My Eyes

a/n: Here's a bit of background info on Mimi. Its largely based on my fic "Confessions." Anyway… here you go.

Chapter four: Little Miss Negative, 'Cause She's HIV Positive

When I was sixteen, my father died, leaving our already impoverished family virtually penniless. My mother had me, and five others to take care of. Three of the kids were under three years old, the other two were five and seven. My father who died was not really my father at all. I was the result of a high school fling my mother had. She married my adoptive father when I was eight. After Dad died, the house we lived in was horrible – not really a house at all. We were pretty much squatters. I figured my mother had too much to handle, and didn't need another mouth to feed, so I hitch-hiked to the City, figuring on being a Broadway dancer. But nobody would take me. I was a little Spanish wannabe with no agent. I was too young, too skinny, too inexperienced, too everything.

Central Park had become my home at the time. I loved it; the people, the noise of traffic on one end balanced out by the quiet of the park. But paradise would last for only a short while. I was hungry, and often scared, despite the tough façade I tried to put up. Winter came quickly – sooner than I had planned on, and I was cold. I had my seventeenth birthday in the snow. I had taken up prostitution, but only when I was desperate.

Then one day, I started feeling really terrible. I woke up with a sore throat. It hurt to swallow or eat anything. Normally, I wouldn't have done anything about it, but cash was low, and I didn't feel right about giving my flu to someone else. I had heard about a free clinic somewhere around the East Village, and went there, telling them about my flu-like symptoms, so they ran some tests – "for precautions". It turned out I was HIV positive. they told me that I would need to take my AZT regularly, and to be very careful, because it was a highly communicable sexually transmitted disease. Like I didn't already know that.

I stepped out of the clinic to find it raining heavily – how appropriate. I sank to the ground sobbing, letting the rain wash over me, wanting to die; it was inevitable now. I just wanted to speed up the process. The words on the page in my hand rang in my head over and over again. Mimi Marquez – HIV positive. Mimi Marquez – HIV positive….

I felt a warm hand on my shoulder and looked up to see a… man? in a bright orange mini skirt and matching jacket and flowered green heels looking at me concernedly.

"You okay, honey?" I wordlessly handed him my test results. "Oh, honey," he said, enfolding my in his arms, stroking my hair. "Me too." He… she held me as I cried and laid my problems at her feet, offering comfort where she could. We stood and started walking down the street together. "I'm Angel."

"Mimi."

As we walked down the streets, a man and his dumb friends looked over at us – at Angel – and came up to her.

"How's it goin', faggy?" His friends laughed uproariously. They looked – and smelled – drunk. Angel laid a hand on his shoulder and calmly replied:

"Baby, I'm more of a man than you'll ever be, and more of a woman than you're ever gonna get." She smiled and walked past, head held high, as the skinhead was left to his friends' taunts.

Angel and me were the best of friends after that. She helped me find my job at the Cat Scratch Club. When she found out that I was a hooker some of the time, she freaked out, and put a stop to that.

"Where do you think you got HIV from, you crazy? And running around giving it to other guys? What's wrong with you?" she shrieked.

"I'm careful," I mumbled. She popped me on the head for that one.

"What do you do, Chula? What are you good at?" I looked down and shuffled my feet.

"I used to dance." Angel thought for a moment.

"I've got it! You can dance at the Cat Scratch Club!"

"A strip club!" I shouted. Angel rolled her eyes.

So here I was. After two years, I got the attention enough to warrant a solo. So, every night, I stepped out onto my stage, smiled broadly into the spotlight, and began my dance.

"What's the time…"