“Yes, we were totally different... she was a student from a strict Christian house and I was a carefree Rastaman doing my music... we were crazy to think it could work. But then you came along and made it all worthwhile. So your mum may hate me, she may blame me for ruining her life and doing her wrong, but she can never deny the gift that our relationship left us with: you.”
“Oh, I love you, Dad,” I said, hugging him. He always knew just what to say. “Thank you.”
He stroked my hair gently and murmured, “I love you too, baby love. And I always will, y’understand?”
“No, Dad,” I smiled. “I don’t understand, I overstand, seen?”
Dad laughed and gave me a push. “Go help Leona,” he said, turning up the volume on the stereo. “And make me a herbal tea while you’re there, OK?”
“OK, Dad.”
Just as I got up to go to the kitchen, I heard my mobile phone ring. Thinking it must be Dwayne, I picked my bag up. “I’ll just take this call, Dad...”
Dad nodded and flicked on the TV. It was time for Match of the Day.
I answered the phone as soon as I had stepped into the dining room. “Dwayne?” I whispered, my heart fluttering in my chest.
There was a pause on the other end. A sharp intake of breath.
“Misha?”
It was Mum.
Moment Of Truth
MISHA
“Where have you been?” Mum’s face was tight, her jaw set, her brown eyes blazing.
“I was at Dad’s!” I opened my eyes wide, trying to look as innocent as possible.
“Before you got to your dad’s, Misha! And don’t try and tell me that you were with Effie because I have already spoken to her and her parents!”
For a split second, I considered insisting that I’d gone straight to Dad’s but one look in Mum’s eyes, and I knew I couldn’t lie to her. Not again. She had always been able to see right through me. “I was with Dwayne.”
I would have given anything not to have seen that look in Mum’s eyes: a mixture of disappointment and disgust. It was almost unbearable and I felt shame and regret burn my insides like acid.
Mum kissed her teeth and turned away abruptly, growling, “Just get inside; you’ve got some serious explaining to do.”
I stepped into the hallway after her and turned away to pull off my jacket. I tried to breathe normally, to steady my nerves, but inside I was trembling. I had never seen her so angry in all my life. But what would she do? What was the worst she could do?
I would soon find out.
“Sit down,” said Mum curtly as I stepped into the living room. Everything about the room looked dark and menacing, nothing like the comfortable, welcoming space it usually was.
I sat down on the edge of the sofa, chewing my bottom lip. Mum took a deep breath. “OK, Misha, this is how it’s going to work: I’m going to ask the questions, you’re going to tell the truth. Do you understand, Misha? The truth. No more lies.”
I nodded. What else could I do? There was nothing to say.
“Right. Firstly: have you been seeing that boy, Dwayne?”
“Yes.”
“Even after I told you to end it with him?”
“Yes.”
A pause. I decided it would be safer to avoid Mum’s eyes and look at the floor. That way there was a chance I would be able to delay the tears that were already threatening to fall.
“So you’ve been sneaking out to see him behind my back?”
“Yes.” What kind of tears were these? Unfamiliar as they were, I could name them: these were tears of shame mixed with regret.
Mum took a big, shuddering breath. “All right, Misha, I don’t need to tell you what a terrible disappointment this is to me. I trusted you – and you betrayed my trust. Did you think I wouldn’t find out? What kind of fool do you take me for? You think I don’t know when my own daughter is lying to me?”
“Mum, I...”
“No, Misha, there can be no explanation for what you have done, no excuse. I invited that boy into my home and gave him a chance to prove himself. He failed miserably, on so many levels. And out of my love for you, I told you that it was best that you didn’t see him again. Haven’t I always done what is best for you? Haven’t I always sacrificed everything for your happiness?”
“For my happiness?” I was incredulous. Mum didn’t really expect me to agree with her – did she?
“Yes, Misha, for your happiness! Everything I have worked so hard for over the last few years has been for you...”
“Mum, all that has had nothing to do with my happiness! It’s always been about what you want, not what I want!”
Mum kissed her teeth and shook her head in irritation. “Oh, Misha, grow up! I’m not talking about you being happy for a few weeks because some boy is sending you a thousand text messages! I’m talking about your future here, your life – what’s best for you ...”
“But how would you know, Mum?” I felt anger build up inside me at last. “How would you know what is best for me? You’ve got no idea who I am, Mum! You may think you do but, really, the only Misha you know is the one you expect me to be...”
“Misha, I know you better than you know yourself, believe me.”
“How can you say that?”
“Because I am your mother!” Mum’s voice was high and she got up abruptly, pacing the floor in front of me. “Because I gave birth to you! Because nobody else in this world has sacrificed as much for you as I have...”
“Stop saying that!” I shouted suddenly, jumping up, my hands over my ears. I just couldn’t stand to hear her say that one more time. “Stop beating me over the head with that every time I disappoint you, every time I don’t live up to your expectations! It’s like you’re making me pay you back for giving birth to me, for you and Dad splitting up, for bringing me up on your own – I didn’t bloody ask to be born!”
The slap came so hard and fast that it took me completely by surprise. The fire of Mum’s hand spread across my cheek like a hot, red stain.
