Who They Was

by Gabriel Krauze

  The chick opens the door for me. She’s wearing hot pants and a T-shirt, and she has a tattoo of a gun and the postcode N16 on her thigh. The flat is baking, heating turned all the way up. Rex is chopping up work on the table and wrapping it in clingfilm. A documentary called Hitler’s Henchmen is on the TV. He loves documentaries about World War Two. Sometimes when we’re bunning, he’ll start lecturing me about some obscure shit that I’ve never heard, about resistance fighters or German military tactics or suttin. I sit down on the sofa next to him and bill a zoot. After a while I say it – you know I love you brudda but I just couldn’t let you rob Capo. He laughs while he stares at a piece of work on the scales and says I love you too, that’s why you pissed me off yesterday, I was just feeling a way Snoopz, I’m not actually gonna eat him, Capo’s cool. And just like that it’s settled. We bun zoots and watch a documentary about the SS.

  When his sells start calling he says are you rolling? Course brudda. Come then. We get in his whip and he says this brer’s gonna have a good bit of money for me coz his giro dropped last night. You know the dates yeah? I say. Yeah brudda come on, I know when all my shoots’ giros drop, he says. Then he starts blasting Gucci Mane, non-stop trap lyrics, and I lean back in my seat as he drives us to Finsbury Park.

  He parks up on one road outside a dusty white building full of broken windows and torn curtains. A sign over the entrance says Sunny Vale Hotel. We’re going in there Snoopz, just watch how they move coz these are some proper scatty nittys. He takes me into the crackhouse. The nittys gather around him, holding crumpled notes in their hands – I want three light, no make it four – and some of them stare at me. Rex says this is my brother, if anything happens he’ll come back and shoot all of you. I almost laugh, thinking really? Will I? I didn’t know anything about this arrangement but I guess I will. Rex finishes serving the cats and we leave. Where you looking to go? he asks me. I need to be in Cricklewood I say. Gotta help Capo bag up some more cro. I can drop you off in Kilburn if you want, says Rex. Safe brudda.

  Later I’m jamming with Capo in the traphouse in Cricklewood. We’ve just finished chopping up a box into four-and-a-halfs. I’m reading a Daily Mail article on my phone and every few lines I’m like whatdafuck, this is some bullshit. Capo says wagwan? What you reading?

  I’ll tell you what’s wrong with this Capo, with this whole fucking society; it’s the fakeness innit. Blood are you seeing this? Typical white journalists writing bullshit about the roads, which they know nothing about. Nah man, I swear down they chat so much shit and then they get published and people read their lies like it’s legit. But then those same people don’t fucking know that there are ends like South Killy and they don’t believe that man are seeing people get licked down every day, hearing gunshots at night, seeing all sorts of crazy shit. Like see this dickhead, some white, blonde, English woman who writes for the Daily Mail and what does it say here? One woman’s terrifying account of why her middle-class neighbourhood suddenly doesn’t feel so safe any more. So what happens yeah, is this woman’s walking home with her youts near SK and some bullshit pops off. Basically she writes how one gang of youts was chasing some chick from next ends and they’re all throwing bottles and then the bottles are crashing next to the woman and her youts and she’s got her fucking pram n dat so she’s getting all shook and blood, do you know what this bitch writes? She writes, as a journalist, I’d devoted years to infiltrating London’s violent teenage gangs … Infiltrating gangs? Are you fucking mad? You ain’t infiltrating shit. Undercover feds infiltrate gangs, not some fucking white woman from the Daily Mail. Real g’s ain’t never gonna talk to you or tell you anything about their life. At best, all you’ve done is gone to some random estate in London and talked to some wasteman who wants some clout, so he chats some shit to you and you’re like I can turn this into an article. Don’t laugh brudda, this is serious. Like forreal, how did she infiltrate them? Did she pretend she’s a fucking nitty, tryna smoke work or suttin? Did she pretend she’s selling her pussy or suttin? Don’t chat shit innit. Blood are you seeing her picture? Are you seeing this picture of her?

  I hold the phone towards Capo who’s just finished vacuum packing another four-and-a-half. He looks up, sees the picture and shakes his head. Then he stands, opens the window, grabs the Febreze and starts spraying it into the air around us.

