Peace

by A. D. Koboah

  “How’s Mohamed? You seen him since you got back?” she asked, the strange smile she had on her face widening, seeming to mock me.

  “Nicola, I’ve been trying to call you all...” The rest of my words melted away as I thought about the way he had looked at me and the things he had said.

  “What’s da matter, Peace? Has Mohamed done somethin’?” she asked, almost in a sing-song tone.

  I took a deep breath.

  “Nicola, I’m pregnant.”

  I’ll never forget the way the blood drained from her face and she reeled back in horror. Thinking back to that moment, I realise how blind I had been and that I had been too caught up in my growing hell to really register why she had appeared to be so shaken by my news.

  “D-does Mohamed know?”

  I had sat down on my bed, giving into the tears again.

  “Peace, does Mohamed know?” she asked again, her voice firm.

  “Yeah, I told him just now.”

  “And?”

  “He doesn’t wanna know.”

  She turned away from me and I sat looking at her back, seeing her exhale and the tension that had previously been in her shoulders leave them.

  “Nicola, you wouldn’t believe the way he talked to me. He told me he had a girlfriend and he told me to get rid of the—”

  “You thinking of keepin’ it?” she asked sharply, turning to face me again.

  “Nic…I can’t kill it.”

  She turned away and the tension was back in her shoulders.

  “Nicky, it was like I was talking to a totally different person, he…he called me—”

  “Peace, I gotta go… There’s a coupla tings I need to sort out.”

  “Can’t you stay a bit longer? I haven’t even told my mum yet.”

  She was already by the door.

  “I’ll bell you later.”

  She had looked up at me briefly before leaving my room and I had seen what appeared in my hysteria to be disdain in her eyes and felt once again the way I had when Mohamed’s friend Jason had driven me home; like I was a pariah.

  It was only years later that I realised I had misread both their expressions and that what I had seen on Nicola’s face as she slipped out of my room was fear.

  A knock came on my bedroom door a few minutes after Nicola left. It was followed by Barbara pushing the door open and barging into my room, something she was fond of doing. She had moved out into a place of her own years ago but still spent most of her time here with me and our mother.

  She walked over to my dressing table.

  “I’m surprised queen Nicola left so quickly. She ran out of here looking as if she’d seen a ghost.” She started picking up different bottles and putting them back down. “Have you got any hair oil? I’ve run out.”

  “It’s the blue jar in front of you,” I said.

  She picked up the jar of blue magic and opened it, running her finger along its surface.

  “I really don’t like that girl, she’s sly… Damn, this is too heavy for relaxed hair. You got anything else?” She turned to face me. “What’s wrong with you? Have you been crying?” she asked sharply, concern etched into a face that was so similar to mine and yet we couldn’t have been more different.

  The few seconds of silence in the room before I spoke was the calm before the storm that erupted, bringing tears, angry words and also a deep, deep shame that lingered like debris long after the storm had waned.

  Chapter 9

  And so I began my long, lonely walk to motherhood.

  In the days, weeks and months that followed, I was haunted by the anguish of rejection and isolation.

  It was there when I looked in the mirror and saw the small lump that was already starting to protrude from my lower abdomen.

  It was in the faces of my mother and sister who constantly reminded me of how much I had disappointed them without uttering a word.

  It was there especially at college whenever I saw Mohamed.

  The most painful instance occurred one evening when I left the college library after a heavy revision session and headed to the lifts with a bag full of books and a headache. Most of the classes had ended an hour ago, so the corridors were eerily deserted as I walked over to the lifts. But when the lift finally arrived and the doors sprung open, I came face to face with Mohamed, probably for the first time since that awful day in the rain.

  He stiffened when he saw me and his eyes widened in fear. I saw his Adams apple bob up and down as he gulped and then he quickly turned his head to the side.

  I stepped into the small lift. Acutely aware of how rigid he was beside me as the lift began its descent, I snuck a look up at him. He had his head turned as far as possible from me, making me feel as if I had turned into Medusa and a single glance in my direction would turn him into stone.

  We reached the ground floor and he dashed out of the lifts before the doors had fully opened, hitting his shoulder against one of the doors in his haste to leave. I was left watching his fleeing back until it disappeared from my view.

  Feeling the tears begin to well up, I quickly made my way to the toilets, and once in the relative privacy of a cubicle, I let my anguish flow.

  Wiping away tears of rejection and humiliation, I asked myself again and again how someone I cared for, someone I knew cared for me, could be so cold. I didn’t have many answers, only the one I didn’t want to consider: That he hadn’t cared for me at all.

  It was about fifteen minutes before I was able to make my way out of the college.

  When I got to the college entrance, I saw Nicola’s fair-skinned friend, Jenny, leaning against the gates. She straightened up when she saw me, and when I walked past her, she fell into place beside me.

  “You on your way to the station, Peace?” she said and smiled at me.

  I looked up at her suspiciously as she normally didn’t speak to me. But there didn’t appear to be anything calculating in her expression and her smile seemed genuine, so I gave a thin smile in return and nodded.

  “Me too,” she said and then fell quiet.

