Sleepless
by Isu Muhammed
Awake
“Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
There was a clear disparity between the energy and tone of both voices. Like the disparity between hot and cold, or white and black, or dead and alive, or half asleep and wide awake. The half-asleep voice belonged to Kamiye. Her husband, Jade, owned the other, livelier one. He was the one that had heard something.
Awake
“I think I can hear something. I better go check it out” he said and pulled himself out of bed in one swift motion. He exited the room he and his wife shared before she could inaudibly utter her response.
“It’s late hun. It’s probably nothing.”
Five minutes later, he came back into the room and rolled himself into bed.
“It was the downstairs tap,” he said, Kamiye had already fallen asleep but his voice pulled her awake.
“hmm?”
“I said it was the downstairs tap.”
Kamiye turned over in bed unto Jade’s side and wrapped her arm around him, putting her head on his chest and one of her legs on his. Jade was on his back with his body almost perfectly still and his face pointing at the ceiling.
“What was the downstairs tap?” Kamiye asked.
“The sound I heard. The tap wasn’t tight enough and water kept dripping until it filled the bucket and started to spill over. Good thing I heard it when I did. We would have woken up to an empty tank.”
“mmhmm” came the voice of Kamiye and then, quiet. A very short span of silence denoting Jade’s wait for Kamiye’s real response. When none came, he spoke again.
“Did you hear what I said?”
“I did.” There’s a weird way one’s voice sounds when the body starts to slip out of the grip of sleep, this is how Kamiye’s voice would be described. “You locked the tap and saved our water. My hero. Now try to sleep.”
Jade closed his eyes, dissatisfied with Kamiye but unable to retort.
“Time to sleep,” he said to himself.
“Good sleep,” he said.
“Sleep of kings,” he said.
“Sleep,” he said.
“Shut up!” Kamiye protested just before he said something else about the sleep he was about to have.
The night crawled by and it seemed quiet had returned to the married couple’s room. Jade kept his eyes shut expecting sleep to come soon now that there was no other sound to distract him. The morning was near, another Monday, another week. Work would be fruitful this week, he would be so productive, sign many papers and have many meetings and change the world. Before all that, Jade needed sleep. To sleep, he needed silence and now that he had it…
Tok Tok Tok.
The clock in the room came into his hearing all of a sudden and his body flinched ever so slightly, the way restless bodies are fond of. He opened his eyes; listening to the ticks, and then counting them. At one thousand, a small smile tugged the edge of his lips and he closed his eyes believing now he could find some sleep despite the consistent ticking.
“Close your eyes,” he said.
He had over the years developed a technique for putting himself to sleep. A technique where he spoke to himself encouragingly until he eventually dozed off. A technique that worked only half the time.
“Relax yourself; lower your heartbeat and sleep” he whispered to himself.
Then came the sound of Kamiye’s snore cascading with the ticking of the clock and forming a rhythm, the two sounds consistent and periodic in their vibrations.
After that, sounds came from everywhere, the low pitched hum of the refrigerator, the distant croaking of the gutter frogs and the sporadic, but sparingly so, horns of the ever awake highways of Lagos.
Then…
Awake
“Honey, I think I heard something”
Kamiye’s snoring seized but she slept on. Jade’s instinct was to shake her more aggressively and talk louder.
“Kam, wake up. I think I heard something”
“Something like what?” This time, she woke up, Jade made sure of it.
“I don’t know. Just listen”
The two sat up in bed, necks tilted and ears peered waiting for a sound that neither was quite sure of.
Awake
“I think I should go check it out” Jade pulled the duvet off his body and pushed himself out of bed.
“Check what out?” Kamiye asked.
“The sound, I think I know where it is coming from”. With that said, he stepped out of the room. Kamiye took a look at the clock and sighed. It read 3:12. She stayed seated on the bed for what seemed like ten minutes then resigned back to laying down determined to complete the night’s sleep.
Then came a crash, the falling of something hefty and shattering of glass.
Kamiye, rolled out of bed, landing painfully on the floor but ignoring it and dashing out of the bedroom, through the passageway, down the stairs, and into the sitting room. There she found Jade standing over the fallen bookshelf with a slipper in hand.
“What the fuck Jadesola?”
Kamiye’s voice was loud but the emotion in it was not easy to tell. It could have been anger or confusion or worry or an equal amount of all three.
“It was a rat,” Jade said a little meekly.
“What?” Now only confusion was in her voice.
