The Dirty South (14 page)

Tania's reasoning proper surprised me. This ghetto chick wasn't as stupid as she dressed.

‘Courtney was always an idiot from schooldays,' I remarked. ‘And his mum goes to the same church as my granny. So why the fuck is he turning Muslim?'

‘So they can order their girlfriends around,' reasoned Tania. ‘Haven't you been listening to me, Dennis? And I'm proper fucked off with it. I'm gonna sack him after Christmas.'

‘Why after Christmas?' I asked.

‘ 'Cos he's promised to buy me a gold chain and name-brand
shoes from this store in Bond Street. We was up West the other day and I pointed them out to him.'

I laughed out loud. ‘So Courtney is nothing but a sad boops! I'm gonna tell you blatantly, Tania, if me and you ever have something going on I ain't buying you shit! I ain't no boops.'

Taking a mighty toke Tania blew the smoke over my head. She looked a bit pissed off at my last remark but it's better that she knew where she stood with me. ‘I don't need no man to buy me shit!' she said, performing her head moving sideway thing. How the fuck do ghetto chicks do that? ‘But if a man's offering I ain't saying no,' she went on. ‘Man take what they want from you so I'm gonna take what I want from them. Besides, you didn't come here to chat about Courtney, did you?'

‘No,' I answered. ‘I'm just kinda wondering why you linked him in the first place. He's a pussy-hole.'

‘When his bredrens are not around him, he's cool, you know, on a level. But when he's with them he changes. Acts like a hardback man on road. You get me?'

‘Courtney ain't no hardback,' I stated. ‘At school this maaga little African brother broke him up, punched out two of his teeth and ran off with his sandwiches and crisps.'

I looked around for an ashtray but couldn't find one. ‘Where shall I tip my ash?'

‘In the bedroom. Follow me.'

I knew what was coming next but I didn't have an erection. Tania led me to her box-room and the walls were covered in posters of LL Cool J, Usher, Will Smith and Tupac. At least they covered up the cheap wallpaper. The bedroom was so small that if you wasn't careful you might broke the window with the mortise key when entering. She closed the door behind me and she invited me to sit down on her single bed. The duvet had no cover on it and I reckoned it had never been washed. There was an ashtray on her dressing table and I placed my fat-head in it and my half bottle of beer beside it. She did likewise and seconds later we were rolling about on her bed, taking off each other's clothes. Underneath her dressing-gown she was wearing a black bra and a black thong. It
didn't take me long to get her naked and she had the most buff body I had ever seen in the flesh. But I so much wanted to see Akeisha's face in front of me. I tried to imagine it was Akeisha's face but that didn't work. Closing my eyes only made me imagine how big Tania's nose was.

I rolled her onto her belly and started to kiss her neck, caress her back and feel up her bottom. Her face was pressing into the bed. But Tania moved onto her back and stuck her tongue down my throat. As she circled my tongue with hers, her big nose was bumping into my face like a dodgem car driven by a fucked off bully at the funfair. I just couldn't carry on. I pulled myself off her and sat up… For a moment I thought that I should have just let her give me a BJ. At least that would have kept her nose away from me.

‘I'm not in the vibe to do this,' I explained. ‘It don't feel right. Courtney was a proper bredren at school and I don't want to do him any disrespect…'

‘What!'

I shook my head.

‘Are you a fucking chi chi man or something?' Tania yelled. ‘You don't want none of this?'

She raised her bottom in the air, gyrated her hips and all her business was revealed.
Damn!
She was fit! Her bottom was proper peach-like but I couldn't wok her with
that
nose. And she wasn't Akeisha. It was then when I noticed the condom packets on her dressing table. She even got the plain ones that I asked for, no fruit flavoured shit.

‘Come out of my fucking house, man! Wasting my fucking time with a someone who prefers a man's bottom. I can't believe you diss me like that. Fuck off and remove your chi chi self from my gates. It's a good thing you stopped when you did 'cos I ain't catching no Aids from a chi chi man. You thought you could cure your chi chi self on me? Fucking liberty!
Remove
from my gates, man!'

All I could do was pull my clothes on and step. I didn't even bother collecting my fat-head and drink. As I left the insults still kept flying.

