‘You should feel ashamed of yourself. You get thrown out of school, then you end up in a police station. What next?’
‘They attacked us,’ Prem said.
‘But you attacked girls,’ his mum shouted back. ‘Young girls on their way home from school.’
‘We didn’t attack them,’ Prem reasoned. ‘We were just talking and messing about with them.’
‘Girls are not for messing about with. How would you like someone to start messing around with your sisters?’
‘Girls are not all perfect you know. You think they’re all angels don’t you?’
‘That’s enough,’ his mum said. ‘Let’s go.’
Tyrone’s mother just nodded her head and calmly said, ‘I’m not saying anything to you.’
‘OK,’ Tyrone said. ‘Don’t say anything.’
All three of the boys began to walk towards the door when the officer put his hand up in front of Ray as if he were stopping traffic. ‘I’m afraid you can’t go.’
‘What are you talking about can’t go, there’s the adults, there’s the door, let me out.’
The policeman signalled the two mothers and the other two boys out of the room. ‘I’m afraid not. You need a guardian or one of your parents to sign you out. They have been notified but they haven’t shown up yet.’
‘They know me,’ Ray said, looking at the door that had just been closed by Prem’s mother. ‘They can sign me out.’
‘I’m afraid not. The adult must be related to you,’ the officer said as he left the room.
When the officer locked the door behind him, Ray was on his own. No friends, no police, just an empty room with its own little toilet. If there had been windows with bars and whitewashed walls it would have been a cell. But there were no windows, only artificial light, and the walls were painted a shiny sky-blue. A padded bench ran across the back wall.
For a while Ray rapped to himself, entertaining an invisible audience, but he couldn’t keep it up for long. He was tiring and it was a tough audience. It wasn’t long before he was lying on his back on the bench listening to the background noise: a mixture of phones ringing, keys jingling, doors slamming and cries for freedom from other arrested people.
Ray fell asleep and was woken by a police officer standing over him and calling his name. He sat up to see his mother and father standing by the door. Ray addressed his father.
‘What do you want?’
‘I want to leave you to rot in here, that’s what I want,’ his father said convincingly.
‘Just go, then,’ Ray snapped back.
‘Look at you.’ His father was beginning to lose his temper.
Ray returned fire. ‘Look at you.’
‘Look at the both of you,’ his mother said. ‘You’re like two babies. Come on, I want to get out of this place.’
The police officer listened, uncomfortable in the midst of a family feud. Ray stood up and walked out. His mother signed for him and they left the police station. Outside the station, Ray’s parents turned to face home and Ray turned towards the music shop.
‘Where are you going?’ asked his mother.
‘I’m going about me business,’ Ray replied, looking down the road.
‘What business?’ his mother said. ‘What kind of business you have?’
‘Leave him,’ said his father. ‘Just leave him, let him live on the streets. That’s all he’s good for.’
‘Shut up,’ his mother shouted at his father. ‘No wonder he doesn’t want to come home.’
‘He doesn’t want to come home because he’s a tramp, he’s a negative. Him and his friends, they are all negatives.’
‘Shut up,’ she said. ‘And you Ray, come home, you heard what the police said, we’re responsible for you.’
Ray’s father walked away and left his mother standing pleading with Ray to go home.
‘Your father’s upset, Ray, he doesn’t mean what he’s saying. He doesn’t know how to deal with these things. Come home, Ray, we can talk things over.’
‘He doesn’t know how to talk,’ Ray said, looking in the direction of his father.
‘Well, talk to me,’ said his mother.
After a few more words of reassurance Ray decided to go home with his mother. They were silent for most of the time, but every couple of minutes Ray would ask her a question which she would answer using no more than a few syllables.
‘Has anyone been in my room?’
‘No.’
‘Are my CDs all right?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is my CD player working?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘Has anyone messed with my stuff?’
‘No.’
‘Has anyone called for me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who?’
‘School.’
‘Why?’
‘Checking that we got the letter.’
‘What have we got to eat?’
‘Food.’
Chapter 5
The Sunday Educational Supplement
A report published today reveals some alarming figures about exclusions in schools in England and Wales. The report, published by The Nation Foundation, an organisation that works with excluded children, identifies the reasons for the high levels of exclusions as verbal abuse, violence towards teachers and non-teaching staff, damaging of school property, bullying and possession of cannabis.
The authors of the report highlight the fact that an exclusion from school is often only a symptom of deeper problems within the child’s life, and that in most cases simply taking the pupil out of full-time education can cause more severe problems for the pupil in the future. The report states that an excluded child is most likely to be a teenage boy, although the number of girls is increasing rapidly. Eighty-three per cent of excluded children are male and over two-thirds of them are aged between 13 and 16. It also found that a significant number of excluded young people are involved in crime, which means that the real cost of exclusions is very difficult to calculate.
