by Derek Owusu
12
It always takes her longer to get ready so I sit on the bed watching her applying, rubbing and straightening. I see myself in her mirror and notice how beautiful she is compared to me, how dark I am, how my skin is cursed: everlasting thirst, dry, and even from where I sit I can see the white worms piercing my pores. I smile to see my teeth, stained, so I swallow them again, my relaxed lips now wrinkled, reminding others of balm, aged after such a long-awaited stretch. I lower my head, eyes nearly rolling back trying to see the centre of my hair in the mirror. I notice the lonely area, curls no longer tight having developed a space between them. I drop my head further and close my eyes. I started shaving my head when the corners holding the line and weight of questioning age decided to, like I always do, step away from my face. I look up and avoid my own gaze, her make-up nearly done and as she brushes, blends or highlights, she smiles at me and asks if I’m all right, babe. I say yes. Then I tell her, ‘I need a trim, man.’ She understands. She turns to me, putting away her brush and pulling out wipes, the first white tissue coming out with a flourish, like a farewell to time, time she doesn’t mind losing. ‘Babe, we’ll stay in today. Okay?’
13
I once dressed well but my suits no longer fit, abandoned in my wardrobe. This weight is new, a burden for bearers, as I once went shirtless in everything but the rain. Now, keeping myself alive takes more than raised dumbbells and bent knees with dead weight. Now belts have only one use … One foot inside a leg, and without a struggle I capitulate to avoid chuckles, silent laughter from the side-splitting seams. Q loves my size and I try to smile when she jokingly calls me thick, stealing a glimpse as I walk past hotel mirrors and notice my thighs and behind, no longer smooth but dimpled, zaddy turned zuncle. As I unbutton, my thumb lifts what now spills over. We call it uncle belly. I call it antidepressants causing more problems than solving. I wish I didn’t care, but soon, the tipping scales show I may not be here.
14
The gesture, the one that brings her into the genre of fiction, is the language of her body when smoking a cigarette – shoulders rolled in, head lowered while hands cup a lighter and neon tip from disapproving winds. Her inhale is to wield power, forcing the first speaker to wait for her answer while she blows smoke as if finally she can breathe. Waves of imitation about to break on us. I order us both another drink, complaining of the cold so we can sit inside. But then her wine glass supersedes her cigarette and I’m watching the rolling waters of her white wine as it lends itself to falsehood, the ornamental sip and glass raised halfway to the sky punctuating the end of each ‘sophisticated’ sentence.
15
Giving myself some space, serotonin to settle, sitting on the lid of a toilet seat with my palms on my temples, I notice the drip of a leaking tap is never out of time, offbeat, giving the porcelain it’s bound to a melody: music to match moon-pulled seas contained by the ocean tubs of African deities. Then the drip becomes a tick to the flow of time, and I reach under the cold tap to preserve the trickle, freeze the hands for a moment, soak myself in the peace of nothing moving forward, just for a moment, just for a … The water spills over my palms and hits the tub loudly, shattering the surrounding air, signalling everything back in motion. I dry my hands and walk back into the countdown.
16
Saturday morning we collect videos and watch what we missed the night before. Sky sets are absent from all our homes so we stand level, equally excited to hear shattered glass or see elbow pads tossed to the crowd. Shops on the parade give us boxes we use as tables, and private property grass has no choice but to be our stage. I go through boxes, get hit by boxes, pinned on boxes, wide open on boxes. Excitement drives my hand into the enclosing wall and I use the blood to colour my forehead once cardboard becomes a chair.
I walk past our Costcutter, exchanging words with the shopkeeper arranging fruits. A response to my brother’s age is cut short when he steps out in front of me, my old friend, my tag team partner, carrying the same boxes we once used for our Saturday morning title fights. He avoids eye contact. He’s unshaven, with a blanket I know doubles up during the day as a coat to keep out the cold. I broke a pinky today and could give him the change; I put my hand in my pocket, hesitate, then walk on home, knowing I should turn back but not wanting to embarrass anyone to assuage my guilt.
17
Scales float to the surface of the tainted tea, wafers on the tongue but for the price of a new kettle I tolerate the calcified sacrament. The bag is drained till nothing is left and put aside to gather its strength, for in a few hours it will again be drenched. Use-by dates mean little as long as tops are green, so I pour regardless, cream-like thickness repulsing me more than a sour taste. Brown sugar because it’s healthier, or so our house thinks, but still, we each heap five spoons to compensate for the melanin-tinged sweetness. I head back up to my room, so familiar with the steps I can focus on my next poem, not caring to stop the tea, peeking over the side, from spilling over and causing my favourite mug to weep. I reach the top – blowing, sipping, thinking – with a white page in mind: each letter I lay down a puzzle piece to spell out the images I imagine. Then I see her, side profile, lips moving with whatever I’d written, typed really, printed and stacked on my bed. My foot creaks on the final step, the stair knowing my intent was stealth but speaking under pressure. She drops the poem, the sheet floating back into the anonymity of the waiting pages. ‘K,’ my mum says. ‘Don’t write so much about me; you’ll cry too much when I’m gone.’ I didn’t see her face when she spoke; she was my dream-like device, but now, sadly, I’ve awoke.
