“That’s what we all say when we’re out there. Do you know how many girls I see come in on a regular basis who are either pregnant or getting treated for STDs? There are some things that a shot won’t get rid of.”

“I’m careful,” Yoshi said.

“That’s the same thing my sister said,” Vivian reminded her.

Though they were only words, they hit Yoshi like a physical blow. Like all the women in their family, Yoshi’s mother Carol was beautiful. Unlike Vivian, Carol wasn’t the party girl. She was quiet and kept to herself. Yoshi’s father was the first man she had ever been with, and though he didn’t stick around past Yoshi’s fifth birthday, it didn’t stop Carol from shouldering the load of both mother and father. It was she and Yoshi against the world.

It was years after the breakup with her first lover before Carol had healed enough to take another. Let her tell it, Cash was the beginning and the end. At six foot three with light skin and curly hair, all the women went crazy over him, and Cash reveled in it. People always suggested to Carol that he was sleeping around, but she turned a blind eye to it. She convinced herself that a man was just going to be a man and let it go. As long as he held her number one above everyone else, she tolerated it.

About a year into the relationship, Carol had come down with a terrible case of the flu. She thought it would pass, but a month later it was still there. After some coaxing, she let Vivian take her to the doctor to run some tests. When they got the results back, the doctor revealed that she was HIV positive.

The news brought Carol’s whole world crashing down around her. Cash, of course, denied giving it to her, but she hadn’t been with anyone else. The bastard even packed his things and took off after infecting her. For loving this man, Carol had condemned herself to death.

The first few weeks were the hardest for Carol and her family. With the help of the doctors, they tried to convince her that there was life after the HIV virus, but all she could think about was how she wouldn’t be around for her daughter. Though Yoshi was young at the time and didn’t really understand what it meant to have the virus, she understood that it was fatal. She tried to be there as much as she could for Carol, but nothing seemed to move her anymore. Yoshi would sometimes listen to her mother cry herself to sleep between shots of Jack Daniel’s. They say alcohol numbs the pain, but it didn’t do much to ease Carol’s.