Peace

by A. D. Koboah

  It felt as if burning lava was being forced through my raw throat, but my stomach continued to inflict pain by contracting again. The heaving eventually subsided, but it took a while for my ragged breathing to slow down.

  Pulling myself up to the sink, I rinsed the foul taste out of my mouth and splashed water on my face which was greasy with sweat. Incapable of finding the strength to return to the bedroom, I lay down on the bathroom floor, resting my face against the cool floor tiles.

  The doorbell rang out through the silent flat a few minutes later, the intrusive sound seeming to send out tiny vibrations that rattled the walls, the floors and finally my battered body. I tried to ignore the insistent ringing and drew my aching legs up to my chest. But after about five minutes of continuous ringing and a few persistent thumps against the door, I pulled myself up onto my feet. With my legs quaking uncertainly like that of a new born foal, I used the wall as a crutch to hold me up as I walked slowly to the front door.

  It took a few clumsy attempts before I was able to unlock the door and when I pulled it open, I saw Eva on my doorstep with her hands on her hips, her mouth in a thin line.

  It took all the strength I had left to hold myself upright and I felt a bit better when I saw the anger in her eyes melt away when she saw me. She opened her mouth to speak but no words came out. Instead her eyes widened and her mouth became an ‘O’.

  “Oh my God!” she exclaimed finally. “What the fuck’s wrong with you?”

  “Why...why are you here?” I asked. My own words were barely above a whisper and the words scratched at my raw throat. “I told you in the note I left that I had something I needed to do. Alone.”

  Her eyes hardened again and she kissed her teeth, stepped forward and pushed her way into the flat.

  Sighing heavily, I closed the door behind her and leaned against the front door.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “Withdrawal.”

  She was still for a few seconds and then her expression softened.

  “Come on.” She took hold of my arm. “Come and lie down.”

  She led me to the bedroom. If she noticed I was shaking violently and needed to lean heavily on her during the short walk, it didn’t register on her face. We entered the bedroom and she looked around in dismay at the sheets and at the floor which betrayed the moments I hadn’t been quick enough and had strewn vomit everywhere.

  “Sit down a minute,” she said and gently lowered me onto the floor. “Where do you keep your clean sheets?”

  “In the bottom drawer.”

  I could feel the feverish cold descending on me as she changed the sheets and I was grateful when she pulled me up and I was able to fall into the bed. I huddled up in the clean, soft sheets and wrapped the duvet around me in an attempt to beat back the chill.

  “So all this is withdrawal from heroin?”

  “Yeah,” I mumbled from the bed.

  “Why are you doing it like this? Why don’t you call your doctor and get him to prescribe Methadone—”

  “No!” I interjected sharply.

  “Why not?”

  “You don’t understand. Meth isn’t a cure. It’s just a substitute for the real thing and I don’t wanna take any more drugs. I need to do this my way. You shouldn’t even be here, Eva.”

  She stayed silent and I couldn’t see her face from my position in the bed.

  “Is that Dante?” she asked after a while, and I assumed she was referring to one of the photographs of him I had put up around the room.

  “Yes.”

  “He’s gorgeous.” Her words were heavy with sadness at the thought of the young life that was now lost. “I’m gonna let you do this your way,” she said after a minute or so. “But you won’t be doing this alone ’cos I’m not going anywhere.”

  And so she stayed and busied herself washing sheets, soiled clothes and cleaning up vomit from the floor. A bucket materialised next to the bed so I could throw up into it and it disappeared and returned clean again whenever I was forced to use it.

  She left the flat sometime later, and when she returned, I could hear the sound of her footsteps in the kitchen and then she appeared at the bedroom door with a bowl of soup. I was able to sip a few spoonfuls of it and then lay back against the bed, satisfied with the small effort.

  That small measure of satisfaction didn’t last long however and I found myself violently flung forward with the force of a severe spasm and over the bed in a desperate search for the bucket. Luckily Eva was there holding it to my face and I was surprised by the violent flow of vomit a few mouthfuls of soup could induce. When the flow ended, I retched painfully for the next minute even though nothing was left to come up.

  The exertion left me depleted physically and Eva had to gently lift me up and lay me back against the pillows. She covered me with the duvet and then gently wiped away stray bits of vomit from my mouth.

  She stayed with me and opened the windows, using a newspaper to fan me when I complained of a hot flush. Whenever a cold chill descended she covered me with two duvets.

  I was so weak that all I could do was stay huddled beneath the duvet, wishing that the tremors could stop, wishing that the cramps in my stomach and the ache in my muscles, abdomen and shoulders from the hours spent prone over the toilet, and then the bucket, would stop. I was too weak to move and every inch of my body was crying out in pain.

  Helpless against this seemingly never-ending pain, I prepared myself for another sleepless night.

  Chapter 23

  Life without Dante continued to be a nightmare after my pitiful suicide attempt. I spent most days alone in my flat with the curtains drawn, avoiding calls and visits from my mother and Barbara. After a while, I grew tired of lying to them about how I spent my days and decided to at least try and get a semblance of normality back. So with that thought in mind, I stepped out of my block into weak sunshine and walked reluctantly toward the bus stop and a nine o’clock appointment with my course tutor.