‘Invite man to my gates and find out he's a chi chi man! You secretly wanna rinse man's bottom but you wanted to front it out with me to try and prove you're straight. That's a
diss
, man.
Real
men love this.' She cupped her breasts and then squeezed her buttocks and performed that gyrating thing again. I reckoned if I was Noel I would have rode her like a sex-starved rhino. He didn't mind too much if the face was lacking.

‘Fuck off from my gates and take your nasty, shit-caked dick with you!' she ranted.

As I quickly hot stepped from Tania's block, I couldn't help but think of Akeisha and how I wished it was her I was seeing for a Monday evening wok.

I was reluctant to go to Stockwell Youth Club two nights later. Tania had a big mouth when she was vexed and I was proper shitting myself that because of our little incident she might have spread some fucked-up rumour all over Bricky that I'm a chi chi man. Some shit like that could really fuck up my shotting career… But duty called. Noel and myself were shotting outside the club and chirpsing the chicks. I was kinda relaxed 'cos we were making nuff brown sheets and there was no sign of Tania.

But then Courtney Thompson appeared. He was dressed in some weird white garms that looked too big for him. He was wearing the same stubble and walking all slow-like as if he was in some Sergio Leone western. He looked straight at me. I never really looked too hard at men's features but Courtney was my God ugly. His eyes were close together, his ears stuck out and his face had this lopsided kinda look to it. Tania was with him. She was wearing a mini-denim skirt, black fishnet stockings, a white clingy T-shirt and a loose-fitting tracksuit top. She was chewing gum the way ghetto chicks chewed gum and she had a trailer load of attitude. On a normal day I would have cracked up laughing at the sight of this weird couple but this wasn't a normal day. Courtney had come with a crew. Most of them were wearing skull caps, white garms and messed-up beards. It was like watching a fucked-up TV series about Jesus and those Jewish baddies in the temple.

Noel noticed the cranking up of the tension. ‘What's gwarnin, bruv?'

‘I ain't too sure, Noel,' I answered as Courtney and his crew walked up to ten yards away from me and stopped. Courtney was still bad-eyeing me so I just returned his glare with interest. Others who had been in and out of the club had now stopped what they were doing and watched to see if any violence would be happening. Courtney and myself were still having our staring contest until finally he took two paces forward. I noticed Noel slipped his right hand into his inside jacket pocket and there it remained.

‘My girl says you've been hitting on her,' Courtney accused.

I remembered my paps saying to me once that when you're in a dangerous situation, never let your foe become aware of how frightened you are.
Always
look them in the eye and don't look away. It's one of those ghetto rules.

I took three paces forward and I sensed that Noel had moved in close behind me. He had my back and I'm sure he was ready with his shank. Noel owned one long bitch piece of a shank. Now there was only a couple of yards between Courtney and myself. I could feel the tension cranking. I kept telling myself, Dennis,
don't
blink. Stare out this motherfucker.

‘Yeah,' I admitted. ‘I did hit on her. But you know what? I didn't wok it 'cos I realised she was too fucking ugly to wok… A man doesn't wanna have a reputation that he woks any junz on two legs…
Deal
with it!'

Courtney looked at me as if his eyes were gonna fire off lasers. I held his gaze and I even stepped a further pace forward. My heart was thumping but this time I was ready. I wasn't about to freeze like I did with the Peckham crew. My limbs were alive, ready for action. Why should I be scared of a brother who got jacked at school for his sandwiches? Why should I be scared of a brother who didn't have no bredrens at school?

‘I ain't gonna waste my energy on pussy non-believers,' Courtney said. ‘But if you diss me again then me and you are gonna kick off.'

I sensed a hatred in Courtney's eyes that went beyond me
hitting on his girl. Since we left school I dunno what or who had influenced him but it was obvious to me some serious shit happened to Courtney.

‘So what?' Tania yelled. ‘You're gonna let the man walk away? After he hit on me and dissed me? Are you a fucking pussy, Courtney? Proper hardback brothers I know would have shanked a man for that shit. And you're gonna let him just walk away? Don't you care when men hit on me and show me disrespect? Anyone from these ends who is watching this gonna call you a
pussy!
Are you gonna stand for that shit, Courtney?'

