by Joseph Kane
Fed up with how the flat looked, we moved house again for the umpteenth time. I suspected that we needed to run from debt collectors, but who knew what motivated mum. It was off the estate which was good, but not by much. The new neighbourhood was practically attached to my estate, close to my old high school. The faces didn’t change; I just happened to live near different gang members. Chris bounced from flat to flat on the estate, being drawn into bad influences as much as me. He mainly played his music, having parties all the time, rather than hanging around the streets as I did. His generation was bad, but not as intense. Some bad black guy we knew stabbed him in the face, before robbing his music equipment right in front of him, out of his own home. As well as my challenges, he had his too. Things like that happened from time to time. Now in a two-bedroom house instead of a flat, we had more room to relax in; another freezing shithole. We never had any heating in all the places we lived in. Mum had a heater in her bedroom, which took the piss. Her life resided in her bedroom. The last thing we needed was a bigger place. No one ever used the two living rooms. The area we moved to was a Muslim community, so it was good being in a calm environment. Their gang was always on the corner, but they were harmless, apart from the prick that punched me in school. Directly across from us, was a family that lived in two houses, side by side. There was an old Asian man in the house on the left, being looked after by his daughter. The house on the right belonged to his other daughter, that had quite a few kids. The two daughters were Chris’s age, and they became good friends with Levi and my mum. They weren’t devoted to Islam like most of the community. The old man was an alcoholic that had four daughters to a white woman. That didn’t go down well being a Muslim. Siobhan that lived in the house on the left was a nice woman. Sharron with all the kids was also lovely, but just like my mum, she was a full blown alcoholic, very loud and very animated. With over five kids, she mainly stayed at home. Mum would drink with her across the road expectedly. I went across plenty of times. We became close to them. With the pigsty of a house, piles of clothes everywhere, and kids running around in nappies, Sharron usually stood in front of the fireplace, with a baby in one arm, and a glass of neat vodka in the other. During the chaos, she shouted at kids trying to act organised; it was a complete zoo. With the whole family drinking, and taking substances, it was no wonder the rest of the community felt their impact. Everyone was intertwined or knew each other so the actions from one family could be felt across the estate. Bad influence plagued everyone, giving an incentive that its ok to do what the hell they want, because everyone is doing the same. Eight-year-olds smoked drugs and stole cars because everyone around was that way inclined. Once everyone had caught the scum-disease, it then evolves into a competition. Stories of places like Manchester and London echoed around, creating a standard that everyone lived up to. It became nothing short of crazy.
Being fourteen was one of the toughest years of my life. Dossing around all day had become the norm, along with most people in my situation. There were no plans whatsoever for my future. Now my only meal from school was no longer available; I somehow survived off toast. Mum received child benefit for me; I just didn’t get any of it. Even Levi had disability benefits, yet the fridge had been empty wasting electric for years. It was only when her mum came around as a guest that she made an effort to cook a meal. It was the only time the living room was ever used. Suffering from mental health issues, my gran lived in a psychiatric ward for quite some time. Levi had a nightmare trying to get her back, come night time. As he drove down the road, she would open the car door trying to jump out. She didn’t want to live anymore. Poor Levi had to drive while holding her. It happened every week until he refused. Even when she visited, the only food I received was leftovers. Her excuse for starving me for years was because I didn’t like her cooking. What kid isn’t fussy about what they eat? Begging people I knew, I could make up forty pence to get something to eat. The takeaway up the road sold one japati for exactly forty pence. Pouring chilli sauce on warmed me up. That was my only source of food. Sometimes I walked to Fulwood to get a meal during the week from my gran. Having pride made me reluctant to ask anyone for anything. My mum didn’t deserve me, the money she got, or Levi for that matter. One day when she was out of her room, I decided to search around for money. The first place I looked was under the mattress. Long behold, there was a shitload of money piled up in twenty-pound notes. It must have been payday. I hated stealing, but that was a day when I took what was rightfully mine. Forty pounds was all I took. The first thing I bought was cannabis. Getting through depression, and those nights of hell was a priority. Secondly, I bought some food from the takeaway, because I couldn’t cook. By now, all the boys were selling weed and crack cocaine. They didn’t let life drill them to the ground. Instead, they took the bull by the horns and survived. Now fairly distant away from that kind of life, I grinded it out living with mum.
Lying in bed on most nights, the same routine would occur. My bedroom door would be kicked open, then punched numerous times.
“Get the fuck up now. What have you said to Levi?”
She was good at making stories up. I tried reasoning with her, begging her to leave me alone. Insisting like usual, all I could do was respond.
“Just fucking leave me alone.”
Her shouting drove me to despair, and now it was worse.
“Right that’s it; I’m ringing the police.”
She started taking it to the next level with threats. If it weren’t the police, she would start ringing Levi’s family up.
