by Jenna Bush
Ana looked for Berto in the cafeteria during lunch, but she didn’t see him. She wondered if he hadn’t felt well and stayed back in his room. She didn’t worry, since she had no reason to think that he was going anywhere.
She chatted with her friends throughout lunch, and just before she got up to clear her plate, one of Berto’s roommates passed her a note. Ana slipped it in her pocket and went to the restroom so she could read it in private.
Ana,
I’m leaving this place. I’m being transferred to a home for people like us. I’ll try to get them to take you. I won’t forget you. Ever.
Ana was confused. Could Berto actually be gone? She didn’t understand where he went or why. They were just getting started; she had so much more to tell him.
Ana went to the administration office and found one of the guards sitting at a desk doing paperwork.
“Where did Berto go?” Ana asked.
“Who?”
“Berto. The boy who came two weeks ago.”
“Oh, him,” the guard said. “Yes, he’s gone, and you don’t need to worry about where he went.” Just like that, Berto had disappeared from her life.
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Ana wanted to forget Berto, but she couldn’t. She wanted to regret telling him her secret, but she didn’t. Ana tried to convince herself that knowing him didn’t matter, but her heart never let him go.
With Berto gone, the days at the center dragged. Ana feared that she would never escape the monotony of her life confined to the concrete box she now lived in. When she became angry, she used her sessions with María to discuss her frustrations and pain. She realized that her emotions didn’t have the power to control her anymore. This made her feel stronger and more free.
61
A few weeks later, a woman stopped by the administration office. Ana sat on her bed, weary and tired. From down the hall, she thought she heard the guard mention her name.
She heard footsteps; then the guard said, “Ana, gather your stuff. You’re being transferred.”
She thought of José and Berto; this time it was her turn to disappear.
Ana had no idea where she was going. Would she go home with Isabel, who was now living with her godfather? Would she live with her favorite aunt, Aída?
Ana pulled the box from under her bed. The jeans she wore when she had arrived no longer fit. Even though she was a year older, she was thinner from eating very little. She had to wear the uniform she had on. She didn’t care if she said good-bye to the other girls; Pilar, her closest friend, had left long before. Ana had now been at the center longer than any of the other girls in her dorm. But she wished she could have said good-bye to María, who was gone for the day. So Ana scribbled her a quick note.
“I’m ready,” Ana said to the woman standing next to the guard, waiting to take her to her new home, wherever that was this time.
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Ana didn’t say anything as she put her box in the trunk of the car and then opened the passenger door.
“I’m Silvia,” said the woman, climbing into the driver’s seat. “I work at the Rosa Mística, your new hogar, your new home.”
Ana’s heart dropped. She wasn’t going home to be with Isabel.
“You’re now old enough to come to our facility, which is one of the few group homes for people with HIV/AIDS,” Silvia said.
Ana’s head snapped up. How could this stranger know her secret?
“It’s okay, Ana,” Silvia said warmly. “Everyone at the hogar has HIV or AIDS.”
When they arrived at the hogar, Silvia led Ana through two large metal doors into a covered courtyard filled with blossoming tropical plants. Fuchsia bougainvillea climbed a trellis along one wall, and bright orange bird of paradise grew along the perimeter of the garden. Paintings of saints hung on the stucco walls, protecting those who lived within the gates.
Ana looked around and saw about ten or twelve men and women sitting in smaller groups, talking, sewing, and playing cards. A thin old man with frizzy gray hair sat in a rocking chair listening to a soccer game on an old portable radio. Two middle-aged women sat together and knitted.
In the far corner a young man and a teenage boy played checkers. They laughed quietly as one gained an advantage. The boy sitting with his back to her wore a large white T-shirt that was too big for his small body; his hair was buzzed short, like mowed grass. The older one nodded in her direction, and then the young man turned to look.
Ana stopped and her mouth dropped. Looking at her from across the courtyard was Berto, a smile on his face.
“Berto!” Ana cried out. “What are you doing here?”
“I told you I would take you to a better place,” he said, looking at her shyly.
“Berto shared your name with us,” Silvia said. “We reviewed your file at the center and decided that this would be a more comfortable home for you.”
Ana couldn’t speak. So this is what he meant in his note to her. She hadn’t understood because she had never heard about a home for people living with HIV/AIDS. In her experience, people with HIV/AIDS were not welcomed anywhere. But they were welcomed here.
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At her first family meal at the hogar, Ana sat at a long wooden table with all of the residents. Silvia and Pablo, the administrators, did not have HIV/AIDS, but they lived in the home and managed the facility. Before eating, everyone around the table held hands and prayed.
“Amén,” they all said at the end of the prayer.
Ana was amazed by the quality and freshness of the food. She ate a casserole of chicken and rice, along with fresh vegetables and tomato soup. She took special note of the bright colors on the table—green, yellow, orange, red—so different from the beige mush she was accustomed to at the center.
“Is the food always like this?” Ana asked Berto, who was seated next to her.
