Keeper of Keys Read Online Free PDF Page A

at the ceiling. Unable to sleep I finally pulled myself from the bed and back to the window to stare out into the moonlit night.
My body was tired but my mind wouldn't shut down. The muscles in my neck, arms and calves throbbed and the tendons in my hands burned with the strain I had put on them from gripping the steering wheel too tight for too long.

    To tell the truth, I was afraid to sleep, to close my eyes and allow my dreams to over take me. I was afraid that I would close my eyes and like my mother, dream forever and never see my child again.

    "Did you pray?" This man asked whom I had allowed into my house to fix my roof and had stayed on to mend my mind.

    Pray? Every breath I took was a prayer; every beat of my heart was a prayer. No, I did not draw on words I'd heard my grandmother recite from the bible when I was a child, I didn't call out to the Lord the way my mother did when she was tired, frustrated or both: Lord help me!

    "No, I did not do that." I told him.

    What would have prayer done for me at that point? The disease was in my body already, mixed in with my blood and flowing through my veins. And who was I to ask the Lord: Why have you done this to me? That would have been a foolish question. I had done it to myself, over and over again with men whose names I could hardly remember.

    I wished I could have had someone else to blame. Perhaps a private hospital with lots of money and an impeccable reputation. A deranged psychopath that got his kicks from leaving AIDS tainted needles in the seat cushions of movie theaters.

    There was no one thing or person to blame outside of me, Kai.

    I did finally fall asleep, but not before I watched the sun climb up into the sky, not before the night clouds broke away and sailed off to the part of the world where people were readying themselves for sleep. Not before I wept.

    Chapter Six

    Fried chicken is an odd smell to wake up to when you don't expect to wake up at all. I blinked at the sunlight that spilled into my room the color of Grandma's lemonade and sniffed the air for the scent of coconut oil. "Did you thank God for the new day?" Asked the man who would, he confided in me later, find anything and everything that was broken in my house just to stay close to me.

    "No, I didn't" I said and I must have looked ashamed because he smiled and rubbed the top of my hand and said it was okay to be angry with God sometimes.

    "Kai?" Sherry's announcement put a stop to whatever conversation was taking place in the kitchen.

    Poor Boy was at the table, a golden chicken leg clutched in his hands, his lips were shimmering with grease and I almost laughed when he smiled at me. He looked ridiculous and reminded me of our summers together when we were small and AIDS was something brewing in a government test tube in a place we didn't know existed.

    Sherry was at the stove, flipping thick chicken breasts in the large black frying pan that had belonged to her mother.

    Precious was there too, sitting across from Poor Boy. Her back was to me, but I knew her face was perfectly made up and that her nails were painted a delicate iridescent pink and most likely the white material of her blouse dipped in a long V exposing most of her bosom.

    From where I stood I could see the clean smooth heels of her foot, because Precious never wore shoes in the house and always, always rested her weight on her toes when she sat. There was a gold bracelet on her left ankle with a heart that dangled from the clasp. And I knew someone new was loving Precious. I hoped she was using a condom.

    "Girl you must have been dog tired." Sherry spoke to me but her eyes were on the chicken breasts she was turning.

    Precious finally turned around and as expected her make-up was flawless. She looked like one of the models in Essence magazine, the issue they put out in January telling you what lip and eye colors were going to be hot that spring and summer.

    "Hello," I said and walked a crooked line towards