Don’t call my cousin again you, said Riaf to Ardan. Kassim followed. He yanked my arm to come with them. I looked back at Ardan rolling over to his side, his head down, embarrassed and hurt. Selvon stood over him, staring through the wire fence at the three of us as we left. I wanted to call back, tell them I’d text them, but how could I? I turned and followed my cousins leading me away.
Behind the gate I made out Irfan sat waiting in the front seat of Riaf’s Civic. I thought about how it was that my brother and I ended up here, with the Muhajiroun as our keepers. I knew that there were darker corners to those memories that had never become illuminated until now. Dots that still remained unconnected. My brother and I, growing up together, seemed to have been protecting ourselves from some darker current. Riaf and these Muhaji thugs represented that weight now. I was being torn away from the road where I had found refuge and was being forced back into the one place that held all the misery in the world. A place next to my brother, at the mercy of others.
SELVON
No one hears what I say to her under the music. She has her pink lipstick on. I tilt my head up and show her my chin. Make her look up at me with them big brown eyes, pushing up her top lip. She’s relaxed around me, acting like a princess though I know better. Her clique are on the side and watching, green. She glances over like she’s watching them watching her. Watching her get chirpsed by me on the court. I move in closer until she feels my breath on her skin.
Excuse me. Where you think them hands going? she says, raising her eyebrows to me, smiling. Her teeth are the only thing that’s busted about her. Bottom set are all jacked up in wrong angles. Only slightly. But enough to make me switch from her lips to her breasts pushed up by her bra. I remember the last time I pressed her and kissed her skin. The last time we were alone I ate her out. This was weeks back after gym session. Her long fingernails scraped my skin, scars I felt for days in the shower. Her pussy was wet. She tasted like plum.
Come here babe. I lean in to her ear. I wait to feel her breath tighten. Make sure my body makes her want it. Make sure I feel her feeling me. Make sure I get past her acting stush, like she’s not on it and make her want me.
I say suttan in her ear and I feel her take in a deep breath as if she has to control herself.
I’m coming up there tonight yuno. I say this as if it ain’t a question. By now my body is across hers and she’s twisting her hips to fit my shape.
Boy, you crazy. Her eyes are full of the same mad scheme as mine. I see her throat swallow. I smile. So does she, and I see her busted teeth.
I hear a shout. We both turn hearing it. I look over and it’s coming from the other side of the cage. I see figures standing, looks like it’s aggro or suttan popping off. Missy moves away from me and I crane my head. All the feeling of her is gone in an instant. Everyone looks over to the side, all holding their chatter. I search the bodies on the far side of the court and see someone on the floor. Been pushed to the ground? I look at the boy there. Who is it there?
Ardan.
Been punched or suttan? I break off from Missy and I move to check it. A crowd is gathering around them lot. Two of them with Yoos, one fat, one skinny. Both wearing red-brown of that mosque. I see Ardan on the ground holding his belly as I reach them.
Oy, what’s goin on? I say and make a hand for Ardan, you all right mate?
He don’t look hurt. Just holding his belly but he don’t look bad.
I look over to Yoos, his face behind one of them mosque olders who’s looking my way now. I watch this other chunky fucker step to me, a black beard and packed gut under his shirt. I watch his fists coil up like he’s baiting me.
Are you deaf blood? This Muslim man says it spitting near me.
Disrespect. He don’t touch me tho, this fool. I look him straight, relaxed like. This donny’s just posing and I tell it to him by not moving, not flinching. Big man like me, what’s he going to do? I kiss my teeth and hold out my arm toward myman on the ground again. I feel a fatty palm against my arm. I look at this hairy dickhead with my face ready, breathing in slow and hollow. Wa-gwan with these Muhaji fuckers. They think it’s nuttan to breeze into our space like this? Ardan is shook. Yusuf trembling behind this other man. Suttan in me brews at them, making me possessive of the Square.
I wait out this man until the other one calls him back. I watch them leave now, taking Yoos with them. I watch them all the way out. They push past Ruben and Dan by the gate, making Dan drop his zoot. They don’t even look back or say nuttan. Just keep walking to their car, fixed with Yoos in step with them. Kiss my teeth.
