Ryan White - My Own Story (4 page)

I think my hemophilia was tough on Andrea. The whole family was always eyeing me and paying more attention to me, whether I wanted them to or not. Most of the time my hemophilia meant that Mom spent more time with me than she did with my sister. Andrea never has come right out and said anything about it. She’s the shy, quiet type, especially about private stuff like how she feels about things. But that makes it even harder for her to get people to pay attention to her. When my aunt Janet got married, I was about four, and Andrea was about two. I was the ring bearer in the wedding, and Andrea was the flower girl. I had a new blue suit, to match Janet’s husband’s tuxedo, and Andrea had a long blue dress. Anyway, I started down the aisle first, and Andrea was supposed to follow me. But she’d barely gotten started when she saw all the guests standing and grinning down at her. Poor Andrea had a shyness attack, and she started to cry. I went back and put my arm around her and whispered, “What’s the matter, Sissy?” Then I took her hand and we walked the rest of the way together.

Andrea and I have always been close because we were only two years apart. When we were growing up, Andrea didn’t like dolls or frills. She wanted to do what I did. But I guess you can’t imagine a sister and brother who are more different than we are. We don’t look or act alike at all. When she’s with her friends, Andrea talks a mile a minute. But most of the time Andrea is quieter than everyone else. Like when I was in the hospital, Andrea would come to see me and usually sit in a corner. Sometimes a nurse would come by and try to talk to her. It was like Andrea knew only three words: “Yes,” “No,” and “Fine.”

Ryan, age thirteen, and Andrea, age eleven.

As far as I’m concerned, Andrea’s very messy. From my mom I caught the collecting bug. Mom loves to collect dolls and figurines, and Christmas and Easter ornaments. She’s always on the lookout, even in June or July, for a Christmas store where she can find something new to hang on our tree. I talked her into buying an egg tree for Easter as well. I started out with miniature cars, and then I moved on to comic books. My grandpa is a major collector. He used to have the original Superman comic! The very first one! It’s worth maybe $35,000. Now he says he can’t find it; he doesn’t know what happened to it; maybe he gave it to a neighbor. Every week he’d take me to a comicbook store in downtown Kokomo so we could hunt for more collectors’ items: X-men, Wolverine, Superheroes, Marvel—I had them all. I started going to comic-book club meetings to talk to other collectors. I was usually the youngest. Everyone had a nickname and mine was Ry-man. Then around the same time, I got hooked on collecting G.I. Joe. I had practically all the figures, and even some camouflage pants to wear, and camouflage sheets on my bed.

Now, if you have a collection, you have to take care of it. Even comic books. You can’t keep them in a pile under the bed. They have to stay clean and unwrinkled, or you can’t sell them to other collectors when you want to. And I liked to see my G.I. Joes in rows on my shelves, so I knew which ones I had. Andrea didn’t care about collecting dolls or anything else. Once Mom threw a fit after Andrea gave a Fisher Price doll a haircut that looked like the Statue of Liberty’s crown. Andrea certainly didn’t care about keeping things neat—hers
or
mine. So we had fights, sometimes just about every day. For a long time, Andrea was a real tomboy, and she’s always been a good athlete. So when we were growing up, she quickly got to be stronger than I am. But when we fought, she never hurt me, even when I hurt her. So I know she loves me quite a lot, because she put up with a lot.

Jeanne and Ryan, eighteen months old.

The family relaxes at home with cat Chi Chi and dog Wally, 1986.

Andrea, age four, and Ryan, age six.

With Mom it was almost as though my hemophilia made things better between us. My mom is very homey, and likes fixing up the house and baking cookies—she would cook anything to help me gain weight when I was sick. She certainly wasn’t pleased that I was ill, but I think she liked that I was home a lot. I mean, she had worked hard to put together a nice house, and here was someone who stayed in it! Andrea was always out running around, playing tomboy games with her friends, or she’d find things to do by herself. Mom and I had more in common. We both liked things neat—though my mom would yell when my dogs chewed up an end table or got into the trash.

Mom read to me all the time—books and magazines. That got me started doing well in school, and in learning about what’s going on in the world. What we liked to do as a family was fix some Cokes and popcorn and a tray of sandwiches, grab blankets, pile up together on the couch, and watch TV late at night on weekends—especially Johnny Carson, my favorite. We always watched movies and the news, and I liked keeping up with how the world works. That’s how I knew, starting in 1982, that a new disease called AIDS had been discovered.

Mom and I also care about looking good. Now that she’s a teenager, Andrea cares more too. But not when we were growing up! Mom would laugh when she took us shopping for clothes. I am particular. I want the name brand. I work hard to get Mom to spend more money on everything, but especially on clothes. Andrea never was fussy. If Mom said, “We can’t afford that,” Andrea would say, “Well, fine. I don’t care. You pick something out.” Then she’d wander off to the five-and-dime, or to those candy machines in the supermarket where you put in a nickel and get back bubblegum or a whistle or some other tiny toy. The smaller and cheaper it was, the better Andrea liked it. The more she could get for ninety-nine cents, the happier she was.

Especially if it was a magic trick. When I was sixteen, my grandparents moved their trailer to Florida. They’d spend the winter down there, then come back to Kokomo to see us in the summer. Sometimes we’d meet up with them in Florida on spring break. Andrea discovered a magic store down there. After that, she never bought anything except fake baby rattlesnakes—really just two paper clips and a rubber band in an envelope—or plastic noses that had little candies falling out of the nostrils. Flies in ice cubes, squirting pens, whoopie cushions—Andrea had a way to freak out just about everyone.

It was funny to watch Andrea try out her stuff on people, but let’s face it—she was buying junk that didn’t last or got used up right away. That’s not for me. I really love Guess? jeans but you can’t find them for boys in Indiana. Once Mom tried to fool me with a girls’ pair, but I knew because the label was red, not green. So I would call my aunt Janet and ask her to buy them for me in Birmingham. I figure, that’s what being a collector is all about. You get the best, and then you have something.

Andrea and I were alike in one way: We were always bugging Mom to have another baby. Boy or girl, I didn’t care. But Mom said she had to be married first. So Andrea and I put a lot of time into matchmaking. Then Mom said the problem was she might have another boy—who could have hemophilia. She felt bad enough about me. But thanks to my cousins, there was always a baby, and I love to hold babies. When I was four, my uncle Tom, who had married my aunt Deb, had a baby girl they named Monica—and then they had three more kids, all boys: Josh, Matt, and Brian. When I was nine, my aunt Janet, who went off to Alabama after she married my uncle Leo, had a girl, Misty, and went on to have two more, Sarah and Lisa. Whenever we all went to Highland Park, I’d always be trying to pick up whoever was the baby—and the baby would be wiggling and squirming and trying to get away from me.

Andrea and Ryan and their cousins in the summer of 1988. Top row, left to right: Monica Hale, age twelve; Misty Joseph, age eleven; Andrea, age fourteen; Ryan, age sixteen, holding Lisa Joseph, age six months; Josh Hale, age ten. Bottom row, left to right: Sarah Joseph, age four; Brian Hale, age three; Matt Hale, age eight.