Althea relented.
“OK.”
I put her shoes on, pushed her arms through the sleeves of her jacket and took her down to the Pen.
Eventually, the council added two hoops to each end, but at that point it was just a rectangular patch of gravel. We always found things to do. Like playing imaginary hopscotch in between the cracks, where the weeds were growing through the court. Or counting the bars on the fence. The fence was hexagonal, so we used to run from one end to the other, counting the bars on all six sides as quickly as we could.
Sometimes, Mum used to make sandwiches and cut up oranges for us, so we could have a picnic. We liked that. Tennis balls or roller skates were the best things to break the boredom, but they could often end in fights. You just gotta improvise.
That day we had a good play, until my sister called us in on her way back from the shop. She’d got some ginger beer and ice poles. I didn’t particularly want to go in. Neither did Cheenie.
“We have to go now,” I told her, zipping up her jacket.
“No,” she sulked.
“Come on, mummy’s got some ice poles. Better be quick before Auntie Sour gets them first.”
She took my hand and stomped reluctantly up the stairwell, tripping over her shoes as she gazed back at the Pen.
When we got up to the walkway, Althea was fumbling through the blue-and-white striped newsagent bag to find her keys.
“Hold this,” she said, passing me the bag as she started searching her pockets.
I let go of my niece’s hand and reached for the bag.
Cheenie made her break for freedom, and bolted back along the walkway. One of the concrete slabs had been removed, and replaced with some mesh. The council had taken it off during some work, and never got round to putting it back the way it was. I’d got used to the red plastic mesh flapping around the gap.
I chased after her, but seeing me following her just made Cheenie run quicker towards the mesh where she could see the green grass of the courtyard below.
It was a 25ft drop.
For a split second I considered jumping behind her, but realised it was too high. I would die, and probably squash her in the process.
Althea threw herself at the walkway, almost flinging herself over after her.
“Cheenie!”
I can’t remember running down the staircase, but I guess I must have.
The neighbours below had seen something drop past the kitchen window but didn’t think for a second it could have been a child. They rushed out of their house when they heard us screaming.
I don’t know who called the ambulance.
They say you’re not meant to move a casualty like that. The official advice is to put them in recovery position or some shit like that, innit? Fuck that.
I scooped Cheenie up into my arms.
Her eyes were bulging. Her whole head was swollen. She looked like a Martian.
Blood dripped from her nose.
I caused this. The words were running through my mind. I caused this. I caused this. I hated myself.
As we sat outside the double doors of the ward, waiting for news, Althea couldn’t look at me. I tried to hug her, but she flinched. “Don’t touch me,” she spat.
Eventually, Mum stormed in, blabbering some Allah talk and giving us all her quotes from the Qur’an. She’d been praying at the mosque. I couldn’t bear it. I paced up and down the wards, knowing it was all my fault.
She spent weeks in hospital, wired up to the machines and a drip. They told me when she woke up she tried to call my name.
In the end, the doctors said they were happy I’d picked her up. They said it let the blood drain, or some shit like that, so I got praised for that.
Her lightness had counted in her favour. An older, heavier person probably could never have survived the fall.
She had a broken wrist and a fractured skull. But that was it. She would survive.
But it was a dark time. For the first time, I knew what shame felt like. I knew an anger I’d never known before, an anger that made me want to go out and cause harm, against myself, against anyone. I came back from the hospital a different child. I could still see the resentment in Mum and Althea’s eyes. I felt like Cheenie pulled me over the edge with her. Sometimes, I wish she had.
A week later, the music went on again. “Only love will solve your problems.” Over and over again, all through the night.
Tyrone had been my friend from young. He’d moved to another estate down the way, but always came to visit and see his old friends at Roupell Park. His mum was poor, poorer than ours, and his brothers knew some serious characters, but Tyrone was a good kid. He never got into badness.
He was a light-skinned Jamaican boy – we called him red-skinned, which he didn’t like – and he always dressed sharp. He didn’t have lots of new stuff, but the stuff he had, he kept fresh.
His only downfall was that he loved to eat. He was the kind of kid who used to come to your house, go straight to the kitchen, look in your pots, and before you knew it your dinner’s gone.
As usual, he brought his tennis ball, so we went to the Pen, but we soon got bored bouncing it off the wall.
“Alright, shitheads?”
It was Tiefing Timmy. He had two white girls with him. I vaguely recognised one of them.
“You the girl whose baby fell from the block?” she asked.
“Shut your mouf,” said Tyrone. “Ain’t none of your business, innit.”
“Kid fell from there,” she said to her friend behind a conspiratorial hand, pointing to our third floor flat.
“The social should be on to you,” she said.
Was she trying to incite a fight?
“Say that again.”
“C’mon, Sour,” said Tyrone, hearing the alarm bells. He tugged at my sleeve. “Let’s leave it. They ain’t got a clue what they’re talking about.”
The girl with the piercing – a jewel on the left side of her cheek – stepped forward. She wanted a fight.
“I said, say that again.”
She walked closer, and shouted out loud.
“I said, you and your family should have the social on to you.”
She was a little taller than me, but skinnier. I reckoned I could have her.
