That Reminds Me

by Derek Owusu

  14

  Outside the eyes of God there are no sins; I learned deceit when I decided to give my life to Christ. Timid, with a voice too weak to reach salvation, I was told to speak up and be heard, bounce my words off the drums of God, played by the young West African boy waiting for citizenship but finding a home in church. My pastor – their ‘Daddy’ – told stories of sex, drugs, his first testimony, matrimony, and, I’m sure, years later, his succumbing to infidelity. Sins are stories given to Anansi to warn children at bedtime; a web of lies filled and taken over by the locust invading from across the sea. What didn’t touch the brink of spiritual abuse was spoken of by gargling deacons as sipping on the devil’s juice. I rested on community centre seats as the horn of judgement bellowed from the throat of our leader. And in feeling no rapture, I knew it was over. I knew as I sat and soothed myself with musical thoughts of consequences played out over inherent value, that purple rain contained no trumpets. I smiled as all heads bowed for the closing prayer, mine containing only a thank you; I stood and turned my back to the pulpit, attentive to the standing of goodness without the worship of crucified statues.

  15

  I took bread out the freezer and heard the front door slamming, a sound then swallowed up by the half-banshee screams of my cousin, who, apparently, had barely survived: his pace had saved him from stumbling to the other side. He wanted something, anything; ‘Where is it?’ he asks, ‘Hurry up and get the ting.’ I put my hand inside the sandwich maker to gauge the heat. I’d been craving, roasting for toast bread and margarine since I woke up, since the smell of weed and soaked socks drying on the radiator took over from the oily stench of cockroaches. I had shaken a small one off my toothbrush and held it under the running tap, only for a few seconds, remembering we’d get billed for that, while my cousin, Ghanaian so not bonded by blood, told whoever was outside to suck their mum, yes, the day had now begun. I took my breakfast into the sitting room but stood to eat, my cousin not even noticing me watching him dig something out of the back garden grass, two of his friends on guard but blocking his path – how long will all this last? I took a bite of toast and felt the melted margarine between my teeth – a passage where the working class meet. My cousin found what he’d been looking for and I turned away, brushing crumbs off my vest, thinking about the Doppler effect, knowing I’d be hearing sirens next.

  Act 1

  The tapping gets louder the closer I get – I turn onto my cousin’s street and the youngest, twelve, is beating magnetic tags against the concrete garden wall. He keeps a rhythm, a steady tempo, not quite 140 bpm but close, while he imagines wearing the Adidas tracksuit grime artists get for free – no one asks how any more, only where – he tells me JD, but he sold all the electronics as soon as he got them. Inside the house there’s another trill but this time it’s the high-pitched excitement in a voice still holding the strain of yesterday’s cacophony, too much discord to be a revolutionary chant. I try to take a seat but no one moves, or looks, the narrative holding them hostage, my cousin carrying on with his story, finally getting the attention he’s always wanted, embellishing each interesting detail with a hand gesture I need to dodge. You could film him and he wouldn’t notice, a face that’s photo ready – ‘Where were you? – I went raving – No after party, though – Police locked it off – I tried to call you – Why, what happened?’

  Act 2

  AMI is the new ting but north man don’t do it, only south man do – I ask my brother what AMI stands for and he tells me he can’t remember.

  Our politician is standing in front of microphones held by pale fingers – he is condemning the young black boys who were building on past aggressions and revolutions, blindly, yes, but an encroaching state not unforeseen. There is a charred bus in the background and a Hasidic Jew walks past but the camera becomes unfocused.

  At the end of a jog, I approach a melee in the street, my brother is bleeding from his brow and screaming for me to back it but I don’t, I talk everyone out of their violence – my brother walks towards the house, still seething. I follow, there’s blood dripping down his cheek, and when we arrive at the house he shuts the door in my face.

  Girls are screaming and boys, black boys, are shouting – an arm shoots in and out of a side car window, like a quick morning effort to remove ice from a windscreen, the blade gleams, and noticing my fear my cousin asks, ‘Have you never stabbed someone before?

