Sour

by Tracey Miller

  Then he hung up. I’d been told to expect to meet anywhere, any time – a café, a nightclub, a designer store. Burberry suited me fine. It sounded like a suitably stylish place to meet up.

  I jumped on the bus that afternoon with a spring in my Reebok’d step. I had a wad of notes in my pocket and I was going shopping. I was going to buy something new.

  I hung around outside for a long time before going in. Didn’t want to be inside too long, else the snotty assistants would start getting suspicious. In the end I timed it just right.

  I was admiring a pair of snakeskin shoes, which were looking lonely on an empty, spotlit shelf when the phone rang. I didn’t need to answer it, because the man who had just made the call was standing a few metres away from me.

  He wore blue dad jeans and a pink Ralph Lauren shirt, with the navy polo player on his pocket. He was pot-bellied and reminded me of Grant Mitchell – exactly the kind of guy, in other words, who could have been Klaire’s husband.

  We walked out together, the cute black girl and the loaded white guy who, worst case scenario, appeared nothing more than escort and client. Yeah, we know the story there.

  I followed him round the back of Regent Street, and hopped into his shiny black Range Rover which was parked in a back street in Mayfair.

  “So, what you after?”

  Some might have been intimidated at that point, but thing is, I’ve always been a demanding girl, yeah. If you don’t ask, you don’t get.

  “It’s gotta be light, fresh, chrome-plated, feminine-looking. Something James Bond would like. Miss Moneypenny shit. Get what I’m saying? And I’d like it to sit well in my palm. Something dainty, yeah?”

  OK, so I might have got a bit carried away.

  There was no flirting. He just smiled.

  “What’s your budget?”

  Now this I had done a bit of research on.

  “£500?”

  “Right. OK, we’ll get back to you,” he said.

  I’d never met a guy of this calibre before. He looked like a businessman on a casual day. I could smell money. Maybe he wasn’t the villain, he just got connections.

  Either way, it was almost like meeting royalty. You just automatically assume these people have got a swimming pool.

  There I was sitting in the back of a shiny Range Rover in a street in Mayfair, with a man who smelled faintly of cigars. I was moving with the big cats. I felt like I’d upgraded. I smiled inside. I was going up in the world.

  I’d seen guns before, of course. Once, Tyrone and I found one discarded in the hedge on the estate. Shit, I remember going to a rave and seeing this guy pull out a Mac-10. It even had a strap so he could carry it around like a tennis bag. And of course there were the young, dumb kids who’d take up the offer from an elder who needed to get rid of one, quick. The idiots thought they’d hit the big time. I used to laugh at them thinking these serious characters suddenly found it in the goodness of their hearts to start giving presents.

  But this was like buying a new car. I was going to be getting a piece of my own.

  I handed over my £500.

  “I’ll be in touch.”

  He waited for me to get out of the car, and drove off, looking like any other swimming-pool-owning, Ranger Rover-driving, tax-avoiding businessman around Mayfair.

  I went home on a high that afternoon, thinking about the order I’d placed, and counting down the days and weeks for my James Bond shit to arrive.

  Man, I thought it would never come. I was like a kid waiting for Santa Claus.

  Way I saw it, I would be a responsible owner. I would not be getting in the devil’s way. I wasn’t going to go out, flashing my cash and making myself bait. I needed it so that, if disrespect did come to me, I would be within my rights to protect myself.

  Defence is the best line of offence, innit?

  Three weeks later the call came, and I was told the Brixton address I needed to collect it from.

  I’d been expecting a box of some sort for my luxury item, packaging, like you’d get with an expensive TV or a fancy necklace. So I was a bit disappointed when this unknown elder just handed it to me as it was. I didn’t want his mucky hands all over my new toy.

  I slipped it into the Head bag I’d brought especially, and couldn’t get home quick enough to inspect it.

  When I did get home, I could hear the music blaring from across the Pen. I walked in the door to find my mum was hysterical.

