Sour

by Tracey Miller

  It felt like a long time since I’d seen Mum. I didn’t know how to feel or what to say.

  She too craned her neck, and made a long whistle as she took in all the mahogany panelling. She looked like she’d lost weight. Her hair was done and she was wearing a new top I hadn’t seen before. On the front, it had a leopard made out of sequins.

  She gave me a big hug, and held me away at arm’s length to inspect me up and down.

  “You’re thin, how yuh look so marga. Knew dem nah feed you properly.”

  I had missed her chicken and rice.

  She just kept staring at me.

  “You OK? You never phoned, gyal just disappeared. You OK? How you just gaarn a court pun yuh own? Nah seh nuttin to me? Just gaarn like ghost. You shouldn’t do dat. You never tell me nuttin. I’m your mum, Sal!”

  “Yeah, I’m OK.”

  “Ah wah dis?” she said, admiring my new lodgings. “It nah look like weh me goh fi see yuh puppa.”

  No shit.

  I know when she’s going off because she talks fast. I didn’t want her embarrassing me in front of the other inmates, whose families were all behaving nice and quiet. But her pace was normal, not too quick.

  Her eyes were the other giveaway. They’d go glossy and watered over, as if she was forgetting to blink. Again, she seemed fine. She carried on chatting, about the long journey here and the letters from the power companies threatening to cut us off. Best of all, she wasn’t quoting from the Koran. When the Koranic quotations come out, that’s when you know.

  Nah, Mum was OK. I was proud of her for keeping it all together.

  I had put her out of sight, out of mind. I’d wanted to forget about the road. If you keep thinking about the road you’re going back to, that’s when you’re going to get depressed.

  Yusuf wanted to know everything. What was it like? What did I do? Where did I eat?

  I told him about Dr Chris, how he was like a friend who was really caring and helped me any time.

  “We have our lunchtime chats now. He’s from the country. Said he ain’t never heard of Brixton.”

  “No way?”

  “Yeah. Says he’s only been to London a couple times.”

  Yusuf found that even weirder than I did.

  “Yeah, but he’s cool. I really like him.”

  “So, is prison hard?”

  I thought about this before answering. Harder than being on the road? Harder than watching over your shoulder, or facing down threats?

  “Nah. It’s fine once you get used to it.”

  Yusuf nodded, taking it all in.

  “So how long you got left?”

  “Dunno. Got four months and that’s nearly two gone already. Can’t be long.”

  “Sweet.”

  I noticed he seemed jumpier than usual. Excitable. As if he had things he wanted to tell me but couldn’t.

  “So how’s tings? You doing OK?”

  He looked over his shoulder to check how closely the screws were listening.

  “Some serious shit going down,” he said. “Man’s making serious queen’s head.” He made a whistling sound. “Honest, sis, squillah like you wouldn’t believe!”

  As another screw walked past, Yusuf smiled and leaned back on his chair, looking pleased with himself.

  I scowled at him to shut up.

  He saw my expression and clocked that this was not the best place to be discussing his latest business ventures.

  We spent the rest of the visit chatting about home and food, and what I was missing at Roupell Park. Not much, it seemed.

  Maybe I was putting on a brave face. I ain’t gonna tell them the dark thoughts that keep you lying awake at night, wondering what the point of it all was, wishing you’d go to sleep and just never wake up.

  So I smiled and joked and made sure Yusuf knew he didn’t need to worry. They both left on a happy vibe that day, and that’s what I wanted.

  It wasn’t my fear of being inside that I wanted to shield her from. It was my fear of going back on the outside. The longer I stayed in prison, the more I worried about my release.

  Maybe Mum knew it too. Was that why she went away so happy?

  Maybe she thought I was safer in here, too. She could finally keep tabs on me.

  She and Yusuf had brought a reminder of home, a reminder of the life I had to go back to, and it had unsettled me.

  Sure, I felt guilty for having to make my mum travel such a distance, for all that embarrassment I’d caused her when people asked where I was and she had to tell them her daughter was in prison. I’d let her down. I was adding to her illness.

