ℬᎾℳᎯ

I CLOSE THE DOOR and enter into the bathroom. Quick shower.

Why do I feel so wrong?

I don't think it's because we've joined the forty eight percent of Nigerian teens who have engaged in unprotected premarital sex.

I turn to the mirror and remove my white robe.

You lost yourself again.

No. I didn't. 

What's wrong with me today?

I sigh and walk to the white ceramic tub. My reflection looks back at me in the slow rippling water. 

Still skinny. Eyes are still a blue lagoon. He said they are beautiful but my breasts are still limes. I'm a little sore and sticky between my thighs, but I'm still me. Just Boma. Right?

Okay, my mouth tastes like his shower gel but that doesn't change anything.

Maybe, we shouldn't have. I'll die soon and this would all be for nothing, I would have put him through this for nothing. I have sinned, I'll go to hell, and burn for eternity, then both my life and death would be torture.

No. Don't cry. There's nothing to cry about.

I squeeze my eyelids shut.

Try. Just try. Lord forgive me my sins, forgive us. At least I'm not dead yet. Okay, breathe.

Open your eyes.

My reflection opens her eyes too. It's slow, but urgent—the tears—I feel so wrong. He said it's not a fault.

It's not a fault. IT IS NOT A FAULT BOMA, YOU HEAR?

Right foot first; then a gasp escapes my lips when the hot water flows over my body. I rest my head slowly on the ceramic rim of the tub.

I didn't think I would feel this way, I didn't think I would feel deader. Maybe this is what I get for trying to escape. There's no escaping for me, no escaping from myself.

I'm stuck being a living dead, until. . .

A time will come, might be today or tomorrow or next week, maybe next month. On that day, I'll be surrounded by an army of love. My breathing will sound just like that crappy Riverside ventilator, while everyone waits for the last one—my last breath.

I'll look away from Mom and cry, because I always cry, or maybe I won't have control over anything, for a change, not even my tears.

They'll say more than a few good words and tell me it's okay to go, even though all they really want to do is keep me from facing the scythe. But aren't we all so helpless at making the most defining choices of our lives?

After a few minutes, even the raspy breath would become a rattle. My lungs will fill up with the fluid that has tried to drown me all my life, and I'll struggle internally for just one more breath.

Mom wouldn't know, she'll only see her daughter lying still in bed with a distant gaze. Ivan will think I'm passing peacefully because he can't hear my internal screams. Chinny won't be able to stand it anymore so she'll run out, crying, looking for anyone, anyone to bury her face into and fall apart into a million little pieces that will never be put back together.

I'll hear the last beat of my heart and I'll feel every tiny hair on my body salute as I close my eyes forever.

Mom will scream when the heart monitor flatlines. Ivan will hold my lifeless body as if he can shake or kiss me back to life, back to health. Chinny will hear mom's scream and run back inside to watch my already pale body grow cold, colder. Tee would begin to wonder if this was what he signed up for.

I'll hear Ivan's sobs, they'll remain in my brain forever and ever. Maybe I'll get a chance to give him one last kiss. It'll feel like a brush on his lips, but he'll know it was me.

The medical team will arrive almost immediately, the doctors will confirm and state the time of death, whatever time it would be, then they'll cover my face with a white sheet. Away from my family, my body will be rolled to the morgue to join other fellow dead.

If I'm found wanting, my judgement would begin and I'll say 'hi' to the devil; if I've been forgiven, then I'll go to heaven.

On my funeral, wait. I have to plan that. Rule no 1. Nobody wears black, only blood-red, after all, it was my blood that killed me.

They'll roll my body into the church and I'll lay there, unaware, in my prom dress, in a white coffin. Everyone will look at the face of a girl who suffered too much and died too early, some will never stop crying.

Chinny will take the stage to make a speech but she'll choke on her words. The people will understand, it's not easy to lose a best friend so horribly and remain the same.

Ivan will come up in a ridiculous red suit and start by reciting The First Void from Dying Like the Sun. He'll cry. Then he'll tell everyone that he loved me and he loved me well, that my life wasn't a sad epistle of pain and suffering. He might say something like:

"Here lies the body of my beloved. . ." Scratch that. It's more Beyoncé than Ivan.

He'll say, "Bomate Anastasia Lawson, the only girl who managed to save my life even when I couldn't save hers, was too good for this world. . ."

Whatever that last part means, I'm just saying.

"We knew ourselves in more ways than friends are supposed to know. . ."

At this point, many of the guests would realize he means we were lovers and had sex, and so they'll cry even more because in their minds, I went to hell for pre-marital sex.

"I'll like to paint you a fairytale, tell you that her life was easy and perfect, but it wasn't always a dream. She suffered. More than she deserved, more than any of you can imagine, but she was beautiful. Inside, outside, top to bottom. The time she had was neither short nor long nor just right. She used everyday and made everyone she met a better person. . ." 

