* * *
“Can I walk you to your car?”
* * *
He wanted to talk more, I could sense it. One hour a week was hardly enough to push past all the barriers he had rightfully erected around people like me — people he saw as posh, people who didn’t understand the life he’d been born into on the estate.
* * *
“Do you have more to say to me?”
* * *
“Only about Butcher and what ‘e’s doing to ‘er.”
* * *
“Sure. Tell me.”
* * *
“Promise you won’t make things harder on her?”
* * *
“I’m only obligated to disclose gang related activity as it pertains to you.”
* * *
“Right. But you ‘ave morals innit. If you get all offended, maybe you’ll think about calling someone and make life harder for her.”
* * *
“I promise you, Malik. You can trust me.”
* * *
“Fine. Butcher’s got worse. It’s been harder to deal with, and I don’t know what to do about ‘im.”
* * *
“What’s happening?”
* * *
“He could really kill her, Sierra.”
* * *
I didn’t stop Malik when he called me by my first name. Accepting any bit of relatability those teens could throw my way was the only way I could relate to them. The more comfortable they felt with you, the better. That’s what I’d found out throughout the past five years.
* * *
“What is he doing?”
* * *
“She’s terrified of him. ‘E keeps saying ‘e wants her to convert for ‘im, and ‘e’s more than willing to force her to.”
* * *
“Your sister is Muslim, right?”
* * *
“She converted for the last wasteman, I don’t see why she ought to convert for this one. Butcher’s bare stupid. He doesn’t get it and she’s out of her mind in love with him. She doesn’t care that he’s dangerous. That he’s a gangster. Last weekend, they got into an argument about ‘er scarf and he threatened to send her to Russia on a spaceship. ‘E’s fucked in the head.”
* * *
“Has he hit her?”
* * *
“Not recently. But she’s been behaving. It will start up again, mark my words.”
* * *
“Is he using?”
* * *
“Yes. MDMA, pills, everything ‘e can get ‘is ‘ands on.”
* * *
“He’s meaner when he isn’t using?”
* * *
“’E’s a mean bastard all the time.”
* * *
I walked towards the door of my office with Malik in tow. He held the door open for me, and we poured out into the centre. Hymns spilled out into the youth centre hallway, off-key, as usual. The choir director’s screech followed a particularly horrible note in Amazing Grace.
* * *
“NO, NO, NO! YOU HORRIBLE IDIOTS, WE’VE BEEN OVER THIS!”
* * *
“’E’s got a bee in ‘is bonnet,” Malik muttered with a grin.
* * *
“I’ve got to pick up my things at the locker. You coming?”
* * *
“Sure thing, Miss St James.”
* * *
We walked for a few feet down the hallway before Malik tapped his hand on my shoulder.
* * *
“Miss St James?”
* * *
“Yes, Malik?”
* * *
“You mentioned your brother was involved in the gangs.”
* * *
“I did.”
* * *
“Will you tell me what happened to ‘im?”
* * *
“Will it scare you off joining if I did?”
* * *
“Probably not.”
* * *
“Right. Then I don’t see the point in bringing it up.”
* * *
At my locker, I slipped into my peacoat and changed my short heels into plain, black converse sneakers. Malik held my purse as I dressed.
* * *
“Same time next week, then?”
* * *
“Absolutely.”
* * *
“Good. I’ll talk to Yasmin, then.”
* * *
“Keep in mind, she’s scared, and no matter what he’s done to her, she loves him.”
* * *
“I don’t get it.”
* * *
“Get what?”
* * *
“How can she love a pig like ‘im? ‘E’s done horrible things, and ‘e’s an absolute bastard to ‘er.”
* * *
I shrugged.
* * *
“Human beings aren’t logical creatures. We struggle to defy our conditioning.”
* * *
“That’s all there is to it then? You grow up on the estate, you end up with a roadman?”
* * *
“We all make our own choices, but some of us are more prone to certain choices than others.”
* * *
“You ain’t makin’ any sense, Sierra.”
