Peace

by A. D. Koboah

  When she spoke again her voice was barely above a whisper as if she was afraid that giving voice to her thoughts would tempt fate to do the unthinkable.

  “Suppose this is too much for your body to handle. Suppose you die, Peace? I have to take you to hospital.”

  “No.” This came out as a ragged whisper, the words feeling like shards of glass against my raw, aching throat.

  I had a lot more that I wanted to say to her. I wanted to reassure her, explain that I had to do this, that I didn’t want any drugs as trying to mask my pain, trying to take the easy way out instead of facing my emotions, is how I had ended up in this position in the first place.

  I was so tired of doing the same thing over and over again and I couldn’t keep on running. The only way I was going to chase this pain away permanently was to face it head on.

  “Well, I have to do something. I can’t...” There were more sniffles and then I heard the bedroom door close behind her.

  I could hear the sound of her muffled voice speaking, I assumed, to somebody on the telephone, and then the sound of her footsteps as she rushed around the house. She re-entered the bedroom a few minutes later and started shifting things around. When she removed the bucket and returned with it a few moments later, I became vaguely aware of the fact that I hadn’t thrown up since dawn. It was now late afternoon; the longest I had gone without the need to vomit since my ordeal had begun.

  Maybe this meant that the worst was over. That maybe, just maybe I was getting closer to shore.

  When the doorbell rang a few hours later, Eva jumped up and ran out of the room to answer it. A male spoke a few moments later.

  “What’s going on? You said on the phone that this was urgent.”

  “It’s Peace. She...” She was crying again. “She’s really sick... I didn’t know who else to call and I don’t know what to do.”

  “Where is she?”

  Moments later, they entered the bedroom and someone sat down heavily on the bed. I gasped and tensed at the jolt of pain that the unexpected movement caused and when my eyes flickered open briefly, I saw Jason sitting on the bed, gazing at me with concern in his eyes. Eva stood a few feet away, watching his reactions carefully. She was wearing the same clothes she had been wearing the day before and she looked haggard. I was grateful when my eyes flicked shut and I was spared from seeing how wretched and forlorn she appeared.

  “Peace?” I felt a hand on my arm and then my forehead. “What’s wrong with her?”

  “She... It’s withdrawal. She’s been detoxing for over three days now. She hasn’t eaten anything and she—”

  “She’s been like this for three days?”

  I felt the mattress spring back up when he stood up. “Why didn’t you call me before?”

  He sounded angry, really angry and it was directed at Eva. Ashamed of the fact that I had put her in that position, I opened my eyes again. They both turned to look at me when I lifted my head up and tried to push myself up into a sitting position.

  Eva was immediately by my side.

  “What is it? What are you doing? Lie back down.”

  Jason was standing at the foot of the bed. His face was flushed with anger but I also saw fear in his eyes and helplessness.

  I was too weak to offer any real resistance when Eva pushed me back onto the bed, so I lay there and squeezed my eyes shut at the searing pain in my aching muscles. When I felt a cold glass touch my lips, I shook my head and forced myself to open my eyes again.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to... I’m not angry with you,” Jason said to Eva. He glanced at me again before he took hold of Eva’s arm. “Come on, let’s go outside. I need you to tell me exactly what’s going on.”

  They left the room.

  I tried to lift my head up with the intention of following them into the living room so I could hear what was being said, but the small effort was too much. I let my head fall back onto the bed where I fell into a strange, fitful sleep, at times unable to tell whether or not I was awake or dreaming.

  I thought I saw a woman in the corridor and heard unfamiliar voices and snatches of conversation that didn’t make sense.

  “What do you want me to do, Jay? I told you, she’s young and relatively healthy; she doesn’t need to go to hospital.”

  This was followed by the quiet murmur of a male voice, but it was too low for me to be able to make out what was being said.

  “Well, from what your friend has said, it sounds like the withdrawal symptoms have peaked so it should get easier from now on. It was a stupid way to detox, not to mention dangerous, but she’s done it. The hard part is over now.”

  I heard the male voice again before it was cut off in mid-flow by the woman.

  “Oh, so you’re a doctor now? Please! What you need to tell me is who that girl is and how or why you got involved in all this? You suddenly don’t have much to say? All right, I’ll let you off for now because I’ve got to get back to work. If she gets worse call me—okay?”

  I drifted off to sleep.

  When I woke up again the room was dark and I had a strange feeling that I was buried under that darkness which was as thick and heavy as a layer of sand. I couldn’t see anything and no sounds reached me under the dark sand. Feeling panic add another layer onto it, I lifted up a hand and was surprised to find it wasn’t pinned down and floated up easily.

  Although I still felt shivery, my head came up next and then my upper body when I pushed myself up into a sitting position. The grains of sand before my eyes grew smaller and smaller until they were as small as air molecules and I started to see the familiar sight of my bedroom which was half-hidden under a night-time shroud.

  The red glow from the digital clock on the chest of drawers told me I had been sleeping for less than three hours.

  Hearing footsteps in the hallway, I shakily swung my legs over the side of the bed and tried to ignore the pain that streaked through me along with a rush of dizziness.