That might not be true for Quincy and Jacklyn. Still, it's 'so Ivan' to say that kind of thing.

He might end with something like, "I'll miss the days when I can talk to her, when I can laugh at her stubbornness or get lost in those blue eyes. She doesn't want me to become a widower, but I'll never recover from a world without Boma and I'll never appreciate this part of life that envies good people and chooses to snatch them away. . ."

Wow.

Slowly, the water in the tub creeps up my neck, then past my chin. I let myself slide in until I'm completely submerged under the water.

Image after image, childhood, prom. Kiss, kiss, kiss. Joining bodies; they tear through the dark stillness behind my closed eyelids. Everything we were, we are, what we could have been.

I've never been under water for this long. My lungs scratch against my ribs. 

Kill me if you must, kill me now.

At least I can control this, maybe I get to choose how it ends.

The water rides up through my nostrils and into my head. A dozen sharp needles begin to pick at my brain. 

How is it even possible to cry underwater?

I hear my heart, an endless band of dub. . .dub. . .

Now! Out!

I am jolted out of the water as my eyes flood. I fear the cough will rip apart my left-over lung. It's too violent. My body catapults itself out of the tub and to the cold white marble tiles. 

My hands find my stomach, holding it down as it churns, over and over causing me to retch painfully. 

This body doesn't want to die. Why?

My intestines tighten and I crane my neck, ready to eject everything in my stomach. Out they pour, in seemingly never-ending streams of semi digested fish and vegetables. Another retch follows another stream of more undigested particles. 

The retching seems over, but my throat tightens and I start coughing again, it's deep and scratchy. I close my mouth with my elbow so I don't hear how bad it sounds. After, I pull my elbow away.

Blood. I've never coughed up blood. My heart bubbles vigorously around my sore chest.

I sit up against the tub, resting my head between my knees, while wiping vomit, tears, blood and water from my face.

Mom. 

"No!"

You're talking to yourself, no need to yell, definitely no need to cry.

"I can handle this. It's what I signed up for. She has to have a life outside me. Right. I won't call her."

Beside the tub is a floor towel. I pick it up and start cleaning the mess. What a smell. Gross.

I chuckle aloud. "Venice would be better."

After cleaning the floor and washing the towel, I stumble weakly into the bed room, switching off the lights and hiding myself under layers of warm white silk covers, allowing the warmth to filter a deep breath out of me. 

I reach for my phone and dial him. I can feel his hesitation with each ring that goes by without him picking up. 

I call again, he picks on the second ring.

"Hey, Bo."

"Hey." Just tell him what he needs to know, he doesn't have to know I vomited or coughed up blood. "I'm . . . I'm not so good. Can I ditch dinner?"

He's silent for a while. "What's wrong?"

I feel the tightening scratchy urge rising in my throat again so I sit up and let it out. The idea of coughing on the phone while Ivan is on the other end stings my skins so I dampen the sound with my palm.

Blood. What's this one again?

"Bo?"

"I'm fine."

"That cough doesn't sound so good."

"I'm fine."

"Do you want me to call for the hospital?"

I'm silent. This is no time for hospitals. What do I want to hear? That I'm getting worse? Isn't it already obvious?

"No, Ivan. I'm fine. Trust me."

I don't hear his voice back. . .

"Ivan??"

"Boma, you don't have to shut me out. I know you won't be here forever, you won't even let me dream about it, and I want to keep you here forever, but I know it's out of my control. But please Bo, don't run away from me while you're still here," he sobs. "That is worse than watching you die."

In my silence, I have discovered that silence is unspoken spoken words. Used well, it makes more impact than words.

"Bo??"

"Ivan," I swallow. It makes a thick sound travelling down my sore throat. "I'm not shutting you out, I'm just. . . I'm just trying to give you my best self, you deserve that. Okay?"

I hear his slow stifled breaths on the other end. "Okay." he finally says.

I'm quiet, just holding back at my tears.

"Shoot?" he asks.

I smile, trying to avoid wiping my face with my bloody palm. "Shoot. Let's make Venice amazing."

He's silent again, just sobbing. It scatters my heart. "I love you Ivan."

"Yeah," he says. "I love you too. . . and. . . uhm. . .don't be late tomorrow, we leave early."

"Okay."

"Okay."

I chuckle. "Tomorrow." I think he nods so I smile and hang up. 

For a moment, I just sit up in bed, crying. My life happy-sucks. It's not even a joke. But I'll be fine.

I get up again and walk back to the bathroom to wash my hand. 

Before settling back to sleep, I swallow a tablet of Hydroxyurea and Astiphar, and pray that I don't die in my sleep.