Sour

by Tracey Miller

  “He only did that coz he knew I didn’t have anything on me,” he said. Stone was some years younger than us. “I’m going to hurt him. Have you seen my uncle?”

  This boy’s uncle was a real postcode celebrity of the day. I’m not overstating it when I say he was known as a fucking nutter.

  “He knows who my uncle is. My uncle is going to fuck him up.”

  I had never seen Stone so psyched. He was usually so chilled. The vibe had got to him too.

  “Look, calm yourself down, man.”

  He touched his face, and saw red.

  “Fuck, I’m bleeding!”

  I wasn’t packing a shank. It was inquisitiveness that brought me here. I wasn’t going out for war and crime. My plan was to do a bit of sneaky tiefing, being an Oliver Twist for the night. And Oliver Twist doesn’t carry knives or guns, darling. That was the vibe I was on. So meeting Stone threw me off course.

  He was already pumped up, spoiling for a fight, with his hoodie pulled down tight. I felt the flicker of that old buzz.

  Brandon had taken a liberty. He knew who Stone was. He knew who his family was. It felt like blatant disrespect. Stone was a kid I would have looked out for.

  Brandon was older than us. He made money. He was a name to be known. Why was he headbutting a little boy? It was unnecessary. He had to be put in his place.

  Any visions of me being Oliver Twist for the night were now thrown out the window. This was war.

  It was getting dark. Police cars were now racing by, but they weren’t stopping. They sped right past us.

  So, now we’re looking for faces in the crowd. Looking for his uncle. Lo and behold, we soon find him. He wasn’t tall, but he wasn’t hard to spot. He was the man who seemed to be leading a crew of his own through the mob. You could see from the thickness of his neck and the tattooed arms that he was someone who had done a bit of gym, but more than that, he had the swagger of a crazy bastard. He had shot people, people who he shouldn’t have shot, and right now he was in his element.

  Stone ran over and told him what had happened, showing his own red rags to this crazy bull.

  “What the fuck? That fucking Brandon tinks he can fuck abaht, does he?”

  The chase was on. One form makes many. Now, there were thirty, maybe forty of us, a swollen splinter group, all looking for the same face. Brandon was a marked man.

  This was no longer about making money. This was about getting justice.

  This was getting way above me. The mob had drifted along New Park Road. We were following Stone into my estate.

  “That’s him!” he cried. “Let’s get him!”

  Brandon ducked out behind a parked car, and over a wall into an alley that led back to the estate. Someone else shouted, then another, and another. We all made chase. We could head him off at the pedestrian underpass that opened out into Roupell Park.

  The uncle led from the front. I wasn’t far behind. I was so far in front, in fact, that I swore I’d be the first to get this guy. I’d make sure of that. You’re in the moment, innit.

  I wasn’t fearful of no one, least of all an idiot like this boy. As we started to give chase, it sounded like a stampede.

  We sprinted through the piss-stinking concrete tunnel of the underpass, and out into the open courtyard of the estate. Then boom. All I know is that the sky lit up. The gunshots sent us all hitting the ground like in the movies.

  Hold on. I saw the crazy-arsed uncle diving to the floor. So I dived too. I cowered tight, to keep myself safe. I could smell the earth, and realised my jeans would be stained by grass. I stayed still, unsure whether he was coming forward to shoot again.

  No shots came, and I rolled over behind a car. He had disappeared like a ghost.

  “Is everyone alright?” the uncle shouted.

  All I’m hearing is yeah, yeah, yeah.

  I got back up.

  The uncle was livid.

  “He’s just tried to kill me. That’s it. Everyone exit. I’m going to get my mash. Fuck this. Who’s in?”

  I realised the group was considerably smaller. It was just the hard core left.

  “Everyone meet back up here, yeah?”

  “Cool,” I said. I was going to my house. Someone had just made an attempt on my life. It was time to defend myself properly.

  As I started to run, I felt a pain, a slight sting.

  I could hear voices behind me. I ain’t waiting on them, I thought. I’ve got my own argument with this Brandon boy now.