  “My boy! They took my boy. He no hurt a fly, dat child.”

  “Mum! What are you talking about? What’s happened? Where’s Yusuf?”

  It took some time to get any sense out of her.

  Yusuf had been arrested.

  He had done a steam and he got caught for it. He was still an innocent kid.

  Boydem had him in custody. I hated police. I hated the system. I hated this whole fucking place.

  They could do what they liked to me. I was serious enough to handle it, but my little brother? That was going too far. He was just a kid.

  I stormed straight up to my room, leaving Mum wailing and howling in the living room.

  I laid the bag on the bed, and opened it up. Grant Mitchell had come up with the goods. The piece fit snugly into the palm of my hand. I got used to the weight, and the feel of the chrome against my palm.

  Prison had been fine for me – hell, I’ll tell no lies, I was still missing it. But I knew, for all his bravado and new tattoos, Yusuf was still a sensitive soul. I worried how he would cope. I didn’t think being locked up would be good for him, and my first visit proved me right.

  When he sent his first VO, I didn’t know what to expect.

  Feltham ain’t no East Sutton Park. Feltham was where it all happened, everyone knew that. If you weren’t a gangster when you went in, you sure as hell were when you came out.

  What do they expect? When you keep all the Man Dem from different gangs across London all cooped up in the same hardass units, you’re asking for trouble. Feltham was a big man’s prison for kids. It was known.

  Being a visitor there for an afternoon was more daunting than a month at Her Majesty’s Service in the luxury of ESP.

  Just getting in, you’re searched like you’re a criminal, dogs sniffing you, fingerprints scanned by a machine. The corridors smelled of bleach. This was serious shit. This was not a place for my little brother to be.

  Yusuf appeared behind the glass, and sat down. I wanted to hug him but couldn’t. His eyes were wide and frightened, and flickered around the room. He sat on the edge of his seat, checking over his shoulder and fidgeting.

  “Alright, sis,” he mumbled.

  I felt responsible for him. I wanted to help him, to hug him, to tell him he was going to be OK, but I couldn’t. That hurt.

  They had given him clothes to wear – a burgundy tracksuit – but it was too big, and his skinny frame looked lost. He had lost weight. He seemed lost behind the eyes.

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “Do you need any money?”

  He shrugged.

  “I’ve been writing to you. Just keep looking out for stuff.”

  “Yeah,” he mumbled. “Got ’em. Thanks.”

  “Gonna be OK, Yusuf. Just gotta keep your head down.”

  He told me he’d been on 23-hour bang-up. Didn’t have much choice.

  A year, I thought again. A year is a long time for a child.

  Sitting on the other side of the glass brought back memories of visiting my dad, only this time it felt serious. This time there was someone I actually cared about on the other side. The only person I cared about.

  It felt like only a few minutes had passed when I was being ushered out of the door and through the security checks again. I turned to wave goodbye, but Yusuf was staring at the ground, head hung. He didn’t look up.

  Anger was boiling inside me. I wanted to go out onto the streets and cause some mayhem. I needed to cause trouble in his honour. Back home, Tyrone tried to reassure me. Everything happe
ns for a reason, he said. What kind of fucking reason could there be for keeping a boy in prison for a year?

  God was trying to fuck with me.

  As for Mum, she’d always expected this from me – said a lot that she seemed to sail through my sentence – but Yusuf was her baby. He was the apple of her eye. So it was little surprise that when he was sent down, she broke down.

  When I saw the flashing lights at our door, my first instinct was to turn off my phone. Everyone would have to wait. Mum was being carted off in an ambulance. She’d been walking up and down the street, swinging around her baseball bat, threatening to hit people, and was now struggling with the paramedics, yelling Koranic quotations at the top of her voice.

  Some neighbours stuck their heads out of windows. Others stopped in the street to watch the commotion as Mum was taken away.

  “Salwa!” she yelled from the stretcher. “Call the police! They’re trying to kill me! Get your hands offa me …”

  I went inside, slammed the door behind me and drew the curtains shut.