  Look at her outside her fucking countryside house, they’re balling bruv, some fucking rich upper-class people blood. Any black yout from the hood they’re gonna be shook of him and think he’s in a gang or whatever. Fuckssake, this is what I can’t stand Capo, this fakeness innit. You get these journalists writing this bullshit about the roads for a paper like the Daily Mail and everyone gets scared, everyone gets shook. And then blood, just to make it even worse, what does she say? Listen to this bullshit: I ran, clutching my terrified children. It was the wrong thing to do of course. I’d drawn attention to my fleeing family and a splinter group gave chase to us calling out get the whiteys. Are you fucking dumb blood?

  Capo laughs, leans back against the sofa and sparks a cigarette.

  Get the whiteys blood? Like you fucking know that no youts on road in London are gonna shout get the whiteys. Maybe they shouted oi rob that white woman innit, but no fucking youts on road are gonna run after a white woman and shout get the whiteys, get the whiteys. Typical Daily Mail racist bullshit, stirring shit up, creating fear, tryna make people shook of black youts, shook of road youts, shook of mandem who wear hoodies and Nike creps, like everyone’s just doing the same cruddy shit you get me, like what is this bullshit? Can you believe it blood? Fucking get over it. Real life, you just bumped into real life innit, it burst the little bubble that you live in and that’s what happens. I fucking hate shit like this you know, it gets me mad.

  Capo says that’s why I don’t read newspapers fam. You should ’low it man, stressing yourself out when everyone knows it’s full of lies.

  But Capz, I’ve even seen this shit in books fam. These journalists, these observers who ain’t from the roads, ain’t spent a day in their lives doing dirt, writing about mandem who do dirt, inventing, imagining, creating all sorts of demons for their readers to believe in. But we know the truth. We know what’s really going on and then you read this bullshit and there are people actually making money from writing these untruths. Imagine.

  Fuckinell, that was a rant and a half, says Capo, you should bun a zoot, and he gives me a bud of amnesia.

  WHO THEY WAS

  I’M BACK AT home with my parents. The flat asleep, darkness drifting softly all around. I’m in the hallway. Breathe out and as I close my mouth, somehow the entire bottom row of my teeth slides over the top row and clamps my jaw shut. The pressure on my top row is immense. I panic because I can’t open my mouth. The bottom row is pressing pressing pressing hard against the top and I know I’m gonna have to move my jaw into its natural position at some point. I give in to the pressure because I can’t take it any more and there’s no other way for me to open my mouth again. My jaw moves back into place and the force and pressure snaps the entire top row of teeth out of my gumline. Loose teeth crumble onto my tongue. I hold them in my mouth. A few are still attached to my gum, but barely. I can feel them move as my tongue slides over them.

  It takes me half a minute of checking each individual tooth in my top row by trying to wobble it with my thumb, for me to realise I’ve had that dream again. Every time it’s the same. Nothing strange happens to make me realise I’m having a dream. No distortion of reality. Every time I feel the loose teeth in my mouth, I realise I’m never gonna have my natural teeth again and it’s a terrible feeling of loss. When I check my teeth after waking up, the relief is so real that it stays with me for most of the morning. I don’t know what the dream means but it’s way more disturbing than any of the violent ones. At least with those, when I wake up I know I’m back in reality. With the broken teeth I just think it’s the morning after I snapped my top row of teeth and I’m full of sadness, wishin
g that I’d never allowed it to happen, before I realise I was dreaming. It’s like the only time that I truly feel regret and the feeling is unbearable.

  I never used to have this dream. Not before all the moves and eats and all the madness. Before finding out that sticking a gun in the belly is mad scary, more scary than sticking it to a man’s head even. Before the moves with the clamping and ripping ice and popping Rollys and Cartiers. Before all the kicking off doors and running up in yards you’d never seen the inside of. Before the outlaw tattoos and the diamond teeth. Before knowing to wash gunshot residue out of your ears with petrol. Before finding out that when someone gets shanked or shot in the belly, you might just smell shit if their intestine’s been punctured. Before learning about true friends and snakes and the two being one and the same. Before knowing that Anyone Can Get It. Before a thick woollen bally for the winter and a thin cotton one for the summer. Before swimming down to the bottom and realising you’ve run out of breath. Before the dreams about broken teeth. Before all that was the first ever move, the first ever eat, the first time.

