This time we go for a basement flat. Do the usual one, two, three, run up and kick off the door. It flies open too easy and smashes into the wall. I see four Moroccan brers staring at us, standing in a corridor full of low grey light. I’ve got a hammer in my hand but Dario’s already cutting back up the stairs. Right choice. I cut as well. Running down the road past white-columned houses and hedges with morning burning in our chests. The tag round my ankle slides up and down a bit as I run, I can feel it getting heavy like, rubbing against my skin. But no, only for a moment because I’m thinking about it. I’m still doing what I always do. It’s become part of my ankle. I’m used to it now. Imagine.
The most jarring ting is that it had to be during my summer holidays that I’m on tag. Actually, the most jarring ting is simply being at my mum’s yard. I can’t bun it up in my room so that means I have to get mad charged at Bimz’s or Uncle T’s before I come home and then she’s always asking me if I’m high and next stupid shit because my garms are booting of cro and my eyes are redup and she gets all obsessive and can’t just allow me.
One morning she asks where are you going, what do you do with your day? I just carry on eating my fried eggs and she keeps repeating Gabriel where are you going? Then she says are you a drug dealer? But the way she says drug with her immigrant-trying-hard-to-sound-proper-English accent sounds like drag, so she’s asking are you a drag dealer? I crack up laughing and then I get tired of it so I say stop chatting rubbish I’m going to see my friends in South Kilburn and she says your criminal friends who do nothing with their lives. I’ve heard this bullshit too many times so I say shut up man and she says don’t talk to your mother like this and I say whatever man and she says I’m not man I’m your mother and I forbid you to talk to me like this. But she doesn’t even realise I’m galaxies away from her, I’m on another planet, I’m with the space gods and the fallen angels. I’m not even who she thinks I am. I am the bite of a wolverine and the tongue of a lizard. I am the agony of a thousand outlaws. Tell me where you’re going, she says. I say or what? I’m a grown man, I can do what the fuck I want and anyway, you never allow me to have Yinka round here or any of my bredrins so why da fuck should I stay indoors all day? She says I don’t let that girl come here because I don’t like her. I say how can you not like her? You don’t even know her, and my mother says because she’s beneath you. The blood in my head explodes and I lose all the words that were waiting to come out of my mouth. I get up and go to her desk in the living room where she has some photos of me and my brother. I tear up all the photos of me into tiny pieces and scatter them on the floor. As I put my Nike creps on in the hallway, I look up and see my mother’s latest artwork hanging on the wall above me: a wooden board painted with lumpy streaks of oil paint and stuck onto the board is a pair of white baby shoes – my baby shoes from when I was like two years old or something – and beneath them the dried-out seed pod of some plant. The whole piece is set into a flaking white window frame which my mother found in a skip. I cut out of the yard.
Last time we had one of these arguments I went for a walk and threw a brick through the kitchen window of a house down the road while the people inside were sitting at the table eating dinner.
This time I phone Uncle T who says he’s got some purple haze. I say I want two draws, I’m coming for that now T. He says no problem my son, listen to this – and then he puts the phone down.
Walking up Harrow Road, I breathe in deep. Hot sugar smell of exhaust fumes. But the feeling my mother sparked inside me hasn’t gone away, it’s still there clutching my heart.
At the junction with the red Costcutter, on the corner where all the fiends come out at night, I cross the road. Traffic is standing still. Red light. I walk between two whips. The whip to my left rolls forward and bumps into the side of my leg making me buckle. I turn to face the driver like whatdafuck are you on? He stares at me and frowns. Sour eyes. Looks like he’s chewing his own mouth. Sticks his middle finger up. I walk back round to his side of the car, open his door and give him three sharp bangs to the face until I see blood come in a quick trickle around his eye, more real than any colour I’ve seen today, and I can see dark wet patches on the knuckles of my black glove. My hearing comes back. The bus that’s waiting behind him is slamming on its horn. The man accelerates out of the line of traffic into the oncoming lane, drives across it, onto the pavement and crashes into a lamp post. I walk away. Need to go and bun that purple haze at Uncle T’s and drown this thing that’s dancing in my chest even though it feels kinda good right now.