  Luckily my house wasn’t far away. I could see the block beyond the Pen.

  I heard more talking from behind.

  “Are you OK?”

  Actually, that step down on to the pavement didn’t feel right.

  I tried to walk, but noticed now a numbness in my leg. I was dragging it. Next thing I knew I’d fallen.

  Stone spotted me.

  “Sour! She’s been shot!”

  Initially my instinct told me, no, it was a blank. But why couldn’t I get up?

  I looked at the sky. I didn’t want to look down. My mum’s warning earlier played back at me: Hard ears pickney always feel.

  The pain was so severe, I couldn’t cry. I could feel the pain radiating from my leg up my left hip and into my tummy.

  I put my hand on my thigh. It felt cold and damp. I imagined a big-arsed hole that I could put my hand right through.

  I took a deep breath and looked down. There was bare blood all over my cream jeans. It was the kind of blood that soaked your clothes, instead of staining them. Deep dark, almost black. I’d never seen so much blood in my life.

  The ball bearings had sprayed across my thigh. Blood was now seeping down my jeans, and I could feel it soaking the inside of my trainer.

  OK, can’t be that bad, I lied to myself. Just ride it, you’re a soldier, stay firm. You’ve had worse beatings from your mum. You can take this.

  But the pain wouldn’t go away. I tried to cry – it seemed like the logical thing to do – but the tears wouldn’t come. The pain only got worse.

  Stone scooped me up and helped me stagger across the grass, over the tarmac that Tiefing Timmy used as his racetrack, and along the path by the bushes, pocked with dog turds and litter.

  A few more came to help him.

  “We gotta get her to hospital.”

  He sounded panicky. He was slapping me in the face, telling me not to shut my eyes. Dunno what films he’d been watching.

  I was just thinking I’ve gotta stay awake. If you nod off, you don’t come back, ain’t that what they say?

  No one mentioned ambulance. That made sense. When you’re a criminal, the last thing you want to do is deal with police, or any emergency services for that matter. When things go wrong, ambulance ain’t your first instinct. There will be questions, and more than likely some comeback.

  No! Gotta take her to the hospital. I don’t know who brought the car.

  My leg was so stiff, I remember Stone having to forcibly bend it, to fit me in the hatchback. I couldn’t breathe properly. Their voices were beginning to blur into one.

  “I’m thirsty, I’m thirsty. I want Ribena.”

  She wants a Ribena.

  “Stay awake,” Stone shouted from the passenger seat. “We’re gonna get you your Ribena, girl.”

  Once we reached the loading bay there was a moment of panic. I was physically stuck in the car. They tugged and pushed, and finally dragged me out the car like a rag doll. I was slammed on the floor.

  Someone, from somewhere, must have got me a wheelchair, because the next thing I knew I was being pushed through the automatic doors of A&E. I rolled into reception. When I turned round, there was no one there. It was like being wheeled in by ghosts.

  Staff hurried around, then it went blank.

  I came through in a cubicle – just one of the cubicles set up in a special room for riot casualties. It was like a makeshift army hospital. They’d prepared for a busy night. They got one.

  They’d cut off my trouse
r leg.

  Beyond the curtains, I could hear someone crying like a bitch. Groggy from fading pain relief, I tried to ride the pain, talking to God, talking to my mum. I should have listened to her.

  Was I going to walk again? I thought about this boy Brandon, and how I was going to kill him when I caught him. I was also thinking about the police officer I’d seen circulating. He knew me well. He would know that wasn’t the right name on my medical notes. I didn’t want him asking questions. I was in the unusual position of being a victim, for once, but I was in no mood to be snitching on anyone.

  As he walked past, I shrank beneath the sheets. Not because I felt I’d done something in particular this time, but people in glass houses, innit.

  Pain shot up into my hip, and I thought of Brandon and wondered whether they had caught him. If that uncle had found him, he would probably be in here already. Or the morgue.

  The X-ray looked like a dot-to-dot. I’d been hit by a sawn-off shotgun. The ball bearings had sprayed across my left thigh.