“Don’t you ever,” choked Mum, her chest heaving, “speak to me like that again. I am your mother. And I always will be. And don’t ever go thinking that you will be able to pay me back for that because you never will, do you understand?”
All I could do was blink, as my cheek throbbed. I was stunned. She had never hit me before. “Why did you hit me?” I asked, my voice trembling.
I saw Mum falter and her eye flickered. Maybe she regretted it. Maybe she would apologise now.
But no.
“Misha, you need to come to your senses. This life is not a game; you can’t just go gambling your future on some lickle...”
“No!” Tears were streaming down my face now and I wouldn’t let her finish, couldn’t let her have the last word, not this time. “No – why did you hit me? Why did you hit me?”
Mum tried to ignore my tears, tried to keep talking, talking about my future, about the challenges I would face, how I couldn’t allow anyone to hold me back. But I was way past listening to all that.
In my mind, memories were crowding together: our house on Coldharbour Lane, cosy afternoons spent at Gran’s place, Rachel and other friends I had ditched because Mum said that they weren’t good enough for me; taking Science instead of French because Mum said more black girls needed to excel in Maths and Science; growing my hair when I had wanted to keep it short, relaxing it because Mum said braids looked common; and Dwayne, of course. Years and years of doing what made Mum happy, what she approved of, rose up to choke me.
“How could you? How could you hit me for telling the truth? How could you hit me?”
She tried to reach out towards me but, just then, something inside me snapped.
“Don’t you touch me,” I shrieked. “Don’t you come near me!”
“Misha!” barked Mum. “Get a hold of yourself!”
But it was too late for orders. I stumbled from the room, everything a watery blur in front of me. Escape, escape, escape. The
word built up to a crescendo inside my head and, before I knew it, I had wrenched the front door open and was running down the path towards the gate, the early evening air cool against my burning cheeks.
“Misha!” Mum’s furious voice echoed in the deathly quiet of the Sunday night street. “Come back! Come back right now!” And she rushed to stop me at the gate. But she stepped back when I whirled to face her. I wanted the neighbours to hear; I wanted her to be unable to face them the next morning.
“All my life,” I shouted, “I’ve tried to live up to your expectations! I’ve been everything you’ve wanted me to be, tried to make you happy. And now that I’ve found a happiness of my own, a happiness you don’t understand, you want to take it away from me...”
“Misha, love, it’s got nothing to do with that...” Mum tried to take my arm, to lead me back inside where the neighbours couldn’t see us, but I shook her hand off.
“No, Mum, I’m not coming back inside! Not until you can learn to listen to me, to what I think, what I want. You say Dwayne isn’t good enough for me? Maybe the truth that you can’t face is that I’m not good enough for you.”
“Misha!”
But I was already running, running down the street, escape, escape, escape pounding its own rhythm inside me.
Retribution
DWAYNE
After Misha left, I went home to change. I had planned to stay home, maybe give Tony a call, play some Playstation, basically lay low.
I was about to call for pizza when my second phone – my ‘work phone’ – rang. It was Spoonz telling me that they had scored some top class weed and a bit of crack cocaine. He asked me if I wanted to come get some.
The deal was too sweet to resist. Avoiding Jukkie and Trigger, going to after-school maths class and spending time with Misha all meant that I was seriously broke. I needed to refill the coffee jar of cash I kept in the lining of the sofa in my room.
I knew that, in a couple of hours, the crackheads would be coming to the wheelie bins underneath St Paul’s to score their nightly fix. I reckoned I could make some quick dough without getting into beef with anyone, as long as I left the house tidy and was home before Mum got back.
Just as I left my room, I caught sight of Malcolm X’s autobiography, lying face-down on my sofa next to my copy of the Qur’an. I bit my lip and thought for a minute.
‘Do you really need to do this, blud?’
‘What’s that?’
‘Go sell some crack to feed a junkie’s nasty habit. I thought we were past that...’
‘You may be past that, blud, but as for me, I’ve got to make my Ps, same way.’
‘So you ain’t gonna listen to nobody: not your mum, not Ms Walker, not Brother Malcom, not even your Lord? Let alone what Misha would think if she knew.’
‘That’s what I hate about you, man. You’re so idealistic. You don’t think practically. Yeah, I want to go straight, I want to sort my stuff out. But in the meantime, man has to eat. And if those crackheads don’t get it from me, you know they’re gonna get it from someone else, innit? I didn’t create the market, blud, I just supply it.’
Silence.
‘So what, now you ain’t got nothing to say?’
‘You make me sick, man.’
‘Stay like that.’
But by the time I had spent a few minutes standing around those stinking bins, I was regretting it. There were some other man there too, eyeing each other up. Someone said that they heard that the 5-0 would be patrolling so everyone was on high alert. I had just wanted to chill, score some easy money, and go home and eat pizza. But it didn’t look like it was going to be that kind of night.
I was tense, listening out for any police sirens coming into the estate. It was Brixton so, true say, there were always sirens going off. What mattered was how far away they were. Did you have enough time to stash whatever you were holding and make a run for it before they came with their sniffer dogs and batons?