  The answer to her sudden friendliness came a few minutes later.

  “He’s really out of order.”

  “I know,” I said with a sigh, knowing that if she knew, then it was likely the whole college knew. “But even though he’s carrying on bad, I...I can see it’s just because he’s scared and doesn’t know what to do about what’s happening.”

  “And you’re not scared?” she retorted, her mouth twisting in anger. “You seem like a nice person, but I think you’re being too nice when it comes to Mohamed. He did the same thing to one of my friends. She ended up having an abortion, but the way he carried on really messed up her head. He keeps treating women like shit and getting away with it. And don’t even get me started on the way he ran out of the lift just now so he wouldn’t have to talk to you. He’s a fucking pussy! Don’t feel sorry for him ’cos he don’t deserve your sympathy.”

  “I know,” I said softly.

  I didn’t even know this girl so I knew I shouldn’t have been talking to her about how I was feeling, but I hadn’t spoken to Nicola in weeks. Every time I called her, her phone rang out or she was too busy to talk to me. I hadn’t spoken to anybody about the situation I was in and I realised that I was desperate to talk.

  “I can’t pretend that this is all Mohamed’s fault. I should’ve looked out for myself a lot more than I did. I never made him use a condom, even though I wanted him to, and I believed what he told me about how he felt about me even though his actions were saying something else. I’m responsible too. Boy, I wish I could run away from this, but where can I run to?”

  I looked down at my stomach. Her gaze followed mine and we both chuckled sadly.

  “I hear what you’re saying, but it still don’t make his behaviour right.” We entered the tube station and walked down to the platform.

  “I know. I think the worst thing about all this is that even though people have an opinion one way o
r the other about what’s happened, it isn’t a surprise to anyone. Ten years ago, something like this would’ve been a big deal. But nowadays, it just seems normal.”

  She nodded, her face echoing the sadness in my voice. Her mobile phone interrupted our contemplative silence and when she retrieved it out of her jacket pocket and looked at the screen, her mouth turned down in displeasure.

  She put the phone back in her pocket and looked up to see me watching her.

  “That was Nicola.”

  “Why didn’t you answer it?” I asked.

  “I don’t talk to Nicola no more,” she said. “Not after what she did.”

  I looked up questioningly at her and her expression softened into one of mild alarm.

  “You don’t know what she did?”

  “Well, I haven’t seen Nicola in a while. We keep missing each other,” I lied.

  She stared at me intently for a moment, opened her mouth to say something and then closed it again. She looked relieved when a wind swept through the platform and we heard the distinct rumble from the tunnel before the train grumbled into the platform and screeched to a halt.

  “I’m gonna go now,” she said with a sad smile. “Keep your head up and don’t let no one bring you down.”

  I was surprised when she hugged me before she wandered away.

  That night I lay in bed sobbing as I replayed the moment with Mohamed over and over in my head, wondering how he could toss me out of his life so easily. I eventually got out of bed at around two o’clock in the morning and switched on the radio. On hearing they were playing love songs, I was about to turn it off when Mariah Carey’s I’d Give My All started to play. Her light, feathery voice, those inhumanly high notes and the keen way in which she sang of a woman’s pain, a woman’s yearning, made it impossible for me to switch it off. And that song came to summarise the pain and rejection I experienced during the months leading up to the baby’s birth.

  I spent many sleepless nights lying alone waiting for sleep, thinking of him and the things he had said to me. Crying quietly until sleep eventually took pity on me and pulled me away from the torturous thoughts going round and round in my head.

  I told myself every day that I couldn’t get through one more bout of the so-called morning sickness that happened to last all day. I didn’t think I would be able to survive the pressure from my family to tell them who the father of my unborn child was and their constant pleas for me to consider having an abortion. That pressure had eventually turned into quiet disapproval, and the disappointment they felt whenever they looked at me; their shame at my predicament, began to weigh heavily on my soul.

  I didn’t think I would stand the lengths my mother and sister went to in order to conceal my pregnancy from our extended family and close friends. And I definitely didn’t think I could live through the humiliation I saw on my mother’s face when my stomach became too big to hide from everyone or the long, grave silences that followed visits from members of the family. Without her saying a word to me, I knew she felt she had failed as a parent, and whether she said it or not, I knew she felt I had failed her.

  Nicola had all but disappeared from my life. I never saw her at college and she never called me during those long lonely months.

  But I got through it all, one day at a time. I passed all my exams, even though the grades had been lower than predicted. I took refuge in my part-time job, coming home and going straight to my room, saving every penny I earned as I started planning for his arrival.

  I eventually got some respite from my mother and sister’s loaded silences when I moved into my new home, a two-bedroom flat in a run-down, high-rise block of flats. I remember the lonely days I spent with my ballooning stomach, painting the flat. And the amount of time I spent worrying that I wouldn’t have the money to buy everything I needed for his arrival.

  I also recall the guilt I felt whenever I thought about his upcoming birth with regret.

  And sadly, when I could no longer continue working and the baby’s due date grew nearer, my fear regarding the future increased. And in those quiet moments in the early hours of the morning, I wished I could have gone back in time and ended my pregnancy. But it was far too late by then.