The rest of the people on the court spread out like they all shook too. Even the lot by the gate. I see Missy and her clique duss out. I’ll link with her later anyway.
You all right bruv? I say to Ardan, and this time he takes my arm. I pull him up. I don’t expect him to be so light and he comes up fast. In my mind I’m thinking he’s too soft, too skinny, and too easy to fuck about with, this man. Always in scrapes he don’t belong, ending up on his arse.
He takes his phone out his pocket, saying it’s broke, saying them Muslims broke his phone or suttan but I don’t listen. I look at him like, no they didn’t. You the one that broke it if anyone, I’m thinking. You the one that let himself get pushed about. Kiss my teeth. Anyway, the game’s done now after all that. I look to get my stuff while he’s chatting about his broken ting. My bottle and bag is by the dogs. Everyone’s off. I turn to Ardan and see him looking at me odd, looking at my chest and then up at me like he wants to bury himself in my shadow. Bredda looks scared.
ARDAN
I open my eyes and I see Selvon reach a hand down to me. I pull myself up. Fuck. They all looking at me to see if I’m crying or suttan, as if I pissed myself or suttan. Fuck them. That cunt was going to wind me tho. I swear he was going to wind me. I watch their feet, them henchmen jackboots, walk out the gate taking Yoos with them. Why they taking Yoos for? I want to shout fuck off away, bring back our mate, that I’ll slap them up and slap their mas. But I don’t say nuttan. No way I’d cry. Not in front of this crowd. My palms go to press my eyes but I stop in case it looks like I’m crying.
You all right bruv? Selvon says to me.
My fingers dust off the dirt. I brush my arse and I feel suttan. My phone. I can feel suttan wrong in my back pocket. My finger slips into it and I feel the hard plastic smashed into pieces in my back pocket. I take out a shard. Then another, and I bring out my phone and the screen is split into three pieces. Suttan like ink all over, screen like trapped blood behind glass.
Oh shit, Selvon says. His eyes looking at me as if to see if I’m crying. I’m not crying tho and I show him so. But I look down at the broken pieces in my hands.
Them pricks broke it man.
What was it, your phone?
My phone blood.
Why you got the phone on you when you’re playing footie for anyway? And did that dickhead punch you or not?
Selvon didn’t see. I glance at the gate but they gone. I stash away the split plastic. Run my palm over my head and put up a front. Make a gesture that tells Selvon to allow it. Fuck it, like. I say suttan and clear my throat. I spit. Fold my arms and make a face like whatever. I feel everyone still staring. I look at Selvon’s chest and breathe out. Allow having to deal with this right now.
My mind goes blank.
Like my rage boils in my blood. I touch the end of my ear as if that’s where the pain is kept. Think about all my recordings on the roof. Recordings I never backed up off my phone. Gone. All my bars smashed to pieces. Gone. Then I go calm suddenly. Like I’m numb. Think of my ma in the darkness. Think of my old nan. I’ll sing for you my young one, she used to say. All I hear is my nan now. Like she’s cupping my ears from the rest of the noise. I hear her sometimes when I’m like this. I hear her speak when I’m pressed. Or when I’m mad with anger, when I can’t do nothing else but hate. That time when I threw them scissors at Jay. When Mr. Wallis shamed me in PE. When Dad left m
e with Mum in a state. She comes to me now, when I’m here on the ground getting laughed at. Know your blood boy. You’re strong. I see her in a memory. Her wrinkled face, skin soft like creased-up tissue. Nan’s dry arm over me, holding me close for a nap. I was bare young. But I remember. Ancient woman with her whiskey and fag lit by the table. Me pretending to sleep while she was speaking long and low as if to herself. I’ll sing for you my boy. Don’t you ever be scared of nothing, you hear me?
Nan keeps me calm. Lets me hurt like, but silent.
I open my eyes again.
Selvon is there now, bold and solid against the sunlight. The noise of Square comes back flooding my ears and I can breathe again.
Blood, can we duss? I say to him.
Selvon knows what I mean when I say it. He nods like, yeah come. I follow him toward Max and my bags. In my mind I make a bar.
Irish heroine
Hear her like a seraphim
Silencing fears for pioneers
Living lives before mine
Everyone is leaving the Square now. Max sits by my feet and I see his big eyes looking up at me. I pick up my bags and I leave with Selvon. I think of Yoos. I’ll catch up with him later, ennet. See if he’s all right. Allow them Muslim man anyway.