I barged forward, tugging against Tyrone, who was now trying to hold me back. She laughed.
“Aw,” she said, sarcastically. “Little Sour getting upset?”
She pushed me hard. I pushed her back.
“Whoohoo!” Tiefing Timmy squealed at the prospect of a bitch fight. “Go on yerself, gerls!”
I took a swing, but missed. She did the same and didn’t. I lunged for her face, making a grab for her hair and jewellery. I wanted to rip that stupid piercing from her ignorant face. But she was older, tougher. Unlike me, she had been in fights before.
Before I knew it, Tyrone and Tiefing Timmy were dragging her off of me. There was no doubt about it. She had won that fight. I wasn’t angry. I was blind fury livid.
On the way home, Tyrone seemed disappointed. He was a cool kid, and clever. He never got into fights. He wanted to be an engineer. But he was no pussy. He knew how to handle himself. He knew I could have done better.
“How come you didn’t have her? You can handle yourself.”
He seemed genuinely puzzled. I felt I’d let him down.
“Dunno. She riled me, I guess.”
“She ain’t all that.”
We took the long way home, through the underpass and by the Chinese takeaway. For most of it, we walked in silence.
“You know what, Tyrone?”
“What?”
“You’re right. That shit ain’t going to happen again. I’m going to be well known.”
“Oh yeah?”
He laughed it off.
“For real. That doesn’t happen when you’re a name to be known.”
I remembered something I’d seen on the lyrics of an album: reputation of power IS power.
“I’m going to be serious, Ty. Wait and you’ll see.”
Dick Shits
“Why did you go telling everyone my mum was crazy? I’m gonna fuck you up for what you done, girl!”
I didn’t wait for an answer. I thought Natasha was my friend.
“You make me sick.”
I barged forward and pinned her to her desk in the religious studies classroom, lifting the kitchen knife high in my hot, sweaty palm so everybody in St Martins could see it.
“Sour, stop!”
The others tugged at my uniform and begged me to stop, but I wasn’t listening. What goes on at home was one thing. Broadcasting it here, around school, the only place I could escape, was another. I didn’t care about the consequences or the rules no more. I was angry. And I wanted to hurt that bitch.
Fast forward half an hour and Mrs Edwards, the humourless headteacher with the Margaret Thatcher helmet hair, was telling me what was going to happen. What she was really doing, though she didn’t know it then, was giving me the first big break of my criminal career.
“You are being expelled, Salwa. I’m referring you to Dick Shepherd’s. From now on, you will be attending school there.”
I was destined for Dick Shepherd’s, the rejects’ school all the rest of us knew as Dick Shits.
Phillip Lawrence had just left his post as headmaster of Dick Shits when I arrived. Three years later, he’d be dipped in the chest by some 15-year-old yout as he tried to break up a fight in another playground just eight miles away. Black boys killing their white teachers! That soon woke up the world.
But let me let you into a secret: lawlessness reigned supreme long before then. What happened to that man was a tragedy, no two ways about it. I’m only surprised it didn’t happen sooner.
First off, if I wanted to be respected at Dick Shits I knew I was going to have to step up a gear to thrive and survive. St Martin’s was junior league. This was the Premiership.
My uniform was angelic, my pleats were proper fresh, but I was determined to be demonic.
I wore my new knife in a belt under my blazer. It was made of rabbit skin and had a rabbit’s foot dangling from the belt. I’d bought it from a gypsy boy, and wore it with the kind of pride the other girls wore their Claire’s Accessories.
I wasn’t at Dick Shits to learn. I was there to make money. It was time to become top dog.
I soon found that if you’re loud enough and strong enough, there’s always someone quieter and weaker who wants to follow you. Over time, I recruited several associates willing to take my lead. They were the Two-Tails to my Sonic. Some of them, as a joke, even started calling me “Mum”.
“Y’alright, Mum?” they’d shout at me in the corridor.
“Yes datter, yes son,” I’d reply, with a grin. “How are you?”
“Me alright still, y’naw?”
If any of my sons or daughters got into a little scuffle, I’d know about it.
It helped that a lot of the Somalian kids were tiny. Three foot nothing, some of them. It was easy to pick them up by their ankles and shake them.
Sometimes, a brave friend would try to step in.
“Put him down, what’s wrong wit you? He said he ain’t got no money.”
Lo and behold, the coins would fall from upside-down pockets. I’d leave the two-tails to pick up the change.
The kids soon learned at lunchtime to step aside and let me through. There were plenty boys doing the same. But a girl? That caught their attention.
If a girl got a bit rude to a blood, someone I considered an ally, she’d get slapped about. Spin and turn and kick. Just like the video games. I had no interest in female friends. I liked being one of the boys.
Now, you might think a place like Dick Shits would have a problem with truancy. Perhaps. But the really bad kids, the ones who caught my attention, were the ones who weren’t even meant to be there at all. Dick Shits wasn’t somewhere to learn, it was somewhere to meet, somewhere to talk business.
Doing the register was hilarious, man. You could have a room full of children with only 15 of their names on the list. A teacher could walk into a classroom dotted with grinning, unfamiliar faces.
What were they going to do? Tell them to go home?
