Stephanie

by Shade Ogunleye

AIDS is the NUMBER ONE killer of African Americans aged 25-
44 [...]

As I shakily made my way down the cobblestone road on 116th and Broadway, my eyes filled with happy tears. I did it. I was an incoming freshman at Columbia University in New York City. The welcoming ceremony for the class of 2009 opened Columbia’s black iron gates to a stampeding herd of eighteen and nineteen year olds hungry for independence. I felt the muscles in my cheeks go in to spasm; I had been smiling for three hours straight. Columbia was my first and only choice. I couldn’t believe the poster of Low Library on my closet was actually before my eyes. I kissed my sniffling mother and waved to her tearful face, which was pressed against the window of a cab. I turned and floated off to my dorm to meet my roommate, Stephanie from Long Island. Nothing in my previous experiences could ever have prepared me for how this young woman would change my life forever.

“Roomie?” I kidded to the beautiful and long-haired petite girl who was adding color to her side of our starkly white cinderblock room. “Roomie!” she replied, a huge smile spreading across her face. We were best friends in moments. Tasmanian devil-like decorating ensued; she matched my Bob Marley poster with a glossy rendition of Van Gough’s “Starry Night.” My raggedy cabbage patch with her equally loved teddy bear. A picture of my smiling family with a 1980s-looking snapshot of woman wearing oversized glasses. “Who’s that?” I asked, still smiling. But Stephanie didn’t return my smile.

She looked at me gravely and said, “She was my mother. She and my father both died of AIDS.” I used the corner of my desk to steady myself, but I didn’t know what to say or how to respond. How could I let her know how the words she had spoken had shaken me? “I’m sorry” hardly seemed sufficient. “It’s okay,” Stephanie said. “My brother and I left a pretty rough part of Brooklyn and moved in with our aunt on Long Island.” “I...I…” I started, but could only make out sobs. I cried.

Stephanie walked across the room and reached for my hand. I grasped it and whispered, “I’m so proud of you.” I was amazed. Inspired. In awe of her will, her ability to turn the hardships of her life into motivation to succeed. At seven years old, she had the wisdom to know that she deserved better than what was handed to her. I had sat myself on a high horse for overcoming a sexual assault in 10th grade, but Stephanie had been fighting poverty and grief her entire life. She could have given up or turned to drugs or alcohol. Trying to envision myself in Stephanie’s life, I don’t think I would have been as strong. “Look at you, Stephanie,” I said. “Look at you. You’re at an Ivy League University now.”Stephanie squeezed my hand and then went back to decorating. I watched her a while longer, unsure of how to move or breathe, let alone go back to normalcy.

The next day I looked for an HIV/AIDS awareness group on campus. I was shocked and horrified at the information I learned. Why didn’t I know about this American epidemic? I’ll personally admit that I felt, at least on some level, AIDS was a disease that happened to gay men, drug users, and people in third world countries. But AIDS is here, in our American homes. So much so that AIDS is the NUMBER ONE killer of African Americans aged 25-44. There are multitudes of statistics available in pamphlets, on the internet, in books. But this one I could not escape. It followed me. It haunted me. I couldn’t stop thinking about what this fact meant for the African-American community. Ages 25 to 44 are the years when you’re making your own decisions about your career, your family, your life. African-American mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, and friends were dying not from drug overdoses or gang violence, as the media would have us believe, but from AIDS. Why wasn’t this fact written on billboards, on the sides of buses and trains, in magazines and newspapers?

It seems to me that if most people, regardless of race, die from AIDS near the middle of their lives, then they are contracting HIV between their teens and early 20s. Therefore, HIV/AIDS education needs to start much earlier. In my own high school education, I felt like HIV/AIDS was discussed on a more scientific level that simply left a roomful of 16 and 17 year olds embarrassed and full of questions we were too afraid to ask a 50-something year old man we would have to face the next day. The frankness or for lack of better words “realness” about HIV/AIDS came in college. And I had to seek out that atmosphere in organizations. As the data contests, setting the starting block for AIDS education in college is a fatal mistake, especially when we consider the students who don’t know they need to protect themselves, the ones who don’t even know they’re in danger. Or worse still, the people who don’t go to college and otherwise don’t know how to seek out information about the AIDS epidemic. We all need this information, every color and at the appropriate age. If “The Real World” is TV-14, then 14 or ninth grade sounds like a ripe age to start talking frankly about HIV/AIDS.

My personal view is how many more people have to die, how many more children must be orphaned before we stop dancing around HIV/AIDS and get real sex-ed? Those statistics were more or less meaningless placed before me on a photo-copied page in eleventh grade. For me to wake up, I had to meet Stephanie. I had to associate a face, a story with the disease. How long would I have gone on in my ignorance if it weren’t for Stephanie? I honestly have no idea and that scares me. I don’t want it to have to take meeting a “Stephanie” or losing a loved one for others to wake up. As Miss Black NY, I’m speaking at high schools all over New York City and administering the only known cure for HIV/AIDS: education.