THAT FIRST WEEK THEY got to know each other again. They went for a walk or a ride in the car, they sat and talked, they went shopping or to get an ice cream. Mike went to his nieces’ softball game. His brother Larry took him to the park. Mrs. Rocha drove him to K-Mart and they bought a needlepoint set, a paint set to paint on cloth, a cross-stitch set and a woodburning set. They thought they might do some of this together but, as it turned out, they never did any of it.
She thought they should clear the air, but Mike wanted to put the past behind him. “What’s past is past,” he kept saying. In San Francisco, he had said—
“Mom, I want to say something—I’m sorry for whatever I said or whatever I did. Sometimes I didn’t know what I was saying or doing.”
“That’s fine,” she said. “Don’t worry about it.”
He had said over the phone from the hospital—
“I don’t want to bring up the past. Let it be past. I know I’m going to die and I want to go home.”
Of his past gay life, Mike only said, “I was lonely and lost then.” Mrs. Rocha had met two boys, lovers, through her group in Denver. One of them had AIDS and they sent Mike a nice letter with a Polaroid picture enclosed of them together but he wasn’t interested in making friends.
“I don’t want to have anything to do with any more gay guys,” he said. “I don’t want to have any feelings for them. I thought I had friends but I lost them because of this disease. If I get better, I want to live a different kind of life.”
“What kind of life?” she asked.
“I want to be able to take care of myself and live on my own.”
She said, Well maybe you will be able to, but at the same time she knew Mike might die. She wanted Mike to make it right with his sisters and brothers before he did. She wanted him to make it right with his father. When he didn’t call his dad, she said he must call. His father wasn’t a well man. He had heart trouble. He’d quit drinking. His son should show some respect. So she knew Mike went to see his dad but not when. She didn’t pry. One day Mike brought it up himself.
“You know, I didn’t think you would ever want me back in your house again.”
“Well,” she said, “you were mistaken all along.”
“I guess I was. I thought my father was the one who understood me. It wasn’t so. My dad’s a cop-out. It took me all these years to understand what my dad really is. You never said anything bad about my dad.”
“No. He is your dad.”
“And I knew why you divorced him only I didn’t. I had my dad on a pedestal but it wasn’t so. On my part—I don’t know about the other kids but I wanted to treat you the way my dad did. I wanted to beat the shit out of you.”
It hurt but she wasn’t surprised to hear him say this. “And what did you gain from it?” she asked.
“Nothing. Dad didn’t even want me to come back.”
Before she went out to get Mike in San Francisco, Mrs. Rocha called the welfare office and they said Mike would be given Medicaid. He was already on Medicaid in California. So that next Monday, she took Mike over to the welfare building to apply.
They sat in the waiting room for half an hour. Mike was restless because his ass hurt so from the herpes he could never completely get rid of. Right now, aside from all his other medications, he needed medicine for the herpes. He was in pain. He kept standing up then sitting down then standing up. Finally, they were told they could go in and see Ms. Smith now.
They went in and said hello and sat down. Ms. Smith looked at the papers. “What can I do for you?” she asked.
“My son has AIDS and he needs to get on Medicaid,” Mrs. Rocha said.
Ms. Smith put her head down.
“He just came home from San Francisco. I called a few weeks ago. I talked to this other lady, I forget her name, and she said to talk to you.”
Ms. Smith didn’t look up, she asked some questions about Mike’s financial situation and how long he’d been in Greeley, and Mike answered, but she kept her eyes on the papers with her hand on her head.
At length, she said, “So you want Medicaid but he’s not a resident of Colorado.”
“He is now,” Mrs. Rocha said. “He was born in Colorado,” she added. “There’s his birth certificate, a copy I got last month. It’s an official copy.”
“You know, I can approve or deny anything I want,” Ms. Smith said.
Mrs. Rocha didn’t understand. “Well, he needs Medicaid now, today.”
Ms. Smith looked up from her desk and said, “You don’t tell me what you need, I’ll tell you what I can give you.”
There was a silence. The two women glared at each other.
“Let’s go, Mom,” Mike said.
“You can go to the car and lay down if you need to,” Mrs. Rocha told her son quietly.
“Let’s just go.”
“I’ll be right back,” Ms. Smith said, and she left.
They sat there.
Mrs. Rocha had never asked for welfare in her life. Since her kids were older, she’d always worked for a living. The truth was, she didn’t know anything about welfare. They had told her in her group Mike should apply. She wondered if this woman knew she didn’t know anything about welfare and was just talking through the side of her mouth.
This Ms. Smith was gone a long time. She came in then went right back out again. When she came back and sat down and started shuffling papers, Mrs. Rocha said, “Would you please hurry up? My son is not feeling well and he can’t sit here all day waiting for you to get done.”
Ms. Smith’s lips were, by now, set in a line. She had Mike sign a bunch of papers.
“You know,” she said to Mrs. Rocha, “if something happens, you’re responsible.”
