What Binds Us (19 page)

“Hello, Marquis,” Dondi said when Marquis entered his room, as if he’d seen him just yesterday.

“Dondi,” Marquis said. “It’s been much too long.”

“I’ve thought about you. Often. I’ve worried that I gave this to you.”

“I have it, if that’s what you’re asking. But I can’t say that you gave it to me. Or that I gave it to you. And what does it matter? I’m here. You’re here. Let’s not worry about blame. Let’s just concentrate on getting you well. Deal?”

“I’m not going to get well,” Dondi said blackly.

***

Leonardo came to visit again. His appearance was a shock, not only because we hadn’t heard from him in months but because his head was shorn and he wore huge baggy dungarees that tumbled over enormous sneakers of dazzling white leather, cumbersome and improbable as space boots.

He was starkly handsome without the fuss of ornate clothes, without the ostentation of hair. He was an arctic beauty. His allure was cold but compelling, like desire steeped in ice. Only his eyes were warm, burning as they did with avarice as he told us about cutting his first single, filming the video that was now
de rigueur
. His words washed over us. Finally, like an afterthought, he asked to see Dondi.

He seemed satisfied when he came back. He smiled beatifically. “I need a bathroom,” Leonardo said. He sounded desperate, despite the wide smile. “He wanted to hold my hand. I have to wash my hands.”

“Down the hall,” I said, incredulous at his insensitivity, at his coarseness.

“Do you have any disinfectant?” he asked.

“There’s a bottle of Clorox under the sink,” Matthew said.

I made a choking sound at Matthew’s malice, a sound halfway between a bark of disapproval and a laugh. “You don’t think he’s going to wash his hands in bleach?”

“He can gargle with it for all I care,” Matthew answered.

When Leonardo came back, he reeked of bleach.

Portia walked past him, stopped, sniffed the air, sniffed again. She looked at him with disbelief, took in his oversized baggy clothes, walked on.

***

Dondi’s breathing was shallow. He struggled for air that was reluctant to enter his poisoned lungs. Each breath rushed from him almost as soon as he drew it in, as if anxious to leave his moribund body.

It was March, 1986. It was snowing outside, I remember. I kept thinking if we could just make it through to spring, Dondi would be okay.

“He needs to be in the hospital,” Marquis said, moving quietly, efficiently around the narrow hospital bed that seemed like a high, steel coffin.

Colin, Matthew and I were in the hospital’s waiting room, which was glossy white and overly bright. It contained several burgundy plaid sofas of some nubby, irritating fabric like fiberglass so that you couldn’t actually sit on it. Against the wall stood a sleek, black matte vending machine that dispensed very black coffee too hot and too strong to drink; all you could do was hold it in your hands and occasionally blow on it while trying not to think the worst.

We had been exiled here by the attending physician, who was presently examining Dondi. Marquis had insisted we call his doctor who, after hearing his symptoms described, advised us to get him to the emergency room as quickly as possible. The doctor had taken one look at Dondi, at his flushed face and bright eyes, taken his spiking temperature, and called admitting. We watched them wheel Dondi into an elevator. He seemed as fragile as a dream and as impossible to hold.

“Do you ever get mad at him?” Colin asked suddenly.

Matthew looked at him sharply. “For what? Being sick? What kind of a stupid question is that?” His voice had an edge to it I’d never heard before. I wondered for the first time what toll Dondi’s illness was taking on him.

“No, not for being sick. For getting this
disease
. For sleeping with
all those men
.”

“No one deserves to die like this no matter how many men—or women— they’ve slept with.”

“I don’t mean that he deserves this—my God! He’s my brother. What I am asking you is, don’t you get mad at him for being so irresponsible, so selfish? He acted like he had to answer to himself alone.”

“Who else is there?”

“Us. Dammit.
Us
. The people who love him. No one belongs to themselves alone. We also belong to the people who love us.”

“You think this is some kind of punishment from God, don’t you?” Matthew accused.

Colin shrugged and sat down, blowing on the coffee in his hand.

“This disease has nothing to do with God,” I said, setting my cup of coffee on the windowsill. “This disease is of man—created by man to kill other men.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Colin snapped. “Men don’t go around creating diseases to kill each other!”

“That’s bullshit! White people have been using disease to kill people since they came to America. Remember how your forefathers gave blankets to the Indians containing smallpox?”

“Thomas-Edward, you can’t be serious. You’re accusing us of genocide?”

