by Derek Owusu
24
I’ve never stood above a grave but I have witnessed the birth of children.
We strolled through Asokwa streets, the smell a gift to nostalgia, sound beating on the silence, and saw a man sleeping in the dust, people stepping over him like his peace was too sweet to disturb. I asked my mum who he was and she referred to him as ‘the body’.
I remember my brother was born on a Sunday. He came ceremoniously, purple with trauma and seemingly disturbed by the other cries taking up his own, gurgling, drowning in screams, stopping suddenly to look around then intensifying his squall. Everyone is gathered around the bed and I hear from within the circle, ‘Don’t call him “it”.’
Yes, I’ve never stood above a grave but I have witnessed the birth of children.
25
After a late-night library trip I’d call her and say, ‘Look at the moon.’ Black boys rarely speak on the poet’s muse so these twilight tropes seemed original – the moon is glowing new when seen through eyes deprived of cliché. She is bent over my windowsill – leaning out into the stars, a speckled blanket; if she reaches out it’ll be ours. When I walk into a peace that was never going to last. Her hair – the carefully trimmed ends tinged with colours, one close inhale reminding me of home, of all the unknown black girls through hair care I’ve known – glows, a lustre unchallenged, then the jealous moon lights her up and dissolves the dimness of my room. It’s all over her, she’s illuminated, and this bath of light reveals her lack of garments. Our eyes see through the ceiling as we lie with hands interlocked, talking into the day when the sun will want its turn to watch, rays on us as we fall in love. She turns onto her stomach and places a hand on my stubble – like pins in her palm, a sensation running up her arm – draws me closer and I’m disarmed, and with a kiss we’re surrounded by nothing.
26
Collecting sticks makes it more camp-like even though we have electric heaters to ward off unlikely but possible chills in the month of August. Four of us stand around the fire, one couple and two waifs oblivious to their future, the long souls of the fire creating clouds that will dissolve the next day, a smokescreen to the truth of gods blowing aerosols after puffs of their ambrosia. Bored numen lean on the sky and I see glittering stars as the pins and needles in their arms but the rest below, completing my circle, believe the universe’s multiplying eyes are winking at us, giving their blessing to our eager bodies. We don’t kiss, her bottom lip between my roof and tongue, making her numb like divinity, too many unconvincing cries make her a passive deity. Our Olympus is built with poles we thought we’d forgotten, and as we slide along our tent flooring, making sounds like an ocean stretching and withdrawing, I see cities aren’t for me, that artificial lights create artificial love, and a love for our corner of the universe can never exist if you’ve never seen the stars. I wish I could walk through cities shooting out streetlights, bathing bodies with tender potential.
27
I’m sitting in the living room. The light from the TV is keeping the atmosphere alive. I can hear cats fighting through the downpour outside the window, a window I occasionally look out of, studying the rain sliding down the glass to be subsumed into the water at the bottom, slowly dissolving. She’s asleep in our room, hers when she wakes, so I’ll carry on sitting alone watching muted music videos until morning. An hour earlier, my nausea became bitter as I asked why she was sitting so close to me, dismissing her tired affection and turning my back on her. ‘Golden Brown’ played in front of us as she stared, hurt from what I hoped to heal from, trying her best not to give herself over to the rain outside the window. An hour earlier than this, I was stroking her back, fingers playing on her protruding spine, kissing the space behind her ears, licking it clean, but in time a Mau becomes a shorthair. I felt her sweating, knew she was uncomfortable, but kept her position to keep me in place. She said nothing, smiled as she adjusted her limbs. But I didn’t move. So then, as the Stranglers sang on, she spun round on the sofa and ran to our room. So alone I sit, certain she never really loved me, her quick offence proof of what I always knew, watching a music video I don’t recognise and a song I don’t care to make out.
CONSTRUCTION
* * *
Anansi, your web is tender from the fingers that call you so I bring silk to help you weave your stories. There is enough for us both, so recreate my words and cover the sky with material the two of us will soon observe.