“Even better for Sunday breakfast,” he said after swallowing. Berto never lifted his eyes from his plate; Ana remembered the shyness that she had found so refreshing when she first sat with Berto under the tree at the center.
Berto barely had a chance to speak anyway. Around the table, everyone asked questions of Ana and told her the stories of their lives—where they were from, how long they had lived in this home—and some told her how they had been infected with HIV/AIDS. These words were not whispered with shame but stated as fact. “I’m María and I have been living with AIDS for fifteen years,” said one of the middle-aged women who had been knitting earlier. “I was infected by my husband, who was injecting drugs.”
Ana had never imagined such openness about AIDS. At this table, there was a group of people doing their best to live with HIV/AIDS without shame, blame, or fear. She didn’t need to hide her pills or sneak away to take them in private. At the end of the meal, one of the women said, “Okay, vamos, let’s go, let’s take our medicine.”
“I call it my dessert,” said Ana, and everyone laughed. Everyone at the table reached for the pills sitting next to their plates.
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After dinner, Silvia showed Ana to her bedroom. All of the residents slept in rooms with doors that faced a common courtyard. Ana would sleep in a large room with four other women. Some residents, including Berto, had private rooms. The women’s quarters were on one side of the courtyard, the men’s on the other.
Ana liked the soft lavender color on the bedroom walls. Silvia gave Ana clean sheets for her bed. Hers was a twin bed in the corner of the room, near the door.
Since Ana didn’t have many clothes, Silvia took her to a large closet filled with hand-me-downs and cast-offs from various shelters. Silvia told Ana to go through the boxes and look for anything she liked that might fit. Ana found pink T-shirts, jean shorts, a pair of gold sandals that laced up her calves, a white jean skirt, and a red tank top. Ana had always loved choosing outfits; she hadn’t been able to wear anything but the regulation center shorts and T-shirts for nearly two years.
Ana took her new clothes back to her room and tucked them
into a drawer—her drawer. She unpacked the cardboard box, carefully removing the photocopy of her mother and the photographs of Papá, Isabel, and Yolanda.
Ana pinned the images to the wall next to her bed, placing her mother’s in the center. She created a collage of the people of her past. She could stare at the pictures from her bed, just as she did when she was a little girl living at her abuela’s house.
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At fifteen, Ana and Berto were by far the youngest residents at the hogar. No one was surprised when they became instant partners, doing everything together. Ana and Berto ate breakfast together; then they completed their morning chores, which consisted of doing the dishes, mopping the kitchen floor, or collecting the laundry.
After lunch, they sat together in front of a TV in Berto’s room watching telenovelas and sharing the stories of their lives.
Berto told Ana of an early childhood that was similar to her own. He was an orphan who never knew his mamá or papá. He lived with his aunt, who beat him and ridiculed him for the disease he was born with, telling him he was weak, sick, disgusting, and filthy. When Berto was twelve years old, he ran away. He had been the same age as Ana when she left her abuela’s house.
At that point, his story took a sharper turn. Berto dropped out of the sixth grade and lived on the street with a group of young boys, robbing grocery stores and stealing cars to get by. When he was fifteen years old, he was caught by the police and brought into the juvenile detention center. Like two streams, Ana’s and Berto’s stories merged into one when they met at the center.
Berto narrated his story as an observer, clearly but without much emotion. She understood that the real feeling lay beyond the words, underneath the facts, in that place where the feelings were hidden. Ana knew Berto wasn’t trying to be tough or to impress her; she knew because she told her stories in the same way. It was easier not to be emotional, not to be involved. Then it didn’t hurt so much.
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All of the residents at the hogar were invited to go to meetings of an HIV/AIDS support group. Ana went to her first meeting a month after she arrived at the hogar, where she met Sara, the director of the program.
“The purpose of the meetings is to educate ourselves about the ways we can stay healthy,” said Sara in a calm, soothing voice. “We meet twice a week to discuss the importance of good nutrition, of taking our medicines, and of supporting each other.”
Ana had gotten the chance to learn about HIV/AIDS before, but she had never listened as carefully as she did now. This was different from when she was a young girl in school, only partially hearing the teacher because she had been so nervous and afraid that someone would discover her secret. But now she didn’t have to worry about that; she felt comfortable listening and asking questions.
“There are ways you can help yourself stay healthy,” said Sara, “and you need to learn how to prevent the spread of the infection.”
Ana focused on every word. Before the meeting, she hadn’t completely understood how the virus worked to weaken her immune system. She didn’t appreciate the importance of eating healthy foods to keep her body strong enough to control the virus. She now understood how important the use of condoms is not only to prevent pregnancy but also to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS during sex.
That night, Ana sat on the couch staring at Berto.
“What are you thinking about, guapa?” Berto asked casually. Ana liked that he called her beautiful.
“The meeting,” Ana said. “I’ve spent my whole life avoiding talking about HIV/AIDS and now I really want to talk about it.”
“I understand,” Berto said. “I like the meetings too. They’re the closest thing I have to school.”
Ana and Berto tried to turn their attention to the television, but they were both lost in their own thoughts. Berto broke the silence. “Ana, do you ever think about dying?”