NELSON
There is always a spark that begin it. A aimless brawl what spill over, two words overheard what pinch at a man’s pride, a bloody face what not relent, a soldier-boy or some other body for a people to pitch up as a martyr. All the will in the world will not stop the bad tide from forming thereafter. Is like a red sky or a moon-mad cry at night. A thing what pull down a place with it. So the day I seen one of my friends’ head bloodied up, everything what come after it was no shock.
They had carried the body in and lay him on the wood. Get out of the way, man, give him some air. Where is the nurse? Here, take the table—
I see a chest breathing. Breathing hard. Eyes wild and big and blood all over him teeth, collar, and neck. It was Dicky Boy. The crowd shout and yell the name. And I see it was not the usual rab. Dicky was always getting into scraps, but this was not that. Look like he had been attacked by dogs. Dogs let loose by them Teddy boys, that racist mob from around Latimer Road, they said. But Dicky was not dead. The commotion calm when a lady-nurse arrive to tend to him. We moved out the way to give a space to help him. She sponge was dripping with blood and water, I see. And I see Jimbroad holding up poor Shirley, who was trying to hold up she husband’s bleeding head. No tears from she face, just numb to it, even she. We was in Chapman’s drinking bitters when they bring him in. Me, Jimbroad, Claude, Clive, and the rest. It was a flush of anger, not upset when we seen him come. They got Dicky Boy, I thought. They got one of we, that bastard lot.
* * *
A month or two after I seen that KBW sign under the bush, it was like a mad scorn had spread across the Grove. Keep Britain White, Wogs Out!, Blacks Go Home, this sorta graffiti showing up all over the place. It feel to me like a humiliation, how this city can read so rotten. We was all tired of being shame like that. Shame for what? we ask. Every day we come out and see the road what hate we. Clear as day, writ large across a wall, bridge, or a balcony. And after Dicky Boy come in so bloody, it all began to change. All the old and early free-fall, the music jam, flow of beer in the local quarry, dancing on tables in clubhouses, it all got replace by a harsher tone. I remember Shirley especially, she become hard. Hard and spoiling for a fight. She had stop wearing makeup by then. She was at Chapman’s most nights or at brother Clive’s, whose first-floor flat Dicky Boy was stretched out in and recovering. I had come to Shirley at Chapman’s and asked how she feeling.
I feel better when we get the bastards what done it, she would say, you remember that Nelson, when we find them Teddy boys we do it for all of we.
In some terrible way, Dicky Boy getting maul by them Teddy boy dogs, it had bring we all close together. The sight of one of we own brothers with a face torn up, it make we all begin talking about how we must get organize and act. Shirley, Jimbroad, Claude, and Clive, all them veteran Londoners was who we turn to after that. It was they who dictated the anger toward something proper, they who I follow, and believe, without a second thought to the consequence.
The Colored Peoples Association was the key group in the patch. It had been around for many years back, organizing for the well-being of the black migrant in Britain, helping to get a housing and a work and whatnot. After the bad-mind graffiti spread, it was they who start the response to clear it up. So one Saturday we all take a brush and a bucket and we manage how we can. The community come together like that, to show them we unafraid. I scrub off the filth with my own two hands. And I notice sometime that the paint was still wet when I clear it. I remember thinking that the white face what done it could have walked past me anytime. I remember getting so angry at that. And after I had already cleared one sign, the words would show up again the next day on the very same spot. I want smash that wall down Lord, with my bare hand when I see it. Smash the wall down so they have nothing left to write against we. But that was how it was with so many patches knitted up so close together. The bad mind could have been your white neighbor, your employer, your police. Claude use to say, you can never tell a good white from a bad.
I join the Association after that. Jimbroad told me was a good idea. I even get a pin to put on my coat. It have a round blue-gold trim and a crest, say CPA on it, with letters I can feel to touch. Was official then, young Nelson become a proper British black. I was changing, I was getting to be a man among all them other men. Later I remember them singing me happy birthday on the floor of the Chapman’s bar. Dicky Boy was there too with him face in a bandage.
