“Oh yeah? There’s a lot of big talk on the road. Wouldn’t go believing it …”
“Not much,” he said, chucking a bumper packet of crisps into the cupboard with venom. “Just told me my girlfriend was a gangster. That she was knife-happy. That she hurt people.”
“Man Dem talk lies, don’t they.”
“Mmm.”
It scared me more when he went quiet. I preferred it when he was shouting. Scream, yell, throw the microwave through the bloody window. Do anything, just don’t be silent.
Truth was, I’d fallen for this boy, and it tormented me. Just when I’d worked out who I was, or at least what I was going to be, and how I was going to do it alone, along came this nice legitimate boy who confused me, until nothing made sense any more.
Being in love is meant to make you feel safe, innit? Being loved is meant to make you happy. So why did I feel so unsure? I couldn’t understand how another person could have me in tears so easily. No one else had that power over me. Only David.
He didn’t need knives and Glocks to hurt me; all he had to do was say the right thing. All he had to do was open his mouth, and say something hurtful, and it felt like the end of the world.
I had heart but I couldn’t fight back when it came to feelings. This boy made me feel the one thing I’d sworn I’d never be: he made me feel vulnerable.
“Jal said that you’d been in Holloway for robbery, and that you stabbed a boy from summer school. Obviously, I told him he’d got it wrong, that my girlfriend was sweet and kind and would never hurt someone like that. I told him it must be a different Sour. But he seemed pretty sure it was the same Sour.”
David was laughing bitterly and shaking his head, punishing himself for being so trusting.
“Then, you know what he said?”
I hated him at that moment. Why was he tormenting me?
“You know what he said? Same thing you said to me, first night we went out. He said, ‘That’s why she’s Sour; opposite of sweet.’”
Tears burned behind my eyes. Something seared my gut like acid, and stole the breath from my lungs. I think it was shame.
“You know how to make a man feel like a fool, don’t you?”
“So what?” I screamed. “You gonna trust some stranger in the street over me? You just think you’re better than me, always have, that’s your problem. He’s not the problem in our relationship, David. Wanna know the problem? You think you’re too good for me.”
“Yeah, well, I’m beginning to think that maybe I am.”
The phone rang. I could see a shadow shuffling by the landing. I ran up to my room, grabbed two boxes of perfume, and slipped outside to exchange them with a pair of sore, chapped hands for £60.
When I came back David was sitting at the table, with his head in his hands.
“If you don’t like it you can fuck off, I’m not bothered.”
I could see a new look in his eyes. He was ashamed of me.
“So that’s it now?” I screamed, voice cracking. “Are you embarrassed to be seen with me?”
The fight had gone out of him.
“No, don’t be stupid. You’re being paranoid.”
“Paranoid? Well, if I’m such a gangster, why shouldn’t you be?”
Truth was there was only one person ashamed of me in that room and it wasn’t him.
“I ain’t wasting my time with some yout who can’t even defend his girl against some stranger in the street. If you’re not interested in me, I’ll go out and get somebody else.”
He looked up sharply. He looked hurt. I was on a roll. I could feel tears rising up but I was fucked if I was going to let him see me cry. That was not an option.
“If you want to fuck off, do it. Fuck off. Who cares? Actually, you know what …” I said, gathering up his coat and his stuff and shoving them into his chest. “Go home and cry to your mum. Get out, before I give your stepdad some injuries to patch up.”
David shook his head in disbelief.
“What a bitch you can be.”
“Damn straight. And you’re a pussy. Man don’t need you in my life.”
He was fuming now. He kicked the chair from the table.
“I’m not scared of you, Sour, if that’s what you’re trying to do. Jal’s right. You’re just a girl at the end of the day. You might think you’re tough on the road, but I ain’t buying it. You’re a fake. I can see right through it.”
I flew at him. Why did he always say those things, the things that hurt me most? He fell back against the kitchen units. I was throwing punches now, I was mad.
