Proud and strange and so hopelessly hopeful.

I was 6 when my first uncle died of AIDS.

It’s hard to remember much from that age. I remember school – a girl in a bright yellow velour jogging outfit, which she wore almost every day. Chasing boys around the back field. My tall, blonde teacher, who was fun and inspiring and seemed so old but, when I visited her twenty years later, was only in her mid-40s, and no taller than me.

A long ferry-ride. Walking down concrete stairs, trees blowing in the warm wind, colourful people waving flags and riding motorbikes – smiles for me, because I had huge blonde ringlets and was carrying one of those flags, even though it was bigger than I was. Vancouver, 1986. I remember the wind was so strong I had to lean all the way against it with all my weight it to keep the flag up. I remember we went to Expo, too, but it was kind of boring. We visited all the pavilions, but I only remember the one where a gentleman in a white robe signed my name on a piece of paper in Arabic. I was fascinated by the thick round igal on his head. He was very quiet, but smiled at me as he handed me the work. I wanted to ask if the thing on his head was heavy, but my parents hustled me out so the next people in line could have their turn.

A few years later, I still had the flag propped up in a corner of my bedroom. It was a huge piece of cloth-like paper on a green bamboo stick, with multiple patches in various colours covering both sides. My mother kept asking me why I kept “that thing.” I thought the rainbows were just so pretty. I kept the piece of paper with my name in Arabic, too.

* * *

When we walked into my uncle’s apartment after the parade it was empty and silent, dark and cool.

“His neighbour is feeding the cat,” my Dad said.

We stood in silence in the entry hall for a moment, letting our eyes adjust, and then as one stepped forward and broke the dusty airlock seal that empty places seem to grow around their perimeters. I wandered around, trailing my hands over the walls, the backs of chairs. I was very thirsty, probably because of all the candy I’d had earlier in the day. I walked into the kitchen and stood on tip-toes to retrieve a mug from the drying rack. I filled it with tap water from the sink, and put it to my lips.

“Don’t drink that!” my mother said, springing across the room at me. I held on tighter to the mug as she grabbed at it. I was really thirsty.

“Mo-om! Why not?” Was there something wrong with the water? I looked into it, but aside from a few cat hairs, it looked OK to me. I fished them out with my finger.

My dad came up behind her. “It’s O.K.,” he whispered loudly. His voice was tight.
“I just don’t think it’s a good idea,” mom said.
“I’m THIRSTY.”
“Just let her drink it.”
“Turn the mug around, drink from the other side.”

Was there a chip in the mug? I examined it closely, shrugged, and drank the tepid water.

Dad disappeared into the bedroom for awhile, and I became fascinated by the houseplants growing on the shaded balcony. The cat wouldn’t come out from wherever she was hiding. We sat in the car when my dad went into the hospital to deliver the bag of clothes.

* * *

Whenever my uncles and their partners would come to stay for summer holidays at the family home, they would fill the cottage with their swim trunks and towels, beach shoes and jean shorts. It was done up in 70s yellows and browns, with multiple lumpy hide-a-beds and fishing poles stashed anywhere there was space. You could tell my uncles were there because of the laughter that would drift across the beach. They were always smiling, whenever we were all together.

It was the best place in the world.

Years before, they had put a poster on the wall in the kitchen, a painting advertising a bullfight. The matador was dark, handsome, bravely facing down a bull. His head was turned to look at us, his short black-and-silver-embroidered jacket fitting snugly over his muscular shoulders. His slim hips were just rotating away from the bull, his muscular buttocks outlined by the purple silk. “Salamanca”, it read. That was the name of the road the cottage was on. It took me years to get the inside joke, and many more years to get the other joke.

Then, suddenly, one of my uncles was gone. Nobody told me why.

* * *

I was 9. We’d dressed me up as Mme. Liberté for my second uncle’s birthday, which fell on Bastille Day, and I carried a French flag around the front yard as they cheered and sang. We hummed La Marseillaise at each other for the rest of the day, and I ran around until dusk in the long white cotton shift my grandmother had lent me – no single bare breast for me, alas, as I led our march to Liberté, Fraternité, Egalité.

The summer I turned 11 I read aloud all the Judy Bloom novels as we trawled for salmon in the dinghy. “Are You There, God, It’s Me Margaret” and “Then Again Maybe I Won’t.” Sometimes we would sit silently and jig for cod in the kelp beds in front of the house. When we got back to shore, either my dad or uncle would gut the fish, and I would often hold the hearts in my hand until they stopped beating, fascinated. Biology was the coolest thing in the world. Then we’d throw the offal to the seagulls, who couldn’t believe their luck.

If the fishing was crummy, my uncle’s partner – who I called uncle, too – would make bouillabaisse out of the littler fishes. It was lightly spiced, and delicious.

My uncle taught me how to spit cherry seeds for maximum distance and velocity. His partner would go swimming every morning no matter how cold it was. At 9:00am sharp, we would hear horrified yelling from the beach, and then a splash.

* * *

I knew what it was called, by then: AIDS. It happened so fast. My uncle was sick, and my dad flew all the way to Toronto to see him. I couldn’t recognize him in the photo my dad brought back, from his sallow face, sunken eyes and cheeks, and wispy hair. I could tell it was him, though, because he was still smiling.

He was in a special AIDS ward, with doctors and nurses who knew about AIDS and weren’t afraid of their patients. His room was filled to overflowing with cards from his students past and present – he had been a high school teacher – wishing him well.

He died that fall.

* * *

Puberty. A few years later. There was never as much laughter in my life again.

My mother and I had had another fight. After my much older step-brother was killed in a drug deal (another story, for a different day) she’d alternated between catatonic unresponsiveness and screaming rages, and the trick was knowing when the next one was coming. I got better at it over the years, but this one I’d misjudged. I’d been banished to my room, again, and my dad got mad at something my mother had said to him.

As all fights do, this one spiraled from the thing it was about and become about everything. It was sickly fascinating, as I listened at the door of my bedroom, to hear the horrible things they said to each other – marriages rarely survive the death of a child.

Finally, my dad told my mother that they needed money, and she had to go back to work – it had been eight months since her son had died, after all. His brothers had both died, and he had had to go back to work afterwards.

“How dare you compare my son to those faggots?” she yelled.

The next year, I walked in my first pride parade.

(Well, really, my second.)

* * *

NB: I don’t promise that this story is accurate, but it is what I remember. I miss my uncles very much.