Later, after I’ve billed a big zoot in Uncle T’s living room and the clouds are wrapping themselves around me, mouldy sweet smell taking over the flat so it’s in my eyes and brain, I tell Uncle T what happened. I look up at the wall as I talk and between framed portraits of Martin Luther King and Marcus Garvey there are two black-and-white photos of a naked black man and a naked black woman, frozen in graceful strong poses like marble statues, and printed in bold at the bottom of the photos are the words THE ORIGINAL MAN and THE ORIGINAL WOMAN. Further down the wall is a certificate in a golden frame, which says FATHER OF THE YEAR AWARD in raised gold letters, and underneath a printed text reads: This is to certify that the bearer of this certificate has been named Father of the Year because he is warm, wise, generous, loveable and a very important person in his family. Signed with love, and on the dotted line in biro is written Taz, Reuben and Yassmin. Uncle T’s stepdaughter Ayesha is sitting on the sofa bunning a zoot from a draw which some brer gave her. She’s always getting tings for free from different man who probably dream of her but never get to dream next to her. Her slim frame settles into the sofa. We’re mad close, basically family since I’m so tight with her brothers Malice and Gunja and her sisters too, and whenever her older sister Yassmin has a party, the two of them wind on me, sandwiching me between their backoffs, and shout bun n cheese and crack up laughing. Ayesha’s deep though. She has the vision. Like she can see tings that ain’t there. But it’s not all good coz I remember her telling me about this one time when she woke up and bare hands were pinning her down to the bed, and she couldn’t scream because something was hovering over her and it put its hand over her mouth.
Ayesha shakes her head as Uncle T says well you got a knockout punch Snoopz. They’ll soon find out when they cross you. She clears her throat and starts humming.
I say I can’t wait to get off tag so I can move back outta my mum’s yard.
Uncle T says you’re a big man now Snoopz, she can’t be telling you how to live. No true dat?
I say sometimes I swear I hate her you know.
Ayesha draws her zoot, blows smoke out, stares at the TV and says is love ah breed me, so I and I nah deal wid hate.
MEETING GOTTI
WHEN I STEP out of the tube at Kilburn Park I have only two things on my mind: cro and eats.
The cro I can get from somewhere in South Killy. Uncle T’s got the ammi and Jermaine, who is living in Bimz’s yard, just got some banging lemon haze the other day. As for doing eats, the urge is always there within me, hidden and waiting, like tears and heartbeats and forgetfulness. These times I’ve always got my bally in my backpack along with books and notes from uni. Just in case.
I’ve started my second year. It’s September and I’ve been off tag for like two weeks. I come out of the station and night is closing its jaws around the day. I just got back from East and all I wanna do is get faded. I don’t even remember what it’s like to fall asleep without bunning cro, without being mad high till my head spins and my eyes sink into darkness. If I don’t get blackup, my mind will just run away from me all night and I’ll stay awake chasing it. When I bun I can’t remember my dreams. Screaming bloody dreams.
So I walk down to Peel Precinct. It’s not cold yet, summer’s still clinging on, I’m rocking my black Nike hoodie and some jeans and it’s good enough. But I’ve also got this unnameable energy keeping me warm, this feeling of finally being back together with the night, lik
e going to link a special girlfriend – your first love who you ain’t seen for too long – since for the past three months of being on tag I’ve always been indoors by seven.
It’s just gone ten when I get into the precinct and it’s looking deserted; just the camera on top of the spiked pole in the middle watching over everything and all the shops with their shutters down. Warm yellow lights keep secrets behind curtained windows in the three-storey blocks that sit in the precinct. Street lights fight with shadows and lose. Nightfall. In the distance, rectangles of yellow float in unshakeable loneliness: windows in the concrete towers of South Kilburn.
And then I see Gotti coming up to Bimz’s block. He’s with some white ting who’s like half his size, rocking a white coat with fur trimming round the collar. Yo Gotti I say and he says wagwan Snoopz, what you on?