The government has recently stated in its Green Paper on welfare reform that reducing the number of exclusions from schools is a specific target in its battle to tackle social exclusion, but today’s report questions its approach by saying that ‘the government is looking for a panacea when there isn’t one’. It claims that a lack of inter-agency coordination has exacerbated many of the problems faced by socially excluded young people, and concludes by advocating a multi-faceted approach that would shift the balance towards prevention rather than using what it calls ‘the drastic surgery of exclusion’.
The Education Secretary said his department was looking into the report and would respond to its recommendations in the near future.
Chapter 6
Positivity
When Ray and his mother arrived home Ray went straight to his room. Someone had made an attempt to tidy it up, but that was unimportant – the first thing Ray attended to was his CD player. It had been put back on the table, but the wires at the back were tangled and had not been reconnected. Ray connected the wires and put a CD in. He felt a great sense of relief when it started to play.
‘Good job,’ he said as he began to check his CDs. When he noticed that one was missing he went and banged on Kori’s door. ‘Where’s my CD?’
‘You only just back and you started already?’ came the shout back from Kori.
‘Just give me my Busta Rhymes before I bust ya nose.’
Before Ray had time to say anything else the door opened, Kori’s hand reached out holding the CD, and Ray took it from her without either of them saying anything further.
* * *
Although he was very hungry, Ray avoided sitting at the table with the rest of the family that evening. Instead he waited until his father was in front of the television, then he persuaded his mother to re-heat the rice and chicken. Ray ate it like it was the first meal he had had for weeks. At times he loaded his mouth with so much food that it was hard to chew, as it
was like trying to swallow cardboard. It took him a while before he began to realise that he simply didn’t have enough saliva to cope with the contents of his mouth, and then he added orange squash to the mixture to lubricate its passage.
His mother watched him quietly for a while, then left the room. When she returned she had a letter in her hand which she put on the table as Ray ate. Ray wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and picked up the letter. It was from the school, calling his parents to a meeting.
Ray’s mother stood over him as he read the letter. When he had finished reading she took it from him.
‘Obviously your father’s not going to go, but I made an appointment with them for tomorrow, after work.’
‘Good luck,’ Ray said, as he continued to eat.
‘What do you mean, good luck? This is no joke,’ his mother said as she poked her finger into his shoulder.
‘I’m not joking either,’ Ray said, still chewing chicken. ‘I hope the meeting goes well.’
She began to wave the letter in front of his face. ‘This is not about me, you know, this is about you.’
‘Well, if it’s about me then forget it, because I know I’m not going back to that school.’
‘Listen to him,’ his father shouted from the living room. ‘I told you to forget him. Next time he ends up in the police station we should just leave him and let him rot there.’
His mother sat on the chair next to Ray and pulled it up until she couldn’t get any closer to him. It was uncomfortably close for Ray; he froze as she spoke softly to him.
‘Please Ray, I beg you, come with me. Never mind your father, never mind your friends, just do it for yourself, and for me. I can’t take it any more. They said it will be a relaxed meeting where you will be listened to, nobody will be shouting at you, and anything that you have to say will be taken seriously. Please.’
She reached out and held Ray’s arm as it rested on the table. Ray had not felt the touch of his mother for years. It had a calming effect on him, it relaxed him with its warmth, but she was shivering, and when Ray looked into his mother’s eyes he could see that she was a mother who was worried about her son.
‘There’s nowhere else to go,’ she whispered.
‘OK then, I’ll go,’ Ray replied, staring at her hand.
* * *
After a day of avoiding his father, Ray had a great sleep. For a short while he was woken when his parents prepared for work and Kori prepared for school, but then he went straight back to sleep and he slept right through until two o’clock. It was great being in his own bed. Ray had told himself to sleep until he couldn’t sleep any more, and that’s just what he did.
When he did get out of bed he got into a hot bath and soaked for twenty minutes. Then he had a shower and washed his hair. He oiled his skin with baby oil, he oiled his hair with Mr Cool hair gel, and he wiped some of his father’s Afroslick aftershave around his neck. He was smelling, he was oily, and he was greasy, but after only being able to wash in a sink for the previous couple of days he was happy.
Ray began to wonder what had happened to Tyrone and Prem. He rang Marga Man at Flip Discs. Marga Man had heard about the incident at the park and their detention at the station from other kids who had come into the shop, but he had not heard from any of the boys themselves. Then Ray rang Tyrone’s home and Prem’s mobile but there was no reply from either of them, so he spent most of the afternoon putting his CDs in order and lazing around the house until his mother came in from work to take him to the meeting at school.
* * *
When they arrived at the school most of the students had left. Ray liked the idea of walking into school dressed in his big clothes, but his pride in looking so big was matched by his embarrassment at being with his mother.
When they arrived at the headmaster’s office, Prem and his mother were sitting outside. The two mothers greeted each other.
‘What are you doing here?’ Ray asked, moving quickly to sit next to Prem.
‘Had a meeting with Mr Lang, didn’t I. Tyrone’s in there now.’
‘So what are you waiting for?’