“Will you come and sort him out? I can’t take it anymore.” In a soft-spoken voice, dramatically playing the victim.
Her mind was puddled. I was threatened with violence from forty-year-old black men in my kitchen thanks to her; at fourteen. Her nights of drinking would go from music in the living room, dancing and laughing like an idiot, to psycho.
“Angie, will you leave him alone.”
Levi tried until I told her to fuck off, then they were both against me. He raved on about getting one mother in life. I wish someone would take this mother and replace her.
“Right, that’s it. I’ve had enough; get the fuck out.”
“What do you mean get out?”
“I want you out now, or I’m ringing the police.”
“Where am I supposed to go?”
“I don’t care; I want you out. Nobody talks to me like that.”
“Where am I supposed to go at 3am?”
“You should’ve thought about that before telling me to fuck off.”
“Are you taking the piss, where am I supposed to fucking go?”
“Kiss my ass, then lick it!”
She always did have a way with words. It was at the point that being outside was a better alternative. Mentally, I couldn’t take it anymore. I grabbed my thin jacket and stormed out. The streets were peacefully quiet. The weather was two degrees. There was no shelter or help I could seek. No ideas came to mind on how to survive the streets at such a late hour. The only shelter I could think of was in a police cell. Close the town was a car showroom. I looked for a brick to smash the window just to get arrested. Just my luck, I couldn’t find one. There was a three-storey block of flats close by, so I headed there. The stairs were exposed to outside elements, only providing half the shelter. My body temperature dropped if I sat in one spot for more than ten minutes, so I moved around or went for a walk. With nothing but my jumper and I thin jacket, I pulled my arms inside my sleeves to stay warm in a squat. In four or five hours I’ll head back. Maybe by then, she will be asleep. When I knocked, the outcome was 50/50. If she answered the door, I was screwed.
“What do you want? You’re not coming in.”
When Levi answered, he would stand quietly as I walked upstairs to my bed. Knowing she didn’t sleep long before the whole thing kicked off again, I sometimes got an hour sleep. I even hid in the house, listening to what she talked about. She usually caught me after a sweep of the house.
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br /> “Joseph? Has he gone out? I don’t fucking believe this. Levi, when I was young, If I ever spoke to my mum and dad like that, I’d get a smack across my head. Joseph doesn’t know how lucky he is.”
“Lucky?.... Lucky?.... Is she having a fucking laugh.” I mumbled to myself around the back of the sofa.
Once distracted, she went back to her bullshit stories about how her dad listened to ‘My Way’ by Frank Sinatra, topping up her glass of loopy juice on her bedside table, with a lamp that had a manky yellow bulb. Levi just sat up in bed staring at the wall, being took in by her every word. Her new trend was to kick me out nearly every night at 3am. She knew I had nowhere to go at that time in the morning. Preparing to face the cold, I stole a bottle of brandy that she had in one of the cupboards. I saved a can of coke to go with it. The next time she kicked me out, I took the drinks with me. Being prepared was important that night, with the temperature well below freezing and snowing. With no winter clothes, the only way I could stay warm was to drink some brandy and coke. Alcohol was disgusting, but it went down a treat with coke. Internally it warmed me up nicely. Sitting on that cold slab of concrete at the top of the exposed stairs, a million thoughts and memories went through my head. What will be of my future in its current state? How the hell did everything get so bad? Whenever I needed the bathroom, I found a bush with some large leaves used for toilet paper. It was so cold during the night. Moving around so much wasted energy that I couldn’t spare. Already thin, if I stopped moving for more than ten minutes, I’d shiver uncontrollably. After walking for miles on end, I had discovered there was a waiting room at Preston train station. The room had heaters blowing some really good warmth. The heat made me tired, so I laid down and accidentally fell asleep. Sleeping right through to morning, when I woke up, the room had filled with people in suits reading newspapers, and drinking coffee. I felt like such a tramp, as I pulled my arms from out of my jacket. The security man told me that people are not allowed to sleep, so I never returned. The heat was guaranteed to knock me out if I went back. I was ashamed of how I looked and dressed. Somewhere along my life, I became very self-conscience and shy. I’d rather starve to death, or squat over a bed of nails than do anything that people frowned upon. With my gang, I felt like I belonged somewhere. I felt like the most confident person in the world, able to do anything without repercussions.
Nothing I could say or do could make my mum change the way she was. Now eclipsed, she was out of reach from everyone. During the day she went backwards and forwards across the road, sometimes making a scene in front of Siobhan and Sharron. She always started in the most subtle way, while portraying herself as a good person, so that no one knew what she was like behind closed doors. I became good friends with Siobhan. Her fiancé had left her for someone else, leaving her devastated; what a big mistake he made. Siobhan was beautiful, intelligent, and funny. At the time, she had a few glasses of vodka each day to try and get over it, but never got drunk. I opened up to her about what my mum was putting me through. She took me under her wing offering me food and a place to lay low in her dad's house. My mum started noticing that I had found a safe haven, so she upped her antics. One day she decided to call the police when I went for a walk up Beacon Fell with my uncle.