ACCEPTANCE
* * *
Nyame, I’m weak from calling you, from raising my voice with no rumble from the sky. I have starved, given away my stories with nothing but memories in return, a life hidden until I could show you my suffering. But my life means nothing to you, so I take my history and rise from the Golden Stool. Dua kontonkyikuronkyi na ema yehunu odwomfo.
1
I arrived at this ailment with no one trailing, no roses twirling, floating from my heels to dance with a gust sensing my scent, breeze stroking my neck, to land on a path directing people after me. They don’t know what’s wrong with me; tests and corrective lenses, failures, lip service to hope I was never going to engage with. Hope is a hand on a torn-up and beaten shoulder too used to Glasgow-kissing the floor, and as I cross my body to reach over and remove that liar’s touch, the room takes the first steps towards our dizzy daily foxtrot. I drink to hope, each sip inspired by their prolonged absences. To everyone who has vanished or was never there to begin with. The diagnosis is damage to my brain, or chemicals not flowing the right way, or not existing, or tainted by secretion from an organ not supposed to bleed. The condition, I see the world as opposite: the day, bursting radiation from the sun, appears to me as night, and the evening, kept from swallowing itself by the alcoholic distraction of its inhabitants, never beamed so bright. When I wake, I pour a couple of drinks, sit by my window and look out into the dark horizon keeping Tottenham from escaping itself. My mum walks into my room and tells me it’s 9am, put away the alcohol. I offer a glass and tell her to remember my condition in all exchanges with me. I pour her one, and another for myself, down both with a toast to misunderstandings, a solitary one as my mum left long ago. I sleep through the flickering old flame that was my day, coming alive during the night and spending most of my time drinking.
2
I’m watching the day through a breeze-blown slice in my curtains, obscuring nothing but my hour, summer and wind making peace, moving the leaves in the trees standing guard by my window, nervous after my attempts, the sun stroking fronds but leaving others in shadows, seeing the movement of the branches but hearing nothing but the serene sound of cars beyond the garden, limbs waving to me as a bird perches, maybe scouting for a house, onto the bough scratching the glass, knocking to bring me out into contentment while tiny flies shoot in and out of view, their quick existence something I cou
ld argue as I smell the fresh air through the dour scent of a depression that hasn’t left my room in days, then swiftly feeling like I’m outside, alive and welcoming the wind to raise the hairs on my arms, a contrast that blossoms into hope.
3
I flush so adjacent cubicles won’t hear the unscrewing top. This was my second trip to the WC, the first being an hour ago, 9 am, I think. The bottle’s a leftover, a residue of a drunken evening – three hours’ worth of juice because, as I shouted at the self-checkout the moment there was no doubt about the drought, it’s ridiculous that supermarket chains so big don’t sell alcohol before 10am. The neat gin burns my gums, cool on the tongue having so recently been brushed. There’s no odour in the air to clash with the smell of alcohol but I can hear the resultant drops of early-morning coffees. My shoulders rise and fall as I feign childlike laughter to soften this image, breakfast on a throne, for those eyes we always perform to, we always feel looking. I peer up at the ceiling, floods ebbing, and remember when I once ran to the shop soaked by drifting rain, and looked up at a streetlight to notice that the water never touched its radiance. I turn the top and with dripping hands toasted a blinking lamppost about to fade out.
4
A line of brilliance cutting the centre of clouds – a god sailing across the pool of the sky. Light born of this streak creates a second life for sky-lined crystallised waters – purplish mountains, a natural design in the background belying the office buildings in front of them. From the sixth floor of the Southbank Centre I look on, a gin and tonic in hand, searching for inspiration in the water – water sparkling like ten thousand angelic tiptoes sneaking across the surface; water taking on the green of the trees leaning towards its exposure. Meals designed for wine surround me, but I toast the blood-red glasses with lemon in mine, lemon still hovering after many drinks. Cyclists seem to race boats in the distance and tour buses slow to catch the view. Every day, I come here to sit, to turn my back on the world, to grow close to it again. And with every glass, it slowly becomes new.
5
I check my eyes in the mirror to make sure there are no puffs to give away what I’ve flushed, uninteresting small talk. I prefer to cry into the toilet so I can cleanse, feel I’ve sufficiently expelled my sadness. I sniff three times so there’s nothing to notice when I walk out, a deep breath then a confident sigh when I deflate at my desk. It’s 9.30 am and I’ve been here since 9. People start arriving. ‘Good weekend?’, someone asks. I slit my wrists on Sunday night. But what about you? ‘Oh, that sounds great! I’ve been meaning to watch that for a while. I didn’t do much. Just spent time with family. Something you’ll be unable to do soon. And they won’t miss you.’ ‘Yeah, I know what you mean. It can be jarring. But family time is important. We all say we hate them but we love them really.’ ‘True true.’ I turn to my computer and let the weight of my face collapse, my eyes almost closed, the day just beginning. I open Outlook but turn off the monitor, my forehead hovering just above my desk. A hand on my shoulder, ‘Let me guess, wild weekend?’