  Fuck the world, I thought. Don’t ask for me for shit. But even then, that was all me, me, me. Seeing Mum and Yusuf walk out of that door made me realise, perhaps for the first time, that my actions have got consequences for other people too.

  Even then, it wasn’t that that was worrying me. My fear was this: as soon as I stepped back out into the world I would be thrown back out into the dragon’s den.

  I’d created a monster, and monster I was going to have to stay. Once you come out of prison, the stakes are higher. My name would be bigger. I would be a sitting target, open to all sorts. I was open to being killed. Open to being hurt by whoever wanted to take a pop and raise their own status.

  My release was surely only a few weeks away, and I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t feeling quite so brave. As bad as I was, I was still only a girl, and there were plenty characters out there who thought girls were easy pickings.

  I steeled myself for release. I felt like a girl condemned. The problem wasn’t that I wasn’t going to get out of prison; it was that I couldn’t stay in.

  Sooner or later, I knew I would be back amongst the wolves.

  On my way back to the dorm, I did some room-hopping, stopping in to pop my head round the door of the married ladies dorm, as I called it.

  “Hi love, come in and shut the door.”

  Sally was a married black lady in her 40s. Real beautiful. I didn’t know her as well as the others, but there was no one else around and I was feeling sociable after seeing my family, so I closed the door behind me and sat down on her bed.

  She spoke about family, and showed me pictures of her husband and two sons. The faces of her toddler and a cute little boy in a brand new school uniform beamed out from framed photographs by her bed.

  She had always been friendly, Sally. Always the first to ask if I needed anything. How naïve.

  “Aw, is that your youngest?” I asked, picking up one of the photographs. She leaned over, kissed the glass with a delicate peck and let her finger linger over the frame.

  “Yes, he’s coming to see me next week.”

  “And this one?”

  “Nate. He’s five. It’s his birthday next week. I miss them, you know. I miss them so much.”

  She looked up at me. She was now sitting quite close.

  “You’ve done your hair?”

  “Well, visitors here, innit. Wanted to –”

  “Looks nice.”

  She reached over and gently tucked a ringlet behind my ear. Something in the way she did it made me feel uncomfortable.

  Slowly, she took the photo frame from my hand, and placed it gently on the bed beside me. I felt tense.

  “So many things I miss …”

  Clasping my hand in hers, she leaned over and tried to kiss me.

  “Whoah!”

  I shot up off of that bed like a girl possessed. Shit, I practically left a Sour-shaped hole in the wall.

  I was freaked out, man. Live and let live and all that, but coming on to a young girl like that? It just ain’t right. That woman was a predator, man. Probably ain’t even her kids. Just cuts pictures out of a magazine and puts them up there to lure people in.

  I rushed back to my room, angry and agitated.

  Got nothing against lesbians, but keep it behind closed doors, you know what I’m saying? And stay away from me. No thank you.

  I’d give the wardens grief
. They were giving us the shitty jobs. Why didn’t they do it themselves? I didn’t come from South London for this!

  I requested a change of duty.

  Dr Chris asked if I liked animals. With the exception of Maverick, Roupell Park had hardly been a menagerie. I said I did, all the same. Anything had to be better than planting cabbage.

  “Then why don’t you go and work on the farm?”

  Now, I’m a city girl. All those cows with their long eyelashes and stupid faces fascinated me. But as soon as I saw all those piglets running around, knowing they were going to be someone’s dinner? No way, man.

  Besides, it stank. And I mean properly stank, in a way I’ve never smelled before. You had to have a strong stomach to muck them out all day, and I just couldn’t take it. I hated it. I didn’t flinch stabbing someone in the thigh, but I wasn’t cut out for helping kill piggies.

  I went back to Dr Chris the next day, having tried to scrub the smell off, even more miserable than before.

  What about the kitchen? he suggested.

  Now you’re talking. I liked food more than I liked animals, and much more than I liked digging mud.

