Peace

Some people are damned, Ann said, it doesn't matter what they do. Her sister, the youngest of the three of them, was damned, she thought. She didn't have a chance, growing up in the thick of it. At least Ann and her brother could remember a time before the breakdowns, before the divorce.

Ten years ago, Ann says, her sister still at school, lived with her mother. She was half nocturnal even then. She'd rise in the late afternoon in time for Neighbours, and sit watching it in her pyjamas. She'd leave bowls of milk with forlorn rice crispies floating about, and get ready to go out.

You heard a clatter of feet up the stairs. Music from the upstairs bedroom. Stomping about. Her sister was getting dressed. Making herself pretty. Then the clatter of feet down the stairs. Where was she going? Who was she going out with? You couldn't ask her. She'd roll her eyes. 'My business'. Cars would pull up outside, loud music thumping. The front door would open – close; her sister had disappeared for the night.

You couldn't stop her. Her mum tried and failed. No one could tell her anything. Ann tried, on the phone. She was sick of everyone and their advice, her sister said. Just – fuck – off! Her voice rose into a scream. Her mum screamed back. More screams. The front door slammed. Footsteps on gravel, marching off. You're your father's daughter, her mother called after her. You're a bitch, the sister shouted back. 

Her mother in tears on the phone: I shouldn't have said that. Ann: it doesn't matter what you say. Her sister came back in late, very late; it was light by the time her key turned in the lock. Light, morning, and her mother asleep in the chair where she'd sat to wait up.

Sometimes her sister didn't come back at all. Her mother crying on the phone: she's gone, she's left me. Ann: she hasn't left you. She's with her friends. She'll be back. And she did come back, the sister. She'd turn up a whole day later – a couple of days, very breezy: Hi, mum! And then quickly upstairs, moving softly. Hi mum!, and her mum past anger, past despair, didn't have the heart to follow her up. 

Once – almost at the end – her sister sat in when her brother and Ann visited for Sunday lunch. All three of them, and the mother, at a table. It was a miracle. Her mother was happy. It was like when they were young, but without her rampaging ex-husband about. All three siblings at a table, laughing, joking. Only they never asked the sister anything. Never asked where she went, or who her friends were. That was off-limits. The sister was here: that was enough. There at the table, and they were children again, though without the ogre who roared and shouted.

But they weren't children, that was the problem, Ann says. They didn't have a child's resilience. They'd grown old, terribly old. They sat at the table, and it was a pretence. The laughter would fall away and they'd be only their own again, all three of them. They were terribly old, and something had grown with them into a tumour. 

How much time was left? How long before her sister left the house and never came back? There were signs, signs. You know them all, Ann said. You've seen the films …

Peace: that's smack gave her, her sister said. Peace, spreading warmly out from her stomach. She felt lifted, lightened. Her blood was warm. She looked upwards, sighed with bliss. What was lifting her up? She felt as light as air.

Look in the mirror, someone told her. Why? She hated looking. But this time, she obeyed. What did she see? An angel, a beautiful angel. She could open her eyes at last. There it was – there she was: beautiful. A beautiful angel, her pupils shrunk to tiny dots. Oh God.

The high, her sister said – and this was years later, when she was trying to kick heroin on the rehabilitation course she'd lucked onto instead of a jail sentence; years later, when her teeth were rattling themselves loose in her mouth, when her cheeks were sunken, her skin grey; years, and her hair hung limply and her eyes looked out limply – the high was like nothing else, she said. It was religious.

She understood what the word God meant, the sister said. The word God … and perhaps there really was a God. Perhaps that's what she had seen in her own image in the mirror. Her God. A young, female God, very beautiful. A God whose pupils were shrunk to nothing.

She glowed, her sister said. Her arms and legs felt heavy, and there was a pleasant tingling on the surface of her skin as though it was being touched by a shoal of fish. The Most High, that's what they call God, isn't it?, the sister said. The Most High: higher than all highs, but those highs pointing up to Him like aretes. She saw them in her mind's eye, she said, riding up ever higher, flashing the light along their keen edges, converging on a single point: God.

She was losing her teeth, her sister. That's what Ann saw in the visitor's room. They were rattling in their sockets, working their way out. She didn't like to smile, said the sister. She had a partial dental plate, but she didn't like to wear it, as it sat sorely on her gums. Look, do you see? But Ann could only see the ruin of a mouth.

Her sister used to have such good teeth, Ann said. Now she spat them out when she felt it work its way free, she says. Rattling around the sink: a white tooth and its roots, and blood running away with the water. Her studded tongue explored the hole that was left.

She'll have to get a full set of false teeth one day, the sister said. It never looks the same, though, does it? She'd get the dentist to pull out all her teeth, one by one. To be done with them. Maybe she should get gold teeth, like a rapper.

Look at me, her sister said. I'm no angel now, am I? She's laughed. No angel. No front teeth, and a cackle instead of a laugh. Fingers stained yellow. A smoker's racking cough. I'm no angel now.

She looked old, terribly old, Ann thought. She'd gone from being a child into an old woman.

God had turned away from her, her sister said. God had disappeared into the sky. It's a shame, because she liked God, the sister said. She liked being religious.

It's like smoking, the sister said. The high wears off. The first time was the best time. And after that? All religions are about drugs, the sister said. She'd read that somewhere. They're all based on drug cults. The Rastas have it right, with their marijuana.

What happened then?, the poet asked. Did she make it through rehab? Ann shook her head. I told you, some people are damned.