1
The letter starts by saying I seemed to show no signs of discomfort. There is a paragraph dedicated to my presentation, how well put together I was. No need for diagnosis or follow-up. I put the letter in the bin, walk to the fridge, open it, take out a bottle and drink. I always worry about my teeth when I do this, the damage I’m doing to them. A drip trails down my chin, parting my dark skin and splashing onto my white shirt. I move quickly. The bottle now wobbles, trying to steady itself on the side, no trace of the hand that clutched it, the hand now turning on the tap. After a few seconds of trying to sober up my shirt, I realise I’ve made it worse and know I have to change. Upstairs, I take off my jacket, hang it, unbutton my shirt from the centre; then I move on to the cuffs. Blood has soaked through one arm, cut and burnt, burnt sienna, a stain of shame, but no one will ever see it because my blazer never comes off. The Baileys would be an obvious blemish, like the alcohol on my breath. I grab my blue Extra and put them in my pocket. I take down a T.M.Lewin and decide to iron it out, noticing a slight crease just under the collar, a place no one looks. Blotches of red cover my bed, droplets trailing back to themselves. I’ve been meaning to change the sheets but the blood, being dry, coagulated, won’t affect my shirt. I lay it down, careful not to add creases, and begin to iron, knowing how the shirt feels under the heat. There. Done. It looks good. Clean. Fresh. I put it on, then remember my drink, sure to use a glass this time, and a straw to protect my teeth.
2
Reading the symptoms felt like reading the traits of my sign – my understanding of mental health ailments was limited to depression and multiple personality disorder, and anything outside of this cinematic understanding sounded like an excuse for careless behaviour. I did wonder about the truth: where do I begin and BPD stops? – imagine living a life in which who you are feels like a prop. The printouts came eighteen years after I needed them, and watching my hand tremble with the page, the specialist reached out and told me the older I get, the fewer the traits. But for the bodies lying drained, piled up on the path to his office, this news has come too late.
3
With my eyes closed, I’m sliding my hand up and down my forearm, feeling the scars, the tribal marks, the conflict and human certainty, human suffering. And now you see. The stage lights can go off, a slammed door then darkness, light stripped of its difference, a black mass consuming my body. And here I stay until I can cut myself free. My lacerations are organised, straight lines ascending, an appeasement to the me who salivates at my life ending. How calculated is death, how careful with its scythe; does it wash its hands before and after taking someone’s life? My hands are always clean when I remove the blade from its wrapper; I hold it in its centre and examine its edge. How sharp does it need to be to cause a single stroke of death? And is it sideways, or down the middle? My movie memory contradicts. It’s either a horizontal line like Constantine or a vertical slit like John Wick. Is it death today or just a sign of emotional strain? I’ll put the blade to my wrist until I pull it away. I know when I’m serious – when I can cut through my tats, something permanent disrupted – my reminders to fight, scrawled when I needed a lie to hold on to life. In cursive, this too shall pass, so I separate too from shall, then carve a line through ‘Ozymandias’. The shock is like an icicle expanding in my chest; suddenly I can see my own breath. The left and the right arm bleed, obscuring what the rest of the tattoos read. Cross-legged on my bed, listening to the drip, watching the burgundy spread on my sheets. My old wounds itch – the feeling of scrambling pinpricks slowly mushroom o
ut from the wound until three separated rivers of blood intervene to soothe. My failing cells cut loose. I never thought they’d be of any use. I wonder how long I will be like this – administering a tear with more care than I give to my own life.
4
My mum looks at the cuts on my arms and I can see her getting older. I know she’s trying to translate English thoughts into Twi and struggling, so I put my hand on her shoulder and tell her not to worry. I’ll be fine. ‘What’s tormenting you, son?’ I explain, ‘I’m a bit unwell, Mum. Nothing for prayers and paracetamol.’ I appreciate her. I once watched her wrinkled stomach as she got dressed, examining the incision marking my first steps into fading light, my mother mutilated to guarantee my entrance. But when her eyes rest on my arms, slowly closing their openings, a slow blink, the rewinding frames of a flower blossoming, she gives in to the pressure to fall prostrate, presses her palm on her scar, splaying her fingers, as if full, as if she can’t take any more, stopping something falling out. And she grieves.