  “OK,” he agreed. “Go downstairs tomorrow at 7am, and introduce yourself.”

  Excellent. You’re on.

  Lesley, who led the kitchen shifts, was blonde, smiley and very, very fat. It was just me and her in our part of the kitchen. She ran me through everything, and gave me my gloves and hair net. Happy days. This beat Wellies and waterproofs, I thought, triumphantly.

  This, my dear, was definitely an upgrade. Maybe they’d let me do some cooking.

  As a kid I’d loved baking. I was a dab hand at the old Victoria sponge. I could make egg custard, biscuits, flapjacks, the lot. There was always someone at the mosque having an event that required cake, so I’d learned a lot from Mum.

  Mum even had a Kenwood blender. A powerful thing too. It was always on the go in our house, and I used to love coming home from school and hearing it buzzing away. The sound always came with the smell of nutmeg and cinnamon, and when she finished mixing she used to let us lick bowls and pour the mixture into heart-shaped baking tins.

  For all her manic-ness, she never burned the food either. She might have been mental, but she was a good cook, my mum. Used to pack lots into the freezer. Corn beef – I knew how to make that. Maybe that would go down well. I made a mental note to suggest it to Dr Chris.

  Our job, explained Lesley, was to clean the pots. OK, I reckoned. Sounds simple enough. I was shocked to see vats bigger than me. And plenty of them.

  This was going to keep me busy. But at least it wasn’t cold, and Lesley was cool. We would chat away while washing the never-ending pile, which never seemed to get any smaller. I soon got into the rhythm of things. Move too slow, I learned, and you’d get a pile-up which would stress you out.

  Once Lesley showed me her scrub and rinse technique, soon I was flying along. I learned how to keep up, and for the first time in my life got a strange satisfaction from working hard.

  I nicknamed Lesley “Miss Piggy” – not to her face, obviously. She was big and blubbery but she was the most pleasant woman in there, and I soon started looking forward to our kitchen shifts, tiefing food together and nibbling on the biscuits.

  After our shifts, we treated ourselves to extra puddings. I’ve never had such good puddings as I had at East Sutton Park. I realised this was probably the happiest I’d ever been.

  After a few shifts together, I waited for the right moment to ask her how long she got. It was always a sensitive subject. Some inmates volunteered it, but others – the long-timers – you knew it was best not to ask. But I was curious about Lesley and she seemed pretty open about everything else.

  The moment came at the end of a particularly tedious shift, once we’d eaten all the food we could, and there was nothing to do but chat.

  “You’ll probably be out soon,” she said, brightly.

  Tell the truth, I knew there was an appeal but I hadn’t given it much thought. I didn’t like to think about it, but she was probably right.

  “How long you got?”

  “10 years,” she shrugged.

  “You serious?! What for?”

  The moment I’d blurted it out, I regretted it. I fidgeted. The same soft, smiling, stupid-looking woman who I’d been chatting happily with all week looked me right in the eye. When she said the word, it was like I saw the devil in her.

  “Murder.”

  I’ll be honest. She freaked me out.

  I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I read something in her eyes that said she enjoyed seeing me squirm. Suddenly, I started imagining a cruelty I hadn’t picked up on before.

  I had felt safe around her, comfortable, you know? She threw me off kilter. How I could get it so wrong, even after all that time on the road, made me anxious. Perhaps it ain’t so easy after all. Suddenly chopping veg lost its appeal.

  I went back to digging up the cabbages in the garden soon after that. Still, on the plus side, at least she didn’t try to kiss me.

  “Get your stuff packed up,” said Dr Chris. “You’re going home.”

  Everyone had looked out for me. The inmates, the screws … I’d been mothered for the first time in my life. There were no fights, no tensions, just camaraderie and support.

  Most liberating of all, there was no need to be aggressive or make my mark. You don’t swagger into HMP Holloway, aged 16, and expect to shake things up. Duppy know who fe frighten.

