Pigeon English

by Stephen Kelman

  Miquita: ‘This is what you get! You best keep your mouth shut, bitch!’

  I wanted to close my eyes but I couldn’t stop looking. It was just too brutal. I saw Lydia on the other side of the circle. She didn’t know who to support, Miquita or Chanelle. She was just watching them both. Her face was all scared and stiff.

  Then the teachers came. They broke through the circle and got Miquita and Chanelle and pulled them away. Everybody went quiet. They were disappointed, you could tell. They wanted to see somebody get killed. The teachers pushed us all away. The circle broke up and everybody split. It was very fast.

  You could see the snot on the ground and some of Chanelle’s hair like a crazy spiderweb. There was a fingernail. Somebody trod on it and crushed it before I could pick it up for evidence. I couldn’t concentrate for the rest of the day, everybody was still thinking about the ruckus. Everybody acted out their favourite bits like a movie. Nobody could believe it was real. It was the best fight they’d ever seen. The best bit was when you thought somebody you didn’t love would die, it made you feel invisible.

  All the pool balls at Youth Club are broken. They all have holes in and they don’t even roll right. People keep throwing them. You’re not supposed to throw them but they still do. And some of the sticks don’t even have an end. You can never hit the ball straight, it always goes wobbly. Asweh, it’s proper vexing. The pool table smells of wet dust. There’s a hell of burns on it from cigarettes. If you licked it you’d get a million germs. Even Nathan Boyd wouldn’t dare to lick it.

  Lydia went in first to see if X-Fire was in there. She looked around the corner. I crossed my fingers (it’s quicker than praying when it’s an emergency).

  Me: ‘Is it all clear?’

  Lydia: ‘Yes! Just come on or we’ll be here all night.’

  It was our only chance. X-Fire thinks he owns the table, nobody else ever gets a go when he’s there. It’s only when Derek isn’t around. Derek’s bigger than X-Fire, and he knows Tae Kwon Do. He taught me a forearm block. There’s one that goes high to block a high attack and one that goes low to block a low attack. It’s quite easy. Derek wouldn’t teach me an attack for if I used it on Lydia. When somebody asks him to teach them an attack it’s usually just to sound their sisters with. He only teaches defences.

  We only played until the crazy balls got too vexing. Lydia wasn’t even trying. She hit the white ball in the pocket on purpose just so she’d lose.

  Lydia: ‘Game over. You win.’

  Me: ‘Ho! You can’t lose on purpose, it’s cheating!’

  Lydia: ‘I can do what I want. It’s a stupid game anyway.’

  She only says that because she’s no good. It doesn’t mean you should give up. Mamma says giving up is a sin. It’s the same as lying. It’s even worse than that because it’s lying to yourself.

  When we came out I used my binoculars to check for enemies. Miquita and Killa were sitting on the wall. Miquita was smoking a fat cigarette and Killa had his hand down the back of her pant. It was quite disgusting. I wanted to puke.

  Miquita: ‘Hello, Juicy Fruit.’

  Me: ‘Gowayou.’

  Miquita: ‘Chlamydia, you want some?’

  Miquita held her fag out for Lydia. The smoke smelled like BO. It made my heart go proper fast.

  Lydia: ‘No thanks.’

  Miquita: ‘She’s a good girl, innit. And she knows when to keep her mouth shut, not like Chanelle. I had to bounce that bitch. Whatever she thinks she knows, she don’t know shit. She’s just an attention-seeker, that’s all she is. She needs to grow up.’

  You could see the lighter burns on Miquita’s hands all shiny like wax. They weren’t even for a good reason like Auntie Sonia’s burns, they were just a trick. Killa only made them so Miquita would admire him. I even felt sorry for him then. I didn’t even have to burn Poppy to make her admire me, I only had to make her laugh. Somebody should tell him, laughing is the best way to make them admire you. It’s even easier than burning.

  Killa: ‘Stop looking at me, man. I’ll break them f—ing things you don’t put ’em down.’

  His mouth just looked stupid through the binoculars. It was too close up to be angry anymore, it just looked like a cartoon. I don’t even think Killa’s hutious. He can’t even spell his own name right. It should be Killer. His eyes were all sad from where the smoke was getting in them. I know how he feels, it’s proper itchy.