“That’s precisely what I’m doing. Do you remember a product called Roach Ender? It was billed as ‘birth control for roaches.’ It was supposed to kill roaches and render their offspring sterile. You know what? It worked. It really worked. Now, of course, you can’t find a can of the stuff anywhere. Probably because if it had stayed around long enough, it would have wiped out roaches completely. And that would have seriously hurt the business of roach killing. Sounds like AIDS, doesn’t it? Think about it. Not only does AIDS kill people, it makes it impossible for them to reproduce. That its victims die in a most horrible manner is just an extra added bonus for the sadistic sons of bitches who dreamed this up.”

Colin stood, sat again. “Jesus. How did this start?”

“During the Nixon administration there was something known as the Special Virus Cancer Program. A bunch of government scientists, along with doctors from the Army’s biological warfare unit, worked on the genetic engineering of viruses. The thought was to identify a cancer-causing retrovirus. Do you remember Martha Mitchell?”

“Sure,” he said, perplexed. “She was married to John Mitchell, the attorney general during the Nixon administration. But what’s that—”

“Do you remember after Watergate, she came out with a story that she had been kidnapped by government agents and given injections? Everyone laughed at her, called her a madwoman. Then, a few months later, she developed a really rare form of cancer and died a spectacularly horrible death.”

“It wasn’t cancer. It was multiple myeloma.”

“Right. A blood disorder in which the body is unable to produce antibodies to fight disease. What does that sound like, Colin?”

Colin looked ill. “You can’t mean…”

“HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, is a retrovirus.”

Colin nodded.

“Should I continue?”

He nodded weakly.

“In seventy-eight, just as the Special Virus Cancer Program was shut down, the government enrolled thousands of gay men in New York in an experimental program to test a vaccine for Hepatitis B. A year later the first cases of AIDS started showing up in gay men in Manhattan.”

“It showed up in IV drug abusers too,” Colin said.

“True, but who’s to say where it showed up first? I’d guess gay men because of the vaccine. No doubt, that’s how it was introduced into the population. Many drug addicts hustle to support their habits, so it wouldn’t be surprising that they picked the virus as well. Also, it wouldn’t have been particularly easy to flood that particular market with infected needles or contaminated drugs. And hell, who cared? Drug addicts were a scourge on society. Throwaway people, they were the most expendable segment of the population. Just like the faggots. Then the straight boys picked it up. I guess no one realized how many of them were diddling us on the side and then going back home to their wives and girlfriends. And then everyone was donating blood. Now the whole mess seems out of control. Or is it? Is this just managed chaos? A way of tracking the disease, of learning how to control it, tailor it to specific needs? Once it’s controlled it can be unleashed at will, the ultimate weapon in germ warfare. Think of it: entire peoples wiped out in a generation or two!”

“Thomas-Edward, don’t you think this whole scenario is a little hard to believe? Who could be doing this? Our government?”

“What?” Matthew interrupted. “You can’t believe that our government would let a disease run rampant for the express purposes of tracking it?”

“No, of course they wouldn’t,” Colin answered firmly.

“From nineteen thirty-two until seventy-two, there was an experiment in Tuskegee in which a group of poor black sharecroppers with syphilis were left untreated so that a group of government doctors could track the disease over the progression of their lives. These men had families. Lives. Many of them are still alive, in the last stages of the disease. That, Colin, is documented fact. Now, do you still think what Thomas is saying is so farfetched?”

***

Phipps came to the hospital.

Dondi looked at him in silence for a long moment. “I never thought I’d see a face so beautiful, or so welcome.” He reached for Phipps’ hand and held it as he hadn’t held a hand since childhood. The three furies came, bringing tears and crosses and plaster saints and a touching faith. They checked into a hotel near the hospital and stayed a week. They visited daily and spoke of faith healers and miracles in hushed, hopeful voices. They planned a trip to Africa for treatment Dondi would never make.

Leonardo called. “Should I come?” he asked.

No, I told him. We didn’t need his presence, like an unchecked malignancy, compounding the horror.

“I told Leonardo not to come,” I told Dondi when I hung up the phone.

“Good,” he said.

I was shocked by his callousness. And my own.

***

When we went to see Dondi the next day, he looked up as we walked in. “I’m glad you guys are here,” he said. “I’ve come to a decision. I don’t want any more medicine.”

“He can’t stop his medicine,” Matthew said to no one in particular. His composure was crumbling, his voice reaching the upper register as it edged toward hysteria. “He’ll die. He’ll go blind.”

“He knows that,” I reminded him.

“I don’t understand,” Colin said.

I did. Dondi had led a life of desire. Had, perhaps, been ruined by desire. He’d had everything. Now he wanted the only thing he’d never had: nothing.

The three of us—Matthew, Colin and I—sat around an oval white Formica table. We faced a small army of doctors and residents, an internist and an infectious disease specialist. Brilliant lamplight rained down on us. Relentless. Merciless as disease. As merciless as the doctors’ educated words.