“My son has gone to commit suicide; can you send someone.”
Mick and I didn’t know. Two police horses walked right past us near the top of the hill, popular for fell walkers. Once back in Preston, we were approached by the police. She had completely lost the plot. I couldn’t understand why my mum had it in for me so much. She seemed to enjoy it. Cannabis wasn’t strong enough to help me deal with the daily torment, so I started self-harming. Inside I was screaming, but she didn’t know. Taking a large bread knife out of the kitchen, I sliced across the top of my arm. The jagged edge created wide cuts every time I sliced without looking. The pain from my arms took my mind off her torture, hidden under my jumper. Anger was an understatement. Why on earth did I not use the rat poison? I could have been out of prison by the time I reached twenty, with a trade. Not satisfied with what she had already done, she rung the police, telling them I had a gun. Luckily, when armed police had come looking for me, I was sat in Siobhan’s house. Mum knew we were inside together, so she told the police where I was. They banged on her door so hard; I thought they would break it down. My heart pounded as they surrounded the house. It was terrifying. Siobhan calmed me down, instructing me to creep into the kitchen with her until they left. I could hear my mum talking like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. Thank heavens they went. Over the next few days, I had to hide while armed police hunted me down. I loved to take the chase from the police innocently, but this was different. The result would have been me on the floor with guns in my face, or worse, they might have shot me. Armed police followed my Uncle Mick for days, in the hope he would lead them to me. It ended when I surrendered to the police station. They locked me up for ten hours before releasing me. What kind of mother wants her son to suffer, or be killed?
Anger filled my veins when I finally exploded in a rage of fury. She was trying to kick me out one day, which was unusual. She usually waited until the early hours of the morning. Something inside me just snapped. In my face shouting with her stinking breath stood on the landing, I pushed her flying into her bedroom door. Being that she was as thin as me, she crashed to the floor like a small child. The look on her face was priceless; she looked like she had seen a ghost.
“I’m sick of your fucking shit, YOU get the fuck out and see how you like it.”
Like a possessed demon, the cannabis must have clouded my judgment. She scurried downstairs out of the house, like the coward she was with her tail between her legs. Walking right behind her, I slammed the interior door smashing the glass window when it hit the wall. She fell to the floor in the middle of the road looking back at me with fear. I picked up a shard of glass from the floor, aiming straight for her like Michael Myers. She begged for her life in the middle of the road as I got closer, with the full intention to scare the shit out of her. I had learnt that fear was a powerful tool. As I looked to my right, the Muslim gang stood on the corner staring at me, so I returned inside. I dropped the glass, waiting for an ambulance to arrive. Her collarbone had snapped in half when I pushed her into the door. Amazingly, she didn’t get me arrested. I did, however, get permanently kicked out.
There was only one person I could turn to, and that was Chris. Now off the estate, he had a flat down by the river. Fortunate to let me stay, Chris told me how mum had kicked him out as a teenager, making him sleep in a bin when it was snowing. I slept on a mattress for a few months behind his sofa. He stayed up playing on his PlayStation with his girlfriend. We both had the same idea to distance ourselves from that hell hole of a neighbourhood. It was only a matter of time before we would have been sucked in. What followed was nothing more than pure destruction.
1. Countless suicides.
2. Countless deaths from drink/substance abuse.
3. Carjackings.
4. Shootings/drive-by shootings
5. Prostitution.
6. Armed Robbery.
7. Gang wars.
8. Murders.
9. Burglary.
10. Intimidation/violence
11. International drug and gun smuggling.
The list goes on. Everything you can think of, they did it. From the small kids I watched grow, to the older men; everyone was involved in serious crime amounting to 300-400 years in prison between the lot of them over two decades and counting. Finally, the estate was knocked down. Dead, in prison, or misplaced, it all came to an end as I predicted. A drug ring was smashed that was described as Lancashire’s largest-ever police operation. The black guy that stabbed Chris in the face was smuggling drugs and guns from Holland. Being brought down, he took a lot of people with him to prison, including my friend that told the teacher to fuck off on my first day at primary school. It spread like wildfire. I couldn’t believe the people I grew up with we
nt to such lengths. Brothers and sisters all shared the same fate. Sure, they had nice kitchens, nice cars, and made the national news along with an hour-long documentary, but it didn’t justify the shit life we had. That’s why I stopped running. In the end, it all catches up. Another portion of the gang had also made headline news when a serious crime unit was sent from London to surveillance them. A Few years younger than me, the group were caught selling drugs around Preston before the gang was smashed. Some of the faces were new, but either way, anyone involved had to chew the same fat. They proved the point that they were bad mother fuckers. In the end, they gained nothing.