* * *
Sound of breath from who? My son? He has come home at last. I hear a clatter of the front door open downstairs. Home from him running, running. I hear the sound of the keys tossed on table. I hear him take a trainer off, one, two. The rustling of him gym bag, him feet on the stair. I try move my head to follow the sound he make, arching my neck to see the face as he enter. He glance into the room and into the side. Earphones still in him earholes buzzing. He see me, eyes fix and serious as usual. That youthful face what never seem to be in full view. Seem always to be on a way elsewhere. And obsessed with the physical training. A pugilist mind and a broad chest, him. Quietly unbending to nothing, like him father. He take the earphone out and he come near me. He place him hands on my shoulder and blink away the sweat. He smell of the outside, the morning.
He kiss me on the head.
Yes, Dad, he say to me, playing footie and then off to the gym.
Him and him short sentences. Maisie tells me she cannot get two words from the boy most days. I turn my eyes to see him. I try and smile but he does not see it. I watch him walk away and see them muscles in the shoulders and neck. It make a pain in my chest to see him go. Why must I worry about him so? I think of my son and the world he was given. More than anything I want shield him from it. I want call out the boy’s name before he go. But Selvon cannot hear me.
YUSUF
I snatched at the blurred lines of the passing scene outside. Estate gave way to the High Road. I was back in the tight fold for now. I couldn’t think of Ardan and Selvon here and had to leave them behind in Square. Now I was fixed Yoos, unfree Yoos. Yusuf Sammo with his Muslim cousins in a car that smelled of samosas and weed.
Kassim sat beside me in the back seats. Riaf was driving with a cigarette on his lower lip. I was sat behind my brother who was silent in the passenger seat. It was the first time I had seen him wear his kameez since we were children. Riaf turned to look at me.
Oy, what you doing playing kickabout Yoos? Can’t you see all the shit that’s going down outside?
I screwed my face and stared out at the market stalls and cornershops along the short way to August Road. We trailed other cars being routed through a corridor of police ribbon and traffic cones. I watched each car roll past, eyes behind windows scoping out the debris from the
night before. Racist graffiti painted on shutters of shops. A motorcycle passed. A bus. I looked up at the passengers, thinking about the area reflected in their faces. Neasden and its narrow lanes. The cafe by the bus garage. The old shop selling cheap toys for a pound. The refuse center by the off-license with the gate that opened slow, where vans would drive in and pile washing machines and refrigerators into stacks of rusted metal. How it had changed, shifted, and here I was now trying to clock familiar shapes in the murk. This was an area most people wanted to pass through, ennet. A place where the city’s resentment collected, got into the air, the pipes, for those who lived here to live off.
Kassim leaned over to me. His breath was harsh.
Yoos, your mums was worried yuno. Started crying when she called us, seeing your bed empty when she woke up. How comes you never told no one you went football? It’s dangerous out here blood, your marge was getting ideas.
I felt a slow boiling in my stomach. Who were these two to ask me this? As if I had abandoned my brother, made my mother cry. About.
This ain’t the time to do that bruv, said Riaf, just dussing out like that. You got a duty by your fam, get me? Especially now what with your bro’s issues and that.
Riaf’s hand went in the direction of my brother, talking as if he weren’t there. I saw Irfan’s eyes flicker up at me in the rearview mirror. He looked away just as quickly.
You deaf Yoos? came Riaf again.
I heard you, I said, my voice feeling as if it were escaping me.
Yeah, and now you’re going to be rolling up mosque fucking stinking of footie sweat. Imam called you both in to talk, you understand? You need to show some respect bruv.
I looked up once more at my brother in the rearview mirror, his eyes haunted and looking blankly out at the passing world. I sunk back into myself as I watched him and thought about how he had changed.
I remembered the day Abba bought us a family computer. It was supposed to be for Irfan’s studies, ennet, as he was just finishing primary school. I still had two years to go. The battles under the dining table ceased soon after that. I was left alone to my cardboard trophies and invisible wild. Over one summer, Irfan had grown out of being a child. For him, the Internet had become more engrossing than I could ever hope to compete with. Our shared toys and secret worlds, gone, leaving me alone to play Had with the other boys along Estate balconies.
In Our Mad and Furious City Page 8