Gotti. Black like a bee’s tongue with eyes like some far corner of space where even stars get lost. I can see acne scars on his cheeks and the girl next to him smells of shampoo and cigarettes. I’ve jammed with Gotti a couple times at Bimz’s yard, mostly just sharing a zoot while we all squeezed into the bedroom, finding a place on the bed as everyone took turns to play Soulcalibur on the Xbox or whatever. Mazey recently moved in to one of the spare rooms in Bimz’s yard and he keeps saying how if I link up with Gotti it’s gonna be a mad ting, and I’m always like forreal, I need someone to do eats with. But I’m not a begfriend so I wasn’t suddenly gonna ask him to bring me in on a move.
This is Chelsea, says Gotti and the white girl does a little wave and I say wagwan. Then to Gotti, I’m looking to get a draw fam.
He says Bimz ain’t even in. I was knocking earlier.
Someone must have dat, I say.
Where you coming from? he goes.
I say uni still, but I’m done for the week so I’m back in the ends for now.
Say nuttin, he goes. I’m gonna see who’s got dat, and he takes out his phone.
We sit on the concrete staircase leading up to the first level of Bimz’s block. The white girl stands by the bottom, chewing gum, looking at us.
I hear you been tryna get them man to do eats with you I say.
Yeah but them man ain’t on it like dat still, says Gotti. I heard you’re on this ting though.
Yeah g I’m always ready, I say and stand up, slide my backpack off, zip it open and pull out my bally. It’s one of those thick woollen black ones with two holes for eyes and a little hole for the mouth.
Don’t lie, he says, smile opening across his face and he takes it from me. I swear down I see a spark in his eyes like embers stirred by something unspeakable, or maybe I’ve been reading too many books and my imagination’s being extra.
I love this shit, says Gotti, holding the bally almost gentle and looking at it like it’s his lover’s face. The silence of the precinct rolls over us and the white girl spits her chewing gum out and puts a fresh one in her mouth. Then voices.
We see Ryder – one of the younger SK mandem – and his bredrin with two little lighties in vest tops, swaying and laughing, bumping into each other, the chicks almost supporting the brers who lean over them holding half-empty bottles of Hennessy.
Wagwan we all say to each other and Ryder says it’s my birthday and we say happy birthday g and the chicks are laughing at something, their tops pulled down tight with little gold chains nestling between breasts, tangled up with baby blue and pink plastic prison rosary beads, tattoos on wrists, babyhairs gelled into little curls that stick perfectly to their foreheads. Ryder’s boy says I’m so mashup and his ting says pass the yak then b and every one of them is mad wavy, but still the silence of the precinct flows all around us like a lonely river while we splash in it. Then, walking across the precinct by the shops, we clock one Asian brer and Gotti turns to me and says come we eat him and I say I’m down.
Gotti pulls my bally over his face and I pull my hood over my head, tightening the drawstrings so that it closes around my face and we run across the precinct. Panther feet. The man stops, freezes as if the shadows around him just came to life, and it’s all blatantly under the CCTV camera in the middle of Precinct. I grab the man’s sweatshirt collar and pull him back like nah you’re staying here blood and at the same time Gotti pops the man’s watch off his wrist onetime and the man says allow it please no please no and I tap his pockets and pull out his wallet and Gotti grabs him by the front of his sweatshirt and I swear I can see Gotti smiling but it’s like the bally’s become one with his face and I open the man’s wallet and pull the money out – only sixty pounds – and Gotti pushes the man away and I throw his wallet at him. The man stops, picks up the wallet, looks at us and says allow it man. He’s fully slipping though; walking through Precinct at night like he don’t know it’s dangerous out here, probably taking a shortcut to Queen’s Park station or suttin. That’s what you get for lacking. I say duck out man and move towards him like I’m gonna do him suttin and he starts running away and I stop and Gotti laughs and I laugh and then we turn around and walk back to Bimz’s block.
Chelsea is standing there waiting and Ryder and them lot are swaying all waved off, taking sips of Henny while they watch us. Then Ryder says you man safe yeah, and they walk off to wherever they’re going because the night’s not over for them, not even close to being done.
