by V E Rooney
Whatever it was stank, so when I found half of a roll-up left in an ashtray on the side of the couch after Mum and Janice had gone out for the evening, I don’t why I lit it up. I’d tried a ciggie before, you know, the usual childhood experimentation, and the coughing fit that resulted ensured that I didn’t want to try it again, but I knew there was something different about these ciggies.
A few puffs in, I didn’t know what the fuss was all about – it was just like a normal ciggie. After about ten minutes, my vision started going wonky and my head felt like it had been stuck in the washing machine on full spin. Time was slowing down and my stomach began to feel queasy. After fifteen minutes I was paralysed on the couch. My legs suddenly weighed 500 tons and I couldn’t move. I remember this night clearly, ironically, because Coronation Street was on and I hated it and wanted to switch over (at a time when remote controls were not yet the ubiquitous greatest labour-saving device of the 20th century) but I didn’t have the strength to get up to go across to the TV. It was fucking frightening. My heart was pounding and sweat was dripping off me. Why wasn’t I laughing my head off like Mum and Janice did? Maybe my childhood physique just didn’t react to it the way adults did. This impression was reinforced when I threw up all over myself, unable to get my legs to take me to the toilet.
Whatever the reason, I swore there and then never to touch the stuff again. I must have passed out on the couch. The next thing I knew, it was the early hours of the morning. Mum and Janice were standing over me and doing that drunken whispering thing in an attempt to be quiet but which is usually louder than speaking at normal volume.
“Oh fuck, look what she’s been smoking,” I heard Janice whisper to my Mum.
“Why the fuck did you leave a joint on the couch?” hissed Mum.
“Why would I leave a fucking joint on your couch, Clare?”
Mum prodded me gently. “You alright, love? We’re just gonna put you to bed, alright?”
That’s all I remember about that night. In the morning I woke up with a head full of fog, and stumbled to the kitchen where Mum was filling the kettle. To be fair to her, she did look quite shame-faced but she ripped me a new arsehole anyway.
“What have I told you about smoking?”
“Not to.”
“What?”
“Not to smoke.”
“Don’t get smart-arsed with me, you hard-faced little cow.”
“I found it on the couch. It was horrible, I don’t know why you smoke them.”
“Well,” she stuttered at this point, “you shouldn’t be smoking anyway. When you’re sixteen, you can smoke like a factory chimney but until then you keep away from them, do you hear me?”
“Alright. I don’t want to smoke them again anyway, it made me vom.”
“Well, good.”
There was silence as she made two cups of tea. I sat down at the kitchen table.
“So what ciggies are they?”
“Never you mind, alright?” This was a demand, not a request. I knew better than to push the point. We drank our tea. More silence. An occasional glance. “Are you in tonight?” I asked.
“Yeah but tomorrow me and Janice are going to bingo in the townie. Why don’t you go down the video shop and get something to watch with the twins?”
“I’d rather poke my eyes out.”
More silence. Mum got up, having drained the rest of her tea. “Go get washed and dressed, you’re gonna be late for school.”
The following evening, I traipsed next door with Mum to Janice’s flat. They were getting ready to go out and Janice had gone to the video shop and rented Halloween for me. The twins didn’t like horror films and were in their bedroom playing with Sindy and Barbie, so I knew they wouldn’t disturb me.
As I walked into Janice’s flat, she and Mum scurried into the kitchen. More whispering.
“Are you sure?” I heard Janice say.
“Don’t worry about it.”
Janice was extra attentive to me, telling me to help myself to whatever was in the kitchen – crisps, cola, biscuits. “It’s alright love, plenty more where that came from,” she said breezily, as if I was a VIP guest. I plonked myself down in front of the TV with some crisps and tried to block out their excited chatter. “Wonder if there’ll be any fit fellas there tonight,” Janice mused as she applied yet another coat of lipstick in front of the hallway mirror.