Those who did try to eject them soon learned life was easier just letting them stay where they were.
Some had been expelled elsewhere, and didn’t have much else to do. Others just didn’t want to attend their own schools. Ours was like a youth club. A youth club where we were in control.
Yeah, Man Dem came to Dick Shits because it was loose and relaxed.
Better to be here with the rest of your bloods in a lesson, rather than out in the street alone.
Killer P – he used to crack me up, man. Don’t know which school he had ever belonged to. He was an MC. A real talent. He didn’t shank no one or nuttin like that. They called him Killer because of his killer lyrics. He had that Shaggy, Sean Paul ragamuffin style going on.
He liked the class of this poor little Asian lady the best. She taught Social Science. Used to put on documentaries and films and shit, so it was her own fault really. Victim of her own success, innit. Her class was meant to have been around 30. Instead, 40 would turn up. She was slim and frail and her voice barely carried beyond the first cramped row of tables.
Just as she’s got the class under control, having settled in the nerds trying to learn, and soothed the disruptive ones who couldn’t care less, this black boy bursts through the door, singing a cappella.
Gyal dem ah wine anna move mek di man dem take notice,
Gyal look so hot, when she move but she already know diss.
They were his own lyrics. That boy had talent. We jumped up and cheered Killer P as he started MC-ing from the front of the classroom.
“Alright!”
Bloods who knew the lyrics started singing with him, drowning out Miss Deng who looked like she was about to cry. Classmates started to whine on the tables, like they were dutty dancehall girls. I sat back in my seat, enjoying the spectacle.
Gyal shake up your batty let mi see, gyal come over an whine pun mi,
Gyal dem ah call me Killer wid da P, mi just waant pure love and harmony …
The door slammed shut. Miss Deng had gone.
“Miss, come back!” shouted Killer P. “I just spitting out a ragga song.”
For some of the teachers, that woulda been a good day.
There was a maths teacher with dreadlocks. Probably fancied himself as a bit of a Rasta, knew his music, the kind of guy who tolerated no shit, one of the few who tried to keep things in order. We liked him. Poor man. He’d tire himself out chasing bloods down whole corridors. Even he gave up eventually.
As for the unpopular teachers, well, they used to get slapped down. Simple as.
Come November, there would always be fireworks getting let off in the classrooms. When it was snowing, dirty snowballs went off everywhere.
We had a sports field. It needed a sit-down lawnmower, and that lawnmower needed petrol. More than once, I looked out the window and saw youts who’d raided the gardener’s shed, pouring tins of fuel from the top of the hill towards the classrooms, and setting the rivers alight, until the grass was streaked with lines of fire.
Oh my days, that would lead to proper chaos. We were always pleased to see the fire crews appear because it meant we could hit the road.
One time I even saw a moped ridden through the corridors. Yeah, it all used to happen. Every class at Dick Shits was like a scene from Gremlins.
Kept things colourful, that’s for sure. No two days were the same. Assemblies on Friday were always a highlight. One minute you’re sitting there thinking everything’s cool; the next some idiot has gassed both entrances and the emergency exit, and suddenly everyone is stumbling around, choking, with their eyes streaming.
You might ask how they could they get away with it. But you’re not understanding. We had control of the school. Why do you think it’s knocked down
now?
Police officers floated through the corridors. Their presence made little difference to me. I knew there was nothing to fear from them. I’d learned that early, from a shoplifting spree with Yusuf.
We went out licking stuff from Alders, the department store in Croydon, tiefing garmz and slipping chops – necklaces, bracelets, that kind of shit – down our sleeves.
Yusuf got us caught. The police station had beige walls and lino flooring the colour of cream soda. We didn’t feel intimidated or scared. We hung around, got a nice cup of tea, grabbed a sandwich – which was more than was waiting for us at home. The officers were really nice. They showed us the custody suite. It was like another fun day out at The Bill.
They gave us a caution that day. I still remember the nice, white police officer who said he hoped it would be the last time he saw us. “Good luck with your life,” he said, as he showed us out.
And that was it. As we left, I remember smiling. If that’s all the police do to you, I thought, I’ll stop worrying.
Stop and search was a problem for plenty, but not for me. There were always bare complaints from the boys. But girls? Who’d stop and search a girl? More fool the Feds.
“Have you got it today?” they’d ask. Sometimes, I’d answer them, sometimes not. They never asked to see it. The secret was to let them imagine – they’d always imagine the worst.
When you know you’re carrying the power to take someone’s life you don’t need to exert yourself.
I never flashed it. Didn’t need to. I wasn’t crazy in the head, y’know. Let everyone else assume, that was my motto. Only the fools will try to test you.
I knew well the effect of a flash of chrome. When my mum picked one up, I’d seen the way people would run. You got a whole sense of respect carrying a weapon, and I liked it.
Carrying a blade was like having an “access all areas” pass for the V Festival. I jumped the queues, and got the best seats in assembly. All the backstage benefits came flooding in. The two-tails stole to impress me. Others wanted to have me on their side. Resting by my hip underneath my grey school jumper was the knife, and when the situation presented itself I had every intention of using it. Otherwise, what would be the point?
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