“What do you mean?” Mrs. Rocha asked.
“It’ll be in your shoes.”
“He’s signing the papers. I’m not. He’s responsible for himself. He’s a man now. He’s a grown man. I’m not going to be responsible for anything.”
Mike didn’t say anything. He just signed the papers.
Mrs. Rocha asked, “How much will I be allowed for taking care of him?”
“What do you mean? He’s your son. You don’t get anything for taking care of him.”
“I don’t?” Mrs. Rocha was stunned. “Then how am I going to take care of him?”
“I have no idea.”
“Then you’d better find somebody else to take care of him,” Mrs. Rocha said, really heating up now, “and pay them, if I’m not allowed to take care of him. What about food stamps?” Mrs. Rocha asked. “Is he entitled to food stamps?”
“No.” Ms. Smith spoke as if her patience were being sorely tried. “He is not entitled to food stamps. I don’t think you understand.”
“Well, why not?”
“Technically, he’s not entitled to anything.”
“What do you mean?”
Ms. Smith sighed and explained as she would to a child. “I’m going to give you these papers. You’re going to take them downtown to the Social Security office to see if he can get SSI. Once SSI approves him, if they do, then you come back here.”
“And what are we going to do in the meantime?” Mrs. Rocha demanded. “He needs his medication. Something has to be done because I don’t have the money to buy his medication. How is he going to get his medications?”
“Look, there is nothing—the same way he’s going to eat, I guess. How are you going to feed him?”
“Let’s go, Mom,” Mike said.
“It’s none of your goddamn business how I’m going to feed him,” Mrs. Rocha said. “I’m not asking you to feed him. All I want is medication for him because he needs it. He needs his medical for the hospital and all these other costs.”
“Did any of this occur to you before you brought him back from San Francisco?”
Mrs. Rocha realized—this lady was afraid.
“Why didn’t you leave him in San Francisco?”
“He’s my son,” Mrs. Rocha said. She spelled it out for Ms. Smith just the way Ms. Smith had spelled it out for her. “I couldn’t leave him out in San Francisco. He’s maybe dying. What would you do if it was your son?”
“I probably would have left him out there where he could get help.”
“Mom, let’s go.”
Mrs. Rocha told Mike to go out to the car and lie down and when he left she turned to Ms. Smith and said, “Lady, let’s step outside and I’ll slap your face.”
“Don’t you threaten me.”
“Now you look here, you’re going to help me one way or the other,” Mrs. Rocha said. “But I am not going to kiss your ass for a dime.”
“And you look here,” Ms. Smith said. “We are not responsible for your son. If SSI doesn’t approve him, we can’t do anything. Nothing.”
Mrs. Rocha exploded. “Well why the hell are we talking here, then? I’m just wasting my time, is that what you’re saying? And my son is sick and he needs to get home and I need to go home to take care of him.” She could have wept. “Oh, just go to hell. Forget it.” And she walked out.
When they got home she called the doctor and the doctor told her not to worry about it, he’d call up welfare and get a voucher for her for the drugs. When she worried aloud about the bills, he said, “Don’t worry about it. Just don’t sign anything. Somewhere down the line, they’ll have to pay for it whether they like it or not. You have enough problems as it is.” When she called welfare, Ms. Smith wouldn’t talk to her but she went down and picked up the voucher from the receptionist and she never had to see Ms. Smith ever again.
The Social Security office was easier—thank God, downtown they took his papers and did the rest over the phone.
Her husband kept scrubbing the bathtub on his knees on the bathroom floor.
“Why did you do that? I just cleaned it.”
“I wanted a bath.”
“I told you, I just cleaned it. I just changed the towels.”
But her husband kept scrubbing.
“I explained to you didn’t I?”
Her husband wasn’t a drinker but the first week Mike was home he came home drunk every night. Once he was so drunk, he came home and went into the bathroom and passed out.
“You don’t have any respect,” she told him. “You don’t have any respect for the dying.”
She knew it was the AIDS. He said he was all right about it but what would you think if you saw a man turn into a drunk right before your very eyes, just like that?
“Look, if you can’t handle this, get out,” she said to him when Mike was out of earshot. “If you don’t get out, I’m going to throw you out. I have enough problems as it is,” she said. “I don’t need to deal with this shit.”
So her husband quit drinking. But he was still scrubbing the bathtub, changing the towels.*
“Well what do you think Mom? I’ll probably be moving out of here pretty soon, on my own, get a job and be by myself, huh?”
* There have been no documented cases of casual, or household, transmission of the HIV virus, even where family members shared toothbrushes and otherwise lived together in circumstances with a high degree of physical intimacy. A tiny percentage of health-care workers have acquired the virus through their jobs; a handful of AIDS cases have been reported where workers were infected through needle pricks or, without observing standard precautions, had prolonged contact with HIV-infected blood and/or had a wound or other avenue to the circulatory system exposed to it.