One by one, the crackheads starting appearing from the dark corners of the estate. I tried my best to be polite to them for the sake of business but, to tell the truth, most of them made me want to heave. How could they let themselves go like that? Matted, dreadlocked hair, funky clothes, teeth that hadn’t seen toothpaste since before I was born. I tried to avoid touching them; I was sure they had lice and stuff like that.
But hey, these were the customers and you know what they say: the customer is always right. So I smiled and joked with them same way, happy that my bag was almost empty and that I would be going home soon.
When I had one bag left, I decided to call it a night. I was mash-up and proper hungry. I’d be ordering an extra large pizza when I got home.
“Yo, I’m out,” I called to the others who were still standing around, hoping for more customers.
“Catch ya later, yeah?”
“Stay safe...”
As I squeezed through the narrow gap between the two bins that hid our spot from the rest of the estate, I bumped into a little kid, his hood over his head.
“You got some punk, bro?” he asked, trying to make his voice sound all manly. I frowned and pulled his hood back off his head. I knew that voice.
“Spaz!” I almost shouted. “What you doin’ here, man?” It was Jay’s best friend from school.
He seemed embarrassed to see me. “I just came to get some weed, innit. My brother’s vex’ with me coz I broke his iPod, now he won’t get me any weed. Told me I have to get it myself until I pay him back for the iPod.”
“What you gonna do with weed, man? Ain’t you still in nursery school or something?”
He stood up taller and said, “I sell it at school, innit. ‘Nuff boys can’t get it for themselves but, through my brother, I can get it for them. Make a little dough, y’get me...”
And I looked down at the bright white trainers he was wearing – the latest style. I didn’t have to ask him how he was spending his money. I thought about the trainers I bought for Jay every couple of months. I never wanted him to go through what I went through: being teased because your mum bought your clothes from Primark, never having money to get the latest trainers. I made sure that my little brother had everything he needed – mainly so that he wouldn’t have to be hanging around bins under St Paul’s with a bunch of junkies and drug dealers.
I looked down at Spaz. He was just a little kid, man. He should have been home in bed, not out here on his own. I flipped his hood back over his head and pushed him away from the gap between the bins.
“Go home, man,” I growled. “It ain’t safe for you out here, y’get me.”
But he wasn’t having it. “What’re you talking about, man? I can handle myself! I just need to get some food, that’s it. Why don’t you just sell me some, innit? I’ve got the money...” And he put his hand in his back pocket and pulled out a bunch of ten pound notes. He looked up at me and, in that moment, I saw Jay’s face instead of his.
It was too much for me.
“Nah, I said go home, man! I ain’t selling you nuffin’. Now go home before I mash you up, yeah?” And I gave him a shove to show him I wasn’t joking.
He swore at me, then spat on the floor next to my shoe. But he still turned and walked away towards his flat on the other side of the estate.
“And don’t let me catch you here again, y’undertand?” I shouted after him.
He gave me the finger.
Feisty.
By the time I got home, I didn’t even feel like pizza any more. I felt sick. I just wanted to sleep, to block out everything that had happened that day.
That’s one of the wonderful things about sleep: it’s like a warm, dark tunnel where you can go to escape from everything and everyone. I counted myself lucky that I didn’t dream and, if I did, I never remembered my dreams when I woke up.
I wondered why I hadn’t heard from Misha, then remembered that I had put my ‘non-work’ phone on silent while I was out on road. I took it out of my pocket and checked it for messages. Two
from Misha and five missed calls from Mum. Five missed calls? It must have been serious because Mum hardly ever rang my phone.
I rang her number.
“Dwayne?” Her voice sounded weak and tired and straight away I got scared. What had happened?
“Dwayne... it’s Jay...”
“Jay? What, Mum? Has something happened to him?”
“Well, sort of... I need you to come, come now...”
“Mum, where are you? Just tell me, I’ll be there.”
“We’re at the police station in Brixton, Dwayne. Your brother’s been arrested.”
Scapegoat
DWAYNE
Jay, Jay, what have you done, man? What have you done?
A million questions were buzzing around in my head as I ran all the way to the police station on Brixton Road. I had seen him just that afternoon! Where the hell did he go when he left the house? Who had he seen? I thought of his little face in the bright neon lights of the police station. He was only ten! He didn’t belong there! Did they rough him up? ‘Cuff him? Who did they put him in a cell with? A ten-year-old for God’s sake!
I was jittery by the time I got to the station but I took a deep breath before going in. I had to hold it together, for Mum, and I didn’t want the police to go asking any questions about me either. Although I had managed to keep myself out of trouble with the police so far, I knew that one false move, one stupid mistake, and you would be banged up in a cell with rapists and junkies, on your way to remand or jail somewhere mad far like Portsmouth, where your family couldn’t even come see you on the regular.
I stuffed my hands into my pockets – and my heart nearly stopped beating.
I still had the bag of weed in my jacket pocket.
I stood there, chewing my lip. What the hell was I going to do? My phone rang again. It was Mum.
“Yeah?”
“Dwayne, where are you?”
“I’m almost there, Mum. Just give me a minute...”
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