by A. D. Koboah
“What? Nothing! I was just talking to my neighbour.”
“At this time of night?”
I walked down the corridor and tried to brush past him into the bedroom, but he caught my right arm.
“Seriously, what were you doing?”
I gasped at the hand on my upper right arm and for a moment I thought he was going to pull my hand out of my pocket.
“What are you doing? Let go!” I cried and tried to tug my arm out of his grasp.
He immediately released his grip but his brow furrowed and he stared at me intently, his eyes following me as I walked into the bedroom. I headed toward my chest of drawers and wondered if I could try and drop the tiny packet, which felt as if it was burning a hole into the palm of my right hand, into the drawer.
“Sit down,” he said calmly from the doorway.
I turned back around to face him, realising I couldn’t slip it into the chest of drawers with him watching me so carefully.
“What’s going on?” he asked gently.
“Don’t talk to me like that!” I cried, taking on an indignant tone whilst desperately thinking of some way to distract him so I could hide my brown. “Y-you think you can sleep with me and then talk to me like I’m...I’m...” I sounded convincing even to myself, managing a quiver in my voice and doing the wounded heroine routine really well.
But he wasn’t fooled.
“Stop it, just stop the bullshit!”
He was angry now and took a step toward me. My eyes widened in alarm and I took a step back making contact with my chest of drawers. My fingernails dug even deeper into my palm and I was sure I had drawn blood now. All he had to do was remove my right hand from the safety of the dressing gown pocket, open my fist and my shameful secret would be revealed. And I knew that if I let that happen, he would have nothing more to do with me.
He stopped where he was a few feet away from me when he saw how scared I must have looked, and mistaking my expression for fear of his apparent anger, he lowered his voice and tried to put on a veneer of calm.
“Tell me what you were doing just now.”
“Y-you and Mohamed are exactly the same. You both think you can sleep with me and then treat me like shit. B-but I’m not having it, Jason. I’m not.”
“Why do you keep doing that? That’s the second time you’ve said something like that to me. I’m nothing like Mohamed, you know that,” he said quietly, sadly, his armour unable to conceal the anguish he felt at my words.
“Do I?” I flung back at him.
His anguish deepened but I didn’t care. He had forgotten about what I had been doing a moment ago and so I took that opportunity to walk past him and out of the room into the corridor.
The bathroom was achingly close.
“I asked you before if you slept with me to get back at Mohamed,” he said and I stopped a foot away from the bathroom door. “You said no, but it was, weren’t it? You’re not over him, are you?”
I glanced at him. He was defenceless without his armour and I wanted to comfort him, take away what I saw when I looked at him. But I could still feel the heroin in my right fist like a ball of shame searing my skin.
“Don’t be stupid!” I flung over my shoulder before quickly walking into the bathroom and locking the door behind me.
I hid the heroin in the dirty clothes hamper under some clothes, waited a couple of minutes and then flushed the toilet and washed my hands. When I returned to the bedroom Jason was sitting on the bed in his jeans, hastily putting on his shoes. His face was flushed.
“Are you leaving?”
He stood up, put his shirt on and began doing up the buttons.
“Jason.” I walked over to him and tried to put my arms around him, but he brushed me off.
“What’s wrong with you?” I asked, although I already knew the answer to that question. My little ploy had worked. It had worked a bit too well. “Are you just gonna leave?” I asked and heard desperation creep into my voice.
He finished buttoning up his shirt and went to leave the room but I blocked his path and stepped in front of him every time he tried to get round me. He eventually stopped and glared at me, forcing me to see his anger and also that I had hurt him.
“Jason, just sit down and we’ll talk. I swear, I didn’t mean what I said. I just...I just...” I tried to put my arms around his neck but he caught my wrists in his hands.
His dark brown eyes were intense and unreadable when they met mine.
“Don’t...” He paused and looked down whilst I frantically searched his face. “Don’t call me again, Peace.”
The finality behind his words was like a blow. He let go of my wrists and stepped past me. I spun round, not wanting to believe it had all ended before it even started.
“Jason!” I cried, unable to hide my desperation and that in itself made me angry at myself for being so weak. “Go then!” I screamed at his back when he reached the door. “Fuck you!” I shouted against the tide of my escalating fear when he pulled the door open.
He really was going to leave.
I felt the fear leave me when he hesitated at the door and I thought he was going to turn around and give me another chance. But he hesitated for only a split second before he stepped through the door and pulled it shut behind him.
“Jason!” I ran to the door. “Jason! I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you what I was doing. I’ll tell you everything!” I cried, hitting the closed door with my open palms. “Please, just don’t go.”
Those last few words came out in a sob and I slumped to the door. I was alone with my useless tears and my shame.
I sat against the door for a few minutes knowing I would never see him again, then I stood up and ran to the bathroom and emptied the clothes basket. When I found the filthy little brown bag amongst the clothes I picked it up, threw it against the wall and then sank to the floor. My quick, shallow breaths soon evened out but I was still frustrated and angry with myself and at that little bag of dirty brown powder that had me dancing to its tune like a puppet.