See that’s how I know you’re on it, says Gotti, pulling off the bally and giving it to me. You didn’t even hesitate, and he spuds me hard like he’s punching my knuckles and I’m feeling gassed up, mad energy like power running through my arms and legs. I think about how I’ve just become a part of what makes these ends dangerous. Part of the landscape; the most unpredictable part of the landscape, more like its own weather system than the sky itself.
What watch is dat? I say and he shows me. It’s a stainless steel TAG Heuer. He says you can have it brudda, passing the watch to me like he’s not even interested in it. Don’t lie, I say. Yeah brudda that’s you, he says. Come we get a draw, I say.
He grabs Chelsea around her waist from behind, puts his face into her hair and says you can come and stay at mine if you want Snoopz. I say swear down brudda? And he says mum’s life.
I tell him I wanna go to my mum’s yard quickly to grab some p’s and a couple tings and he says cool fam I’ll come with you.
One rule I have is that I don’t let anyone know where my parents live so that no matter what I get myself into, it’s never gonna come to their doorstep, and more importantly no one can ever hurt my family or try do them suttin to get at me.
So when we walk down to Harrow Road, I tell Gotti that my mother lives just behind the blocks on the opposite side to Warwick Estate. He tells me that Chelsea lives in Warwick so he’s gonna drop her off there. I walk through the blocks on the opposite side and as soon as I’m out of sight I sprint down to the bridge crossing over the railway tracks, through the alleyway on the other side and come out near my parents’ road.
At my parents’ yard I repack my bag. The house sleeps. The digital clock on the stove glows midnight. I reach under my bed for the Nike shoebox and take 3,000 out of my stack. That should last me for a while and anyway, I’m sure I’m gonna do some serious moves soon which will add to it. I grab my strap. It’s in the same shoebox under all the fifties: my Star 9mm with a silencer, unscrewed for now, wrapped in an oily T-shirt and tied up in two blue plastic grocery bags. The clip has eight shells in it and there are two loose ones rolling around at the bottom of the shoebox. I have a feeling I’ll be needing it at some point. I put the three bags in the front pocket of my backpack along with my textbook on literary theory, sheets of lined paper, a copy of Das Kapital, and my pens. Then I pack some clothes which I wrap around the strap before putting it into the main bit of the backpack. I leave without waking my father and mother up. I’ve become a ghost.
I run back the way I came, through the alley, over the bridge, catch my breath and phone Gotti saying I’m just leaving my mum’s yard now g, where you at? He tells me to link him on Harrow Road by t
he petrol station. We walk back to South Kilburn.
Nighttime smothers South Killy, orange block lights and black shadows sucking the colour out of the place. Gotti’s mum lives in a flat in D-block, in Wordsworth House. Four floors, with a permanent darkness oozing over the balconies. A notorious place. I almost feel like I need to take a breath before I follow Gotti in, but since it’s well after two in the morning now, the block is drenched in a heavy silence. Gotti tells me about how once two undercover feds pretending to be nittys, a man and a woman, went onto the balcony of D-block. The mandem banged them out, says Gotti, kicked their faces in when they was ko’d, stripped all their clothes off, took their handcuffs and radios and next shit. You shoulda seen the way boydem come for the whole block fam. Two vans full of riot police kicking off every single door on a madness, says Gotti and then he laughs, gravel in his voice.
Did you get through to anyone? I ask because I wanna get high right now. Nah, but I know one yout who’ll have that. Man will just knock his door and make him wake up, says Gotti.
When we go in, I notice that the cameras inside the block have been spray-painted over with black paint. We get to the first floor, walking up stairs that smell of stale skunk and piss. It’s like Blake Court up here; a long balcony that looks out across the park towards Precinct and rows of doors. One of the landing lights stutters, dies, comes back to life and repeats its struggle. I’m thinking how this is where all the D-block mandem jam, watching out for feds, ops, nittys, talking smack in loud voices with guns tucked in the melting shadows of the balconies, dirty rain-beaten concrete all around, looking like they’ve pulled the stars out of the sky and stuck them in their mouths. Gotti walks up to a door and claps the letterbox a couple times. No one answers so he does it again.
Who They Was Page 9