  “Samantha Miller?” she asked, lifting up my notes.

  I nodded.

  “OK, we have to take some of these out.”

  She lined up swab pads and starting rubbing solutions along my whole leg. I was trembling, shaking. I wanted to kill her. She picked up tongs.

  I cussed her out, and screamed and shouted.

  “If you’re going to be that way, I’ll just leave it, shall I?”

  “Just cut the whole thing off!” I yelled.

  Later, a doctor came through and told me I was free to go.

  “You’ll be OK. You had a lucky escape, but I’m afraid there’s nothing we can do to remove the rest of them. If we go in and take these out, it will cause you more harm, and possibly ruin more nerves. So we’re just going to have to leave them in there.”

  Like the shards of glass door left in Mum’s head.

  “You can go.”

  I hopped out on my crutches, avoiding police and their demands for a statement. I had no desire to be associated with being shot tonight. The Feds would spin my house. I suddenly panicked. What if they had spun it already?

  I couldn’t check out of hospital quick enough. I got out, hopped home and laid low. I had every intention of killing that boy. It was only his good luck, and my bad, that fate intervened once more before I could find him.

  Plus, I needed to get home for another reason. Someone had run round to my mum’s and told her I’d been shot. She didn’t know if I was alive or dead, so when I went through that door you can imagine the scene.

  When I hobbled up to my room, I held my black jacket up to the light. The bottom looked like it had been crocheted. There were holes everywhere.

  The doctor was right: I was lucky to be alive.

  I laid low. No shotting, no meetings, no nothing. I pulled the curtains down and shut out the world.

  Brandon wasn’t seen around the estate again. Wise move. He had opened fire on a postcode celebrity; he knew he had to get out.

  In the first few days, Stone and his crew came round to reassure me there was a hunt out for him. He had a hit out on him for a while. Soon enough, the visits stopped, the world went silent.

  No. Growing up in my world, you have two fears: going to prison and getting shot. Now I’d achieved both. There was nowhere else to go. There was nothing else to aspire to.

  Worse, I’d been shot and survived: I became invincible. If I wasn’t Teflon before, I was now. If a guy pulls a gun on me, I’m the one who knows what that pain feels like. That gives me the upper hand. I mentally reprogrammed myself. If being shot means a night in hospital and a few weeks in bed, what was there to be scared of?

  Once again, almost without even trying, my infamy grew. Getting shot simply confirmed my role as one of the Man Dem. That was it. It wasn’t elegant. It wasn’t glamorous. But it was getting dizzy near the top. The stakes got bigger, the loss of face even greater. It was like the tiny trapdoor that was an exit to a normal life, with normal hopes and normal fears, was shrinking to a pinprick out of my reach.

  Life on the road was consuming me. I was running out of energy to keep running, keep ahead.

  Life was cheap. Getting shot simply made me more reckless than ever. There was nothing left to be scared of.

  I no longer cared about what I was doing, or who got hurt. I wasn’t just a menace to society. I was now a menace to myself.

  But before I took the boldest step of my life, there was one more person I had to hurt.

  Point of No Return

  Is it nature or nurture that makes you bad? In my case, it was hard to tell. Either way, it was a lose-lose situation.

  In the months after the shooting, the house went quiet, the phone stopped ringing. There was only one person left in my life.

  David, any fool could have realised, was my way out. I could have adopted his life; instead all I did was drag him down into mine. I would do something unforgivable to David, something that leaves my heart cold and chills me with an unfamiliar sensation. I think it’s called regret.

  Weaponry had lost its wonder. I didn’t care what knives and guns could do. They’d lost their glamour, the potency that gave me power. But something else was happening too, and it was down to the volatile and destructive relationship with David. I was losing heart. And David knew it.

  “You’re nothing but a thug,” he’d scream. “You think you’re so hot, but really you ain’t that nice.”

  “Shut your mouth. Or Man Dem –”

  “What Man Dem, Sour?!” he screeched. “Who are these Man Dem you’re always on about? I don’t see no one knocking down your door. Wake up. You’re living a fantasy. I’m the only one left!”

