Maggie & Me by Damian Barr

Author:Damian Barr [Barr, Damian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2013-02-15T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

‘Yes, one is concerned but governments cannot prevent people from getting AIDS – but people can themselves, by the way in which they conduct their lives and that is what we are having to say to them: “Look! These are the dangers. These are where they arise. Now, if you do that, then you are liable to get AIDS!” ’

Margaret Thatcher, radio interview for IRN, January 1987

I catch AIDS in 1987. I’m not sure exactly how but I’ve definitely caught it so I’m definitely going to die: horribly and soon.

I’m eleven.

‘Act normal,’ I tell myself as the advert that’s been going round the playground finally comes on the telly. Our living room is full, as usual, with my mum and Dodger on the armchair and Joe, Shawn, Tricia and Aidan on the couch with me and Teenie on the floor in front of the telly. Billy’s at Logan’s again. Normal.

‘There is now a danger that has become a threat to us all,’ begins a plummy English voice that I vaguely know from something else. Something else embarrassing. On the screen an obviously papier mâché mountain explodes and I’ve seen better special effects on Terrahawks. ‘It is a deadly disease and there is no known cure.’ Joe shooshes Tricia who is crying because Aidan nipped her. Teenie would rather be outside playing but it’s dark so she starts girning and I nip her which I never do and she’s so shocked she actually shuts up.

‘The virus can be passed during sexual intercourse,’ and we all snigger and I join in even though I feel sick inside. More shooshing. This threatens to be as mortifying as the time these women with shaved heads invaded the News and Sue Lawley got all flustered and I asked what a lesbian was. On the telly a workman’s hands chisel a word out of black stone and chapel bells ring doomily. ‘Anyone can get it.’ Anyone, yes, but. ‘Man or woman. So far it has been confined to small groups. But it’s spreading.’

I am in that small group, I know I am. I must have it already. I look at the cream rug I’m sitting on and see the AIDS spreading out from me like a stain. ‘So protect yourself. Read this leaflet when it arrives. If you ignore AIDS it could be the death of you. So don’t die of ignorance.’ The workman’s hands finish their work and the epitaph is complete: AIDS. I see my name on the tombstone as it falls towards the grave.

I go up to bed. I’m the only person at 15 Rannoch Avenue with their own room. My mum and Dodger sleep at the front over the living room. Teenie shares her room with Tricia and Shawn and Aidan and Billy when he’s here. I’ve got the ‘quiet’ room at the back. ‘So he can study,’ my mum says when Teenie takes the huff, knowing she thinks homework is a kind of punishment. I’ve hammered nails into the wooden doorframe and bent them back to make a claw-like lock.

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