  Killa: ‘I mean it, man, I ain’t messing around. Just f— off.’

  Killa stood up all red-eyes. I spun around sharp-sharp and started looking at the Jubilee Centre instead. You can still see the ghosts of the bad words on the wall, waiting to trap you. F— off and DFC and suck my balls. I felt Killa grab me from the back. I wasn’t even suspecting it. He got my hands and squeezed them proper hard and made me drop the binoculars. He smashed them and smashed them against the wall until they were broken in a million pieces.

  Killa: ‘I f—ing told you. Don’t f— with me, man.’

  Derek: ‘What’s going on?’

  Derek came out proper fast like thunder and Killa just split down the alley. Miquita went after him, her big fat behind was wobbling all over the place like a bag of crazy mice.

  Me: ‘You’re paying for them! I’ll tell the police you broke them!’

  There’s no way I can fix them, they’re too far dead. Without the binoculars I’m just a civilian again.

  Lydia: ‘I’ll buy you some more.’

  Me: ‘You’ll never find them again. I got them at the carnival.’

  Lydia: ‘They don’t have to be army colour.’

  Me: ‘I like army colour, it’s better for hiding.’

  Lydia: ‘Who do you have to hide from?

  Me: ‘Nobody.’

  Lydia: ‘Let’s just go home, it’s getting late.’

  Signs of guilt include:

  Ants in your pant

  Talking too fast

  Always looking around you like you’ve lost something

  Smoking too much

  Crying too much

  Scratching

  Biting your fingers

  Spitting

  Sudden bouts of violence

  Uncontrolled gas (farting a lot)

  Religious hysteria

  I put it in my notes for Dean:

  Me: ‘Detective Opoku observed four signs of guilt in suspect: Killa. He then obstructed Detective Opoku when he was doing his duty. Detective Opoku suggests we make him suspect number one. Beware: suspect’s accomplice, Miquita Sinclair (aka Fat Hands, aka Miquita Shit Eater), is unlikely to cooperate. She’s a bitch. Suggest we approach with caution. Over and out.’

  Aka stands for also known as. It works for names you gave them and for names they gave themself.

  All the women were very worried for if they couldn’t get their meat anymore.

  One woman: ‘Where am I s’posed to get my meat from now? I always get my meat from Nish.’

  Another woman: ‘His meat’s better. The butcher’s meat’s always tough. It’s not as fresh.’

  One woman: ‘I know. What are we s’posed to do now?’

  It was too late to do anything, they were already taking Nish away. He was shouting and screaming like an alien. He sounded mad. He didn’t want to go. The policemen were pulling him and pulling him but he was hanging onto his van. He wouldn’t let go of it. They had to pull his fingers off. I could hear them breaking. Asweh, it was very cruel.

  Watch doctor: ‘Leave him alone! Bully!’

  Fruit man: ‘About f—ing time! Send him home!’

  It felt too crazy. It wasn’t fair. He didn’t even poison anybody. I wanted to help him but the policemen were in the way, they’d spray acid in my face.

  Nish’s wife fell over. The policeman pushed her, I saw it with my own two eyes. Her shoe fell off. I picked it up for her. She was crying. Her toenails were painted red. They looked crazy and lovely. Her lips were red as well. There was meat everywhere. People were stealing it. I wanted to
kill them.

  Noddy: ‘Oi, put that back, you thieving bastard!’

  Pisshead: ‘F— off, baldy!’

  More policemen came to stop the thieves. They locked up Nish’s van so nobody could get inside. Then they took Nish and his wife away. They put chains on their arms. Both the two of them were crying now. It made my belly go cold. Nish is from Pakistan, I saw the flag in his van. It has a star and a moon, it’s my second favourite flag after Ghana.

  When there’s a star on a flag it stands for freedom. The star points in all directions, it means you can go anywhere you want. That’s why I love stars, because they stand for freedom.

  Me: ‘Did they poison somebody?’

  Noddy: ‘No, they didn’t poison nobody.’

