A Losing Game

"Comes to Light (Everything)"

            Roderick remembered his mother, Yvette, even though she died from a drug overdose when he was six. He also had memories of his father, Barry. The family of four resided in the Stacy-Brooks Housing Project and even back then, it was a bad place. Barry always told Deven to make sure he protected his baby brother. Roderick remembered Deven the most from those days because that's who he spent the most time with. However, most of his memory came from the period after child protective services took custody of both him and Deven. He definitely remembered the day they split him and Deven up.

            "What did that fuckin' junkie do to me?" Roderick asked Deven after finally wrapping his mind around what Deven had told him.

            "We still don't know," Deven answered while wiping his tears away.

            "We?"

            Deven looked at him and continued, "After I got you out of there, I took you with me and I found dad at that old bar he used to drink at all the time. I told him everything and he took us to the hospital. I don't know what they told dad because I had to wait in the waiting room, but I do remember him acting different when he returned with you. He had this big Ziploc bag with a bunch of different bottles of medication inside."

            The moment Roderick heard his brother mention medication bottles, a memory flashed before his eyes. He stared at Deven and said, "AZT."

            "What?"

            "Did one of the bottles"—he took a deep breath—"have AZT on the label? Because I think I remember seeing that. Or I remember you giving me pills from that bottle a lot back then."

            "It was one of the medications they had to give you just in case...Bobby did more than touch you. Rod, Bobby had full-blown AIDS."

            The revelation took the wind out of Roderick again and he had to sit down in one of the nearby lounge chairs. As his mind was still processing what his brother had just told him, he asked, "Is that why I was always sick back then? I would eat somethin' and then throw up not even five minutes after I'd eaten it." He was on the brink of becoming hysterical as he said, "I've been tested. I'm negative. I know I'm negative. I can't—"

            "Rod, you don't have HIV or AIDS. Either Bobby didn't molest you in a way that exposed you to the virus or the antivirals worked. Neither momma nor dad got the truth out of Bobby or anyone else who knew him."

            "He's dead?"

            "Yeah, but not from AIDS."

            "Dev, I need to know everything and I know you're not tellin' me everything."

            Deven looked into his brother's eyes and revealed, "Dad didn't go to prison for killing some other dude in the streets he had beef with. I overheard momma explaining what happened one day when she was talking with one of her junkie friends. Dad spent night after night looking for Bobby but Bobby's peoples were hiding him because he'd told them he owed a dealer money and his life was in danger. So, dad found out who Bobby was getting his heroin from and told the dealer to get the word out that Bobby liked to molest little boys. It wasn't long before the whole hood turned on Bobby, including his own family."

            "What happened next?"

            "Some men brought Bobby to dad and dad tortured him to death in the courtyard in front of everybody who was outside at that time of night. Momma said dad wasn't himself at all anymore and that any amount of reasoning was gone from his mind. He got arrested that same night. The cops found him still in the courtyard stabbing Bobby's dead body in the head repeatedly."