5
Before bloodshed a decision is made. Friends fold into strangers, and instead of listening I’m counting the number of lines on each of my arms and which needs to be caught up, cut up. We carry on cutting up a few moments more, then I’m released to wonder about my release, if I have any antiseptic wipes left and the size of the plaster I’ll need. I don’t bleed onto the mattress any more as my mum is now familiar with the metallic smell of my plasma – giving credence to the idea I’m more machine than man. Lunch over, I sit at my desk and stare at what my GP described as ‘the OCD-like neatness’ of my cuts, some still worn as wounds, not there yet but on their way to scars. I squeeze them, measure them, run my finger over the callused ones, too wide so glued back together, too late for stitches; the doctor says the BioGlue helps reduce scarring. I’ve never been back. They scream attention in summer, so stunna shades with tints create a barrier between myself and assumptions. I’m told they’re beautiful, described as battle scars or assumed to be tribal marks by awed onlookers unable to detangle their thinking from two-dimensional tropes. I don’t wear my scars, they wear me; wear me down, wear me out, coerce me into increasing their number until they’ve won the war. Sometimes, I think I may just let them.
6
I wanted to live again. As they gathered, I felt the pressure of each tear awake to its own trickling sand weighing down the dirt on my grave. The torn tendons in my wrists stopped me from pushing against my choices, the bed where I lay. I wanted to know if they’d cry, if they’d weep, if they’d die – in another life my ashes are poured on distant rivers run dry.
7
It wasn’t the demands of time that told me therapy was over, it was the gestures of arms exasperated by my self-loathing. ‘Who taught you to hate yourself, K?’, was said with a tremor like the slow and contained eddies on an unsettled river. I didn’t know the answer but I knew I could never see her again. I left her therapy shack – a shed converted so a retiree could spend the last years of her life helping others to live theirs – unlocked my phone and deleted her number. The small amount of emotion in her voice was loud enough to scare me away, ear suddenly raised like those of suspicious prey. I couldn’t burden my therapist or know I had the power to – so, therapist, I unburden you; yours was a shoulder that was supposed to stay dry. There are some people that you shouldn’t see cry.
8
Baileys in hand, I thought a streetlight was the moon, so danced under the stilted lustre like the curve of a waning crescent pointed at the soles of my feet, imagining my other half two-stepping with me without symposiums, community centres only, knowing no one is compatible on Tottenham streets. And still, our steps are complete; and still, we find love.
9
The exterior of the pub changes more than the interior. There’s a new chalked message on the board outside and this is enough to know I made it home yesterday. The same seats hold the same bodies and the same hands hold the same drinks. To find my place I order my usual and lean my elbows on the bar, resuming my role in this drunken masterpiece. I like to cut out irrelevant parts and end things quickly, so I sit with the Zimbabweans who drink like they’re already dead. Our glasses stand on the table like trophies. My head falls on my interlocked fingers as my body slides the chair backwards, making me more comfortable as I watch, through a half pint, the distortion of my Zim friends talking about the superiority of the backsides back home. Standing by the only fruit machine in the pub is a girl who keeps looking over, the flashing lights behind her more arresting to my blurred vision than she is. She swallows the last drops of her drink. I imagine my fingers down there. And she’ll return the favour, I know, throwing me up so there’s space for another drink. A bell rings. We don’t need any more but why not take advantage, grabbing what we might need to fall asleep. I look up at the roof. I mouth the words, ‘I won’t be sick.’ Just get me home. I’m not drunk, I’m ill. My mum helps me into the house and sits on the edge of our tub while I’m choked by the rim of the toilet.