“No,” Ana said quickly. “Don’t be morbid. Besides, everyone dies. I prefer to think about living.”
Ana leaned over and kissed Berto on the cheek and went back to her room. She wanted some time alone.
Ana sat on the bed, letting her thoughts wander. She considered Berto’s question. Ana decided that she preferred to ignore death, as if it were a pesky bug in the corner of the room. Many people she loved had died—her mamá, her papá, her baby sister, friends from the hospital. In the last month, two people had moved from the hogar to the hospital, and she didn’t expect to see either one of them again.
Ana knew she lived in denial. She knew she could die from HIV/AIDS, but she looked healthy and felt fine, and she didn’t want to waste her time thinking about being sick. She had always been diligent about taking her medicine, and she rarely suffered from colds or the flu.
Ana stared at the image of her mamá on the wall and thought about how much the medicine and treatment for AIDS had changed since Mamá died twelve years before. Ana now knew that many of the drugs used to treat HIV/AIDS had not been as widely available and effective when her mother, sister, and father had died. At the meeting, Sara said that the drugs for HIV/AIDS were improving all the time and that, while it didn’t look like there would be a cure for AIDS anytime in the near future, the medicines currently available could help Ana stay healthy for a long time, as long as she took them every day.
Ana thought some more and then decided: No, she really didn’t fear death, but she respected death. She accepted that death was waiting for her, but she had no intention of giving in; she planned to fight it, and the best way she could do that was to live. She was beginning to understand, though, that she needed to live responsibly.
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Ana and Berto sat together on the couch in the community room every evening and watched movies. They always sat side by side, close enough for their knees to bump but far enough away so no one walking in would think that they were interrupting anything. Ana liked feeling the warmth of Berto’s skin.
One night when Berto and Ana were the only two in the room, when the movie was over and the final credits were scrolling across the screen, Berto leaned over and whispered into Ana’s ear: “Me gustas.”
Ana trembled. She felt the words like a flush through her body. Berto had said, “I like you.” These three words changed everything for Ana.
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In the morning, Ana smiled at Berto when she sat down for breakfast. She wore the mandatory school uniform: a white collared shirt and a navy blue pleated skirt. Her hair was woven into a long, shiny braid.
“This is a big day,” Ana said to Silvia while putting some warm plantains on her plate. “Ninth grade.”
Ana had transferred to a new school; she needed only two years to graduate from secondary school.
“I hate first days,” she said. “I’m always so nervous.”
Berto wasn’t able to go to school, but he hoped to return when he felt better. He had dropped out at age twelve, when he ran away from home.
Ana finished her breakfast and said good-bye. Her eyes lingered on Berto, and she smiled. She then rushed off to wait for the bus outside the hogar.
When she returned, Berto was waiting for her.
“Let’s go for a walk,” he said, eager to get outside.
They walked through the neighborhood, talking about Ana’s classes and some of the girls she ate with in the cafeteria. Ana appreciated having a chance to talk about her day with someone who really wanted to listen.
A few blocks from the hogar, they sat on a bench in a park. Berto reached up and gently stroked Ana’s long black hair. He leaned toward her, and they shared a tender kiss. Ana had kissed other boys before, but she had never felt a connection like this; shivers ran up her spine, and her mouth curved into a perfect smile.
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For the next several months, Ana returned from school and spent every afternoon with Berto, walking through the barrio, looking in shops, watching movies at the hogar. Once, Silvia and Pablo took all the residents to the beach. She and Berto swam in the salty waves and danced to
Shakira on the radio as the sun set behind the ocean.
Ana considered Berto her novio, her boyfriend, although they tried not to act like a couple when they were back at the hogar. They didn’t think that their relationship violated any rules, but they weren’t sure and didn’t want Silvia or Pablo to start watching them closely. So they kept their relationship a secret.
Ana felt connected to Berto; she trusted him more than anyone except Isabel. She could not imagine either one of them deliberately doing anything to hurt her. Berto didn’t yell or swear at her; he held her hand when they walked together; every day he told her that he loved her and needed her.
Some evenings, Ana slipped into Berto’s bedroom to watch television instead of watching in the common room. They usually watched comedies or soap operas, but one night they turned on Law & Order. In this episode, a middle-aged psychopath had attacked a young girl, and the detectives were trying to solve the case.
“Why do you want to watch this trash?” Ana asked, feeling uncomfortable because she had been reminded of Ernesto.
“Come on, it’s good,” Berto said. “Are you scared, guapa?” he teased, tickling Ana under her arms.
Ana didn’t want to explain that the show terrified her. She snuggled up to Berto, but she tried not to look at the screen. She counted the number of tiles on the floor and thought of a topic for an upcoming religion project, but the scene on the television kept drawing her back.
As Ana watched the grainy black-and-white television, she became more and more tense. She had tried to forget Ernesto, but like a dust storm this program stirred up old memories. Memories of that night—Ernesto’s eyes, his grubby hands, her inability to scream—flashed through her mind.