  Me: ‘Why are they taking them away? I don’t get it.’

  Lydia: ‘Advise yourself. You’re so lame.’

  Noddy: ‘They just lost their ticket, that’s all.’

  Me: ‘What ticket?’

  Dean’s mamma: ‘I never knew they was illegal. Their mince’s better than the crap you get off the butcher’s. His is all fatty.’

  Noddy: ‘I s’pose their luck had to run out sometime. Three pound please love. I can do you a discount if you buy another lot, three for four pound.’

  Dean’s mamma: ‘Go on then.’

  Dean’s mamma was buying socks. You can get them with all different sports men on the top, like one playing tennis and one playing football and one riding a bike. I’ve even got them myself. I bet you a million pounds they’re for Dean.

  Me: ‘What will happen to them now, will they send them back? Is there a market in Pakistan?’

  Lydia: ‘Of course there is, stupid. There’s a market everywhere.’

  Me: ‘Do they have trains that go under the ground?’

  Noddy: ‘I don’t know about that one.’

  I hope they do. I hope Pakistan is as nice as here. If I had to go home I’d miss the tube the most. And my friends. Poppy likes it the most when I chase the clouds away for her. I just kept watching the cloud until it moved and the sun came out again. Poppy didn’t believe it was me, she thought it was just the wind. I still think it was me.

  Me: What ticket were they talking about? Have we got one?’

  Lydia: ‘He means a visa. He only said ticket because he thinks you’re stupid. Oh, I forgot, you are stupid.’

  Me: ‘Is it the same visa Julius sells? I heard him talking on the phone one time. He said he can sell a visa for five hundred. Why doesn’t Nish just buy one, then he can stay.’

  Lydia: ‘You can’t really buy them. The ones Julius sells are no good.’

  Me: ‘Why, what’s wrong with them?’

  Lydia: ‘They don’t work, they’re fakes. Forget about Julius, he’s a crook. If you bought a chicken from him by the time you got home it would just be an egg again.

  Me: ‘Our visa works though, doesn’t it?’

  Lydia: ‘Yes.’

  Me: ‘Are you sure?’

  Lydia: ‘Yes, I’m sure! Don’t disturb!’

  I hope our visa works. If they try to take us away I’ll just go invisible, then when they can’t see me I’ll sneak up behind them and get their acid spray and spray them until they burn away to ashes. I wish I thought of it before Nish’s wife got her head trod on.

  The next time I see Dean I’ll ask him how he likes his new socks. If I think they’re bo-styles then so will he.

  Connor Green says Mr Staines’s real first name is Seaman. It’s because he was in the navy. I don’t even believe it. Mr Staines is too fat to be in the navy, he’d sink right down to the bottom. I can remember all my French now without looking in the book. I can make a whole conversation. Mr Staines even says my accent is very good. I only know one conversation. It’s for when you meet somebody for the first time, to tell them who you are:

  Me: ‘Je m’appelle Harrison Opoku. J’ai onze ans. J’habite à Londres. J’ai deux soeurs. J’aime le football.’

  Do you want to know what it means? It means, My name is Harrison Opoku. I’m eleven years old. I live in London. I have two sisters. I like football. It sounds better when you say it. Just writing it’s not as much fun.

  The first thing everybody would do if they went to France is go to the top of the Eiffel Tower and do a massive spit. We all agreed. Only Connor Green would do a piss instead.

  Connor Green: ‘Except the people at the bottom would probably try and catch it. They drink piss in France, innit. They think it makes them live longer. Thick bastards.’

  Jordan was the first choice for a spit sample because he loves spitting so much. It wouldn’t even be hard to get a sample, he’d just give it to me straight away.

  Jordan: ‘F— off man, I ain’t spitting in that!’

  Me: ‘It’s clean.’

  Jordan: ‘I don’t care. What you want my spit for anyway, what you gonna do with it?’

  I bit my lips to stop the smile coming. Lying is OK if it’s for a good reason.

  Me: ‘It’s for my Science project, to test how well germs survive in spit. You get loads of different spits and you put the germs in them, and the spit that kills the germs first is the special one. You could have a cure for something in your spit. It could make you a fortune.’