  Yeah, prison had been a good experience. I could breathe. Exhale and inhale. I didn’t have to play a role or worry about nothing. And I understood for the first time why my dad didn’t want to come out. It’s comfortable when you’re institutionalised. There were no worries about food or gas meters or electricity getting cut off. In prison, it was easy living.

  I had never felt free in life. But inside, in those dorms, it was easy to cope. I could let my guard down and be myself. The only problem was that I’d forgotten who that was.

  Don’t get me wrong, part of me was excited about the prospect of causing a stir, going back on the road as a postcode celebrity. Serving a sentence gave you status. I wanted that feeling of having been missed. I wanted the welcome.

  But the other part? I wanted to stay just where I was. I had time to reflect. Prison, in its own way, had been a blessing from God. It gave me peace and quiet like I’d never had before. No sirens, no functions, no pressure. All my stresses had been put on hold. But now it was time to confront them again.

  So that was me, the tomboy who couldn’t handle the dirt, the brand-name who had heart but couldn’t be kissed and the gangster girl weary of murderers. Yeah, prison had taught me a few things about myself.

  When the day came to leave, I knew I wasn’t the same person as before.

  I left East Sutton Park, if not reborn, then at least refreshed. I collected my see-through bag of stuff and promised Dr Chris one day I would show him Brixton. And I thought of Klaire doing the same, waiting to be picked up in some shiny new car and being driven back to her huge house with its automatic gates and double garages and swimming pool.

  Above all, I left prison having learned my lesson. Petty crime and foolishness gets you nowhere. If you want to make real money, deal drugs.

  Change of Occupation

  I came out of prison a reformed character. I was prepared to work. I was ready for my first job.

  The only problem: nobody told me starting out was such hard work.

  I wasn’t interested in looking up the old faces. Many of them weren’t even there no more. Drex, Badman and Stimpy were still in prison.

  This was a fresh start, of sorts.

  When you’re around so many hotheads, you notice the quiet ones. In the days and weeks following my release, one new face had caught my attention. For the sake of a name, let’s call him Winston. Winston was a much older guy, discreet. I liked that.

  Furthermore, I had eyes. I’d see him on the estate. I watched how
people reacted differently to him.

  He didn’t seem like just another one of the elders. His was a different kind of power. Not the chest-puffing knife-wielding of the brand-names. People seemed to defer to him. They needed him.

  He used to wear a lot of animal skin – some kind of fur – and I knew that wasn’t cheap. I started to watch what he was doing. He would stop and speak to people. He had a handshake. Unless he’s a particularly sociable type, greeting the whole world, he’s up to something. Something about his way, his routine, told me it was something big, something organised.

  I’d look out for him from my window and time my visits to the Pen to make sure he saw me.

  One day, we got chatting.

  I told him, whatever it was he was running here, I wanted in.

  He laughed. “Come on, girl. What makes you think you’re cut out for that?”

  “Don’t mock me, Winston. I mean it. I want in.”

  He said he’d think about it.

  Next time he saw me, he slipped me a mobile phone and some pebbles of brown and white, wrapped up real tight in cling film.

  The phone was so big it was like a Dom Joly brick. With a gold-coloured aerial. I thought he was taking the piss.

  “Don’t fuck up my p’s,” he snarled. I told him his “p’s” – his money – was safe with me.

  “People ain’t loyal,” he warned. “If you don’t pick up that phone every single time it rings and give them what they’ve asked for, you lose money. Correction,” he said, “you lose my money. So what do you do the moment that phone makes a sound?”

  “Pick it up,” I repeated.

  “Then what?”

  “Give them what they asked for.”

  “Correct,” he nodded, satisfied I’d understood the basics of supply and demand, at least for now.

  “Miss a call and those people go elsewhere, me and you gonna have problems. OK?”

  I nodded.

  “Don’t fuck up my line.”

  So, after some gentle persuasion, Winston let me take care of his line. He handed me a plastic bag, which I pressed down deep into the central pocket of my hoodie. If I did well, he said, he’d let me carry on doing my thing from these street corners and stairwells around the estate. Roupell Park would be my patch.