The Powdery White

The door creaks loudly enough for me to hear. Dad’s just coming home. The time is 2:09 am. Dad goes to the basement. I get up out of bed and follow quietly. The light in the basement is really dull so I go really close to see what dad’s up to. For the past two weeks it’s been like this: dad coming home late, I mean. Dad grumbles loudly, and clumsily reaches into the ancient refrigerator we have down here. He takes out a plastic bag and throws its content onto a low, dirty table. It’s powdery white. The tears fall. I knew it. Dad’s a cocaine addict.1

“Dad, stop this now, you caah do dis!” 2

I kick over the table and some powder dissolves into the air. Dad jumps up looking extremely pissed and towers over me who’s just 5’ 2”. Before I can take my next breath, he starts kicking me to a pulp. When I think he’s done, I feel an iron grip around my neck and dad pushing my face to the ground towards the cocaine. He fidgets angrily somewhere for a straw and forces it up my nostril. I inhale. My nostril burns. The insides of my head stretch into infinity and holds there. My eyes turn over. All my muscles go into contraction. My throat constricts. All that takes place simultaneously. It hurts, but God knows, it feels so good, just the same.3

“More,” I hear myself say, ten minutes later. Dad smiles, and obliges. Inhaling cocaine is like going to heaven.4

My hand shakes with the knife behind my back. In my mind I anticipate the moment. I’ll kill Marlon for reporting me to Ms. Barry, the stupid guidance counsellor. His entire life will flash before his eyes just before I finish him.5

I see him coming out of the classroom. I take a puff of my 'spliff' and get high. I see oh-so-clearly now. Marlon sees me and walks toward me. I smile, and launch at him, stabbing him where I want to; in the chest.6

Mom is bleeding from her head when I step inside the house. Daddy sits at the dinner table sniffing his coke. 7

“Call di police Rajeem!” mom screams at me. I just stare at her. I feel dizzy. I ran out of spliff today, and I need more. 8

“Soon cum,” I mumble stepping over her bloody body. Dad sees me coming and scoots over. I sit beside him and sniff too. My head spins, it stretches, my muscles tighten, my throat constricts…but everything feels so wonderful.9

The police come to our house two hours later. Mom is dead. Dad killed her. Marlon, they say, died in the hospital. I killed him. Dad, they say, is involved in a major drug-trafficking business that takes coke from the Caribbean to South America. I, they say, must be taken to Juvenile Prison only because I’m thirteen. I couldn’t care less. All I want is to get high. That’s what I say to them.10