I sat there for a while with useless tears burning a trail of shame down my face. Then I sucked in air and when I released it, it came out as a shudder.
I sat there and stared at the little brown bag for at least ten minutes before I crawled over to it and picked it up.
Chapter 17
I called Jason so many times over the weeks that followed. But he didn’t answer any of those calls or respond to any of the messages I left asking him to call me back. At that stage, I was even willing to tell him the truth. The truth about Dante and what I had left the house to do that night. But as the weeks passed, the harsh bite of my reality sank in and I stopped calling him. It was better this way, I told myself as I made my way to my front door.
But I was miserable. Utterly miserable as I pushed the front door open to a glare of light in the hallway and the unexpected sound of various voices coming from the direction of the living room.
I frowned slightly and stayed by the open door for a moment, trying to work out who the voices belonged to. But I could only make out that one belonged to Eva and that she was talking to two men. All three voices fell silent when I announced my presence by pushing the door shut.
I entered the living room to find Eva and Mohamed standing by the sofa and Jason leaning against the wall near the window. They all greeted me with an ominous silence and the air was thick with tension as they stared at me. I steadily met each of their gazes, trying to find an answer to the silence I had walked into, but could find no answer in either Eva’s sad expression or the accusation I saw in Mohamed’s angry one.
Jason’s told me nothing at all, but he was the one I couldn’t stop staring at. I completely forgot about Mohamed even though all Jason did was glance briefly at me as if I was a complete stranger. Then he turned around so he stood with his back to the room.
That stung, but I casually walked over to the windowsill and sat down a few feet away from where he stood, silently willing him t
o look at me. But he remained as immovable as a rock and barely seemed aware of my presence as he gazed out at something in the deepening twilight outside.
“What are you doing here?” I asked Mohamed after a few moments.
“Nothing,” Eva said quickly and looked down at the floor. “Mohamed and Jason were just going.”
She took hold of Mohamed’s arm to try and steer him toward the door, but he shrugged her off, giving her a wilting stare as he sat down.
“Mohamed,” Eva said softly, seeming to be saying a lot more than his name as she glared at him.
“What’s going on?” I asked firmly.
She sat down beside him, shooting him a dirty look before she briefly met my gaze.
“Eva?” I asked, having a strong feeling that something awful was about to happen.
She looked as if she was about to speak but Mohamed cut her off.
“Why didn’t you tell me my son was dead?”
A heavy silence engulfed the room again and I felt breathless, as if I had just been punched in the stomach.
“W-what?” I managed to stammer after a few seconds in that dense, weighted silence, my eyes unable to leave Mohamed’s.
“Why the fuck didn’t you tell me my son was dead?” he said again, this time getting to his feet and stabbing his left hand in my direction.
Eva immediately grabbed his other arm and tried to yank him back into the chair.
“Mohamed, I told you to let me do this! If you can’t, then go home because you’re making things worse!”
“What? Worse than they already are?” he snarled with only a cursory glance in her direction. “I can’t see how much worse things can get. My son’s dead. Dead. And that evil bitch over there couldn’t even tell me. Instead she fucked with my head by telling me he was sick, took my money and then just left me hanging. What kind of person does something like that?”
He said all that whilst staring intently at me, his burning eyes making him look like a black panther about to pounce. After another sharp tug on the arm from Eva, he sat back down on the sofa.
“How...how did you find out about that?” I managed to ask in a whisper, feeling lost and small as I relived the horror of Dante’s death all over again.
Eva swallowed hard before she spoke.
“I...we...we tried Social Services first of all but we didn’t get anywhere so we went to your mum’s and she told us that he died over two years ago.”
“We?” I said and stood up.
“Yes ‘we’,” Mohamed answered. “All three of us have been looking for him. We’ve met up at least once a week and we’ve spent hours searching, calling Social Services, calling anybody who might be able to help us track him down. I busted my arse looking for that boy and you knew all this time that I would never find him. How could you do that to me?”
I ignored Mohamed and stared hard at Eva who was glaring at him as if she wanted to grab the words that were coming out of his mouth and shove them back down his throat.
“How dare you!” I hissed through clenched teeth and took another step forward.
I could feel a build-up of pressure as I looked at her, realising in that instant that there was a lot I didn’t know about Eva. I didn’t know she could become the stranger who would go behind my back in this way.
“Peace, it wasn’t like that. I swear.” She stood up, holding her hands out as if to try and placate me.
“What do you mean ‘how dare you?’” Mohamed interjected.
“Just shut up and let us talk!” Eva cried. “Peace, I swear. It’s not how he’s making out. I thought I was helping you. I didn’t know. I swear, I didn’t know.”
“You bitch. You fucking bitch! I let you into my life. I trusted you and you stabbed me in the back!”
“You know what?” Mohamed stood up, pulling my attention away from Eva who was beginning to look scared. “I don’t wanna hear your shit! My son’s been dead for over two years and you didn’t even tell me. How could you do that to me? How could something that big happen and you don’t even think about telling me? That was my son. You should’ve called the day it happened and told me. I shouldn’t have had to come looking for you and run around like an idiot searching for him just to have some stranger tell me he died two years ago. Two years ago, Peace! How could you do that to me?”
