Chapter 5
Itold myself it was just for that night. Just one party. Just something to get out of my room and finally bond with Janessa the way freshman girls should bond with their roommate. She was thrilled and thought it would be good for me after everything I went through.
Because sitting there, alone and thinking of everything I had lost, was when everything came back to me in waves.
The arcade.
The ultrasound.
The sharp pain and that sterile hospital room.
That feeling in my body when everything just stopped. So when Janessa dragged me out that first time, I didn’t fight her. I didn’t argue. I just got dressed and followed her out the door.
The music hit me before we even walked in. It was loud and heavy. Usher’s “Yeah” crooned on the speaker system. The room felt alive. It was the complete opposite of everything I had been sitting in for weeks.
People were moving and laughing and were dancing like nothing in the world could touch them, and like nothing had ever been taken from them.
And for a second, just a second…I envied that.
“Don’t just stand there,” Janessa said, nudging me forward. “Relax. Have a drink. Indulge if you want,” Janessa swiped her pointer finger across her nose letting me know she had some party favors that I might need to be in the moment.
Relax.
I didn’t even remember what that felt like.
But I nodded anyway. I let Janessa pull me deeper into the room. I let the music wrap around me and the sound of my favorite singer’s voice envelop me.
I let the noise fill the spaces I had been trying not to feel.
One of Janessa’s male friends, whose name I couldn’t recall, gave me a red cup filled with something strong.
I remember the liquids rippling as if he put a date rape drug or something in it.
I could hear Kenya’s voice calling out to me and saying You better not drink that shit, Baby Bear, but the sound of her voice in my head made me do the opposite.
Fuck it. I had already lost everything: my heart, my baby, my dignity. Maybe this shit would make it go numb. So I drank it. Fast. The burn hit my throat, then my chest.
And for the first time in a long time, my thoughts slowed down. I didn’t think about X I didn’t think about the hospital. I just existed in the music, in the sway of my hips and the soft lips of someone I didn’t know.
I noticed the music, the lights, and the rhythm, and I felt okay.
“That’s more like it,” Janessa laughed, watching me take another sip.
I didn’t respond, but I smiled at her, feeling terrible about what it must have been like to room with me up until this point. I was depressed and mopy and having to witness a fetus on the fuckin’ floor had to be fuckin’ with her, too. So I asked her to take shots with me.
I just kept drinking because I liked it. I liked the way it softened everything and the way it made the edges of my memories blur just enough that they didn’t hurt as sharp.
That night turned into another.
Then another.
At first, I kept track, and I told myself I could drink only on weekends, I could indulge in pill popping only with Janessa, and I could use men for their touch to feel something only when I needed it.
But “needed it” started meaning something different. I started going out on weekdays. Then, after class, and then, unfortunately, instead of class.
“Are you skipping again?” Janessa asked one afternoon, watching me throw on something tighter than I usually wore.
“I’ll go to tomorrow’s class,” I said, not even looking at her.
“You said that yesterday.”
“And I’m saying it again today.”
She sighed. “Chanel. this isn't you.”
I paused for a second. I noticed the tears forming in her eyes.
Then I shrugged. “Maybe you don’t know me like you think you do.”
That shut her up for a while, but it didn’t make her stop watching me.
I got used to the attention. The looks and the way people on campus didn’t ask questions as long as you looked good and kept the energy up.
I learned that nobody cared what you were running from. As long as you didn’t bring it into the room. As long as you sang the lyrics loudly and looked them in the eyes while you took your shot.
And I didn’t bring the energy down. I didn’t talk about the incarceration of the love of my life while I took men into my mouth. I didn’t cry about my lost child while I was snorting coke with people I just met. I left all of that in my dorm, in my bed, in the quiet.
Out here I was fun. Easy. Untouchable. Or at least that’s what I wanted it to look like.
But every now and then, in between songs, in between drinks, and in the seconds where everything slowed down just enough…
I’d feel it. That emptiness was still there and when that would happen I would drink a little more, dance a little harder, and purposely laugh a little louder.
Just to drown out the sound of X’s voice calling me Angel.
I told myself I was learning how to live again.
But really, I was just learning how to forget.