“At the fucking bingo? Only if you fancy shagging pensioners,” Mum replied.
The front door slammed and they were gone. After I’d finished watching Jamie Lee Curtis getting chased by the world’s slowest-moving serial killer, I decided to check in on the twins. I poked my head around their bedroom door and they both turned to look at me. I’d obviously interrupted at a critical moment in the interaction between Sindy and Barbie because Lucy and Lauren snarled in unison at me.
“What do you want?” they said. I didn’t bother answering and shut the door.
I’d been in Janice’s flat before but hadn’t had a proper mooch around. It was smarter than ours, thanks to the council, but she had nicer furniture and a bigger telly and a VHS video machine. She didn’t work, but it appeared she was getting money from somewhere other than the dole. I couldn’t think how or where, though. I wondered if she was a prostitute. I knew what prostitutes were because one time I had watched this World in Action documentary on telly with Mum and it was going on about this AIDS thing in America and how people were getting AIDS from prostitutes.
“Mum, what’s a prostitute?” I asked innocently.
“You what?” she spluttered.
“A prostitute?” I said, more slowly this time.
She ummed and ahhed for a bit and then said that they were women who had sex for money. I had noticed that there were often visitors to Janice’s flat, sometimes three or four a day. I’d see them when I came home from school or at night when I’d go to the off-licence for sweets, passing them in the communal stairway. They never went inside though. They either stood at her front door for a few minutes chatting or sometimes they would be crouched down, talking through the letterbox, and then they’d leave, so I didn’t think Janice was a typical prostitute. Not unless she was giving them blow jobs through the letterbox. I remember asking Mum about it.
“Mum, who are all these fellas going to Janice’s? Is she a prostitute?”
Mum burst out laughing. “Oh fuck me, wait until I tell her that one. No, they’re her mates.”
“She’s got a lot of mates.”
So I was in her lounge. The twins were happily ensconced in their room and Mum and Janice wouldn’t be back for hours. Janice’s flat was laid out in an L-shape, same as ours, with the long bit of the L starting with the front door, and then there was the toilet first on the right, then the little bedroom directly opposite on the left, then the next bedroom further on the left, and at the end of the hallway was the lounge. To the right on the small bit of the L was the bathroom and the kitchen to the right of that, with the biggest bedroom facing opposite, adjoining the lounge.
Then I heard a phone ringing, but I couldn’t see one in the lounge. It was coming from Janice’s bedroom. Before Mum and Janice had gone out, they’d said they would ring up to check on us. I thought I had better answer in case it was them. And the twins were making no moves to answer it.
There was nothing special about Janice’s bedroom. Just a bog-standard double bed, with a bedside table and wardrobes. Nothing exciting at all. The phone was on the bedside table. I answered to hear Janice asking if we were OK, I said we were, and then she hung up. As I went to leave, I noticed that on her bedside table were some loose ciggie papers, an ashtray and what looked like a wooden jewellery box. I was about to leave when I got a whiff of that familiar scent. It was coming from the wooden box as it hadn’t been closed properly. I opened it and there was something partially wrapped up in clingfilm. I picked it up, unwrapped it, and sniffed it.
The familiar pungent smell of the rolled-up ball of green stuff told me th
at this was the stuff Janice used to make her special ciggies, or joints as I had heard her call them. I wrapped the stuff up again and put it back in the box and left the bedroom. But for whatever reason, my curiosity was not sated. I paused and looked at the little bedroom near the front door. We kept boxes of junk in ours. What did Janice keep in hers?