10
Sobs and sniffs sent us over to steady one of our own. My hand wouldn’t rest directly on his shoulder but I tried to comfort him anyway. He was here often, looking out of place, almost too good for it, even though I knew he swapped clothes with the young boys on heroin. If you watched him long enough he looked like a crude addition to a painting long complete. I patted him on the back. His face rested on the bar, ears listening for drinks spilled on its wooden surface. His arms swayed beneath him, long enough to pass the bar stool like pendulums. A glass of white wine and a glass of warm water stood by his head – his fortification in case someone tried to throw him out. ‘It’s all shit,’ he muffles, ‘Shit shit shit.’ I don’t want to talk to him; I’m due to talk to myself this evening and my shit’s had a longer wait. ‘It’s not all shit, bro. Swear. It gets better.’ I give him another tap on the back and a see-you-next-Tuesday nod to the barmen and turn to leave. ‘Is that your good deed for the day, K? A pat on the back and you’ve done your best? What shit.’ He laughs, sounding like all his drink is sitting level in his chest, ready to spill when he’s done, gargling with his levity. I haven’t turned around. I’m two parts angry and three parts trembling, realising I’ve never given this man my name. But it’s Edmonton, so a few seconds pass and I’ve shaken off the novelty and then, like I never wavered for a second, turn around and walk up to him, lowering my head so his space becomes ours, so close that my lips stroke the hairs on his ear and none around can hear me. I can smell the alcohol on his breath but the odour is bearable, almost neutral, and then, intoxicating. I start to feel like I’ve been smoking. ‘How you know my name?’ ‘It’s no secret, K.’ My name again and I’m back to the cocktail mix I’d just shaken off. ‘What the fuck is up with you, man?’ ‘Lost a bet that I won’t hear the end of until eternity; the tenant who lived below me now owns my apartment too. And what was going so well has gone to shit.’ He raises his head for the first time and takes in the entire pub with a single look and blink. I feel he saw more than just the Zims protected from home by their castle of glasses, the reclusive fruit machine which makes a noise every hour but gives up nothing else, the mistaken mating calls of the loud girls, the predators who don’t need such invitations, and the ageing men, evidently made with care, who walk like the earth is moving too unsteadily beneath their feet, men who’ll burst from their skin with a sudden movement, the local’s locals, who have developed more friendship over silence and pints than we could appreciate. ‘What a shithole,’ he says to himself, grabs the glass of white wine and downs it in a few swallows, placing it back on the bar, the glass beaded with condensation. ‘Look, bro, we all go through stuff. If you’re at the bottom, then, you get me, yo …’ ‘Is that the best you can do?’ he says ‘Light, heights, flight and burdens lifting. Fuck me, I leave one place to get away from the lofty leanings of blinding cunts and end up in here with you.’ ‘Fuck this, I’m gone, man. I tried. Talk to God, bro. Maybe he can get you some new clothes.�
� I take a mouthful of his water and walk out, the bartender shouting about an unpaid orange juice. Inside the pub, the man, head back on his forearms, whispers, breathes the words, ‘Talk to God …’
11
The footsteps on the shower surface stop abruptly and I watch Q walk out and dance to the music that silenced the stream, confident enough to move her arms freely to the oja instead of using right forearm to lift what most are embarrassed I’d see. She can’t sing but her buzzing vocals, feigned Nigerian inflections and enthusiasm keep me listening and looking, imagining the tight cords of a gangan sounding around her and speaking of a traditional love. I lie in bed as drunk as she is but preferring the alcohol to stay level, enjoying the flow of a river of wine, red because she hates white, as it steadies inside me but undulates as I lift my head over my chest to keep my eyes on her moving and fusing with the tones of the only Fela left. A missed love language is watching your affection two-step, front to back, to a song on its fifteenth loop, and laughing – no sound, just your stomach moving – feeling the brisk brush of air out your nose as you half smile, the side of your lip upturned, genuine but still inauthentic; it all feels like a movie you’ve watched and accepted, a dreamy landscape being affected. But when she pauses the Prinz and puts her knees on the bed, an indent between my legs, her face an image my memory insists, and the sound of the springs is the only riddem left, the end of that tune is a climax that comes too soon, but as a child who claims he’s sick, I enjoy the sweetness of the spoon.
