“D-do you know Dwayne?” I asked, my voice scraping against my throat.
“Yes,” she replied. “Yes, I do. He’s a student at my school. Seems to have gotten himself into some trouble. His mother is in a bad way – I’m going over there now. And you are...?”
“A-a friend of his...” My voice faltered and I blinked away the tears that were threatening to fall.
She looked at me sympathetically. “You’re Lorna’s granddaughter Misha, aren’t you? She’s told me so much about you... and Dwayne. You sound like a smart girl, one who’s going places. Dwayne is a lovely boy – bright in so many ways – but... don’t let him come between you and your future. That’s my sincere advice to you, woman to woman.” She smiled sadly and stepped out of the front door.
I didn’t even try to stop the tears this time.
DWAYNE
They took us to Brixton Police Station to book us. The knife that had been turned in ‘by a member of the public’ had Jukkie’s prints all over it.
“You’re going down, sonny,” said the officer in charge, sounding well pleased with himself. “We don’t even need no witnesses now.”
There had been a second set of prints on the knife and, when the police took my fingerprints, they realised that they were mine.
So, not only had I been arrested for the first time but, after years of being careful, I was being charged too.
And it wasn’t grievious bodily harm, like I expected it to be. It was first degree murder.
Lockjaw had died while in hospital.
In the eyes of the law, Marvin ‘Jukkie’ Johnson was a murderer. And I was an accessory.
I almost cried, right there in front of the police officers. Jukkie, on the other hand, just scowled at them all and said, ‘No comment’ to everything they asked. I couldn’t believe he could be so calm. Didn’t he care that he was about to be sent down, possibly for a very long time?
Alone in the cell with him, I could hardly look at him. This was his fault, y’get me. I had no business here. But man didn’t seem to care. He never said sorry or nothing. He was just lying on that filthy prison bed where a thousand murderers, rapists and junkies had been before him, his feet against the wall, spitting some bars about jukking the police.
“Yo, I beg you shut up, man!” I couldn’t stand to hear his voice. I needed time to think, to get my head together. I needed to wash myself, I needed to pray.
“What’s the matter with you, man?” he asked, turning to scowl at me. “You look proper scared, bruv!” And he threw the pillow at me.
I ducked and swore at him, disgusted by the musty smell of the prison pillowcase. “Leave off, man, before I bang you!” He couldn’t fool me – I had seen his face when the 5-0 had him on the floor. But if there was one thing Jukkie could do well, it was put on a front.
Jukkie just smirked and walked over to the little window and began rapping that gangster anthem, Tupac’s ‘Me against the world’. I wanted to smash his face in. Man thought he was some kind of hero!
The officer banged on the door with his baton. “All right, keep it down in there!”
But Jukkie just carried on, daring the officer to do something about it.
I’d had enough. I jumped up and ran at him and, with all my strength, slammed him up against the wall. He struggled, but I kept my arm against his throat.
“I said ‘shut up’!”
He choked and wheezed, trying to move my arm, but I held it there until I could feel that his blood was flowing a little cooler. Then I grabbed him by the collar and threw him crashing against the bed. He looked up at me, all wounded, feeling the side of his mouth, tasting blood.
“What’s up with you, man?” he hissed, his eyes narrow. “You’re acting like a chief! So what if we go jail? So what? ‘Nuff things we can learn in jail, innit? It’s like school for thugs like us. By the time we come out, we’ll be older, harder, smarter and everyone will know our names. We’ll be so well-connected we’ll be ready to go out there and make some real dough, y’get me! We’ll be legends, bruv, trust!”
I looked down at him and shook my head. For the first time, I could honestly say that I pitied Jukkie. I really did.
“Is that what you’re so hyped about, Jukkie? Goin’ jail and coming out a legend? To go back out on road again?”
“Of course, man! What else would I be thinking about? Dem Larkside man know that we don’t mess – I took out their main nigga, in front of everyone, blud! People are gonna be talking about that, Dee, ya dun know!”
I wiped my face with my hand. I was sweating. Jukkie really didn’t get it, did he?