  I walked slowly to the bus stop that day, each step away from my flat heavy and uncertain. The rucksack I carried over my shoulder contained only a fraction of its usual load and, as always, I felt the absence of the heavy buggy I used to struggle with wherever I went.

  When I got to the bus stop, I considered turning around and going back home to hide beneath my duvet and listen to the heavy silence permeating my flat. But I saw the bus I needed rolling smoothly towards me to glide smugly to a stop, and when it slid its doors open directly in front of me, it didn’t seem like an invitation I could refuse. So I boarded the packed bus along with everyone else.

  I spent the journey staring out of the window as the bus slowly inched its way through the rush-hour traffic, my thoughts, as always, on Dante.

  I thought about the time I had taken him to meet my friends at university, remembering with a smile the stir he caused when we arrived. Then I thought about what my friends would say to me when I went back. Would I get the same pitying stares I received in the weeks after Dante’s funeral? And instead of the usual questions they asked about my son and the ‘How’s my husband Dante?’ I used to receive from a few girls in my class, what would any of them have to say to me now?

  When the bus passed the chemist I used frequently, I thought about the time we had bumped into Jason, about how much Dante had liked him.

  I also thought about the look on Dante’s face when I had come running to the car window, the relief I had seen beneath the tears when his eyes fell on me. I wondered what he had been thinking in that instant. Had he believed I was going to make everything all right again? That I was going to save him? Did he know I would have given my life to save him?

  If only I could have.

  When the bus reached my destination, I pulled away from my thoughts and stood up along with most of the people on the top deck of the bus. But even though the stairs leading down to the bottom deck and off the bus were adjacent to my seat, I found I couldn’t move forward as my way was block
ed by a line of human dominos which snaked its way along the gangway and down the stairs.

  I sighed heavily and sat back down, deciding not to get caught up in the rush off the bus even though it meant that I would probably be a few minutes late to my appointment. I started to drift back to my thoughts as the queue of human dominoes slowly started to inch its way forward but was jolted back to my surroundings by a sudden movement I saw from the corner of my eye. I turned to see a cinnamon-coloured man in the seat directly behind mine try to push past an older man in a navy blue suit. But unlike a set of dominoes, the snake of people trying to get off the bus didn’t move.

  I gazed up at the man behind me with curiosity. He was in his late-twenties, his short hair was uncombed and he wore clothes that appeared as if they had been slept in. He looked like he had just rolled out of bed and I didn’t think he was on his way to work, so I was curious as to why he was subjecting himself to the rush-hour chaos.

  “Hey, there is no point pushing me, you can see I have no place to go,” the older man said.

  He gestured to the snake of people beside him to emphasise his point.

  “I didn’t push you,” the younger man protested with a shameless smile. “So shut up.”

  The older man rolled his eyes, and with the manner of a grown-up realising that it was no use trying to reason with a petulant child, he turned his back on the other man, inching his way closer to the gangway.

  Then out of the blue, the younger man directed a short, sharp punch to his face. He did it casually and had that unashamed smile as he did so. And just like that, I stepped out of an ordinary morning rush on a bus into the nightmarish world that seemed to keep re-asserting itself in my life.

  The older man, who looked bigger and stronger than his opponent, turned in bewilderment and was forced to cower in order to protect himself as a succession of blows rained on him. His attacker was still smiling as he stepped up the ferocity of his attack and seemed to relish every blow he inflicted and how easily his victim had been rendered defenceless, not from lack of physical strength, but from the unexpectedness of the senseless attack. He held on tightly to his briefcase in confusion as he was pushed against the barrier that prevented people from falling down the stairs, as more blows rained down on him.

  Realising that the intention of his attacker was to tip him over the barrier and down the stairs which were now clear, he braced himself and through some miracle managed to stop himself from being pushed over the bar and down the stairs.

  It seemed as if everyone on the bus was under a spell that prevented them from speaking or moving and so nobody tried to intervene in any way.

  Another man a few people behind these two broke the spell.

  “Hey! Hey!” He tried to charge forward to halt the attack but found that his way was blocked by about four other people in front of him. I saw another man behind him also trying to push forward with the same intention. The attacker, seeing that he was in possible danger, ended his assault and quickly fled down the stairs and off the bus. A few other people did the same. I followed them.

  I was careful to avoid looking at the victim of the motiveless attack as I fled down the stairs and came hurtling out of the bus as if I were being chased by the devil himself.

  I crossed the road with the same urgency and was narrowly missed by a speeding car as it tore past me. Once on the other side of the road, I walked quickly in any direction that took me away from the bus and after about ten minutes, I was able to slow my steps down and eventually came to a stop in the middle of the pavement.

  The streets were still busy with people rushing to work and one or two of them impatiently shoved me out of the way in their haste to get to wherever they needed to be. After a few more of these shoves, I walked toward a bus stop and sat down.

  I sat there for over an hour, trembling at the images that were still fresh in my mind, going over every detail in my head and wishing I could find some way of explaining what had happened. I eventually boarded a bus back home after having failed to come to any logical conclusion.