  I was thirteen, it was half term and I’d gone to see this brer I’d made friends with at private school called Henry. His parents were mad rich, they had one of them big yards in Barnes where we could go upstairs to a room which he called the games room, with a big TV in it and a PlayStation, and we could get forgotten up there and play games all day long. There was a fridge downstairs stocked with cans of Dr Pepper and bottles of Snapple – the drinks fridge he called it, separate from the normal fridge full of food – and I’d never seen anything like that. To me it was some proper MTV Cribs shit where you’d see rappers showing off their kitchens and swimming pools and alladat. I made myself sick from drinking five cans of Dr Pepper back to back and eating a jar full of M&M’s and packets of Monster Munch. Then we ordered Domino’s and I stuffed myself with pizza and didn’t want to go home.

  It was late afternoon when I got back to Royal Oak station. I walked over the rusty green bridge, tagged up with spray paint, and as I crossed the road after the bridge, I saw a group of mandem about my age – six of them – walking towards me. I was only one street away from home. They blocked me as I was about to pass them, they’d all pulled their hoods up and they surrounded me against this wall on the corner of the road and said oi rudeboy, hear what. They pulled out shanks and one of them held his borer to my throat, the point pressing into my neck hard enough that I didn’t want to move in case it cut me and he said you see this blade blood, you see this blade? This is gonna go into your throat if you try lying you get me. I tried to look at the blade without moving my head. They started asking me where you from blood? And when I hesitated they said run your p’s, what you got on you? You got a phone? I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to lie and say I’ve got nothing but I also didn’t want to lie just to protect myself. I thought I don’t wanna get poked up and I choked on my words. I was vexed with myself coz my voice trembled and all I could say was allow me, as they tapped my pockets. I had about £12 which my father had given me because he knew I was going to spend the day with a friend from school and he didn’t want me to feel left out if there was something for us to spend money on. I never got pocket money usually. So they took all the coins out of my pockets and just at that moment a group of primary school children with four teachers walked past. The teachers could see what was going on. The brers never even put their shanks down or tried to hide them. I looked at the teachers as they walked past. I wanted to say help but I thought that when they saw the knife getting held to my throat they’d step in and do something. But they didn’t. They looked at me, then looked away and walked past, fussing over all the little children in fluorescent vests. The brers who were yacking me looked away for a second. I burst to the side and sprinted round the corner. I remember I was wearing white jeans and my legs felt long and thin like sticks that could snap at any second and I jumped over a wall into the front garden of some random house and just crouched in the bushes, heart beating like mad, hating myself for feeling shook, for having been a victim, for not banging that brer in the face.

  When I got home, my father asked if I had any change from the money he’d given me. At first I said that I’d gone out to Pizza Hut and spent it. But later I told him and my mother that I’d just been robbed and had knives held to me and everything. My father clicked his tongue and said nothing and my mother said why didn’t you run away? You must always run away, and that hurt me more than anything. It was the ultimate humiliation. As if they were telling me that I was from a family of victims, a family of people who run away. I realised that no one was gonna tell me how to stand up for myself and I’d have to work it out alone. Maybe it was because they’d come to this country for a better life. But the problem for me was that the only reality I had was this one. So I promised myself that I’d never be a victim ever again, that I’d never just allow someone to take my shit from me, that I’d never run away like a pussy, that I’d never allow anyone to make me feel like nothing, to make me feel frozen like I had no power. I felt that I understood something that no one was ever gonna tell me: that I was alone in this world and no one had my back and if I was ever gonna make it, I better start being ruthless. I better start being coldhearted. I better start rolling with a shank on me every day coz next time I’m gonna stab man up. I better start— I went to my room and then my father called upstairs, dinner will be ready in five minutes. I came downstairs and my mother said have you washed your hands and I said yes, all annoyed with her and when I sat down to eat I felt like we didn’t even know each other properly and I didn’t say anything for the whole meal.

