AIDS and the Muse

by Shannon Joyce Prince

Chapter 4

conclusion

They send breezes to blow through our hair to make us look pretty for the ones we left behind. They offer us a strong astringent that hurts like crazy but makes you smell so good. Smell it? Do you like it?

We cry when we put it on. Our hearts break from the pain, but we know the ritual is an investment in a fuller, new, better heart from the land of the living. And I lay on the edge.

And then there was this large crack, and one of the Deaths who took care of us, rushed towards me looking very concerned. She said the sound was my soul breaking. So I looked around while Death clutched me in her lap, as best as she could from the edge.

Where we were was beautiful. Even if it was all black, it was like an enchanted grotto. I didn’t find contentment there, just resignation. And the others would come back from their haunting, and oh! the Deaths would try not to neglect me as they listened to the others tell of the pleasures of earth. They’d bring me back things, like postcards, and candy.

But the postcards made me think of your paintings; you who were gifted unlike me, but I was your inspiration. And when I wouldn’t eat, they tried to place the candy in my mouth and talk to me gently, and I appreciated it but I didn’t have the heart to chew. I was going to bring myself back to you. Because after all you did to me, you also did to my life.

I know, now, how to survive no matter what anyone does to me, even you. Do you know, now, how to paint the badly and only half-mended soul and heart in me? I’m home, baby. I came back home, because, here’s what I learned in death: I am so good that I don’t wish on you a pain equal to the one you put on me, for real.

Part of it: I didn’t want this tenement to be your tomb. I don’t wish on you what you have done to me. I love you that much, here, and even with me on the edge.

One day, I opened my eyes, and I couldn’t find my death anywhere. What I saw was a man in a mint green satiny jersey playing basketball. So after this one shot, the man turns to me, he has really dark skin, and is very muscular, and has a shiny bald head.

He smiled at me indulgently and said, “Do you know who I am?”

So, I smiled at him and answered, “You’re the number one death interrupter.”

“Two points,” he said. He turned his back to the goal and tossed the ball high into the air. But it is I who flew away from the edge, and for the first time since my heart stopped, I found myself near you and my heart was at my feet. But I know the ball went into the hoop.

There was this one old dead lady that everybody felt sorry for. You couldn’t even see her — just frizzy matted hair, perfume-burned skin from times at death. Purple circles around her eyes from the land of the living. She kept coming back for this man, even though he beat her, because she said he also gave her life. “If you get mad at women sticking to the men who give them life,” she challenged us, “you do it.” So she’d go back and forth, always in pain, but that was the only thing she knew. So one day she goes to the edge and just jumps off.

And here’s what makes me sick. I still don’t wish somebody else gave me life. Just you. What? Because the Deaths tell me, and the dead, that you didn’t know any better than to do to me what you did to me. But I’m sure I taught you better than that.

Well, maybe I’m remembering wrong, because it’s been a long time since then. But when the basketball player came, she was cheering, but it sounded like an animal’s noise. And there were these four Deaths behind her, two on one side with wings and two on one side with ball gowns. And he smiled so big when I told him he was a Superstar Pluto. And he grabbed her in one arm and me in the other. Then he sat me down on the edge and pushed her over.

You want to know why I keep coming back? They’re good to me there. The food’s so much better than here. We eat lots of vegetables and fresh fruit. But when you gave me life, I was grateful, forever. You’re the only one, man, and I’m so grateful to the first round draft pick Death Ghoul for letting me come home.

I have a powerful love for you. And that draws me back from the edge. And I lied about something. I get so scared. Because, man, that old woman didn’t jump off the edge. A Death didn’t even push her. She just fell of nobody’s accord. And that scares me more than anything. So I lock eyes with the MVP, and I hurry back to you, and I sit in this chair and say “Baby, I’m home.”

In each one of my dreams, and each one of my nightmares, whether I’m at the edge or at here, you’re there. It’s not so hard to bring me to earth. If you’re lonely, you just have to say my name. If you’re dying, you just have to stretch out your hand. If your heart’s breaking, how am I going to know? Baby, you have to tell me these things. I taught you that in our relationship.

I wish there were more lights in our apartment building. Remember, how you used to hate the dark when you were painting? Look at your art by daylight. Let it heal you. I’m always telling you to keep painting. If you’re lonely, I’m watching you, even from the edge. Because there’s nobody else who’s going to love you like this.

I’d have to be more dead than they could ever get me to be not to come back for you. You pretend like you don’t need me. Boy, I swear, I won’t leave you alone. I’d have to be really super dead. And, baby, AIDS was just a minor thing. You can’t bury me that far down. You can’t leave me back that many years away. I keep on coming back.

How did I love somebody I couldn’t even touch? When I was your muse, your force of nature? And if you couldn’t touch me in the first place, man? What’s letting go? Letting go is just a thing. Holding on, remembering, loving still — now that’s something. What I was, by nature, was forever. Which is why you were so shocked when I died. But the stuff that was forever in me still is.

Don’t you know that love is a glass, and every time I see my own face in it on the edge you could make me then see yours? Don’t you know how well somebody can do love? So that no matter where you exist, you are never alone, and stepping back from the edge is an easy feat. And the edge is such a glassy thing, that I can see you there. And maybe it’s crazy to keep coming back, but I’ve loved you for so long that I couldn’t be any other way.