  “Eva?” I croaked.

  The door swung open. A huge shadow filled the doorway and then moved toward me.

  “I sent her home a couple of hours ago. She’ll be back in the morning.”

  “Jason?”

  He moved to my bedside cabinet and switched on the lamp, illuminating the room in a soft glow.

  “Turn it off please,” I whispered.

  “In a minute.”

  He hovered over me for a second or two and stared carefully at my face, my trembling limbs and my nightdress which was soaked in sweat. His face gave nothing away, but the image of the way he had looked at me when he found out that I was a drug user floated up to me. When he knelt down before me and reached out a hand to my forehead, I shrank away from him. He quickly withdrew his hand. A few awkward seconds passed before he spoke.

  “How do you feel?”

  I stared into his soft brown eyes and was momentarily struck dumb.

  “All right, stupid question,” he said and a light smile played around his lips before it ducked out of sight.

  “Lie down,” he said when I tried to pull myself up to my feet.

  Another wave of dizziness forced me back onto the bed and I let him take hold of my legs and carefully place them back onto the bed.

  He adjusted the pillows so that when I lay back down, I was half sitting up. He brought a glass of water to my lips.

  “That’s enough for now,” he said and pulled the glass away when I tried to gulp down the water. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  He left the room and I was forced to wait anxiously until he returned with a small bowl which I eyed suspiciously when he pulled up a chair next to the bed.

  “It’s tomato soup.” He smiled at the look on my face. “There’s no point looking at me like that. Here,” he said and held out a spoonful of soup to my mouth.

  Mortified at the thought of being fed like a child, I grasped the spoon with shaky fingers. He held the bowl whilst I slowly brought the spoon back and forth between the bowl and
my mouth. The food tasted strange in my mouth after over three days without having eaten anything, and I tried to push the bowl away after only six spoonfuls. But he forced me to eat a little bit more before he was satisfied and left the room.

  Relieved to be by myself, I pulled the duvet up to my chin and tried to relax my aching body. On hearing his footsteps again in the hallway, I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep.

  When he entered the room, I heard him flick the lamp off and then felt him standing over me. His hand softly grazed my face and then I heard him leave the bedroom a few moments later.

  Alone again, I opened my eyes and stared into the darkness. I was exhausted, but my mind was still active so I lay in the dark and let my mind whirl from thought to thought. I eventually closed my eyes and must have slept for around twenty minutes. When I woke up again, I saw Jason at the bedroom window having parted the curtains in order to look out on the world beyond it. He appeared to be a million miles away from the room and I doubted that he saw what was outside the window, only whatever occupied his thoughts.

  Unaware he was being watched, his defences had been completely stripped away and he stood with his shoulders pushed forward as if he had the weight of the world on them. I wondered why he looked so sad and also why he was even there in the dark little room with me.

  I would doze for about ten or twenty minutes throughout the night and wake to see him either staring down at me, standing at the window, or sitting in a chair by my bed. I eventually fell into an exhausted, restless sleep in the early hours of the morning.

  When I woke up next, it was morning and although the curtains were still drawn, I could tell by the shards of light peeping through the curtains that it was a dreary, overcast day. I could also tell that I was alone in the flat.

  Feeling stronger than the day before, I managed to heave myself off the bed and half-walk, half-crawl to the bathroom, and even then, I had to take little breaks to rest along the way. I bathed and brushed my teeth, these things that I normally took for granted requiring an almost Herculean effort to accomplish.

  Wrapping myself in my bathrobe, I rested on the bathroom floor for a few minutes before I made my way to the kitchen and returned to the bedroom with a bowl, cereal and carton of milk. I collapsed on the bed as if I had just finished a gruelling workout and stayed like that for about twenty minutes.

  At around ten a.m. I heard the front door being wrestled open and the sound of a small person charging into the hallway.

  Eva burst into the bedroom. When she saw me sat up in bed with a bowl of cereal, she stopped abruptly in the doorway and took deep ragged breaths. She looked hot and flustered, as if she had run all the way to my house, and the huge bag she normally took to college (which I often joked was a lot bigger than she was) was slung over her shoulder, seeming to weigh her down. I had seen fear written across her features when she had first burst into the room and her fretful appearance brought a bitter wave of guilt as it occurred to me that the bag wasn’t the only thing that had been weighing her down over the past few days.

  “Peace, I...” she began, thought better of it and pulled the bag off her shoulder and onto the floor.

  She walked over to the window, threw the curtains open and let in weak, grey light before she came and slumped down on the chair by the bed. She began again when she was finally able to catch her breath.

  “I’m sorry, I meant to get here earlier but I was so tired I slept through my alarm and didn’t even hear the phone ring when Jason called to tell me he was—”

  “It’s all right, Eva. I’m glad you got some rest,” I said watching her carefully. She still looked tired to me.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Better.” I didn’t add that I was feeling guilt settle at what I had put her through. “I’m not throwing up anymore and I slept for a couple of hours last night.”

  A relieved smile spread across her face.

  “You do look a lot better. You’ve lost a helluva lot of weight, but you’re definitely getting better.”

