“Yeah, sorry about that, I was hammered. I should have realized you’d read too much into it.” His words were like a punch to the gut.
The door to the flat opened and the girl from before stepped out. “Sorry to break this up.” She looked down at me apologetically. “Tom, are you coming back in?” she asked, putting her hand on his waist.
“Yeah, give us a sec, Anna,” Tom said, turning around to her. “I’m just saying good-bye.”
She closed the door behind her, but Tom continued to face where she’d been standing. “You should go.”
“Who’s that? I thought she was a neighbor,” I told him. No response. “It’s okay if you’re sleeping with other people, I don’t mind that, it’s not like I hav—”
“I—uh.” Tom swallowed loudly. “Anna’s my girlfriend, Queenie. Has been for a while now.” He wouldn’t look at me.
“But,” I gasped, “I agreed we should revisit where we were in three months?”
“I thought you meant we’d see how the other was,” Tom offered weakly. “I didn’t think you meant we’d kick things off again.”
I felt like I was going to keel over and die.
“So we’re really done?” I asked. “Forever?”
“We’re really done.” Tom shrugged.
I opened my mouth to tell him about the miscarriage. Surely then he’d care, surely he’d be forced to think about what that actually meant, how heavy that was. “Tom.”
“What? What?” he asked me, annoyed. And I realized that I’d rather keep it to myself. He wouldn’t care. I’d rather have him not know than have his apathy.
* * *
I walked home in the rain listening to “Losing You” by Solange and “When You Were Mine” by Prince on rotation. By the time I got back, I was shivering so visibly that Rupert actually made me a cup of tea.
“Where did you go?” he asked as we sat in the kitchen, me still in my sopping wet clothes, rainwater dripping onto the lino.
“Just for a walk,” I lied. My breath caught in my throat. “I should go and—” I stood up, and the kitchen seemed to warp. I pulled myself up the stairs while everything spun around me, and flopped onto my bed. My breaths were getting shallow. I tried to call out, but it felt like a giant was standing on my chest. I could hear a ringing in my ears, and then everything went black.
* * *
I came to on the floor next to my bed. I tried to get up, but my limbs felt heavy, so knocked my phone from my bedside table to the floor. I couldn’t call any of my friends, I didn’t want them to see me like this. I couldn’t call my grandmother, she was too old to deal with this. Maggie! She’d probably try to sprinkle holy water on me, but at least she was good at staying pragmatic in the face of illness. I dialed her number and curled into a ball on the floor.
“Hello, Queenie, what’s happening?” Maggie answered cheerily.
“Aunt Maggie?” I rasped. “I don’t feel well.”
“Oh dear, you sound off. What’s wrong?”
“I don’t . . . know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know? Is it your women’s troubles again?” she asked suspiciously. “I’ve been praying for your recovery, so it can’t be—”
“No, I can’t . . . breathe.” It was getting harder to talk.
“What do you mean, you can’t breathe? You wouldn’t be able to talk to me if you couldn’t breathe, sweetheart.”
“Can you . . . come here? Sorry to, ask, I just, can’t—”
“Okay. I’ll get a cab over,” Maggie said. “I’ll have to bring Diana. Her dad forgot that he was meant to take her this weekend. Honestly, that man, he alw—”
“Maggie, please . . . come.”
* * *
I managed to stagger down the stairs to the kitchen for a glass of water and lay on the sofa as my stomach churned. I tried to take big gulps of air down, but whenever I breathed in, something stopped me. I eventually gave way to hyperventilation. After a lifetime of waiting, the doorbell rang, and I hoisted myself up from the sofa. When I opened the door, Diana charged past me and Maggie bustled in after her.
“See, Mum, I told you it smells weird!” Diana wrinkled her nose in disgust, her tucked-up septum piercing catching the light from the upstairs hallway.
“Diana’s right, Queenie, it smells like the whole place is damp. I didn’t know you were living like this.”
I sat on the stairs and put my head between my legs.
“Diana, you go and sit down, find the front room. Don’t take your shoes off, the floor isn’t clean.” Maggie stood over me and bent down, looking into my eyes. “You’re shaking! Am I going to have to get an old priest and a young priest in here?” she joked, putting her hand on my shoulder. “No wonder you’re shaking, you’re soaking wet!” she exclaimed.
“Can’t breathe,” I told my aunt. “And my head is swimming. My hands are shaking . . . and my stomach doesn’t hurt, but it just feels like it’s flipping over.” I stopped talking so that I could try to take some deep breaths.
“Do you feel sick?” Maggie asked, rubbing my back. I shook my head. “Let me know if you’re going to be sick,” she said.
“I’m not going to be sick.”
“Diana, can you find a bucket, please?” Maggie called out. “Queenie is going to be sick.”
“Maggie! I don’t feel nauseous or anything, but I feel like something is going to come up out of my mouth,” I said, flapping my hands frantically. “I don’t know how to explain it. I feel like something really bad is going to happen, I feel like I’ll never feel better.”
I closed my eyes to stop my aunt’s face blurring in front of me.
“Panic attack,” Diana said knowingly as she walked into the hallway.
“When did you turn doctor?” Maggie asked through tightened lips.
“It is a panic attack, though.” Diana crossed her arms and leaned against the wall, smug with her diagnosis. “Some girl in my class had them when we first started school. She used to feel like that before every class, so she had to take lessons in a room on her own.”
“Are you under a lot of stress?” Maggie asked, the sentence getting quieter so that by the time she said “stress” she was mouthing it. Jamaicans don’t typically believe in mental health issues. “And have you been praying?”
“What do you mean by stress?” I ignored the latter part of her question. “I’ve never had a panic attack.” I gasped as a wave of what I immediately recognized as acute panic hit me.
“Doesn’t matter, Henny hadn’t. They just started,” Diana said, picking at bits of the peeling wallpaper.
“Okay,” Maggie said, composing herself by smoothing down her bright orange kaftan. “Diana, stop touching, please. Queenie, get out of those wet clothes and grab your overnight things. Let’s go to Mum’s. Can we try to get the bus, or should I call a cab?” Maggie asked, adjusting her wig.
“I don’t want to go out,” I whimpered.
“You’re not turning agoraphobic on me—come on, let’s go. I’ll call a cab.” Maggie clapped her hands as Diana helped me to stand up.
I looked at my little cousin. “Sorry about this.”
“Don’t be sorry,” she said, helping me up the stairs.
I shoved my headscarf and my laptop into my rucksack. As soon as we got into the cab, Maggie was on the phone to my grandmother, speaking in what I think she thought were hushed tones: “. . . I don’t know, Mum. She doesn’t have a fever, she doesn’t have a stomachache. I don’t know if she’s eaten. . . . Should I call Sylvie? . . . She’s her mum, she’d want to know! . . . Okay. Well, we’ll be there in twenty minutes.”
* * *
“Wake up. Queenie. Wake up.” I opened my eyes to see Diana’s face looming over mine. “We’re here. Do you need me to help you in?”
“No, I’m fine,” I said, swatting my cousin away. “Why are you being so helpful this evening? It’s not like you.” I stepped out of the car and struggled up the gravel path with Maggie and Diana toward my grandmother. She was standing with her hands on her hips. I stepped through the porch door and she pulled me in by the arm and looked at me.
“Wha’ wrong wid yu?” she asked as Diana sat on the stairs and got her phone out of her pocket.