Breaking Out

by Janice Nix

  She was hanging around with a scary group of men, and sleeping with them all. Leroy, Mr B and Jay were Yardies – the leaders of a gang that had south London on lock. The guys were smart and slick, always dressed for business, especially Leroy, who was clearly the leader of the pack. All of them were married with kids, but they came round to her place to do their deals and then get sex. They told her she was beautiful and cool and important while they used her in any way they wanted. Mr B even said that he’d fallen in love with her – this very handsome man with deep dark eyes and long dreads knew exactly what to say. But his sweet talk was just grooming. Her thinking was too clouded to see what was really going on.

  I understood these men. They had great power, but no empathy and no sense of consequence. If they cost Izzie her life, to them that was street business. In their eyes, she was replaceable – another pretty crackhead who made terrible decisions.

  ‘Uh … Jan,’ Izzie said to me at one of our meetings in the office. ‘If I can’t make it here next week – is that a problem?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It is. It’s most definitely a problem.’

  ‘But if I’m out of the country …’

  Now my alarm bells were ringing loud and clear.

  ‘And why would you be out of the country?’

  ‘Um … well. It’s B. He’s sending me on holiday.’ She gave me her very cutest smile.

  ‘Holiday?’ I questioned her. I knew this script already. ‘Holiday where, exactly?’

  ‘Mexico!’ She sounded excited. ‘Three days in a resort. It’s really posh. It’s got pools and –’

  ‘Mexico?’

  ‘It’s going to be a blast, B says.’

  ‘And what do you have to do, to get this trip?’

  ‘Uh – well.’ Her smile was fading. ‘Um. Just a parcel. I have to bring a parcel back to London.’

  There are so many drug mules inside – women who believed their lives of poverty would change if they worked for the smugglers. They desperately wanted a way out of misery – that’s what made them easy to manipulate. A couple of thousand pounds seemed like a win on the lottery. ‘You just have to carry this package. It’s going to be fine …’

  ‘Izzie. Just listen for a moment. Let me tell you something about your Mr B.’

  ‘Janice –’ She started to protest. She didn’t want to hear.

  ‘No. You listen. You know why B is doing this. He doesn’t care what happens to you. He isn’t even paying you. He thinks you’ll risk ten years of your life to spend a few nights in a fancy hotel.’

  She looked deflated and lost.

  ‘Izzie – you know this. He says he cares. He doesn’t. So – no. Don’t go to Mexico. Don’t ever go anywhere they send you. And I want you here next week, on time for our meeting. No ifs, no buts, no arguments. We’ve got work to do.’

  NOVEMBER 1979

  I named my daughter Nadia. Her backflips in my belly made me think of the famous Romanian gymnast, Nadia Comãneci, star of the 1976 Olympic Games. She’d been on every TV screen, all around the world – tiny, dark-eyed and fierce. Just like my little Nadia was.

  I want you to be proud of who you are, baby girl.

  When I was a child, I felt so lost, so confused. Now I set out to show Nadia that anything was possible. I wanted to be big and bold and boss for her – to take on the world. Sometimes the thought of staying safe at home – like Emmanuel wanted – would tempt me. He still hoped Nadia might keep me in the house. But the quiet life, the peaceful life – I knew they weren’t for me.

  Luckily my girlfriends were happy to help me with the baby. Sabrina’s daughters adored little Nadia and constantly asked to take care of her. Ida begged to have her to stay. When she was with them, I knew that she was always loved and cared for.

  As the months went by, Emmanuel and I drifted further and further apart. He stopped asking where I’d been when I went out. Now only Nadia’s giggles filled the silences between us. Although my daughter made me happy, the sadness and emptiness at home were weighing me down.

  The phone rang early one evening. It was Pepper.

  ‘Lamp-post? Fancy coming round to Bagga’s? I’ve got a surprise for you.’

  ‘What kind of surprise?’

  ‘I thought we’d drink that cognac. The one from Harrods.’

  ‘Mmm – mmm.’