  Then came the first eat. I was fourteen. It was about one in the morning. The flat was asleep and I put on black jeans, a black Nike Athletic hoodie and tiptoed past my parents’ bedroom, listening to the snores and praying to myself that they’d continue. When I got downstairs, I went into the kitchen and got a carving knife out of the drawer next to the sink. I remember the moon coming into the kitchen but it stayed there while I went into the hallway, slipped my trainers on and crept out of the flat. I left the door on the latch, went downstairs and waited outside the entrance to the building. I stuck some takeaway menus that I found in the entrance hall along the doorframe, so that it didn’t close behind me. There was a high wall leading from the door to the street so anyone walking by wouldn’t be able to see the doorstep until they walked right past. I was lurking.

  A couple came past and I jumped out of the shadows with my hood pulled over my head and the kitchen knife pointed at them. Give me your fucking wallet now. The woman screamed and ran into the road and the man shouted help as he followed her. There was another man walking by on the other side of the road. He stopped and shouted you motherfucker and then he crossed into the road where the couple were standing, the woman holding on to the man as if the wind might blow her away, and I stepped back into the shadows, pushed the door open, kicked the Chinese menus out of the doorframe and closed the door. I raced upstairs, shut the flat door, crept into the kitchen, replaced the knife and went back to my room. I opened the window quietly, climbed out onto the balcony and down below I saw two police cars and a bully van parked in the middle of the road, blue lights scattering all over buildings and cars, dancing with shadows. Some feds were standing in the road talking to the couple I’d jumped out on, while others were checking the basements of our building and the buildings next to us.

  The next morning, I got dressed for school, took a smaller kitchen knife than the one I’d grabbed the previous night and went out. But I didn’t turn left to go to the tube station, I turned right and went up the road. As I got to the corner I saw a woman coming towards me. I walked up to her, pulled the knife out of my pocket and put the point to her throat. It was a sunny morning, no one was around and she whispered please no and gave me her phone. I turned around and ran to the tube station, jumped on the train and went to school. It was a private school, I was only there thanks to financial assistance ba
sed on my academic and musical abilities, as well as the sacrifices of my parents, and most of the boys there were from mad rich families so they all had the latest phones. When I got there, one of my friends said oh you finally got a phone yeah?

  I was thirteen when I saw my first stabbing. It was at Stowe Youth Club where I always went after school to MC. We’d just finished a set and these brers from Coldhearted Crew tried to rob the DJ for his records. When he didn’t let off, they shanked him twice in his arse and leg and took his record bag. After the third stabbing I saw there, I stopped getting mad adrenaline rushes whenever it happened and I’d watch the youth workers pulling whoever was getting rushed to safety, leaving bloody smudges all down the floor.

  In the end, I got expelled from the private school for too much fuckery before I even got round to doing my GCSEs. I ended up going to this special college for youts who’d all been expelled or excluded from school. First time I held a gun I hadn’t even turned sixteen. I went to Hyde Park with my boy from the college who brought the strap for me coz I had beef with some next youts and we tested it out in one of those avenues lined with bushes and trees near the Albert Memorial. It wasn’t a little bang like in the movies, but a mighty BAOWww that ripped through the air and made all these birds rush out of the trees into the sky. I had no idea that there were so many birds hidden in there.

  In places like South Killy it starts off with the olders sending you out to get food. I mean food food to eat, not buj n work and all dat. They send you to Harlesden to pick up jerk chicken and rice n peas, taking the piss with you on some sendout ting. But the youngers do it because what else is there to do? It’s all pressures and expectations and the greed to get to the levels that you see the olders on. You can’t escape it either. You come home from school and you walk past it all. And the more anyone tells you to avoid it, the more you’re drawn to it. So the youngers do what the olders tell them and then they start delivering packages and holding a next man’s strap under their bed and they feel important, they feel more than just the average person coz let’s be real, who wants to be an average person? After a while, the olders send you out to go and do shootings and alladat and one day you wake up and decide that since you’ve already put in work for your older, the next time he tells you to go and do suttin for him, you’re gonna say fuck dat. You’ve got the strap, you know how to buss it and on top of that you’re sick of being used by others to do their dirt. And before you know it you’ve changed beyond your own recognition of yourself and you’re ready to beat it off on anyone who tries to treat you like some eedyat lickle yout.