  Jordan: ‘I don’t wanna be a cure, let ’em die, I don’t give a f—. Just get it away from me, man.’

  I threw the bottle in the bin. Another idea bites the dust! Adjei, nobody wants to help the investigation. It makes you feel like everybody’s the bad guy except you. It’s very lonely. I haven’t even got a favourite gun yet. I haven’t really thought about it. If I had to choose it would probably be a supersoaker. They sell them at the market. They only fire water. It’s proper brutal, the water goes really far. You have to ask the person for permission before you soak them for if they don’t like it, otherwise there’ll be a ruckus. I’m going to get one in the summer holidays.

  Jordan’s favourite gun is a Glock.

  Jordan: ‘It’s what all the toughest gangsters use. Have you seen it?’

  Me: ‘No. What’s it like?’

  Jordan: ‘It’s the sickest, man. It’s the most powerful. If I shot you with a Glock it’d take your head off. It shoots dumb-dumbs, innit.’

  Me: ‘What the hell are they?’

  Jordan: ‘They’re these special bullets that can go through walls and everything. It’s well deadly. That’s the first gun I’m gonna get when I’ve got the cash.’

  Me: ‘Me as well.’

  Jordan: ‘You can’t have a Glock, it’s mine. You didn’t even know about it till I told you.’

  Me: ‘I still love it.’

  Jordan: ‘Yeah, well not as much as me. I love them the most.’

  We were waiting for the bus to come. We were at the bus stop opposite the flats. If you wait inside the bus stop they can’t even see you. You only jump out when the bus is coming, then it’s a mighty surprise. They don’t even have time to stop you.

  You get ten points for every time you hit the bus anywhere. You get fifty points for hitting a window. If you hit the big window at the front where the driver sits it’s a hundred points. If the window breaks it’s a thousand.

  If you hit the tyre and it goes down and the bus crashes it would be a million points but nobody has ever done it. It’s next to impossible.

  Jordan’s better at throwing. He can get more power. It’s only because he beat me to the smoothest stones. I only had pointy stones and they’re not aerodynamic (aerodynamic means it flies through the air better. My stones weren’t aerodynamic because they’re too sharp).

  Jordan has seen a Glock in real life. He even held it. It was one of his missions for the Dell Farm Crew. He had to bury a gun.

  Jordan: ‘They always keep a gun buried somewhere for when they need it. They’ve got loads of them all over the place, innit.’

  Me: ‘Why don’t they just keep it in their house?’

  Jordan: ‘Don’t be a retard, what if the police found it?’
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br />   Me: ‘Did you shoot it?’

  Jordan: ‘No, there weren’t no bullets in it. You keep the bullets somewhere else, you don’t keep ’em with the gun. I still fired it though. I pulled the trigger and everything. It was well sick.’

  Jordan loved it, you could tell. His eyes went all big. He says it’s safer to bury the gun in somebody’s garden because only they go in there. If you buried it on the green where lots of people go, it’s a bigger chance that somebody will find it and take it away.

  They don’t even know the person who owns the garden. They don’t even ask them. It’s usually an old person. Then they don’t know anything about it. If somebody asks them about a gun they don’t know what they’re talking about. It’s just safer like that.

  Jordan: ‘You always bury it at night. You pick somewhere quiet where there’s no streetlights and that. Only bury it a little way down, like next to a flower or a rock or something so you remember where you put it. You’ve gotta be well quick though; if you’re followed it’s game over, they’ll kill you for giving the hiding place away. I only done it two times.’

  Asweh, planting a gun just felt too crazy! At least if you’re planting plants they’ll grow into something. A gun doesn’t even grow into anything. I pretended like I planted a gun and a lot of baby guns grew up from the ground. Then I sold them at the market.

  Me: ‘Get your baby guns here! Two pound a pound! Baby guns, nice and fresh!’

  It was very funny. Planting a gun is the craziest thing I’ve ever heard of, I swear by almighty God.

  You should always know where to find a gun if you’re in a hurry, you never know when you’ll need it. You’ll mostly need it for a war or to do a robbery with. It makes the robbery easier.