  He was right. My confidence was wavering. A leader needs confidence – and people to lead. To go out on the road without confidence ain’t just unwise, it’s downright dangerous. I felt trapped.

  I had hoped being with David would elevate me to something else. Instead, all he made me feel was shame in being Sour, the chick from Brixton. His words could hurt me more than any gun. Yet every time we fought and finished it, we soon found our way back to each other again.

  To have “heart” on the road, you couldn’t have emotions. To be fearless meant shutting down, having nothing to care about and no one to care about you. The minute that went, the minute feelings came into it, you were compromised.

  It was freaking me out. Worst of all, David didn’t fear me. He could see behind the bravado, and I didn’t like it. It made me feel weak, and I didn’t like feeling weak.

  He’d been picking all that day, criticising my clothes, my hair, my make-up. I was used to people stopping when I said stop. David never stopped.

  To be honest, I was sick of the sight of him. He just kept being negative towards me and was always complaining about something.

  “Gimme back the keys,” I screamed.

  We had been sitting in my car, outside my mum’s house. The plan had been to drive to his, but he was annoying me so much I changed my mind. He could walk. I was driving nowhere.

  “I’m already late. Mum’s waiting for me.”

  “You got feet. Walk. I ain’t going nowhere.”

  “Stop being a bitch and drive me home.”

  I’d had enough.

  “Get out of my car. No word of a lie, David, I ain’t messing.”

  He made a grab for the car keys, whipping them from the ignition.

  “Oh yeah? In that case, neither of us are going anywhere.”

  “Gimme back those keys, or I swear to God I’m going to hurt you.”

  “What?” he scoffed. “Like your dad hurts people?”

  How dare he?

  “Don’t say another word about my family, or I swear to God, David …”

  “Swear to God what? You gotta look at yourself, girl. Look at what you derive from. Your family is fucked up! No wonder you are the way you are. Look at you. For you as a big sister, no wonder your brother’s in jail.”

  As he said
it, he threw the keys across the street. I followed the arc of the furry key ring through the air, and watched as it hit the gutter, and jangled through the bars of the drain.

  Even David couldn’t believe his shot.

  “Face it, Sour, you’re just a fuck-up.”

  I saw red. Before I knew it, I was punching him in the chest and neck, wishing he would have another asthma attack, grabbing for his throat and thumping his ribcage. But something changed in David. He did something he’d never done before. He started fighting back. We tumbled out of the car, lashing at each other like rabid dogs.

  I raged, in between jabs to his kidneys.

  He grabbed my throat and overpowered me, pressing all his weight down on to my throat. I had finally done it. I’d brought out the devil in him.

  I could see the whites in his eyes as he leaned down over me.

  I lost it. I wasn’t playing no more. I pulled my right hand free, and reached for my belt. My fingers felt for the rabbit foot, and up to the skin holster. I nudged my hip to dislodge the blade from the pocket, and the handle slipped free.

  I tried to block out the words, until I just saw his mouth moving. The rest of the world melted away.

  A single jab, and suddenly he slumped to the side. His fingers fell from my throat, and soon he too was lying on the pavement, a strange look of disbelief on his face. His hand was pressed to his stomach.

  He was saying something, but I couldn’t hear. The knife fell from my grasp, as I heaved for breath. His lips were still moving. His eyes were frightened. Gradually, the volume slid back up again …

  “You fucking bitch,” he was muttering over and over again. “You fucking stabbed me …”

  We both looked at the rose of blood blossoming across his shirt. He tried to get up, but fell back down to his knees.

  I stepped back, but this time felt none of the power or triumph that usually came from feeling a blade slipping out of a wound of my making.

  He had some intentions to harm me. I’d warned him I’d defend myself. Why had he said those things? Why would he do that? It was his fault for bringing out my demonic side.

  Only, as I watched the boy who loved me try to push himself up on his hands and knees on the kerb, my usual justifications didn’t sound right. They didn’t even ring true to me any more.