  Bagga was a friend of hers – a fun party guy I’d met a couple of times before. And the cognac was a beauty. Baby Nadia was sleeping. I decided I would go. Emmanuel was watching TV. He looked up when the phone rang, but didn’t say a word as he watched me fetch my coat. Ten minutes later, I was knocking on Bagga’s door.

  When Pepper answered, I greeted her with a hug, laughing and joking just like normal. But she softly laid her finger on her lips and beckoned me inside. Bagga was sitting at the dining table. The curtains were drawn. The lights were low. It took a second or two before I realised what he was doing.

  In front of Bagga was his gear. I saw the glass pipe on the mirror, the glint of the Stanley knife, the bright lines of pinkish white powder marked with fine grooves. This was the first time I had ever seen cocaine.

  ‘Babe –’ I whispered to Pepper. ‘I didn’t know you –’

  ‘JanJan – this is good. Don’t you worry. You’ll like it.’

  I watched Bagga in the half-light as he scooped a heap of crystal grains onto the filter then gently applied the flame of a lighter. Then he put the mouthpiece to his lips and softly drew. Ribbons of smooth creamy smoke filled the globe of the pipe. To me it was mesmerising, beautiful, seductive. A part of me loved to break the rules. Now this was a whole new level. The drug seemed to call to me. I was fascinated, curious, a little bit afraid. I pushed through my fear.

  Bagga put the pipe down.

  ‘Would you like to try some?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  He put another scoop of grains on the filter.

  ‘Not so much,’ Pepper murmured. ‘She’s not done it before.’

  ‘Don’t worry.’ Bagga’s voice was very soft. ‘I’ll look after JanJan. Take your time now. Pull gently.’ Again he warmed up the grains. Tentatively, I sucked at the pipe. I felt nothing.

  ‘You’re pulling too quick,’ Bagga told me. ‘You need to slow it down. But not too much or you’ll make water come through.’

  I tried another puff. Still nothing.

  ‘Try again,’ said Bagga. ‘You need to relax. And stand up – you’ll breathe more deeply.’

  I did as he said, and pulled again. This time it was different.

  A storm of white smoke began to swirl. My ears popped, as though there’d been a change in air pressure. The bubbling thud of the pump in Bagga’s fish tank seemed to vibrate through the walls. My hands grew warm and heavy while the rest of me was joyfully floating. Somewhere I could hear a bird singing.

  This feels fuckin’ amazin’.

  Slowly, I passed the pipe to Bagga. My scattered hearing came back together.

  ‘You good?’ Bagga asked me. ‘You alright?’

  Oh, man. Oh, dis shit is bad.

  Pepper said to me: ‘It’s sweet, isn’t it, Jan?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said at last, still feeling that my lips weren’t quite my own. ‘Oh, yes.’

  After my argument with Lucy, I’d turned to Pepper more and more. Soon we had become close friends. We both had troubles at home – mine with Emmanuel, and Pepper’s husband Scorcher was cheating – again. We felt lonely and confused, uncertain of our futures. It helped to have someone who understood. The two of us began to share a quiet pipe at the end of a working day up West.

  Cocaine is a beautiful drug. It could make us forget about our problems and our worries and our fears. It calmed the rush of adrenalin we lived on. While we smoked, the past didn’t matter and the future with its tangle of concerns just slipped away.

  And Bagga was a very good chemist. Although he didn’t like me asking questions, I learned from him by watching. He knew how to wash cocaine, turning
the powder into solid form – crack – for smoking in a pipe. I stared in fascination as he added the bicarb and water to the powder in a test tube, then heated it. The water bubbled and the oil dropped to the bottom. As the test tube cooled, a stone began to form. Bagga would gently twirl the tube, trickling cold water down the outside, until we heard the chink of the stone. The crystal was most often white or cream. But pink was the real sign of quality – a promise of the highest high of all, and of a great deal of money.

  Working up West, I’d seen how customers – some customers – would pay to get the best. It wasn’t just the goods that they were buying – it was everything. The way that they were treated. The beautiful surroundings. The quality of all the things they saw and smelled and touched. I saw how the shop assistants rushed to help a person who had serious money to spend. It’s what good customer service looked like.