The tension I was feeling was now unbearable. If anything was gonna kick off then that would be better than all this stand-off shit. Courtney's eyes were drilling into me. I knew now that he had to save face somehow. Everybody had heard what Tania had said. I could feel their eyes switching from me to Courtney. There was no way he could just walk away and leave it or give an excuse that I wasn't worth it to deal with. Mentally I prepared myself to fight. Mentally I prepared myself for pain. For me to have an edge I knew that I had to convince myself that the man standing in front of me was just as scared as I was. Maybe even more so… It was something Paps taught me. There would be no freezing today. I felt the breath of Noel upon the back of my neck and I knew he was probably more ready than I was. My shank felt cold to the skin inside my jacket and I wondered if I would christen it today.

‘If you didn't dress like a ho then men wouldn't hit on you!' Courtney suddenly turned on Tania. ‘If you wanna walk with me go home and change your garms!'

Tania looked at Courtney with an open mouth. She kissed her teeth and then stormed off… I relaxed just a little bit.

‘Don't think this is over,' said Courtney. ‘Cross my path again and it's gonna be jihad on your backside. You fucking
kaffur
…'

I went to step forward but Noel's hand on my shoulder stopped me. ‘Leave it,' he said. ‘He's stepping. You won. He's the one who came with a crew looking for war. Now he's stepping.'

As Courtney and his crew turned and walked up the road, I wondered where Courtney learned words like
jihad
and
kaffur
from. He was dumb as shit at school so someone must have been influencing him, telling him shit.

‘Noel.'

‘Yeah, bruv.'

‘Any other brothers from school turned into Muslims?'

‘Yeah. Two I know. Milton Davis and Adrian Callan.'

‘Why you think them brothers are turning into Muslims?' I asked.

‘Fuck knows,' answered Noel. ‘The only thing that Courtney, Milton and Adrian have in common is that they are all fuck-ugly. And if you're a Muslim don't their girls have to obey anything what their men say? I think they do. So I reckon that if any other non-Muslim girls was thinking about linking with the three beasts, would they obey Courtney, Milton and Adrian? Like fuck they would! They're too fuck-ugly to be obeyed, bruv. So what do they do? They turn Muslim so they can find a girl to obey them. Simple as.'

There was a strange logic to Noel's fucked-up reasoning but I had a different theory. In my paps' day it was all rebellious and shit to be a rasta with locks. I know that from my paps' lectures about rastas getting it in the neck from the Feds back in the day. It was all Public Enemy Number One shit. Now, if you locks your hair you can still be a doctor, lawyer, teacher or whatever you want to be. Having dreadlocks is acceptable. Fuck! On some mornings, I see white people with dreads in ponytails wearing suits and making their way to their offices. They look fucking ridiculous but that's not the point… So if you're a wannabe rebel from the street you ain't gonna wear dreadlocks. That's too lame. If you're a wannabe rebel you wanna do something that really fucks off your parents, your grandparents, the Feds and those Tory voters who listen to the
Today
programme on Radio 4. You become a Muslim. Simple as.

N
ext Friday night. It was 8 30 p.m. and I was half an hour early standing outside Akeisha's gates. Hip hop music was blaring out from the floor above and in the forecourt below three brothers were trying to start a car. All this was backdropped by the sound of faraway Fed sirens. My heartbeat raced as I knocked the door. I shifted uneasily on my feet and wiped my clammy hands on the back of my jeans. Remembering that Akeisha was wearing denim garms the last time we met, I decided to wear a name-brand denim shirt and denim jacket. I hoped it was gonna impress to the max…

The door opened and Akeisha was wearing black leather trousers, black leather jacket and a pair of brown cowboy boots. She was topped off by this cream-coloured Panama-style hat that she tilted at an angle to make it almost cover her left eye. She looked better than any R&B chick on MTV Base, Crystal Palace winning the cup final, and me driving through Palm Beach in a top of the range Mercedes sports.

‘You're early, Dennis,' she smiled. ‘You'd better come in.'

I followed Akeisha into her home and it was one of those flats where you walk down a flight of stairs to get to the front room. The place was well decorated, smelt good and there were
images of leopards and tigers hanging from the walls. Where Tania's place was cramped, Akeisha's home was cosy. A black leather three-piece suite dominated the room and there were cream-coloured cushions placed in its corners. The mahogany coffee table looked as if it might take three people to carry it and the flooring was pine wooden tiles. There was a bookshelf that included novels by Toni Morrison and Richard Wright. A rubber plant was in one corner and propped up upon a mini-stereo was a framed picture of Billie Holiday… She was posing beside an advertisement for ‘Strange Fruit'. Davinia would have called the place proper cultured.