When my sister-in-law gave birth to her first child, she refused to breastfeed the baby. No matter how much the baby cried, no matter how she licked her lips the way babies do when they want breast milk, she would quickly carry infant formula and make milk instead. My mother had to force her to sit down before she gave her daughter breast milk.

Three years later, my niece died, and it was not a slow, painless death. She got sick many times, grew lean. We ran from herbal medicines to Western medicine and prayers. The doctors and nurses who declared her dead said she was low on fluids and blood. Others, too, said that at the rate she was growing, they would tell you it was a local disease, “aselam”.

Maybe her death was inevitable, but something nagged at me, even in the way the nurses moved around her. I pulled one nurse aside, held her hands, and begged her to tell me the truth. She asked if either parent was HIV positive. I shook my head no. “I am not supposed to tell you this, but that little girl died because she was HIV positive. Her blood test shows it.” I asked her to repeat what she had just said. She did, and left me standing there.

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I walked over to her brother’s mother in law and told her, “I don’t understand what is happening. Everyone is looking at us. Let’s go find the lab technician who took her blood and ask what happened.” I wanted to ask the lab technician what had caused the little girl’s sickness, but she said, “Oh, please, let’s go home. The child is dead, and no amount of questions can bring her back. It is God who gives, and He has taken her, so we cannot do anything.”

It occurred to me how secretive my wife and her mother had been during the child’s pregnancy. Even through her constant illness, they stayed tight lipped about the test results and told us not to worry because they were handling things. At that time, my brother was away for work, and my mother was sick at home, so my mind was pulled in many directions.

What the nurse told me kept ringing in my ears, so I started observing my brother’s wife. I started sneaking into their room to look for evidence, and when my search was yielding no fruit, I placed a secret camera in their room. I left it there for a month. I saw where she kept the medicines; no one would ever have seen them if not for the camera, but her mother was aware. She sometimes took them in front of her, or her mother sometimes picked them up for her. When I got the chance, I sneaked into their room, went straight to the hiding place. I took a picture of it and Googled it, it was an ARV, and I believe that is what killed the little innocent girl.

Not long after the child died, she conceived again, and by then I had known the truth for four months. Whenever she returned from antenatal, she was protecting her bag as if her life depended on it, especially the Maternal & Child Health Record Book. One day, when she was going for antenatal, I told her I was going to see a friend and would not return home. Instead, I came back quietly and waited around the house. When I saw her return, I gave it a few minutes before entering through the back gate.

She was sitting in the hall with my mother and her own mother. Because she believed I was not home, she had left her bag there instead of hiding it in the room. I intentionally sat beside her and joked, “Let me see how my princess is growing inside your womb.”

Later that day, in the evening, she came to me, apologizing and saying that I should not disclose what I saw to anyone. I asked, “Is my brother aware?” She said no. “Did you contract it before or after marrying him?” She said before marrying him. I told her to tell my brother herself, but it has been two years, and she has not informed my brother.

Sometimes I convince myself that maybe my brother already knows and is only pretending. Because how can two people live together as husband and wife and he knows absolutely nothing? Both of them look healthy. So sometimes I feel maybe he already knows her status and is protecting himself quietly.

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But other times, fear grips me badly. Because what if he truly does not know?

My brother complains about the marriage. Sometimes he says he is tired and feels like divorcing her. So if I speak up now, I know it could destroy everything immediately, and I do not want to be the person responsible for breaking his home apart. For two whole years, I have carried this secret alone.

I have not told anybody. Not even my fiancé who comes to the house every weekend and I tell everything to. Some days, late at night, I lie awake asking myself one question over and over again:

I just want to do what is right without causing a catastrophe.

—Vashit

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