  Act 3

  If you lined up TVs tuned to news channels, the flames would blow through the sets. No respite from the pings of broadcasting messages – BlackBerries finally used for the business of organisation – the age of spectacle has no limits, no finish applied to the awards handed out for partaking in the farce of revolution. But we saw the shortlist days afterwards, each face boxed in preparation for the body. Before the skies could rumble like the throttle of a god preparing to speak over what it foresaw as a London pulse starting to slow, I had saved twenty new numbers in my phone, people I recognised in the paper but hardly spoke to, someone had to, although the entire ends would probably see it for themselves soon. The day after the riots, I walked through the streets, wondering where the first bottle was thrown, and had the urge to repeat the action to believe I too had been initiated into history. Dreaming I’d fallen from the mind of Matheson, I carried on walking through the silent district, knowing the roads felt betrayed – dole money not paid so no smoke reached up, as if expelled from the appendix of modern houses, blown from bookie doorways – but the pavement still had ashes to sate its appetite, leftovers from last night’s part piecemeal. Wandering around, I looked for signs of life and imagined the animated street was hiding in the only bus in sight, its black body tattooed by flames not enough to deter my imagination – they’ll take that away too, I thought – and as my memory comes back from these moments, I’m grateful for the words: ‘Where were you?’

  Act 4

  WE ARE THE POLICE. I felt like Orwell, Owen or Olson standing on the sideline and reporting, each update seconds apart, no profession persuading me, capturing everything – every bottle thrown, every car set alight, every female officer toppled by a miscalculated baton swing resulting in opportunistic Nikes attempting to stomp her out. I broadcast to another world, my Twitter feed my Daily Planet, the place to dump news like leftover thoughts. I was on the train home when the announcement of Hackney Downs reminded me of the London ember gaining air, the riots reaching disconnected regions making up the body of the news. I ran down the station stairs focused on the fray, taking backroads and sliding under police tape. But the scene took me back. I was my father in ’85 seeing so many losing their heads. I stood watching videogame-obsessed teens trying to throw Molotovs but only managing Mojitos, a baby screaming above fire licking windows, trencherman flames eating up curtains, and a boy, maybe fourteen, bleeding from his shin because the excitement forced his foot through a glass window that didn’t shatter but broke in half. I put my phone down, the novel I was threading suddenly revealing itself as true crime. I shook off the stupor, joined in with the screams to save the baby and began to help the boy.

  16

  Every evening my brother comes in racing the sun to twilight, I worry he has killed somebody. He says he is friends – boys – with everyone he knows, used to kick ball with them in farm, Clasford’s livestock, when they were younger, so now they’re safe and grown. But as tone-deaf ads were telling me, you need a five-a-side to know your enemy truly. I can’t cover for you, P, I can’t lie if feds knock: a truth hard to swallow when you were expecting comfort food, but I can’t get my hands dirty even if I’m funding you. We’re standing in our living room, our mum pretending to sleep on a sofa recently freed from plastic sheets, so she can move freely without our noticing but as she snores I’m sure she thinks we’ll ignore her closed eyes’ perceptible blink – what does she think? Confronted, my brother pulls the blade – a long reflection on its side that turns Tottenham into the Everglades – from inside his Adidas bottoms, the len
gth of the weapon comfortable next to the branded lines, its handle level with his hips. ‘So now you’re Catcher Freeman?’ He laughs, his wide mouth an invitation to talk him out of his journey. I take the tool from him and give him back his future; twenty-five years for the blade, but for the rest he’ll need to hand me the gun.