Prem looked a little unsure. ‘Well, I don’t know, he said that he wants to see me again.’
Tyrone and his mother came out and Ray and his mother went in. The meeting was short. Ray’s mother was told exactly why Ray had been excluded, Ray was told why the school could not put up with his behaviour any more, and they were both given a lecture on the job market and why a good education was so important.
Then Mr Lang’s plan became apparent. He formally ended the meeting but went on to say that he would like Tyrone, Prem, Ray and their mothers to have a discussion together. Ray and his mother agreed and so the others were invited back into the office.
The boys and their mothers sat in a semi-circle around the head teacher’s desk. As Mr Lang looked at them from his seat even the mothers looked as though they were in trouble. Noticing how uncomfortable everyone looked, he stood up and went to the front of the desk.
‘I want to drop the formality and just have a chat with all three of you whilst your mothers are here,’ he said, as he pushed papers aside and half sat on his desk with one foot still firmly on the ground. ‘All three of you have broken almost every rule in the book and now, within the same week, all three of you have been permanently excluded from this school. The truth is that I don’t believe that there’ll be any drastic change if you are simply passed on to another school. Let’s face it, none of you have apologised, none of you think that you have done any wrong, and it almost seems as if you are happy to be excluded.’
Ray, Prem and Tyrone looked at each other, all with a hint of a smile on their face. Their mothers looked at them without the slightest hint of one on theirs.
Mr Lang saw this. ‘What I am about to say may seem rather strongly worded, but it’s the truth. On paper you have failed, and you are going nowhere. If we follow the statistical logic your visit to the police station will be just the first of many. You may not want to read it, but the writing is on the wall. But I wanted to bring you together today because I know that deep down you are three highly intelligent boys. Deep down I believe that your actions, these actions that so many of us find intolerable, are in fact reactions to something else, or the lack of something else.
‘Now, I didn’t ask you here for a counselling session. I’m not a psychotherapist, and I don’t want to rummage through your “emotional baggage” or anything like that, but before I consider what to do next I thought that it would be fair if I gave you a chance to speak. The last thing I want is for you to leave here saying you were not listened to. I want to give you this opportunity to tell me where you want to go from here, and if there is anything at all that I can do, I promise you that I’ll do anything to help you, within reason.’
The boys and their mothers just looked at each other in silence. There was a knock on the door. ‘Not now,’ Mr Lang shouted, keeping his eyes on the boys. When they had finished looking at each other they all turned back to face Mr Lang.
‘So, nothing,’ Mr Lang continued, looking at the boys, going from one to the other and back again. ‘We’ll just move you on to another school, who may move you on to another school, and they will probably move you on to another school. Because you don’t like school, you have no idea about what you want to do in life. It may even be fair to say that you have no talent and no ambition.’
‘Rubbish,’ said Ray, frowning back at Mr Lang. ‘We got ambition, you just can’t cope with it. We got skills, we know exactly what we’re gonna do. Right now we’re just killing time.’
‘So what are you going to do?’ asked Mr Lang.
Ray leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. ‘We’re gonna be the baddest motherfucking hip-hop band in the physical world gezza, and your daughter’s gonna love us.’
His mother slapped him across the back of the head. ‘What are you saying, how dare you speak like that? I am going to wash your mouth out with soap myself
and then I’m going to hand you over to your father.’
Even Tyrone and Prem were shocked by what Ray had said, and they moved on their seats uncomfortably as their mothers waited, ready to pounce at any false move or word. But Mr Lang was relaxed.
‘It’s OK. I want him to feel free to express himself, but I should tell you that my daughter’s into grunge music and a bit of the old punk rock. So you want to form a hip-hop band?’
‘That’s right,’ said Ray. ‘And you can’t deal with that.’
‘OK, I have to confess I have never been into a recording studio,’ Mr Lang said, shifting on the table. ‘But I do know that music-making at its best is an art that requires independent thinking, teamwork, mathematics, an enquiring mind, and knowledge of the relevant technology, so I want to make a suggestion.’
‘Oh no,’ Ray said, punching the other two playfully. ‘He wants to be our manager.’
The boys smiled. Mr Lang smiled. The mothers didn’t.
‘I’m a bit busy at the moment,’ Mr Lang continued, ‘but you could think of me as your consultant. Look, I think that you could really benefit from joining a Social Inclusion Project. You have to attend every day, you’ll have to do maths and English and other things that are on the curriculum, but you can also do music technology as your central subject. You will be able to study music and have access to people and materials which would normally be very expensive.’
‘No,’ said Prem’s mother firmly. ‘My son is going to be a doctor, not a music techno person.’
‘That’s right,’ said Tyrone’s mother. ‘My son is going to be an airline pilot, so another school will be just fine.’
Ray’s mother stayed silent.
‘What’s your son going to be?’ Mr Lang asked her.
‘My son is going to be a rapper,’ she said, knowing that her idea of the perfect son was not going to be.
Gangsta Rap Page 5