“The sound I heard was a rat. I saw it. I need to find it and kill it” Meekness gave room for an unnecessary amount of determination to have at 3:30 in the morning.
Awake
Jade dropped the slipper and turned away from Kamiye, his apparent destination being the front door. Kamiye followed with weary steps.
“Where are you going?”
“Outside”
“I think if the rat is outside, maybe you should just leave it be.” Kamiye’s voice was low and calculated. She was trying to avoid triggering him.
“The rat isn’t outside; I’m going to check the outside tap.”
Confused, Kamiye asked why.
“It was leaking before. I could hear the dripping from upstairs. I want to make sure the tap is still tightened.”
Her confusion grew but at the same time, an awareness of the situation came upon her.
“You could hear the outside tap?” She asked.
“Yes”
“From our bedroom upstairs?” She asked again.
“The house was really quiet,” Jade said as he re-entered the house and locked the door.
Awake
Jade quickened his steps past his wife and into the kitchen where he picked up a broom and turned around, walking swiftly past the dining table and out the sitting room.
“Where are you going now?” Kamiye followed closely.
“To kill the rat,” Jade said with the type of confidence that Indigo Montoya had once had.
“Don’t you think it will be better to leave the rat and set a trap for it on our way to work later in the day?” Kamiye shadowed Jade’s movement through the house, watching him peep behind doors and under furniture. He was having a manic episode, his first since they got married. She knew to expect them but not like this. Jade’s bipolar disorder hadn’t manifested like this before, not in her presence. He had been mostly ‘normal’. His mood swings were sporadic but controllable. Occasionally, he fell into intense depressions that dragged on for weeks. During these ‘lows’, he seldom spoke to Kamiye and he often locked himself indoors for days at a stretch. Kamiye knew what she had signed up for. She had come to learn that what Jade needed was understanding and she was ready to understand him. In her wedding vows, she had said she was ready to understand him for the rest of her life, she must have thought so.
“Can’t wait till morning,” Jade said climbing the stairs. “Need to kill it now”
“Why?”
“I don’t want the rat to climb into the bed and start biting my toes”. Jade pushed open the door to the room next to the one he and Kamiye slept in. The one they had planned to have their baby crib in.
“What?” Kamiye asked.
“I am scared of the rat eating my feet.”
“Okay, that doesn’t make any sense.”
Jade’s next response came as a roar. His body twitched and the veins in his neck flexed against the muscles they were wrapped across.
“Don’t say what I’m saying doesn’t make any sense”
Kamiye was afraid now. She needed to diffuse the situation. In the past, Jade’s ups had been spontaneous and exciting, not scary.
“Okay. I am sorry. I did not mean — I shouldn’t have said that. You just need to calm down”
Awake
Jade roared louder.
“Don’t say that. Telling me to calm down will not make me calm down.”
Knife
Jade tore past Kamiye and again down the stairs. Kamiye followed calling to him.
“Jade”
“Jade”
He ran straight to the kitchen, opened the kitchen cabinet and pulled out a knife.
“Jesus Jade”. Her voice trembled with terror. “Please put that down”
Jade’s voice was uncomfortably even.
“Can’t do that.”
“You can hunnay. Please do it for me.”
“I need it. Brooms don’t kill, knives do”
Kamiye moved slowly towards Jade.
“Jade hun, you are having an episode”
Jade looked at her with childish confusion; Kamiye came closer again.
“Let me help”
“This isn’t an episode. You’ve seen my episodes”
“I’ve read about them. Sometimes they are like this.”
She got closer still, slowly stretching her hand towards his.
Kill the rat
Jade saw her hand pulling close and brought the knife behind his back, He looked up and their eyes locked, then his gaze shifted past her to the door of their guest room. He pushed her down and made his way to it, Kamiye got up almost immediately and chased after him. It was in the nick of time that Jade closed the door in her face and locked it before she could she push her way in.
“Open the door Jade” Kamiye cried.
“No”
“Please. Please. Please. Please. Open the door.”
“I can’t do that Kamiye. I can’t. I’m sorry I can’t”
“Please, Jade. I’m begging you”
“I need to kill the rat. I need to”
Kamiye banged the door as she pleaded for her husband to open it up.
“I can’t sleep without killing it Kam. I can’t.” Jade said and then went silent
“Please, Jade. Please Please” Kamiye banged the door and kept banging until her fist must have hurt, only then did she stop and simply cry into the door waiting to hear something on the other side. Her sobs were dying down when she heard Jade’s own sobbing. She shuffled to press her ears against the door trying to hear better. She was right, her husband was crying. First, a steady stream of tears and then a blubbering mess.