  17

  The cut above my brother’s eye is still healing the day he hears the news through his Xbox headset. ‘So he’s dead?’ I ask. ‘Yeah. Stabbed.’ My brother is lying on the mattress in my mum’s room playing FIFA online, gloating over a goal as if his past friendship still remained as his current rivalry, his on-sight relationship. I don’t believe him. ‘P, how do you feel about that? You two used to be friends.’ ‘I can’t pause online games, bro. Talk to me later. But what goes around comes around, innit. Oh my days, man, that should’ve been a goal. See, you’re distracting me.’ I walk out, the final echo of a groan slipping through my door before I close it. They scored again. I lean up against my wall and stare at my curtains. I forgot to draw them this morning and I can see the light trying to push its way in, blocked but unsuccessfully contained by the weak cap of my curtains. I walk over and open them.

  18

  It sounds like an air ambulance descending to lift him to safety, but opening his eyes he sees the wheels of a skateboard stuttering along, dipping into thin gaps in the pavement. The police arrive to watch his watery eyes glitter like an ocean shining off a star, his closing statement, the suspect bleeding to death outside the open-till-late off-licence. Police seal off the road as the shopkeeper walks back into the light of his livelihood, shaking his head like he can tolerate only a few more deaths before he hands the shop over to his son, the son who now changes his clothes and wraps something in his T-shirt.

  A mother does the washing, remembering to turn certain clothes inside out because he hates the effect of fading. She separates the socks and tosses a bio capsule into the washing machine, usually powder into the appliance’s pocket but she’s aware it sometimes leaves chalk-like streaks on his tracksuits. She watches it spin for a while. Then brushes a few fallen leaves with the inside of her foot, like passing them back to the trees, as she puts on her rubber gloves, mixes the liquid with the warm water and begins scrubbing him. He’s a newborn once more, looking up at the face who’s twice kept him alive, bathing him clean, presentable when people come to visit. She’s on her hands and knees telling him about the latest drama in the family. He always listens. And that’s all she needs. For her son to hear her voice and know he’s still her baby.

  19

  The scene: hands hovered waiting for the mic, like pincer index and thumb ready for the draw. The odour is stale, a dull sheen on plaqued teeth has left moisture on the mic, ignored by the MCs anticipating their next hit. From outside, the estate pulses – the surging energy of the set has became the heart of the city – with splintered thinking, one half focused on embellishing their boys 16, 32, 64, long ting, while listening for the next drop, and the other half searching through the mental scattering of lyrics penned on A5 schoolbook pages that will flow well on the beat creeping in. As the next track drops, hands follow suit – it’s not a riddem they can ride and hype to get casual listeners on their side. How many think about the broadcast and how many are just in the moment, oblivious to the structure they’re building – Tetris blocks dropping with each bar, that background jingle a doppelgänger of the instrumental that fills the room. A blooming legend wipes sweat from his face, top to bottom, you can hear the flow, then carries on with his 140 bpm bird-head bop; another young face is looking upwards with eyes rolled back, possession palpable through the epileptic movement of body, mumbling what was written down yesterday evening in front of the eMachine only used for solitaire and Sixteens. The upload to LimeWire is complete before MCs have left the building, some on beef, wondering if that bar was about them, others absconding without paying subs. Some will be back tomorrow, new material, today’s missed drop ethereal, ready to climb the steps and once again become the pacemakers of the capital.

  20

  I spot her on the train. I look up and squint as she rolls her suitcase over my toes – where was auntie behind those glazed marbles? Seventy, I think, with dark rings around her eyes and warts peppering the skin beneath, everlasting weeping, I say to myself. She sits down with an open-mouthed sigh, opposite me but one seat to the left. She’s tired, but instead of leaning back she’s resting her forearm on the top of her case, looking around curiously, but missing me, her eyes slipping over my dark skin. I’ll get off at her stop, take my time behind because I know she’ll take hers, sentimental about every second, a walk every seasoned West African aunt seems to have – almost limping, one foot in a grave no one is willing to dig. She hums ‘Mawon San’, she’s hopeful, taking slow strides into what must be a Sunday. I focus, give myself time to think – I’ll move around to her right before I reach, stop her going anywhere like footsteps in her sleep, the angle paying respect to cultural customs. We stop at the stairs and I step up and gently place my right hand on the handle of her suitcase. ‘Let me help you, auntie,’ I say. ‘Thank you, son,’ she says. I carry her luggage and stand with her on the escalators, watching her rest – Ma, you’re doing your best. I leave her at the barriers, turn back with my own luggage and continue on my way home.