When I loved you, it felt good. So can you just bury me away? Are you absolutely certain? You have never loved like this before, so I have never died like this before, so you don’t know how the talking with a ghost stuff goes. And you won’t answer. So I come back to you steadily while you break me down. Because unless you think these things are absolutely impossible, if something could feel the magic of love from the edge, what do you think it is if not our love?

And when you buried me I was hungry. And my knee was stuck in a position where it needed to pop and couldn’t. And that’s how you sent me away. It’s been a long time, do you remember that I ever lived?

No matter what you do to me. I won’t ever tell you that I’m sick of coming back. I loved you delicately. And I won’t ever let you see me get that knocked down by death. I don’t ask a lot of you. I need you to carry me on. But I guess I can manage staying here in your half memory with you not running to embrace me. Nobody does, not even the Deaths. But I won’t ever be so dead that I can’t hear you call me if you one day get around to it. I’ll never be so broken down that I let AIDS ever become more than a trifle.

Sometimes I’m cold in this apartment. You should petition the landlord to get the heat turned on. Remember how you used to hate the cold when you were painting? And then, too, I get cold from the lack of your arms. When I lived, you told me I’d never leave there, ever. So I sit at the kitchen table and place a memory of you at each of the chairs to keep me company. You and I were eating. Then I stand up and dance to stretch my knee out. You laughed at my eccentricities or my rubbing the kinks out of one of your backs.

I have so many memories of you — so many of these tall lanky men it makes the apartment crowded. One of you carries a radio across the kitchen, his back gleaming with sweat. You paint looking only at the canvas — never at me. I thought you would always look at me. I made you love me like that.

You know how we know that someone’s going to go over the edge? The Deaths start playing the guitar to calm us down! First we have to pay dues. The collection of tendons, veins, etc. that we give up so that they can have guitar strings. And before you know it, somebody quietly falls off the edge.

And the rest of us who get left, start up this soft high-pitched scream. Everybody does their own version. We just scream until the guitar fades on out and our body parts are reimbursed. Then you adjust so well to the person’s being gone, you hardly think about it.

And why do we get scared if we have no control over falling? We’re not being punished, for all we know, where we’re falling to could be really nice. But my wish, and my hope, and my fire is that I don’t ever have to hear one of those notes and know it’s me. But we go, existing on, on the edge where we are mostly safe. And wonder what we did in life to deserve this.

You want to know what I’m angry for? You can’t ever know all of me. That’s the thing about being behind a wall. Behind glass with everything open to viewing is a zoo, behind a wall with something that someone can’t figure out, only fear, is power. You never tried hard enough to figure out all of the ways my maze was built. So you weren’t made for me, but you loved me well. And I was just sure that you were going to be the one to break the wall. I was only mystery. A solution would have killed me. Hmmph, I died anyway. I can’t help laughing. Stop looking at me like that man, I can’t help laughing! AIDS isn’t too big to laugh over.

I am going to laugh for the days I spent in that coffin. I’m going to laugh because that old lady smiled, except when she fell over the edge. She smiled while she cried with the perfume.

Man, I laughed, because who do you think besides me would ever be lovesick enough to come back this much? So what was so good about you to make me love you like this? You weren’t rich, you didn’t make me laugh. And still, I wanted to go on forever as your muse. That’s what I wanted to do for the rest of eternity.

I didn’t love your quirks, the way you were always frowning, the way everything had to be perfect before you painted. But I would run around that house like I was possessed to get things just so. Loving you wasn’t effortless, or even original. It was like picking up an earmarked story that didn’t even win a prize. Yet look at how strong that love was. I guess I love you because it’s all your muse knows. You. Yeah.

I love you because it’s scary — on the edge there.
Can you imagine scary — on the edge there?
It’s really scary — on the edge there.
It gets so scary — on the edge there.
Don’t I commence to lie down beside you when your body’s cold?
And I have never left beside you all while you’ve gotten old.
And just because you’re living don’t think I’ve not grown.
And I’d hate to be vengeful, but it’s all I know to fight the scary — on the edge there.

Baby, once upon a time there were people who would dance all day just to keep the darkness from settling. And when it did, they threw their trash into the ocean. They never learned, just as you refuse to.

And in that kingdom there was a castle with this magnificent hall. And in the hall hung this frame with a mystery locked inside. And in the town square someone was playing basketball while a bum stroked a guitar for spare change. He looked across the cobblestone and saw ten little girls doing Double Dutch. He said thank you for the sixpence in his hat. When he looked back there were only nine.

But up in the hall there was a glance in the painting’s eyes that wouldn’t let the painter near. The girl in the painting looked at him during a break from playing basketball to ask what color are my eyes. And he knew. And that’s what brings me back, man. That’s all there is to it. You’re getting it, baby.

Let me tell you something else. There was this old lady, and she used to get called back to life every time her husband started drinking and thinking about her. And one day, his heart has this revolution. He sobers up. He lets go of his past as an abuser. He forgets about his wife, man.

And she fell off the edge. Everything is in edge, man. Like the edge of my wall, like the edge of death. And I lived and one day my boyfriend decides to make me his muse. And then the AIDS. It was just a thing. A thing that put me a little closer to the edge. And I was determined not to die the second death. The one that counts. And I will always be here with my brown eyes saying, “Baby, I’m home. Baby, I’m home.”