“Jukkie, you killed a man, blud. You took his life. And you’re gonna go jail somewhere mad far like Wales or something where they’ll tell you when to eat, sleep, go to the toilet. How do you know Larkside ain’t gonna send someone to merk you in jail, huh? You’ve got no idea, blud. Prison ain’t no joke ting.”
“But we’ll be together, innit? We’re bredren. You got my back, I got yours. We’re gonna run whatever place they send us cos we’re RDS mans and we roll like that: thugs for life, innit?”
I kept quiet for a minute, thinking about what Jukkie was saying, how he thought this was gonna end. I had to break it to him. I had to tell him the truth, no matter how much it hurt him, no matter how much he cussed me. I had to let him know.
“I ain’t on that no more, Jukkie. Allow the crew, allow the drugs, allow the money, allow the thug life. I’m out.”
“What you sayin’, blud?”
“You heard me, Juks. I’m out for good. I’ve got my Islam to keep me straight, y’get me. And I’ve got my future. I can’t be messing around with this crap no more. It’s time mans wised up.”
Jukkie sneered at me: “I knew you’d gone soft, bro. I just knew it. From when you started seein’ that posh gash and then hangin’ with Tony, I could see you was turnin’ into a punk.”
“It ain’t called goin’ soft, Jukkie, it’s called growin’ up. It’s called wakin’ up. This life ain’t no joke, Jukkie, it’s the real deal. The one chance you get before you’re judged with everyone else. D’you really think that there ain’t nothin’ more to life than this?” I looked around the cell, my face all twist-up. “Than this?”
“But it ain’t forever, man! We’ll be out of here in no time...”
“Jukkie! Don’t you get it? A few years of my life is too long! I don’t want the street life! I want to grow, y’get me, I want to see new things, I want to to be able to hold my head up, be somebody.” My thoughts turned to Brother Malcolm. “I wanna rewrite the script, Jukkie. I want more than this, so much more...” And tears stung my eyes as I thought of Misha and the sight of her face as she watched me being dragged to the police car. My sweetness. True say, for all the sweetness she had given me, I had only given her bitterness in return.
Jukkie stared at me. I had never spoken to him like that before. I know he wanted to sneer, to cuss me out, to make me feel small – but there was no Trigger around to impress, just him and me in a stinking jail cell.
When he finally spoke, he wasn’t high like before. I could even hear fear in his voice when he said, “But you’ll cover for me with the knife, innit? If I say you did it, and you say I did it, they won’t be able to pin either of us down. We’ll both walk free after a few years inside...”
A few years inside? Was he serious? But then I knew that he was serious. This life was all he knew, all he wanted to know. It made me even sadder to say what I knew I had to say.
“I ain’t lyin’ to them, Jukkie.” The cell was suddenly as silent as a morgue. “I’m done with all that. I ain’t takin’ the fall for you.”
MISHA
Of course, Gran told Mum who told Dad who told Leona. They could have had a go – they had every reason to say ‘I told you so’ but, mercifully, they didn’t. They gave me space to grieve and come to terms with what had happened.
Those days after the arrest were days of tears, nightmares and waiting, waiti
ng for some relief. I blamed myself; I pitied myself; I tried to undo the knot of love that I still held in my heart, heavy as a stone. But, try as I might, I couldn’t. I wanted to hate him, I really did. But I just couldn’t. Which made my tears all the more bitter. For what is the use in loving someone you don’t even really know?
Then, one day, out of the blue, Dwayne’s Muslim friend Tony turned up outside my school. I was shocked to see him standing there, a strange figure in his beard and Muslim clothing, standing by the side of the leafy street in Dulwich. I hardly recognised him from that night at the party where I first met Dwayne, all those months ago, when he’d been surrounded by girls, pouring champagne for everyone. He said he needed to talk to me, to explain what had happened at Club Loco.
“I don’t want to hear any more lies,” I said coldly, walking away from him. “I’m done with the lies.”
