’t know the family secret. Only Annie’s husband and mother knew her condition.
She explained that she had a message for her people: be wise. AIDS is here, and it is not something the Americans made up as a reason to spend money—which was one of the rumors going around. AIDS will infect and kill you if you don’t prevent it in yourself and your family, she said. Unfortunately, she had decided she would not repeat this message on television. It was too dangerous for herself, her family, and her place with her ancestors. Annie was afraid she wouldn’t live to see the day when people could talk openly about the virus. She was sure she would be dead in a year. I tried to rebuke that fear and reached out and rubbed her neck as she bit back her tears. Then she looked at Nouci and asked, “Isn’t she afraid to catch my disease?”
“Oh, no, no, no …,” I told her, and pulled my chair closer. I gently twined my arms around her and hugged her close. She was stiff and anxious at first, then melted into me. I think it had been a long time since anyone had held her.
We told Annie where she could access antiretroviral drugs to treat her illness and about the secret support groups for HIV-positive people where she would be welcome. She was very keen to go, although she said she wouldn’t tell her husband. She didn’t think he would approve. Too much fear.
The next day, I sat in the now familiar public health clinic waiting room, tense about what might happen, waiting for our friends. I was relieved as each arrived, calmly and shyly. Dr. Rene, we were told, was stuck on a bus in traffic. We did not want to receive our results without him because he would need to help with the counseling in the very likely event that one or more of the women were positive. I asked the women about how work had been the night before. They said they had fallen asleep on the sidewalk, leaning against a building, while chatting. And how had they spent the day thus far? Typical housekeeping and child-minding chores. One of them told me she did her wash with our water purification product, Sur’Eau. Ever since a huge cyclone in 2000 caused flooding that ruined much of the country’s drinking water, PSI/Madagascar had teamed up with CARE and the Centers for Disease Control to produce and distribute the mild bleachlike solution to prevent waterborne disease. Apparently it’s also great on stains, and we know it’s cheap!
Dr. Rene finally arrived, his glorious smile in place, accompanied by Nini, whom he had worked hard to find. That was why he was late; he’d been out searching the streets again for her. She looked, if possible, in even worse shape than when we’d first met, or maybe it was just daylight revealing more than her stench, which a breeze from the open window swirled around the room. Her feet, bare as many Malagasy’s are, were filthy and crusty, and her legs were far too thin for a woman in her ninth month of pregnancy. Her eyes were glazed and her mouth was raw with open blisters, which she had used her red lipstick to cover with pitiful effect. She told us that her two-year-old was sick, and I could not imagine where the baby had been throwing up and pooping and how Nini had been coping with a sick kid while living on the sidewalk. I