  I reached the entrance to the estate just as Nigel was leaving.

  “All right, babe?” he said casually with a smile, deliberately standing in my way so I was forced to stop. “What’s da matter?” he asked on seeing my dazed expression and trembling hands.

  “I...I was just on the bus and...and...”

  The rest of my sentence was lost behind a plethora of sobs as I burst into tears before him. “He...he...it was just—”

  “Whoa... Calm down. Come.”

  He took my arm and pulled me into the block. He didn’t need to be told where to go and led me to my front door, taking the keys from my hands and letting us into the flat.

  As it was the only furnished room in the flat, I led him to my bedroom and through my tears, I was able to tell him what had happened on the bus.

  His expression didn’t change throughout the story and he was still wearing a slow easy smile when I had finished, his eyes not giving much away.

  “Dat’s kinda fucked up,” he commented, although his tone suggested he felt no real empathy towards the man who had been attacked or the response I’d had to it.

  “I feel kinda silly now for getting so upset and taking up your time like this. Weren’t you on your way out?”

  “Nah, I got nuthin’ goin’ on today. I was just gonna go back home and kick back.”

  “Oh, you don’t live on this block?”

  “Nah, I jus’ do business with a coupla people dat live round ’ere. You still upset?”

  He reached into his pocket, pulled out a tiny bag filled with what looked like brown powder. He placed it in my hand.

  “What’s this?”

  “Something that’s gonna make you feel a lot better,” he said and smiled.

  It had made me feel better. A lot better. And I still remember the immense gratitude that I felt towards Nigel that day for the gift he gave me when he placed that little ball of heavenly powder in my hands and then gently and patiently showed me how to use it. I remember that moment perfectly. I was sitting on my bed watching Nigel smoke his share of the heroin when a heavy feeling of nothingness slowly began to creep over me. The cords that kept me tied to my pain and misery began to pull loose and I was set free to drift into peace.

  Nothing mattered anymore.

  The incident that had just taken place on the bus, and the fear it had beaten into me, didn’t matter. It went away along with my pain, anger and guilt, and I was left floating away from all that negativity. I was in tune with myself for the first time in my life. I even felt in tune with everything around me, including Nigel as we lay on my bed in our coats. It felt as if I had known him forever, as if we shared the deepest of bonds and I wasn’t taken aback when he turned to me and kissed me slowly and soothingly. It seemed natural for him to have done it and although I enjoyed the kiss, I was a lot more interested in the heroin than I was in him. It seemed as if the feeling was mutual as he was also content to lie back and drift away. The only unpleasant part of the whole experience was when I had unexpectedly been gripped with nausea and had to run to the bathroom to throw up. But even that had felt like a purge that left me feeling clean and empty.

  Heaven.

  In the midst of the darkness that was swallowing me whole, I’d found heaven.

  Chapter 24

  I had been told that coming off heroin was hard, but I never imagined it would be this traumatic.

  It felt as though I had been swimming against the tide for days and every stroke I made through the water brought pain as I fought to return to shore.

  All I needed to end this agony was a small amount of the brown powder that had reigned over my life for nearly two years. Just a tiny bit could take the edge off my withdrawal symptoms and make my journey back to shore less painful.

  But as I lay there hour after hour with my body contorting and purging itself of the poison I had fed it for nearly two years, I wasn’t even tempted by the thoug
ht of H.

  I was in agony, but it was strangely comforting, as for the first time since Dante’s death, I felt the pain I needed to feel.

  I had been using heroin to numb it, but it had always been there, manifesting itself in my actions, in the things I had done to myself over the past year and a half such as allow a creep like Daniel into my life.

  The pain I had been running from, the pain I had tried to chase away, was what I needed to feel.

  It was in fact what I deserved.

  I deserved this because I had failed Dante by allowing him to be taken away from me. I had failed him by allowing him to be born into poverty. I had failed him by not choosing a man who would have been the father he deserved.

  All those thoughts ran through my mind as I lay there in agony—the mental pain indistinguishable from the physical pain—as the hours turned into days, days that seemed like months. I had already forgotten what ‘normal’ felt like and was starting to think that I would never leave the dim room which reeked of my stale sweat and the acrid stench of vomit.

  “Peace.”

  Eva’s voice sounded as if it was a long way away and I flinched when a cold flannel was carefully placed on my forehead.

  “Another hot flush?” she asked, her voice low and raspy.

  A barely discernible nod was all I could give her. I heard her sniff and I flinched violently when her hand gently touched my shoulder. Even that slight touch felt heavy on my aching body.

  She quickly removed her hand and I heard her sniff again and a small sob escaped her before she could silence it.

  It was a while before she spoke again.

  “Peace. I have to call an ambulance and get you to a hospital.”

  I shook my head vehemently, the movement causing my body to scream out in pain.

  “You’ve been throwing up; you haven’t eaten or slept in three days. Three days. You’re so ill you can’t even move. I can’t sit here and watch you suffer like this.”

  I kept my eyes closed, wishing I could drown out the wrenchingly pitiful sobs I could hear.