  This was very different. As I spent time with Bagga, watching how he did his trades, who he dealt with, I grew more and more dissatisfied with how the business worked. He had a couple of dealers he knew well, and a regular party crowd that he would sell to. Even though the customers had money, they did an awful lot of hanging about. And when the dealer did turn up, he’d have an attitude – even though his buyers were putting the cash into his pocket. Awful customer service, I thought to myself.

  I knew why it happened. The business ran on fear. Underneath their bravado, the dealers were afraid. Alone on the road with their product, there was always the chance of being caught by the feds. Then there were opportunists and chancers who might try to rob them. And I noticed the same fear in the party smokers’ eyes as they opened their gleaming front doors in their desirable postcodes to buy from Bagga. No mistake – they liked their taste of danger and excitement. But underneath, these wealthy customers were wondering just who their dealer was. Could they really trust him?

  White is very powerful, I realised. They were risking their beautiful, safe lives – just so they could get it. They wanted it that much.

  One evening, we went round to Annie’s. Annie was a lovely girl, a good friend of Pepper’s, but that night, all I could see was that Annie was a mess. She used to have a job, Pepper said, and keep her place real nice – but not anymore. Now it was a crack house, and anyone could knock her door all hours for a smoke. Her dealer was pretty often round there – he used the place to sell. And I could see he had another reason for visiting.

  ‘Why’s she acting like there’s something going on with her and him?’ I asked Pepper. ‘Everybody knows he has a girlfriend.’

  ‘They have an arrangement.’

  ‘What kind of arrangement?’

  Pepper rolled her eyes. ‘What kind d’you think?’

  ‘For a twenty-pound stone?’ I asked her.

  ‘She’s been smoking, so she’s hardly going to stop him.’

  Now I saw a whole different side to the business. The pipe relaxes you. Your judgement gets clouded. How men are aware of this. They seize the opportunity to violate. A woman might not like it – but she isn’t letting go of the pipe. He’s a predator, and she is easy prey.

  Then, a few weeks later, I went along with Bagga to sell in a crack house down in Peckham. That place was full of scary shit. It was pitch black and stinking, empty fridge, dirty plates in the sink, bins overflowing, chaos everywhere. I did a few more errands like that. Each time, I hated what I saw. Smokers would sit peeping out of their window for hours because they thought the house was being watched. They crawled round on the carpet in a fingertip search for some little crumb of crack that might have fallen from the pipe. I watched a smoker picking at a white woollen sweater – she thought that the pattern might be crystals. Any guy who wanted a blowjob in a place like that could get one – sometimes for a smoke, other times just because.

  Sometimes smokers stole from each other. They’d try any trick at all – hiding splinters of rock under their fingernails just so they could have a little bit more. They were too mashed up to care if they’d eaten, or if their children had. Their messy stinky babies ran around in wet nappies and they didn’t even see. These people were helpless.

  Because cocaine is an ugly drug too. It can cost you every single thing you have – your self-respect, your friends, your family, your life. And you’ll still pay whatever it takes to get more, because you can’t face a day when you don’t have it.

  JULY 1980

  ‘Bagga? Is everything okay?’

  He was standing in his front room, staring out into the street. He was usually a chill kind of guy, but when I said his name, he jumped and looked around.

  ‘Janice!’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘See dat?’

  Bagga pointed out of the window. It was early in the evening. Everything outside was quiet. A man with a briefcase walked briskly along on the opposite pavement. Somewhere I could hear a dog barking.

  ‘See what?’

  ‘Dat pigeon!’

  ‘What pigeon, Bags?’

  ‘DERE!’ he hissed at me. ‘Sittin’ on dat branch!’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I can’t see a pigeon.’

  ‘It’s juss gaan. It did a hide!’

  ‘Did a what?’

  ‘Ah polis, Jan – dem train dem fi watch people!’

  ‘Police pigeon? What are you talking about?’

  Sometimes smokers would realise how crazy they were acting, and nervously laugh at themselves. But Bagga wasn’t laughing. He was deadly serious.