David grabbed my wrists and swung me round till I was pressed against the kitchen counter, arms restrained. I bit him on the shoulder and he squealed with pain, releasing one of my arms.
“Get – off – me!”
I reached out for something to grab. My hand connected with the kettle. I slammed it into his face, and lukewarm water spilled onto his chest.
He was stunned. He heaved for breath and staggered backwards, fumbling for his inhaler.
David was having an asthma attack.
He sounded like he was dying. Good, I thought. I slid down the kitchen units, crouching on the floor. I was glad he couldn’t speak. All I wanted was for him to be quiet, to stop saying those words.
When he finally got his breath back, he pushed himself up and walked out that door, calling me all the names under the sun. I leaned over the balcony, watching him go, unsure whether to run after him or scream as loud as I could. Not for the first time, I looked down at the concrete slabs below and thought about pressing my weight over the wall, and just letting myself fall.
I don’t know how long I’d been there when the couple from upstairs appeared at the stairwell. You’d see him in the early mornings, swaggering along the walkways, with a can of lager in his hand. I didn’t see her much. But I could see she was dressed up for a night out – cheap earrings jangled at her jaw, and her hair was pulled into a tight ponytail. They’d been arguing. He was drunk, so was she, staggering behind him in high heels, with make-up smeared across her face.
They hadn’t seen me. Or maybe they had, and didn’t care. “Fucking bastard,” she screamed, halting like a child mid-tantrum, and throwing her bag at him. He spun round, grabbed her by throat and pressed her up against the harled wall. Her legs nearly gave way underneath her, as she stumbled backwards over a bag of rubbish lying by the door.
I knew I should go indoors, ignore it, but I was in no mood to mind my own business – my own business being in the state it was. She was trying to spit on him, through squashed cheeks. He slapped her, spitting back at her, and saying something I couldn’t hear.
“Why don’t you leave her alone?”
He looked around in astonishment.
“I’ll fuck you up and all, you black bitch.”
Now, I ain’t going to tolerate that. Some would say I should never have got involved. Others would hi-five me. But suddenly this ugly bastard had given me the green light. All it took was a little disrespect. He’d obliged. Now I had no choice but to get all Kung-Fu Panda on this fucker.
He was so arrogant, he turned his back on me. Big mistake. I sprinted across the walkway and did a running, flying kick, knocking him off balance.
I’d show him what a black bitch could do.
I must have winded him, or done some damage landing a lucky kick, because now the beer-bellied shit was on his knees on the walkway.
It was his girlfriend who yanked me off, by my hair. The ungrateful bitch. I had come to help her, and now she was protecting her ugly brute of a boyfriend.
“Baby, baby,” she said, dropping to her skanky knees to hug him and wipe the hair from his face. She looked up at me through tearful, panda eyes.
“Leave us alone,” she spat.
Fine, have it your way. I disappeared, locking the door behind me, and slumped back down on the chair in the kitchen. I didn’t have the energy to pick the kettle up off the floor, or clear away the chaos from ou
r fight.
I looked at my reflection in the microwave door.
I didn’t know the animal I had become.
No Such Thing as Justice
Yusuf smiled broadly and gave me a big hug.
“Salaam Alaikum, sis.”
He looked good. Gone were his tracksuits, designer gear and the bum fluff on his upper lip; in its place was a handsome young man, dressed all in white. It was almost like an angel had appeared.
He chatted away happily on the journey home. I told him about college, or at least what I imagined college life would be like if I turned up more often.
I’d only ever known boys to come out of Feltham meaner, harder, tougher. If they had a fraught relationship with authority before, Feltham tended to turn it into pure hatred.
But Yusuf surprised me. He gave me hope.
He told me about the whole wad of certificates he’d gained inside; one of them was in repairing white goods – air conditioning, tumble dryers, that sort of thing. He was going to become a repair man. He didn’t even speak slang no more. He was like a whole new person. I was so proud of him. It was almost like I was picking up my older brother, not my younger one.