6
‘I’m sure I cced you?’ he says. He did, but not because he wanted to. Who would enjoy scrambling about for cultural references to make conversation? He knows how it would look if he didn’t – the token black must be in hand at all times. ‘My email isn’t working properly, you know. Mad.’ I answer. ‘I can’t tonight though.’ Drinking with co-workers is a plunge into alcoholism that I’ll need to deny to more than one person. So a day after an invite, last email sent, I look around and walk to the pub to take comfort as a loner, John O’Brian scribbling beside me. Today the office was more hostile than usual – I question, with my head down pretending to work, if I should engage, or they should. Everyone sips wine for the birthday moment as I turn down the last piece of chocolate cake. Food slows down the gin, anyway. I say goodbye to security but he ignores me. My girlfriend would say he didn’t hear me, but I know how people are, and take a few steps to the pub. I’ve been thinking about the cinnamon trail I left from the toilet to my bedroom, the smell of spiced rum enticing more than vomit repulses. And then I see them. The work bunch, the black ones, drinking and laughing, running from the table and back as black people do, a good time being had by all. Except me. Panic or jealousy or envy – one of the three – turns me around before I’m noticed and I walk out the door. I haven’t spoken to any of them since. They made me cry so now I’ll never try.
7
Mel blows on his bullet before loading his handgun. He’s beer-drenched and emotionally exhausted, tired of missing the wife who not only took her life but his. She’s the air knocking his caravan door, the breeze guiding the napkin cleaning the barrel. He puts the gun to his head, rethinks, decides to swallow the bullet – poison if the shot fails – the bullet with one purpose, the one to drag him along with its speed to a place where his wife may be. He holds the gun in his mouth, muzzle flirting with the uvula hanging like a frozen pendulum, his thumb on the trigger, shaking, nervous, scared of what may come afterwards. He’s hesitating, the movie score melding with the melodrama of the moment, and then, silence. He’s given up but remains alive, crying at his weakness, staring, caressing the photo of his lost love. I watch this every night expecting a different outcome. Thinking – If guns were legal I would already be dead, and this scene would be rewatched by someone trying to understand why I did it.
8
I look around the reception. I’m feeling so isolated among so many that I have to reach over and calm my shaking hand. ‘Dem Dey Go’, the melancholy of the music steals the moment, piano keys pressing on a suffering note. The collective joy causes me to envy, to curl up thirsty. The couple leads an electric slide while I drink. Then I’m home, my brother holding onto my shirt, pulling it tight around my body; my mother stands by my door, anointing oil in hand, the language of her mind struggling to understand. I’m leaning out the window, heaving, breathing, feeling like I’m finally freed from solitary. I’m afraid to turn around – instead, I keep my eyes on the concrete beneath, imagining my fall – maybe two legs broken and no loss of consciousness at all. ‘It’s going to be cool, bro,’ I hear from behind me. ‘P,’ I say, ‘I just need some space.’ ‘I’m not letting you go, bro. It’s going to be cool.’ When I wake up he’s asleep by my feet. I can’t remember the sound of my brother’s laugh. I always listen for it, as they listen for a key in my door, worry thundering floors as feet pace over and I’m told to keep my room unlocked. My brother’s losing weight like I’m losing blood. He walks into my room and stops at my mattress. He stares at the multiple stab wounds, my blood in pockets all over the naked bed. He’s never seen it with sheets off and all he can say is, ‘Rah’. He hasn’t looked at me. He turns to leave and I ask is he okay? Why is he going, is it me? ‘Nah,’ he says, and closes my door. I sink to the floor. He once asked me if I think I can beat it; now he’s sure I can’t.
9
The seventh pill is absorbed in a wave of alcohol before I pick up my phone and call the only number my nurses seem to know. I suck in my bottom lip, ready to talk, a final taste of the spiced rum, an interlude to sobering up my conversation to appear sane to Samaritans …
They’re okay to let me die – if I’m going to do it, there’s nothing they can do. I hang up, hardened by the resolve I’ll now have to show to dissolve my pride. I have to do it. I drink five more pills, Maker’s Mark moistening the pathway into my diffusing body. I call my friend next, and ask her to sit on the phone with me while I die. She says okay so I hang up, nearly at the end. I take seven more quetiapine and call Q. ‘I’m overdosing,’ I say, ‘I’m tired but I thought I’d call you.’ Sleep is reaching for me and death has its grip on slumber’s wrist. I feel drunk, talking about love and forgiveness and apologies and ‘We could have been perfect together.’ I pat down my bed but can’t get it to release more pills, bounce my escape into my palm. ‘K! K! This is not fair, can you please answer.’ ‘I’m here. Hey.’ I’m thirsty. From my bed I reach down to pick up my dr
ink but it spills, soaking the extension sockets. A worry for my books builds up then decays – any thought of what I love has the potential to delay, cancel my train of thought. I can’t keep my eyes open, I tell Samaritans I’m falling asleep, tell my friend I’m dozing off, tell my ex I’ll always be a votary at her feet. I’m weak, before I go, my last hope is that my mum doesn’t find me.