* * *
“It’s complicated. People are complicated.”
* * *
“Can I ‘elp you with that?”
* * *
I handed Malik my purse, which he slung over his shoulder without a second thought. How could this child be so sweet to me, yet tell stories about the horrors he inflicted on other people, from holding them up at knife point, to selling MDMA at raves, or ganging up on teachers after school to steal money and cellphones. Malik was two people at once: a child who wanted to fit in, and be kind and loved and accepted, and a man on the verge of making horrible decisions that would influence his entire life.
* * *
He stood at a crossroads, and I stood with him with the power to influence his choices. The weight of his decisions kept me up at night. He wasn’t the only teen I counseled at the centre, but he was the most vulnerable — not because he was weak, but because he had a fierce sense of where he had landed in the world and he was braver than most. He was more willing to press a knife to someone’s gut or to jump into fights with fists flying madly.
* * *
Malik held the door to the centre open and the frigid London air blew stiffly through the doors, whipping my wig nearly clean off my head. I wrapped my coat tighter around my waist. The weather in London was always a bit shit this time of year. Chilly October rains left a slick wet coat on the sidewalk. Puddles formed outside the centre, stinking of hot piss and cold mud.
* * *
Malik held my arm as I stepped around a puddle.
* * *
“Where’d you park the ride today?”
* * *
“A few blocks up. Let’s hope the meter didn’t run out.”
* * *
“I’ll sort it if it has,” Malik offered, a smile cracking across his dark, face.
* * *
“You don’t have to, Malik.”
* * *
He pulled his hood up over his head, and for a moment, I saw the Malik from East London, feared by his peers at school and stalked by gang members who saw his terrifying potential.
* * *
“No. I do. I want to thank you, Sierra.”
* * *
“I’m only doing my job.”
* * *
“No. You get it. You may be posh, but you get what it’s like. With Gemma, it’s hard. She’s from the North end. She doesn’t get what it’s like in my ends, you get me?”
* * *
“Gemma tries her best,” I replied, defending my coworker publicly, but in secret agreement with what Malik said.
* * *
He was correct about Gemma. She didn’t get it. I, on the other hand, was raised like Malik. I
understood how he thought the way he did, and I understood why he couldn’t see a way out of the life he’d been raised into, especially without a mother or father to guide him, and with a sister so wrapped up in her own drama that she couldn’t see the pain of the young blood she was responsible for.
* * *
“Gemma’s right peng, but she’s stupid,” Malik continued.
* * *
I stifled a chuckle, and instead chided him for his comment.
* * *
“Malik! She cares — about all of you. She’s only a bit naive.”
* * *
“A bit daft, rather.”
* * *
“Come on you,” I laughed, linking arms with Malik.
* * *
He smiled as we stepped over puddles and braced ourselves against the city cold. Businessmen raced past us, shiny suits and shinier loafers carrying them into their Beemers and Audi cars. They lived in a different London from the one that we lived in. They lived in a London of cocaine, money, riches, and relative ease. Life on an estate like the one where Malik was raised didn’t feel real to them. They lived in the London shocked by Grenfell Tower. We lived in the London where we knew it could happen to any of us, and the city council would hush it all up and cover it up with excuses and blames.
* * *
Two cities, two groups of people. The city’s diversity could feel like a myth.
* * *
As we approached my car, Malik continued to chat me up about Gemma, and the other youth counselors. Effie, the drug counselor had made a fool of herself recently since she’d shown up to a rave where a few of the teens had seen her drunk as a skunk and high off her ass on MDMA. Taking her seriously had become much more difficult after that. Nick, the athletics director, had made himself an enemy of the brotherhood recently, and according to Malik, rumor had it that one of the enforcers showed up at his house and forced him to back off their latest recruit.
* * *
Outside of my office, Malik spoke more freely than he ever had. He kept his walls up around himself, and even as we approached my car, I got the distinct sense that he might never open up to me. No matter how hard I tried to reach him, there would always be a wall between me and him which would lead to him joining the brotherhood. I could lose him the same way I’d lost my own brother. The thought settled in my stomach with unease.