  21

  We sleep in the same bed long after I should have grown into my own. I kneel on the mattress cornering my mum, asking why she sent me away, why she allowed me to be raised by people whose lives were so different from our own, people she didn’t even know. My side of the bed is still tender with my silhouette. My mum reaches over to my indent and tells me not to speak ill of the dead.

  She trusted me to keep her alive, to deify, to render her an immortal that cancer couldn’t metastasise. Thousands of stacked monitors going out one by one, a memory on each and then darkness to close the scene. Most of our loves die lying – dropping out of time, leaving broken promises behind. Mum, I thought you wanted to stay. But instead, when I turn back, I see, you were like me but you did it by smoking twenty a day. Why choose to die? I could have saved you, with my towel safety-pinned around my neck, a Boy Wonder wondering how to defeat the evil smoke monster rising to the ceiling. Lose a memory and you’ve lost a life – so hands stretch into the darkness to bring our living thoughts to the light. Shaking the limbic like a Polaroid until the image is clear, I stare at the face I think I remember, confused as to why you’re not here. If I forgive your absence, then you have to forgive mine, forgive me for not showing up and for struggling to keep you alive. And though we’re not in contact, you’ll always be my mother; we’ll meet again because we never said goodbye.

  22

  Loss is scratching the latex off a calling card and waiting for the delayed ‘Ete sεn’ from a line reaching 4,000 miles into the past – across dictatorships, heads of abrofo beneath the stool, rebellions before the porting of ships. Loss is a reminder, when starved to reheat the assorted meat soup from the day before, that the perpetually hungry cheeks of the deceased clinging to the fridge door will never feel the sting of pepper soup on bitten-down nails, or nervously torn lips. Loss is the profile on the bottle opener as you flip the cap of your malt – the skin pulled tight on a face that never looked up into a colonial sun; it’s the tired eyes looking up from the napkin, vision akin to ɔkra developed through midnight walks from evening cleaning; it’s the keyring that sounds hollow in conflict with pure elements, the key that starts the engine, the body bursting with black and white ntoma, the Nyame Mwu na Mawu symbol prominent, as another funeral journey begins; it’s the sticker on my living room door, the cup from which I drink, within the surface of the corn-beef-stew-stained plate languishing in the sink. In our house, where Twi holds loss within each of its syllables, we sing songs of thanks, remembering what we had.

  23

  Farina and mash whet my appetite for a taste of home, so for a third time I travel to find acceptance. Hostile humidity stri
kes me as I walk down the steps. I’m an exile recovering too late, too out of touch. Bag check(s) because the repatriate cedis are unwanted by every corrupt body in the airport. The drive to the coach station is absorbed by gloom; I alone take in the sights of runners hoping to pace their way into the Premiership, while my mum and auntie, anxious but focused, look for joggers too close to the car. I rise to crowing chickens unaware it’s them who will be betrayed, guided into the garden of our compound where no god will stop the raised blade of Abraham; we call him Paa Kwesi. In the afternoon the sun beats down inspiration for the rhythmic descent of pestle onto mortar. I ask to be taught, beat my best imitation of culture, but a few motions in I’m told to hand back the instrument. I watch the plantain pounded into cassava, both having no choice but to mix, body kiss, a matrimony that will fill us up and welcome me home. My aunt turns the fufu skilfully in time with the beating, Chronos curving, her partner stops to shoot sweat from a finger while she rests, but we’re soon presented with the meal, chicken now in pieces with yellowish fufu floating in the soup – aburofoɔ aduane too, paling in comparison. I snip at the sticky swearing-in and my grandma, watching with a smile, says, ‘Akwaaba!’