  “I know. How are you though? You look really tired.”

  “I’m fine. I honestly can’t believe how normal you look. I mean I know we’ve still got a long way to go before you’re back to normal, but at least you can sleep and eat now.” The smile faded away. “You really had me scared for a while. Even Jason was scared.”

  I looked away to the half-eaten bowl of mushy corn flakes.

  “I know. I honestly don’t know how I’m gonna make it up to you, if I ever can make it up to you, that is.”

  “Don’t talk nonsense,” she said with a smile. “Do you think you’ll be all right by yourself if I pop out to the supermarket?”

  “Of course, but don’t you have any lectures today?”

  “I do, but one of my friends is keeping notes for me and I’ve been given an extension on deadlines for my coursework.”

  “You should go in. You’ve missed enough days because of me. I’m all right now anyway.”

  “You do look a lot better.” She gazed at me thoughtfully. “By the time I get there they’ll be halfway through the first lecture, but I suppose I can start on one of my essays. You sure you’re okay?”

  “Yeah, so go. If I need anything, I’ll call you. And you can come home for lunch.”

  “Yeah, that’s a good idea. I’ll do that. Do you want me to get you anything before I go?”

  “Nah, I’m cool... Actually, do you have any books I can read?”

  “Yeah, there’s a couple in the living room.”

  She left the room and I heard scraping noises in the living room which migrated to the hallway and then the bedroom. She reappeared in the doorway pulling the television along with her into the room. She plugged it in and tossed the remote control beside me on the bed along with a few books.

  Heaving that huge bag back onto her shoulder, she paused at the doorway, as if she were still deciding whether or not she should leave me.

  “Go,” I said gently.

  “All right, all right. I’m going.”

  She spun around and disappeared from sight.

  I was surprised when she re-entered the room a few seconds later, walked over to the bed and pulled me into a big hug. I returned the hug fiercely, even though my body was still aching, and tried not to let my emotions overwhelm me.

  When Eva pulled away, she had tears in her eyes but she was smiling as if a decade of sorrow had been lifted off her shoulders.

  “I’ll see you in a couple of hours,” she said as she retreated to the hallway.

  “Later,” I replied.

  The front door slammed shut a few moments later and I was left in silence.

  Alone now, I wiped away a few tears of my own and looked over to the window at the dreary scene beyond it. It was a gloomy, grey day and I saw drops of rain hit the window. The silence in my flat was beginning to feel suffocating, so I picked up one of the books Eva had left and it kept me occupied for a few hours. But with no brown to subdue them, memories kept breaking through my concentration and the book eventually lay unread in my hands as the past found me, bringing with it intense shame that had been absent from my life for a long, long time.

  Eva’s presence at lunchtime eased the heaviness, but couldn’t lift it completely and as day turned into night, it completely took over. When Eva returned later on that night, I behaved as if I was too tired to talk and so lay in bed and listened to the comforting sounds she made as she got ready for bed. The light sneaking under my bedroom door eventually went out and I was left alone to face the memories that were forcing their way back into my conscious mind.

  I had done some unforgivable things over the past two years and I had a lot of work to do to begin righting some of my wrongs.

  Chapter 25

  The last time I saw and spoke to Barbara properly was two years ago when she had summoned me to her flat. When I think back to that day, I can see that I had wanted her to know that I was using heroin; and she had.

 
When she opened her front door, I know she saw it in my eyes, in the constricted, pinpoint pupils that can’t be mistaken.

  I had automatically looked down when the door had swung open, expecting to see Dante’s tiny form in the large doorway and for her to be hiding behind the door, playing the game they always played whenever I came to collect him.

  But only Barbara greeted me at the door and that had made me angry.

  “I told you to get here at three, it’s nearly six o clock,” she said frostily.

  “I guess I lost track of time.”

  The look she gave me normally would have intimidated me, but I had felt completely fearless that day.

  When she walked away from the door, I closed it and followed her into the corridor.

  Every room in her house was painted white, including the corridor. The white house was what I used to call it. It wasn’t a rented council flat in a high-rise block of flats like the pitiful, barely decorated, barely furnished flat I had left behind, but a private property in an affluent part of London she had bought years ago.

  I walked into the white living room, catching a brief glimpse of myself in the large mirror on the wall to the left. I trod across the beige Flokati rug in the centre of the room, not bothering to take my shoes off, or walk around the rug as I used to do. And I was disappointed that my shoes did not leave little black marks on the rug as I had wanted. Her boyfriend had been on the phone when I entered the room. He looked up at me balefully, ended the conversation and came round to stand beside Barbara.

  “Sit,” she ordered.

  I sank into a large, white, leather settee by the window opposite a 50-inch, flat-screen television. She sat down in one of the armchairs.

  “What’s up, Barbara?” I asked.

  Her boyfriend David, who was still glaring at me, stood silently by her chair.

  “My flat was broken into last week.”

  “Really?” I said nonchalantly, scratching plum-coloured nail varnish off my fingernails.

  “David came home and disturbed them. They heard him come in and ran out the back. Thankfully, he didn’t get hurt.”