“I’m not going on the road no more,” he said. “No more buses neither. I’m going to take my driving test and buy myself a car. Saleem said a cousin of his could sort me out with something cheap.”
“Have I picked up the right brother?” I joked.
“Honest, Sour. I sorted my head out in there. Met some people who really changed my view of things. I’m going to work. I want to find a job, a wife, earn money to look after her. It’s Allah’s will.”
Wow, I couldn’t believe it. I really looked up to him. You could clearly see he had found peace within himself. That aura, sense of being, you were drawn to it.
Truth be told, I was jealous. You know that calmness, that serenity that sometimes oozes out of people? “Emanate”. That’s the word, innit? I wanted some of that.
While doing deals kept my money rolling in, and David kept my emotions in a constant state of flux, Yusuf kept to his word. He led a quiet, faithful life, going to the mosque every day, and getting an apprenticeship.
He no longer went to the same Brixton mosque where we’d struggled to learn Arabic as kids. Now, he went north, all the way to Regent’s Park and Finsbury, where they provided free dinners to encourage the faithful to trek that little bit further.
His new imam even set about introducing him to a nice girl from a good home, and just a few weeks later he married her, just like he said he would.
He soon moved out, and once again I had the house to myself.
David and I were back into our cycle of fighting and making up. I’d come back from his house late. The flat was cold, and quiet, with a flickering light in the front room that I’d forgotten to fix. I switched it off, and went to investigate what food was left in the fridge. Unimpressed, I shut the fridge door, and opened a packet of crisps and can of coke instead.
I must have fallen asleep on the settee, because that’s where I was lying down when the phone rang. It was around 6am. I was about to hang up when I recognised the number. Keziah.
I pushed myself upright.
“Hello?”
I didn’t immediately recognise Keziah’s voice. It sounded high-pitched and fragile.
“Sour?”
“Yeah? What’s gwarning?”
“It’s Tyrone,” she sobbed. She kept on repeating his name, unable to get her words out.
“What? What is it?”
“He’s dead.”
It didn’t compute.
“Kez, stop playing tricks, man. It’s too early in the morning for this shit!”
I could hear her crying more clearly.
“He didn’t do nothing, Sour. He didn’t do nothing …”
She was speaking rubbish. She had to be.
But the sobs on the end of the line, they were real.
She told me how they’d been out in a club in the West End, celebrating their engagement.
“It was mistaken identity. Some hothead youts thought he was a rival. Everything was going cool. He said he was going to the bar to get us some drinks whilst I went to powder my nose. You know how we get down gyal?
“All I heard was mayhem and screams and all sorts. I went running back looking for him, and then I saw him …” She started sobbing again. “He was just lying there, on the floor …”
It was a night I should have attended too, but Tyrone was still angry at me and I was in no mood to be lectured about my lack of hospitality that night.
All I could say was: “But he doesn’t even pack a shank.”
As if only those who deserved it were the ones who got hurt. That had been the law of my life – until then. That was the code of the road. Innocent people didn’t get hurt. It wasn’t meant to work like that.
“He doesn’t pack a shank.”
I felt sick. I imagined Tyrone having a shower, splashing on his aftershave, putting on one of his fresh shirts, not thinking for a second he wouldn’t be returning home.
“Where are you now?”
“Back in Brixton. I’ve just left the police station. His mum was there, Sour. You should have heard her when they told her …”
It wasn’t the reality of death that hit me. It was the surge of love I had for that boy. I didn’t have love left for many people. Tyrone was my only true friend. Tyrone was one of the good boys.
When Man Dem died, faces you knew from the road, there was often anger, emptiness sometimes, but never love. Not grief, not really. No one mourned Cyrus. He lived by the shank and he died by it. Same with all the rest who were there one day, rolling with the Man Dem, and being remembered at their funeral the next, with sobbing mums screaming about guns and blaming everyone else.
