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Rafael Campo
AIDS Mother When she refused my suggestion that she have an abortion, I was annoyed. Odds were she would transmit the virus to her unborn child, since she wouldn't take AZT. She explained that because her fiancé had left her when he found out she was HIV infected, and because she would probably die soon, giving birth to this child would be the only record of the existence of their love. That baby in her womb would transform the dark ghetto inside her into a beautiful forest, and it would come out all clean and sparkling new, not toxic! Even if the baby was born with AIDS, she would take care of it as best she could. She would be a good and loving AIDS mother, not like some who just deserted their innocent little ones in the delivery ward, in a hurry to get back on the streets and use. She would make sure that if the baby outlived her, her parents in Puerto Rico would take it in after she died -- that she would keep writing to them and prove that she wasn't a whore and a dirty shooter any more. Her healthy baby would make them love her again, and she pictured her own mother at her side squeezing her hand during the contractions, tears streaming down her face, remembering her same agony as she gave birth to the woman with HIV in bed beside her, the sweet daughter she had never really abandoned.
Rafael Campo teaches and practices medicine at Harvard Medical School's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. His books are The Other Man Was Me, winner of the 1993 National Poetry Series award, and What the Body Told, winner of a Lambda Literary Award. The Poetry of Healing, a collection of prose, will be published by W. W. Norton in 1998 |