I opened the door to the small bedroom slowly in case I disturbed anything. At first I thought my eyes had gone funny and that it wasn’t a bedroom at all. The door swung inward just enough to scrape what was a large swathe of thick polythene sheeting that stretched from one wall to the other. It was clear sheeting, but because it was so thick it was like looking at a wall of Vaseline, and I couldn’t make out what lay beyond it. I looked around and saw a slit in the polythene near one of the walls. I poked my head through and saw that the entire room – walls, floor, ceiling – were covered in the polythene. It was like a plastic bubble. Inside were two small trestle wallpaper tables, but they were covered with these small plant pots, three on each table, with small green plants growing in them. On each table were three small lamps – not normal desk lamps but these glowing orange lamps. At the end of each table was a load of dried leaves, with some already pre-packaged into little cellophane bundles of different sizes. I was in a bubble of heat filled by the stench of the plants, the same stench as the stuff in Janice’s bedroom. I quickly left and closed the door.
I guess you could say I was pretty street-smart at that age, but my knowledge of drugs was poor. I’d heard of heroin and cocaine, thanks to Starsky and Hutch and watching the news with Mum, but I didn’t know what they were, just like I’d heard of marijuana but didn’t know what it was.
I poked my head round the twins’ bedroom door again.
“What?” they said in unison, looking annoyed.
“You know your little bedroom? What’s in it?”
Lucy spoke with a certain air of authority. “Mum says no one’s allowed to go in there.”
“What’s in there though?”
“They’re plants.”
“I can see they’re plants. What kind?”
“They’re special plants from Jamaica. Our dad gives them to mum and she grows them,” said Lucy. With the lucid logic that only children and the naïve can muster, I said: “So why doesn’t she grow them in the back garden?” Lauren rolled her eyes, as if I had uttered something so unbelievably stupid that I didn’t deserve to live.
“They’re special plants. You can’t grow them outside because they need loads of heat, and people might steal them,” she said in a chastising tone.
What was so special about these plants that someone might want to steal them? I had seen a nature documentary with David Attenborough once where he had said something about orchids being prized plants.
“Why? Are they rare or something?” I said.
“No, they cost loads of money,” said Lucy. “Mum grows them and then sells them.”
With that, Lauren gave Lucy a sharp elbow in the ribs, causing Lucy to yelp.
“You’re not supposed to tell anyone!” hissed Lauren.
Sensing that I had stumbled across something I shouldn’t have, and wanting to know more, I said: “I’m not going to tell anyone, honest!”
Lauren scrutinised my face with a scowl.
“Promise?”
“Cross my heart and hope to die, honest,” I implored. This seemed to placate her.
“She grows them and sells them to people, and then when she runs out she gets some more and grows them. They don’t half stink though,” Lucy explained.
“How much does she sell them for?”
“Loads. There’s loads of people who want to buy them and mum gets loads of money for them. That’s why we wear nice clothes and you look like a tramp!” Lauren snorted, with Lucy chuckling.
“Haha. At least my hair doesn’t look like a dead poodle,” I replied.
Of course, this didn’t go down well with the twins and they told me to go away. A few hours later Mum and Janice returned and I trudged back to our flat. I wondered why people would want to buy these plants and how much they sold for. By no means were the twins and Janice rich. They weren’t wearing fur coats and didn’t have a Ferrari parked outside, but they did have more money and they always had money even when the dole ran out. Janice had lent Mum some money a few times to pay the gas or lecky bill. The twins did have nicer clothes than me, nicer shoes, and Janice was never short of cigarettes, rum or the latest albums to be played on the latest hi-fi system. Maybe I could ask Mum to ask Janice if she’d let us grow some of these plants as well - because people paid money to be able to smoke them.
6. HARVESTING
My introduction to dealing was a total fluke. I never did ask Mum about getting some of Janice’s plants, given her reaction to me smoking that first joint. I just left it, figuring that if she wanted to get involved, she would do without any childish encouragement from me.
It was a few weeks after I stumbled on Janice’s indoor greenhouse when one afternoon, I came home from school to an empty flat. Mum was out shopping in town and it looked like Janice and the twins were out as well. I was watching cartoons on the telly when I heard a succession of sharp knocks at Janice’s front door echoing across the stairwell landing. One of her gentleman visitors. When no answer came, another few knocks, this time louder, and then a shout. “Janice!”