“He’s badly dehydrated and we’re hydrating him. The cancer is spreading at an alarming rate. We’ve now found evidence of it in his spinal column and in his brain.”

We were utterly silent as first one doctor then another droned on about grotesque invasive procedures, experimental and useless.

“No,” I said, interrupting one monologue.

“Excuse me? What did you say?” the interrupted monologist, a kindly and bespectacled senior physician with brilliantine hair, asked.

“No,” I repeated. “I said ‘no.’”

“No, what?” he asked wearily, removing his glasses and polishing them to further brilliance in that white light.

“No more pills. No more impossible treatments. We’re taking him home.”

The doctor glanced at Matthew and Colin. I intercepted the look. I stood and leaned toward him, my palms splayed on the table. “Do not think,” I said through gritted teeth, “that because I am black I am not a part of this family.”

“Thomas-Edward.”

I shook off Matthew’s restraining hand and backed away as if he too were the enemy, one and the same with these doctors, with the disease, hidden and destructive, laying claim to Dondi.

Colin leaned back in his chair. He made a steeple of his hands. “Doctors,” he began quietly. “I have on my desk bills for Dondi’s medical care. They total four hundred thousand dollars.”

“Mr. Whyte, if money is the concern here, let me assure you—”

“Doctor,” Colin’s calm voice soared toward a crescendo as he leaned forward. “Let
me
assure
you
that money is
not
a concern. I would spend every dime I had if it would save Dondi, but no amount of money can save him. No one wants him to live more than I do. I have prayed. I have asked God to take ten years—twenty years—from my life in exchange for one year with my brother. I have believed in your medicines, in your protocols, in your false hope. God will not help him. You
cannot
. You think you can defy death? How monstrous your ego! I will not have my brother sacrificed on the altar of your collective egos. Dondi is going home. Today. Do I make myself clear?”

“I won’t be a party to this,” the stalwart doctor in his white coat and stethoscope said, angry.

Colin withdrew an envelope from his pocket and tossed it onto the table. “In there,” he said, “is Dondi’s medical power of attorney. There is nothing you can do to save him. Thomas-Edward promised my brother he would not die among strangers. He will not. Now, you can either release him or you can fight me. If you choose to fight me, I will get a court order. I will sue your hospital every day of the week in every court in the land until the end of time. But know this, one way or another Dondi is leaving here today.”

I walked to the door; I knew I had to get Dondi out of there, away from this horrific sideshow played out here in this state-of-the-art hospital, this antechamber to death. “I’ll need help getting him dressed.”

“Go,” I heard Colin tell Matthew. “Dondi’s going home,” he said.

***

Dondi was dressed and dozing in a chair when the attending physician came in to discharge him. He had tried to stay awake, but the morphine was like a swift current that kept washing him out to sea. What resulted was a kind of slow erosion of awareness.

“I understand your friend here wants to take you home.”

Dondi nodded wearily.

“I need to know what you want. I think—”

“I’m not interested in what you think,” Dondi snapped, raising his head and impaling him with a razor sharp gaze. “You’ve done a lot for me and I’m grateful. Truly, truly grateful.” His voice had drifted into singsong. “Now, it’s time to let go. Let…me…fly…away.”

“Yes, of course, Mr. Whyte. You do understand that if your condition worsens, you’re to return to the emergency room at once?”

“Doc,” Dondi began, for a moment the old Dondi, the outrageous Dondi, the Dondi of our gilded youth. “If I get any worse I’ll be dead, and then your emergency room will be somewhat beside the point,
n’est ce pas
?”

Matthew, shocked, barked a laugh.

The doctor flushed scarlet and dropped his pen. “I’ll telephone transport and have them send up a wheelchair. Good luck, Mr. Whyte.”

Thirty minutes later we were still waiting. Dondi woke abruptly. “Where’s my wheelchair?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’ve already checked with the nurse’s station twice,” Colin offered.

“I want to go home,” he said irritably. “T!”

“I’m here, Dondi.”

He turned his head, tracking my voice. I think we realized simultaneously that his sight was failing him. “I want to go home, T. Please take me home.”

“Okay. We’re going home.” I leaned over the chair and scooped him up in my arms; he weighed less than his shadow. “Let’s go, guys.”

Matthew grabbed his suitcase.

Colin looked at his brother, a dying babe in my arms, and threw himself across the bed. “Oh God! Oh God,
no
!”

“Not now, Colin,” Matthew said.

I brushed past a nurse, Dondi in my arms.

“Wait,” she cried. “You can’t take him out of here like that!”

Matthew took my elbow. “Keep moving,” he said. “Just keep moving. The car’s waiting out front.”

Dondi’s head fell against my shoulder, his mouth hung open, and he drooled on my chest.