“Please, Misha, I’ve known Dwayne since he was in nursery school – he’s like a little brother to me. I – I know how he feels about you and I think you deserve to hear the truth, still...”
I stopped walking and listened, my arms crossed over my chest.
“Misha, there are some things you need to know about Dwayne, some things he ain’t told you. He grew up on the streets, like we all did, addicted to the hustle. He was part of my crew, Run Da Streetz, RDS... he had been since he was 11 years old.”
“He was part of a gang?”
“We were all part of a gang, Misha, that’s just how it works where we come from. Everyone is in a crew – or wants to be in one. The crew is your family, your protection, your identity. RDS was Dwayne’s family and I was his big brother.”
“And what exactly did you do with your ‘crew’?”
Tony bowed his head and looked away for a minute. When he spoke, his voice was low. “’Nuff stuff, Misha, stuff you wouldn’t want to know about. Dwayne never wanted you to know. He wanted to keep you away from that side of his life. He knew that you wouldn’t have it...”
“You’re damn right I wouldn’t...” I said through gritted teeth. Cheated. That was how I felt. Betrayed. How come Dwayne had never told me about any of this? But I already knew the answer: if I had known that he was really one of those people, I would never have given him the time of day. Mum had done her job well with me.
“Dwayne will probably kill me for telling you all this – he would have wanted to tell you himself. But I figured you probably wouldn’t give him the chance – unless you knew how much he’s changed because of you...”
“What do you mean, ‘because of me’?”
“He started changing when he met you, Misha. You made him start to see things differently, y’understand? You opened his eyes to how things could be different. He started making an effort with school, for a start. Then, alhamdulillah, he became interested in Islam. To tell you the truth, I always loved Dee – he felt like my real younger brother. To have him taste some of what I experienced when I became Muslim – the peace, the security, the sense of purpose – was like a dream come true.”
I started fidgeting. I didn’t want Tony to think he could start lecturing me on the benefits of Islam – if Islam was so great, why was Dwayne in a jail cell with a prison sentence hanging over him? “So you’re to blame for him becoming Muslim, are you?”
“Misha, I schooled Dwayne in the ways of the streets. How could I not show him the way out that I had found?”
“But why such a drastic move? Why change your religion? Why let this new craze come between us? I was there from the beginning – I would have helped him...” I felt the ache in my heart start to throb and I realised something I had not wanted to admit: I was jealous of Dwayne’s Muslim faith. I saw it as a rival, an obstacle, something I couldn’t share.
“Misha, sometimes man just needs that extra support, that extra guidance. Yeah, true say you showed him a new way to think about life, new goals and that. But how was he supposed to reach them? He never had what you had...” And he looked up at the school gates and beyond them – to the world of privilege and opportunity that I had long taken for granted.
“Anyway, when Dwayne became Muslim, he found an anchor. The deen was what gave him the strength to get clean, to stop rolling with the mans. Well, Jukkie didn’t like that. He blamed you and me for taking Dwayne away from the RDS, away from him. But I want you to know what happened this weekend. You need to know the truth. It all kicked off when Jukkie found out that Lockjaw and his crew had drugged his girlfriend and raped her – and made some mad video and put it out on the Internet.”
I shuddered with revulsion, thinking of my encounter with Jukkie on Dwayne’s estate.
“But it didn’t end there: the Larkside mans came into my yard and roughed up my mum. Jukkie couldn’t take it. He lost his mind, wanted to smash everyone up. He’d stopped listening to me long ago – but Trigger, who took over as head of the RDS, told him how he could pay Lockjaw – Lawrence – back. That’s how he ended up at Club Loco with a knife. He’d intended to do Lockjaw, right there in front of his crew. But once he’d stabbed him, he gave the knife to Dwayne to hold. The poor guy didn’t know what to do – you know how he hates knives, innit. So he dashed the knife after he dropped you at your friend’s house in West London. But someone found it and took it into the police station. Their prints were on it – the rest, you know...”
I took a deep shuddering breath. It all made so much sense. But did I dare believe it?