Being in an unusually helpful mood, I peered through my letterbox and saw a fella dressed in a tracksuit. He looked like he was late teens or early twenties.
“She’s not in.”
The fella did a sharp turn, looking around as if a ghost had startled him. Then he saw me looking through the letterbox and crouched down to meet my eyes.
“Oh…is she not in, love?”
“Nah, think she’s gone shopping.”
He looked forlornly back at Janice’s front door and back at me. “Do you know when she’s back, love? It’s a bit urgent, you see.”
I don’t know why the urge came over me, but as soon as I remembered the plants, I realised that the spare key Janice had left us in case she ever got locked out might come in useful. I thought I’d be doing her a favour by not letting her miss out on a sale.
“Do you want some stuff for your ciggies?” I asked.
The man stared at me and I could’ve sworn his jaw fell a bit. Here I am, a slip of a girl still in her school uniform and I’m asking this punter if he wants some weed.
“Er, yeah…have you got some, love?”
“Hang on a minute,” I said, as I shut the letterbox flap and went to get the spare key. I opened my front door, shut it quickly, breezed past the still surprised-looking customer and stood at Janice’s front door. I turned to face the punter.
“How much do you want?”
The truth is I didn’t have a fucking clue what the plants or the stuff sold for but I had to charge something or Janice would be pissed off. It’s not like I could give them away for free, and she might get pissed off if she found out she’d missed out on a customer.
The punter gawped at me, incredulous. “Er…an eighth?”
Now, I was good at maths, but I didn’t know what an eighth of these plants was.
“An eighth of what?”
“An eighth of an ounce,” he said in a hushed tone.
“Give me the money and I’ll get you it. You need to stay here.”
Now, on any other day, and with any other punter, how easy would it have been for them to just barge past me and take whatever they wanted? It was fucking stupid, I know. Call it childish bravery or naïveté, but on this day, this punter was so gormless and so shocked at my nonchalance that he complied. He fished out a £20 note and handed it to me. I opened Janice’s door and quickly shut it behind me and went into the small bedroom.
What the fuck was an eighth of an ounce? I could see a few ready-made cellophane bundles so I presumed he wanted one of those. I opened the front door to the punter.
“Here you are,” I said.
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He placed the bundle in his trackie trouser pockets, all the while watching me with this seriously confused look on his gob.
“Cheers, love.”
With that, he strode down the landing stairs, shooting me a seriously confused look through the railings. I shut Janice’s door behind me and went back to mine.
I had just conducted my first drug deal. I was eleven years old.
About an hour later, Mum returned home.
“Can you give this to Janice?” I said, handing Mum the £20 note.
“What’s this, love?”
“One of Janice’s mates came round before.”
Mum now had the same expression on her face that the punter had.
“You mean you…did you…”
I recounted my experience. Mum remained silent for a few moments and then her face contorted with fury. She slapped me across the face and grabbed hold of me.
“You did what?”
“But…I thought she’d want the money,” I implored. Oh fuck. Had I done something wrong? Had I given him too much stuff? Maybe I wasn’t supposed to have told the lad she wasn’t in.
“What the fuck did you do that for? Do you know how much trouble you could’ve gotten into?” she yelled at me.
“But…”
“Do you want the Police round here? Do you want the social to come and take you away? Do you want me to go to jail? Do you?”
It was my turn to be dumbfounded. My halting explanation that I was only trying to help did nothing to assuage her anger.
“You could have gotten us all into big fucking trouble, do you understand? You’re only a fucking kid! What the fuck did you think you were doing?”
“The same thing you and Janice do,” I said, somewhat defiantly.
“YOU’RE A KID!”
I stepped backwards, my cocky answer now feeling like a mistaken act of bravado. Mum went to shout something else but then stopped, and slumped against the hallway wall, looking at me, then wiping her hands down the sides of her face. She took a few deep breaths.