  So, that was that. Three family members incarcerated. I had my own space and my own money. I would only have myself to worry about.

  I went from room to room, pulling shut all the curtains. I wanted to shut the whole world out.

  “Datter of darkness,” that’s what Mum used to call me when I insisted on lying in my darkened room, wishing I was back in prison. Daughter of darkness, damn-straight. Pack up the sun and shut out the world, that’s what I wanted to do.

  The house was quiet. I missed Yusuf’s music. I went in to his room, pressed play on his stereo and took his favourite Dolce & Gabbana blazer out of his wardrobe and into my room. Biggie’s “Mo Money Mo Problems” reverberated through the empty house. I collapsed on the bed, cuddling Yusuf’s blazer like a blanket, smelling its familiar smell.

  I could still hear my mum’s reaction when she first heard Yusuf had been arrested. Her words rattled in my ears.

  “This is a test from Allah! It’s his will. If you kids had not rejected Islam, none of this woulda happened.”

  I wondered if Yusuf was thinking the same.

  Losing It

  “Think you’re bringing disrespect to my mum’s door? Take one more step, just one.”

  “Wooah, relax, Sour.”

  I was pointing the ting at him. A baby 8mm. It was really nice-looking in my hand. Real feminine. And I was holding it point blank range at this blood’s face, totally prepared to use it face straight, if I had to.

  Tyrone had brought some friends over. Having free run of an empty house meant a lot more traffic through the door. They were sitting on the settee, playing the PlayStation. Some were Youngers, others just kids from the estate.

  He had been telling us about a run in with some boy from Deptford, at one of the nightclubs he used to go to every weekend. There had been an altercation. Or at least, there nearly had been.

  “He tried to offer me out!”

  “Did you go ahead with it?”

  “Hell no! Stimpy knows him. He’s a Ghetto Boy. Proper mental case. I was out with my girl.”

  He and Keziah were now officially a couple. I was glad things were going well, and felt pride in my Cilla Black role in their relationship.

  “We were just there getting a drink. I wasn’t in the mood for no nonsense.”

  “So what did you say?”

  “I pointed at his Gucci loafers, and asked him if he felt a bit overdressed, innit.”

  The settee rugrats laughed. Bouncers came over and threw him out. They said he’d been starting trouble all night.

  Yeah, for Badman and the rest of the Man Dem that would have spelt war. But Tyrone had never been one for an altercation.

  “You were lucky, bruv.”

  He laughed.

  “You’re always gonna have haters,” he said. “Shit!” He threw down his keypad in frustration as his PlayStation character was killed by an opponent’s lucky punch. “You can’t let them get you down.”

  I was only half-listening to his story about the club.

  I’d missed the action the week before. A yout from East had been linked with a Samurai sword. Nearly died. Rumour was a Younger yout from around my way had been involved. The young bucks knew to expect a retaliation.

  East youts had their own grievances, and I understood that. But I hadn’t expected it here. Not on my doorstep.

  I was upstairs when I heard the knock on the door. I didn’t recognise the guy as anyone I knew. As he waited for the door to open, he was shifting his weight from one side to another, with a couple of his crew at his back. I got the vibe he was there for trouble, but there were codes and I wasn’t prepared to argue. He was bringing disrespect to my mum’s front door.

  My welcome was not the kind he had been expecting.

  As soon as they saw that I wasn’t playing, the rest of his crew fell back. I held the ting, steadily, closely, at head height.

  “Take your grievances elsewhere, you hear me? Any of you think you’re going to bring trouble to my mum’s door, I’m going to lay you out.”

  Tyrone, ever the peacemaker, jumped off the settee.

  “Sour, what you doing?! Leave it alone. Blood’s just gonna back off, and we’re all going to calm down, yeah?”

  He put a soothing hand on my shoulder, and nodded to the guy to step back.

  “Just need to pass on a message to your people dem … what happened won’t be taken lightly.”