OLLIE COOK
“She’s right fit, mate, look at her.”
* * *
“We’re supposed to be working, Ollie, not ogling the target’s counselor.”
* * *
“I don’t care. Ollie sees something he likes, he can’t keep it to himself.”
* * *
I flicked the orange tip off the end of my cigarette as we watched her from Rupert’s sedan. I hung out the left side of the car, watching her for the third time that week. I should have had my eyes on Malik — the young recruit Sean had me tailing who was supposed to help with Pete’s situation. Malik Berry was of great interest to Sean, and to the higher ups outside the city. I documented his every move, learning his habits for the week and making sure Pete hadn’t been wrong about his potential value to the brotherhood.
* * *
We were a dangerous bunch — the sort of men you never want to meet — and Malik was drawing closer to fitting right in. Butcher — Pete — had his girl’s brother helping him out on small errands, moving weight on the corner and running money from the North end of London all the way up to Wales and Scotland. Malik, had the unfortunate condition of being heavily involved in the movement to stop gang activity in London. He’d been signed up in school and despite his potential, many of us had our concerns, primarily me.
* * *
“‘E’s not a snitch,” Rupert grumbled, taking my cigarette from between my fingers, “Butcher vouched for him. Pete’s words mean something.”
* * *
“When he isn’t fucked in the head,” I countered.
* * *
“Right. I think you just like watching.”
* * *
“Watching what?”
* * *
“Her.”
* * *
She strode arm in arm with Malik. Rupert’s accusation gave me permission to look, which I gladly took.
* * *
“Bollocks,” I mumbled.
* * *
But of course, Rupert was right. I didn’t know her name, but she worked at the youth centre and for the past few days, Malik walked her to her car and I’d caught a good look at her. I stared so hard that I dropped the cigarette. I couldn’t help it. She had an ass like two melons, sitting atop the thickest, most buttery brown legs.
* * *
When my eyes traveled up from her ass and hips, they cinched at her thin waist and flat stomach. Her breasts were two grapefruits, perched and perky in her top. Even with her coat tied up tightly around her waist, she was a bombshell. I could close my eyes and imagine smelling her skin — she’d smell like coconuts and vanilla probably. As Malik spoke to her, his facial expression never deviated from the tough countenance he maintained to survive life on the estate.
* * *
The two of them stopped at a car and I took a long drag from the cigarette.
* * *
“Can’t blame you, bruv,” Rupert mumbled.
* * *
“I could have her if I wanted,” I said.
* * *
“Now you’re just boasting.”
* * *
“I could.”
* * *
“She works at the youth centre, bruv. She wouldn’t look twice at a hench like you.”
* * *
“She wouldn’t be the first good girl I turned out.”
* * *
“Bollocks, Ollie. You talk a big game but at the end of the day, you’re too tough for most women. Especially the sane ones.”
* * *
“Who says she’s sane?”
* * *
“She works at the youth centre. Now focus. We aren’t here to trip over girls, bruv.”
* * *
“Whatever, Rupert.”
* * *
I took another slow drag, but my eyes didn’t leave her for a second. If I could only get her name. Maybe I could get it from Malik. I hated Rupert’s assertion that I couldn’t get her. What did he know about me? Or women, for that matter. I opened the car door and started down the sidewalk.
* * *
“Where are you going, bruv?”
* * *
“Come on!”
* * *
Rupert raced out of the sedan, struggling to catch up with my long stride.
* * *
“They still have a few blocks to go. I want to trail them on foot.”
* * *
“Is this a clever way of trying to talk to her?”
* * *
“I’m not going to talk to her, mate.”
* * *
“You’d better not.”
* * *
We kept about a block behind them. Dressed in black, and moving with deliberate caution, we avoided observation.
* * *
Rupert leaned in as we followed them.
* * *
“You know what, bruv. Get a little closer to her and I see what you mean.”
Out of Bondage Page 23