“He asked you to come and see him at Feltham. What should I tell him?”
I gave Tony the only answer I could. “I don’t know, Tony,” I said. “I just don’t know.”
But the next weekend, I rode the bus to Brixton and took a cab up to Feltham. My insides shrank when I thought about Dwayne in that awful place. Ever since the arrest, I had had nightmares of him in jail, the police beating him, being assaulted by the other inmates. I hoped that they were keeping him with other young offenders. At least that way, he would be safe from the influence of the older prisoners.
DWAYNE
When I saw Misha walk into the visitor’s room, it felt like the first time I had breathed since they took me into custody. She just looked so beautiful to me, it was as if someone had opened the curtains and flung open the window: a breath of fresh air, y’get me. My heart, my mind, my whole body ached to be with her again. But then I saw the pain and confusion in her eyes and stopped myself.
‘Fall back, blud. You know what you have to do.’
I got up to hug her but the officer rapped his baton on the table and barked, “No contact!”
We sat down and, for a while, we didn’t know what to say to each other. There was too much to say, too much that had been left unsaid.
I was the first to speak. “Did Tony come and see you?” I wanted to know.
Misha nodded.
“So you know the full story?” I looked into her eyes for a sign that she believed what Tony had told her, that she forgave me, that she still... that she still cared.
She nodded again. “Are they treating you all right in here, Dee?” she asked, keeping her voice low. “What are the charges?”
I took a deep breath.“Well, you know Lockjaw’s dead, innit. So they’ve got Jukkie up for first degree murder. They wanted to charge me as an accessory but my lawyers are arguing that I’m a minor – and that I don’t have a previous record.”
“So you might get off?”
“Yeah, maybe with a few months in a detention centre or something. Depends on the judge, innit.” I wanted to sound positive, upbeat, but true say, I felt shame. To see my beautiful Misha, my sweetness, in this awful place, because of me, it just broke my heart all over again. All I had ever wanted to do was put a smile on her face. Damn. I’d flopped it. Big time.
I could see that she was trying hard to be brave, not to stare at the other kids in there, with their hoodies and tattooes and hard, hard faces.
‘She’s afraid you’re going to become like them, Dee. That you already are like them...’
I took a deep breath. I had to get it over with before I bottled it completely. “Listen, Misha, I need to tell you something.”
She looked up at me then, as if to say, ‘Tell me something good, Dee, anything to make all this go away.’
“Misha, the first thing I want to say is that I love you, girl. I know I ain’t said it before, not properly, but I have loved you since that first day in Battersea Park. You are the most amazing girl I have ever met in my life, Misha, I swear down. I don’t even know how I ever got lucky enough to be with you....” Tears welled up in my eyes then. I couldn’t even stop them. I swallowed hard. “I know I hurt you, Misha. I know I let you down. And I know I betrayed your trust. And I’m sorry. It breaks my heart to see you in this place. You shouldn’t be here – you deserve better than this. Better than me...”
Tears were falling down her cheeks as I reached out to hold her hand. At that stage, I didn’t even care what the officer said or did. I squeezed her hand, blinking back tears, trying to keep my voice from shaking.
“I’ve thought about this every day since I came here. I’ve prayed on it, five times a day, and in the middle of the night. So I know this is the right thing to do. Misha, baby, I want you to leave this place and forget all about me. ”
For a moment, she just stared at me, totally speechless.
“That’s right, girl,” I whispered. “Just turn around and walk away.”
Then she found her voice. “What are you saying, Dwayne?”
“You deserve the future you’ve always wanted for yourself, Misha. You don’t need a loser like me holdin’ you back. So, even though it’s tearin’ me up inside, I know I have to let you go. I can’t keep goin’ on selfish, y’get me. I have to think about what’s best for you, innit.”
I wiped my eyes and smiled. “Just know that, wherever you go in life, there’s a badman who loves you more than you’ll ever know.” And I busted a few of the lines I had made up, just for her, a lifetime ago in Battersea Park: the lines about the chocolate-fudge-coloured sweetness and the mean left hook.
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