“Jade. Jade are you okay?”
“It’s a voice, Kam. There’s a voice in my head”
“Jade please open the door.”
“It won’t shut up”
“Jade listen to me. Listen to my voice”
“It won’t shut up Kam. I want it to shut up but I can’t make it stop”
“Jade listen to me. My voice is real, everything else doesn’t matter. Just listen to me talk”
“Don’t stop talking.”
“I won’t. Please open the door, Jade. I won’t leave you. I love you. Please open the door and come out”
Nothing.
“Do you remember that time we were driving through Surulere and we thought we saw your mum on the other side of the road. We drove all the way down to the end of the road and made a U-turn only to find out it wasn’t her.”
The awkward sound of a laugh coming in between sobs came from the other side of the door.
“Please, Jade. Open the door.”
There was a click of the key being turned followed by the slow gradual movement of the door opening up. Jade fell face first into Kamiye’s lap.
“It’s alright Jade. It’s alright. You will be alright. Just listen to my voice. My voice is real. It will always be.”
Jade cried long into the day until his tears came no more. In Kamiye’s lap is where he fell asleep. She followed not long after. There, with their sweaty bodies spread out on the floor in front of the guest room with a knife still in Jade’s hand.
This would be a good place for the story to end and for it to be said that Kamiye and Jadesola lived happily ever after despite the difficulties that Jade’s mental illness posed. It will be nice to say that Kamiye understood him every step of the way and helped him get through all of his episodes. It will be nice to say that her voice was real until they were divided by uncontrollable forces.
About a year and a half later; Jade came home to find that Kamiye had packed her things and left. They spoke the day after, on the phone and she said she couldn’t do it anymore. Jade hadn’t had any episodes for three months at the point. They had been having a good run; they spent most days happy and being ‘normal’.
“We are a normal family. I am trying really hard to be normal” Jade said.
“I know but I can’t do it anymore; the uncertainty, the suspense of not knowing when your next big freak out will be. I go to bed every night wondering if you will wake me up in the middle of the night with a knife in your hand saying something about a rat.” Kamiye would never have been able to say these words to Jade’s face. She needed to get away. All the confidence she’d gathered was so she could run away.
“Don’t do that,” Jade said as the first tear rolled out of his eye and down his cheek.
“I’m sorry. I just don’t think I want to raise my children in that sort of environment” Kamiye said. Jade didn’t say anything after so she spoke again “It’s really hard for me too. It’s hard for me to make this decision”
“You are leaving me because of something I can’t control-
“I’m sorry”
-and I told you before we started dating. That’s what hurts. I told you and you said you
“I’m sorry”
-I told you not to say anything you didn’t mean
“I didn’t know what I meant”
-and now you don’t even have the courage to say this to my face. You are doing it over the fucking phone”
Neither of them spoke for what felt like an excruciatingly long time for Kamiye. She was the one that spoke first. “It’s really difficult for me too Jade”
“No, it’s not. This is the easy thing to do.” Jade hung up.
The next time Jade heard from Kamiye was a few weeks later when he received her file for divorce. Attached to it was a letter where she said she had given it some time so Jade could come out of the low that he was undoubtedly in. She thought the depression of being left by your wife would last Jade a few weeks. When they met to sign the documents in the presence of her lawyer, Jade was still going through the depression. He didn’t look at her throughout the ordeal and he didn’t speak a word. This depression, this one attached to losing his wife, lasted him six months. One morning he woke up and it was gone much the same way that she had simply disappeared. He sprung out of the bed with a jolly feeling in his heart. Had his bath, brushed and ate breakfast, the entire time humming the tune to everything’s gonna be alright. He smiled that day, a real one. Not the polite smile he had perfected to avoid questions. It was his first real smile since Kamiye left him. His next low didn’t come for another three months and it lasted three days.
Plug
Hey! Just want to say thank you so much for reading this story all the way to the end. I worked on it for some time and decided to put this one out there. The illustration is by Tade, you can check out more of his art thingies here
The voice narration in the audio copy was done by Seyi Oluboba who asides from being a voice-over artist is a great many things (including a very good friend)
I always appreciate talking about my stories and getting people’s reaction, so I implore you to leave a comment or send me a message about what you think. It would make my day.