But if Tyrone could die, anyone could. There truly was no such thing as gang justice. Gang justice was meant to operate within the gangs, not outside. It was all a lie.
“They got ’em on CCTV.”
They would say that his killer was known to police, and that they hoped to be bringing him in soon. And so they did. But the trial would collapse – five witnesses refused to give evidence. They decided that justice for Tyrone wasn’t worth their lives, and though I was angry I could understand.
My head was still spinning. I felt dizzy.
I asked Keziah if she wanted me to come round.
“No,” she said. She sounded exhausted. “I just want to go to sleep.”
Her voice cracked, and suddenly I heard her wailing.
“Keziah? What is it? Speak to me.”
It took her a few moments to speak.
“I’ve still got his blood on my dress.”
The Mosque
Mum was released the day after the funeral.
“Wha dis? You’re the datter of Darkness, too right,” she said, going through the house, pulling open the curtains I liked to keep closed, yanking up the blinds and bathing the house in light.
She went through that house like a Tasmanian devil, wielding a bin liner with yellow rubber gloves, cleaning surfaces until they shone, and chucking the wilting flowers David had brought me as an apology after our last argument into the rubbish.
Yusuf too had come home for the occasion. Naturally, Mum was delighted her baby boy had embraced Islam. She was also pretty psyched he could fix the washing machine too.
Yusuf looked well. Marriage seemed to suit him. He had shot up, and was now quite a few inches taller than me. I tried to put on a happy face, but I could never hide the truth from Yusuf. He knew me better than anyone. I could see the concern in his eyes. When Mum went out of the room, he asked if I was OK.
“You look skinny. Your eyes look puffy.”
“Thanks very much, Denzel Washington.”
“Nah, I just mean, are you OK? You seem stressed.”
“Lot going on, innit,” I shrugged.
He clocked my new clothes and my expensive trainers, and shook his head.
“You need to come back to Islam, sister. I mean it, for real.” He held up my wrist to get a better look at my flash new watch. “These things,” he tutted, “they don’t matter, y’know. When you’re gone you can’t take them with you.”
“Yeah, well, while I’m here they help tell me the time,” I snapped.
“All I’m saying is God is evident in everything that surrounds us. Everything happens for a reason, innit. Being inside helped me – it was Allah’s will. You gotta stop aspiring to this Biggie life. Where’s that gonna get you? In the grave or in a jail cell.”
The more pious Yusuf became, the more I grew ashamed of myself. He had turned things around. He had turned his back on steaming and money. He was happy.
I looked at my little brother’s earnest face. Before I could get annoyed at his lecturing, he winked and flashed a mischievous smile. I couldn’t help smiling with him.
“So tell me more about this Muslim brother.”
“The authorities, they don’t want him there. They’ve kicked him out into the street, so he’s gathering youts there every Friday. You shoulda seen the TV cameras! He says the media is trying to make war with Islam.”
“So why do you go?”
“There’s some good people there too, innit? It’s the brothers’ mosque. They’re good to lots of proper poor boys from Algeria, Somalia, places like that. They give them food and shelter.”
Yusuf’s new mosque intrigued me. I worried about him praying with all these characters.
“Don’t worry, Sis,” he tried to reassure me. “I stay away from the ones I don’t like. They’re too forceful, man. They invited me paintballing next week – they’re going on a trip outside London somewhere.”
“Are you going to go?”
“Nah. No way. That’s not what Islam’s about, innit? These guys, they’re not preaching the beauty of Islam, the only true religion. Anyway, I gotta work.”
Work’s for clowns, I thought. I’d have gone paintballing in a second, but that’s what I admired about Yusuf these days. He had discipline.
“So, this Muslim brother, what exactly does he say?”
“The house of Allah should be open. If we don’t defend our mosque, who’s going to defend it? If we can’t liberate our own mosque, how can we liberate Palestine? There is no victory except with the help of Allah …”
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