I WAS JUST TRYING TO BE FUNNY | ✓

▬ 41: you could cut me open. I wouldn't stop you

               One of the hot pokers jammed between my ribs pierces my lungs which deflate and don't fill again. I manage only shallow gasps of air and the lack of oxygen quickly darkens the edges of my vision.

My raspy breaths are enough to alert Baba and his voice calls from the kitchen. 'Did your friends leave already? I'm just finishing tea.' Why has he made tea?

The bones in my fingers are about to snap from the tightness of my fists. I shove myself off the door to storm up the staircase, prying my jaw open long enough to yell behind me. 'They're not my friends. Mental cases like me don't have friends.'

I slam my door. My Fon ancestral mask falls face down onto the windowsill and the pile of now-obsolete school books collapses. The heat in my chest only expands. I grab my cell from my bedside, hurl it against the opposite wall. The battery flies out and propels underneath the dresser whilst the casing lands in front of the full-body mirror. Still burning, I smack my Bible onto the floor. Next, my Qur'an.

Then I crash onto my bed, out of fire but still smoking.

I ruin everything.

Would you rather be an animal or a machine? A machine. I can fix it. Defence Antivirus Malware Detection Software whatever. Virus detected. Uninstall. Clean. Factory reset. Turn it off and on again. Clean. I am cured. Machines don't sleep. Machines always know the time.

I'm sorry. I only want to be clean. I want to know what time it is.

Two years. That's the time. Two years since I went to Edenfield and I still haven't paid Iya and Baba back. Not a single pence. It's my fault. Iya doesn't want to work thirteen-hour shifts. It's my fault. She wouldn't have to if they hadn't spent a fortune on my two months of hospitalisation right before a global financial crisis.

Baba's knock is determined this time. Not "may I come in?" but "I'm coming in and I'm letting you know first". He swings the door open and leaves it ajar behind him. He has tea with him. Of course, he does.

'What's going on?'

I grab my Ikea hippo and hug it to my chest, my voice muffled into its chin. 'Nothin. Just leave me alone.'

But the mattress dips as Baba sits on the edge. 'You're not a mental case, habibi. And if you were, you'd still deserve friends just as much–'

'Leave me alone!'

'Okay. I only want you to know that you're ill and it's not your fault–' His own gentle laugh cuts him off when I scream into the hippo. I imagine him shaking his head at me and smiling. 'I love you.'

This is what breaks me.

I ram the hippo to my face, not to hide my tears but the absence of them. 'I ruin everythin.'

'But you can also fix anything.'

With an airy "okay, well that's that, let's move onto something else" sigh I've only ever witnessed dads make, he presses his hands to his thighs. However, when his weight shifts, it's not to stand up but to pick up my Bible and Qur'an from the floor.

The prior he places onto my nightstand after ensuring none of the pages are folded whilst the latter he opens in his left palm. 'Drink your tea. I'll read to you.'

I slide the hippo from my face to watch him, his proportions odd from my angle. Lying down, I can forget that I'm a foot taller than him, I can look up at him like he carries the whole universe with the Qur'an in his hand.

Pulling my cross from my mouth, unaware of when it ended up there, I interrupt before he can start. 'You know I, like... fancy boys too, right?'

Baba looks at me over the edge of the Qur'an. 'Yes.'

'Is that okay?'

'Of course, it's okay.' He squeezes my shoulder in a way that's compassionate without being offended that I dared doubt it.

I push myself up on my elbows. 'Does Iya know?'

'Yep.' Baba is unable to fight a grin though he does his best to mask it as a cough and preserve my pride. 'I know it's hard to hear, but you are not as subtle as you think you are.'

Groaning, I bury myself in the Ikea hippo. They know everything. For how long?

At the latest, Baba will have discovered it when he washed the sleeveless tee and jumper I had on when I came home from Summer. He's folded them into my dresser without remark of the fact that Miles's name is embroidered into the label of the latter.

But they've known before that. That's why Baba let me go to the party and why he wouldn't stop grinning when I came back from Barua's without any Parma Violets. Did they know before I did?

'If you are... exploring your sexuality, that is perfectly fine, but I would much prefer if you didn't do that through porn. You never have a certification of consent and I don't want you to view sex–'

I scream against the hippo, pushing it so firmly against my eyes that stars dot my vision. 'Please don't. Please, Baba, please don't make me listen to this. I promise I will never watch porn. Please just shut up.'

Baba breaths a laugh but doesn't continue on the subject. 'Ah.' He has returned to the Qur'an. 'This is my favourite sūrah.'

'They're all your favourite.'

'That's not true. At least three are my second favourite.' He meets my peevish scowl with an ever-patient smile that tucks me into bed.

'So verily, with the hardship, there is relief,' he reads. 'Verily, with the hardship, there is relief.'

Notes

Habibi: (Arabic) My love, very common term of endearment used in all kinds of relationships

Fon: Ethnic group in Benin, Nigeria, and Togo

Sūrah: (Arabic) Chapter, refers to chapters in the Qur'an