  He’s proper prang, I thought. Outta his tree. Paranoid. Imaginin’ all kinds of nonsense.

  ‘Look, Bagga –’

  ‘Di polis! Dey train dem to watch! Dey got di pigeons watchin’ dis house!’

  ‘I can’t see any pigeons, Bagga, and neither can you.’

  ‘Mi tell you – it’s becos dey hidin’ now!’

  ‘I think they’re just nesting somewhere.’

  ‘No!’ He seemed really annoyed that I didn’t believe him. ‘Trained pigeons, Janice!’

  ‘Man,’ I said, ‘you’ve been blazing. You’re prang. Smoking too much shit.’

  ‘Janice! You need to tek dis seriously!’

  I couldn’t persuade him that south London’s streets weren’t patrolled by teams of specially trained police pigeons. I didn’t like this kind of madness at all. And I had to admit it – the crap was getting harder to ignore.

  A few days later, I lay back in the bath, cigarette in my hand. I let out a long lungful of smoke. The pale blue plume rose, then dwindled in the clouds of warm steam. I wanted to chill out, but I couldn’t. I was asking some very tough questions of myself.

  Las’ night, mi spent seven hundred pounds on the pipe. Yes, mi have money, but that’s an awful lot to puff away. What the fuck mi doin’ with mi life?

  I watched the curls of nothingness winding round the cigarette’s glowing tip.

  Every day I chance my freedom for that money. And here I am, burning it. Risking my future, just for stolen handbags and smoke.

  Even when you sleep, the pipe keeps calling you. ‘You want me,’ it whispers, ‘you want me, you know you want one more.’ It’s an addiction of the mind. It takes all your will to control it.

  Well – it’s not having me. This has gone far enough. I took a long deep breath.

  Nah. From today, no more. I will control yuh, not yuh control me. I’m goin’ to be my own boss. That’s the way it’s goin’ to be.

  ‘Hey, Lamp-post,’ asked Pepper, ‘where’ve you been? I’ve not seen you for ages.’

  I’d been at home, going through a whole lot of stuff in my head. The phone had rung plenty of times, but I’d ignored it. I needed space to think.

  ‘Sorry, Pep. How’s things?’

  I noticed straightaway she seemed distracted and unhappy.

  ‘Not so good. I got problems with Scorch.’

  ‘You’ve not let him move back in?’

  ‘No. Not yet.’

  But I knew that she would. Her husband Scorcher was a bad boy
with a bad reputation. But to Pepper he was just boo – he was sweet, he was funny, he was charming. It was his cheating that drove her insane. When it got too painful, she would tell him to leave. Once he got tired of his latest toy, he came running home. She would always take him back. That was who she was. For the sake of the children, she kept the family together. She was strong. A man like Scorcher knew how to use her strength against her.

  ‘Girl – don’t be a fool.’ I always said it, though I knew she’d never listen. ‘He’s never going to change.’

  ‘I know he isn’t, JanJan.’ My tough, good-humoured Pepper seemed very down. I wanted to distract her from her thoughts.

  ‘So … what if we didn’t need to bother with these men?’ I asked her.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘What if we didn’t need to have these guys around? If we were independent?’

  ‘Oh.’ She gave a wistful little smile. ‘Yeah. I think that would be nice.’

  ‘Well, I’ve got an idea.’

  ‘Okay.’

  I told her what it was, and she stared at me in shock.

  ‘JanJan – have you lost your mind?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t we?’

  ‘It’s dangerous! And anyway – we don’t know what to do!’

  ‘Yeah, we do. I’ve been watching. I’ve made contacts. I’ve been learning how it’s done.’

  She slowly shook her head.

  ‘Jan – you must be crazy. We can’t. Dealing drugs is a game for men.’

  ‘Look,’ I said to her, ‘stop saying that we can’t and just listen for a minute. ’Cos I’m going to tell you how we can. You and me – we should think about the future. This is a bigger game than dipping. This would mean real money. We could change our lives for good – yours and mine, the kids.’