  Tyrone tried to reason. “We ain’t got nothing to do with last w—”

  I wasn’t in the mood for reasoning. I had a new motto, and it was called “Leave Me the Fuck Alone”.

  “Message received, now back off.”

  “What she’s trying to say is you’ve got the wrong house, yeah? Ain’t no one here who was there.”

  The East youts backed off slowly.

  “Just tell your peeps this ain’t over. Dunno who these kids are running around on some hype.”

  Tyrone nodded and squeezed past me to shut the door. It slammed shut, and he pulled across the chain.

  He looked upset.

  “What the fuck?”

  I had power, but this situation had got my back up. Things had moved on to a different scale, and I was struggling to keep it together. The elders on the estate controlled the drugs and the guns.

  Some girls liked make-up, some liked fashion; being serious, that was my new passion. I was clever about it, though. Wasn’t baiting myself up, showing off when I didn’t need to. I ain’t no Robocop.

  Yeah, burners had wiped out that primary power of knives. Suddenly my collection of flick-knives and kitchen knives and other blades looked childish. I had a higher power.

  Five bills could get you a nice little hand ting; but don’t get it twisted, things also floated by for free. I came across some serious shit. Kinda worries me now the things that can easily fall into young hands.

  Once you’d been vouched for, there was always an ex-marine, traveller or retired bad boy from Essex or Tottenham or wherever, willing to do you a deal.

  I’d heard of too many deals going wrong, of young idiots taking their bricks of hard-stolen cash to the old boys, exchanging it for their new toy only for the old boys to follow them back to their house, robbing the youngers of their new piece and bare more besides.

  Or, worse, you could be buying from the police without even knowing it. That was the biggest gang you want to stay away from: the Feds.

  If someone came to try to take my life, they had to take what they got. There was only one problem: that was meant to make me feel safer, but I’d never felt so on edge.

  I was living in no man’s land. I felt like a soldier with a lost cause. What the cause was, I didn’t know. The road had got my back up alright, and I was tense and anxious. I was losing control.

  The youts waited some time before daring to leave the house that night, in case East youts were waiting to link them.

  Tyrone was the last to leave. He seemed pretty dis
gusted.

  “That was bat-shit crazy stuff back there.”

  “Fuck you, Ty. Man brought disrespect to my door. I’m moving on a different level now. I have to defend my home.”

  Tyrone zipped up his hoodie, shaking his head.

  “You need to sort yourself out. Gonna give you a bit of space to clear your head, yeah. Call me when you’ve cut that shit out.”

  He walked briskly down the stairwell.

  “Don’t bother. I’ll give you all the space you need!”

  I slammed the door shut.

  I knew Tyrone was right. I’d acted crazy and I knew it. For what? For coming to my door? I had been genuinely prepared to switch on that boy, and it scared me. What if he had stepped one more step? What then?

  I was a lone soldier, damn straight. Who was there to help me when I needed it?

  Since the rape, I knew I was on my own. That I could handle. My anger was at something bigger. I’d been dealt a bad hand. Why had I been given a rapist as a dad and a manic depressive as a mum?

  Was I meant to be grateful for some shitty job, stacking shelves, or cleaning toilets, just because I was born into life on the estates? That was demeaning. I knew I was smarter than that, but prison meant it was already too late to get a proper job. I could rule that out, instantly.

  When I thought of the outside world, of GCSEs and sixth form and Tyrone and his engineering, it only made me angrier. I was no longer part of it. I was only 16, and suddenly all those avenues had already been closed off. I’d missed the turnings. There was nothing to do now but thrive and survive.

  Way I saw it, the outside world had done nothing for me. So it shouldn’t ask me for shit. I’d been to Holloway, I’d done the time. There was nothing else left to aspire to.

  Well, not entirely. The phone kept ringing, not with calls from friends. Now it was older heads, trying to recruit me.

  Voices I didn’t recognise would start to introduce themselves. I never knew how they got my number.

  “Come and meet here,” they’d ask. “Come and meet me there.”