  My long, solitary walk became less so on the third of January at four twenty-nine p.m. when Dante Mohamed Osei entered the world. From the moment I heard him wail his existence to the world and saw his beautiful face, that tawny complexion and eyes the same mystical darkness as Mohamed’s, my doubts and regrets vanished. I had done the right thing.

  He stopped wailing the moment he was placed in my arms and he had looked up at me, regarding me with the imperious air of a prince overlooking his subjects. That look had made me almost ask out loud, “Am I worthy of you?”

  My little prince.

  He managed to take my mind off the seven and a half hours of arduous labour, but not the pain of the last nine months. My anguish had grown more acute when my mother and sister left the hospital ward and I was left alone with him to watch the other mothers with their partners.

  Whenever somebody walked into the ward I had looked up expectantly, wanting to see Mohamed’s tall, muscular frame filling the doorway, his eyes searching for me. But of course he never came even though I had wished it with all my heart. I wondered that day if he even knew, if he could maybe sense that his son was here and that we were here waiting for and desperately needing him.

  And although I wouldn’t have given up Dante for anybody, it didn’t stop me having another night of sleepless solitude, my silent sobs my only companion in a room full of people.

  Chapter 10

  The weather was dull, threatening rain so I hurried along with my carrier bags of groceries until the estate I lived on came into view. As I approached my block of flats, I carefully scanned the second floor for signs of life before I entered and climbed the stairs, breathing a sigh of relief when I got to the second floor and found the path to my front door clear of unwanted visitors. I wasted no time in letting myself in, and after kicking the front door shut behind me, I headed straight for the kitchen and relieved myself of the heavy shopping bags.

  It was only eleven-thirty in the morning but I was exhausted; physically and mentally weighed down by the anxiety that had been my faithful companion ever since Mohamed turned up on my doorstep over a week ago. I had so far managed to avoid his subsequent visits, but that didn’t stop the anxiety going into overdrive every time he came hammering on my front door. Stepping over the shopping bags, I left the kitchen and began tugging off my coat in the corridor. I had just placed it on the coat hook along with my handbag when I heard a funny noise from the living room, like someone deliberately clearing their throat. Puzzled by the noise as Eva was supposed to be at a class that morning, I opened the living room door and found myself confronted by the very thing I was eager to avoid at all costs: Mohamed leaning against the windowsill as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

  The sight of him took my breath away and for a few moments all I could do was stare at him in dumb shock. He was wearing a black jumper and jeans which couldn’t disguise his well-formed muscular body and was so tall the room seemed to have shrunk around him.

  “What are you doing here?” I was surprised by how calm I sounded.

  “That was quite a welcome I got the other day. You made me look like a real idiot in front of Jason, do you know that?”

  He was smiling at me in a relaxed, warm manner and his words sounded casual, almost flippant, but I knew him too well. I had seen him affect exactly the same manner in the past when some friend or acquaintance had unknowingly said something that had offended him. At times like that, it was only when we were alone that his true feelings came to the surface and an ugly tirade followed in which he would sometimes spend hours berating the person he perceived had offended him. No, I wasn’t fooled. I knew he was angry. Very angry.

  “Yeah you did, but then again, you’ve always been an idiot,” I said.

  The silence t
hat followed was searing in its intensity. He didn’t move and his smile didn’t waver, but I knew a statement like that, coming from me, was the equivalent of having a bucket of icy water thrown in his face. After a few moments, the smile widened and his eyes began to wander, deliberately travelling over my hair, which had been pulled back into a ponytail, and down my body.

  “I asked you what you’re doing here, Mohamed,” I stated, aware I sounded less sure of myself than I had a moment ago. “How did you even get in?”

  “Your friend...Eva? Yeah, Eva let me in. Seems like a nice girl. She thinks me and you have a lot to talk about.” He said the last part as if it was the biggest understatement of the year. “Nice boots by the way.” His gaze had continued on their journey as he talked, roaming pointedly over the brown, Lycra top, short black corduroy skirt I wore and had come to rest on my knee-length, black leather boots. “Hmm sexy. Very sexy.”

  I felt my face grow warm as his eyes continued their intimate little journey and I’m ashamed to say I felt a tiny part of myself rejoice in the approval I saw in his eyes. I had always wanted him to look at me like that, as if I was the most irresistible woman he had ever seen. But that was a long time ago and as much as part of me was flattered, the rest of me was quickly losing patience with him, his unwanted presence and the irreverence he showed as he looked at me like I was still his and that he had every right to be in my home.

  “Get out of my house. Now.”

  “No you don’t.” His demeanour changed with lightning speed and his eyes met mine steadily once again as he straightened up and squared his shoulders. “I’m here because I need to sort out my business with my son. You ain’t gonna talk to me like that. Not for a second time.”

  “Go now, before I call the police.”

  He smiled patronisingly and took a step closer to me.

  “Seriously. Where is he?”

  “What?”

  “Don’t act dumb. My son, innit. Where’s my son?”