It was as if that short outburst had left him depleted and now he looked small and vulnerable as he rubbed the top of his head as if he had something under the surface of his skin that he was trying to rub away.
“I’ve been telling everyone about my son. I’ve bought things for him. I’ve even spent the last two weekends turning my spare room into a bedroom for him. What the fuck am I supposed to do now? What am I supposed to tell people? What the hell am I supposed to tell my parents?”
“Me, me, me. That’s all I’ve heard since you came crawling back into my life. Me, me, me. That’s all you care about. You’re one selfish bastard, Mohamed. He’s dead. My baby’s dead and you’re still thinking about yourself. You don’t care about him. You never did, so why pretend now?”
“What are you talking about? I care. I fucking care or else I wouldn’t have given you that money and I wouldn’t be here trying to find out what happened to him. So tell me. What happened? Tell me how my son died.”
“Get out, Mohamed. I don’t have time for you, so just fuck off.”
“Don’t push me, Peace.” He took another step toward me, his face darkening, his mouth turning into a sneer as he spat the words out at me. “I trusted you. I left my son, my flesh and blood in your care and you let something happen to him. You killed my son so the least you can do is tell us what the hell happened.”
“Shut up!” I cried.
His words were like bolts of pain in my head and I brought my hands up to my ears to try and drown them out.
“Shut up!” I cried again, speaking more to the voice I could still hear in my head. The voice I knew came from within me; that had spoken those words to me every day since Dante died.
I killed him.
I knew that, but I couldn’t bear to hear it coming from Mohamed so I flew at him and slapped him across the face, wanting to hurt him in any way that I could. But the rage I felt at him, at the whole world at what happened to Dante couldn’t be sufficiently expressed by that weak blow. Before I could hit him again, he caught hold of my arms and pulled me to him roughly so we were almost standing nose to nose.
“Just tell me!” he bellowed, sounding like a wounded animal. “I need to know what happened. Tell me what happened to him!”
I wrenched myself away from him and stood breathing heavily into the silence.
“Your son? Your son?” I cried, laughing a hollow, bitter laugh that rang out in the silent room. “Your son? Fuck you, Mohamed! Can you even tell me what your son looked like?”
He didn’t answer and I had the satisfaction of seeing his head drop as he stared angrily at the floor.
“Do you even know when your son’s birthday was? Can you tell me what his first word was or what his favourite food or toy was? Do you know what could get him to laugh or even what that laugh sounded like?
“Did you know that whenever he woke up without me by his side he would jump out of bed and go running round the house crying until he found me? Did you know that? Did you know how beautiful he was, how intelligent? Did you know how special he was, how precious he was to me? Did you know he was my life? My life, Mohamed? Did you fucking know that?”
I was screaming at them and they were all silenced, not only by the loud frenetic sound of my voice, but by the force of the storm that now raged without restraint. I could feel my eyes moisten with tears but I refused to let them fall. I had spent too many long, lonely days and nights crying, first for Mohamed, and then for Dante, and I wasn’t going to cry anymore.
By this time Jason had turned away from the window and even though he still wouldn’t let his gaze meet mine, I didn’t need to look into his eyes to see that his armou
r had started to crumble and that he was rattled.
“You don’t know any of those things about your son because you weren’t there. You weren’t there,” I repeated when I turned back to Mohamed. “You walked away and didn’t look back.
“I raised him. I was the one who woke up in the middle of the night to feed him and change his nappy. I was the one who made sure he was fed and put clothes on his back. I did all of that. On. My. Own! And I was the one who was there to watch him die, not you! Look around you! What do you see in this flat? Nothing! I don’t have anything because I gave up my life, my education, I gave up everything to raise him and now I’m left with nothing. Nothing! My sacrifices don’t mean shit because he isn’t here anymore.
“You don’t have the right to come here after all this time and ask me about your son. You don’t have a son! You abandoned him when you abandoned me so get the hell out of my house!”
“No. No!” He looked up at me again, his jaw tilted defiantly and his chest puffed up with arrogance and self-righteousness. “You can say what you want but he was my son too and I ain’t leaving until you tell me what happened to him!”
“Mohamed,” Eva said quietly.
Her head had been moving frantically back and forth between me and Mohamed as if she was watching a tennis match that sent a jolt of pain every time the ball went flying across the net. “Maybe you two should just go and let me talk to Peace alone.”
“I want you all gone!” I concentrated on Eva now, the fierce tornado they had unleashed about to go raging through the landscape of our friendship and destroy everything we had worked so hard to build.
Seeing some of her books on the windowsill, I picked up a couple and threw them at her, infuriated by the small part of me that was relieved when the books missed their mark.
“Peace, calm down. None of this is her fault,” Jason said placing his hand on my arm.
I tore my arm out of his hand and glared at him.
“Don’t touch me! I don’t ever want you to touch me again. I mean it.”
