“Oh yeah?”
He laughed it off.
“For real. That doesn’t happen when you’re a name to be known.”
I remembered something I’d seen on the lyrics of an album: reputation of power IS power.
“I’m going to be serious, Ty. Wait and you’ll see.”
“Why did you go telling everyone my mum was crazy? I’m gonna fuck you up for what you done, girl!”
I didn’t wait for an answer. I thought Natasha was my friend.
“You make me sick.”
I barged forward and pinned her to her desk in the religious studies classroom, lifting the kitchen knife high in my hot, sweaty palm so everybody in St Martins could see it.
“Sour, stop!”
The others tugged at my uniform and begged me to stop, but I wasn’t listening. What goes on at home was one thing. Broadcasting it here, around school, the only place I could escape, was another. I didn’t care about the consequences or the rules no more. I was angry. And I wanted to hurt that bitch.
Fast forward half an hour and Mrs Edwards, the humourless headteacher with the Margaret Thatcher helmet hair, was telling me what was going to happen. What she was really doing, though she didn’t know it then, was giving me the first big break of my criminal career.
“You are being expelled, Salwa. I’m referring you to Dick Shepherd’s. From now on, you will be attending school there.”
I was destined for Dick Shepherd’s, the rejects’ school all the rest of us knew as Dick Shits.
Phillip Lawrence had just left his post as headmaster of Dick Shits when I arrived. Three years later, he’d be dipped in the chest by some 15-year-old yout as he tried to break up a fight in another playground just eight miles away. Black boys killing their white teachers! That soon woke up the world.
But let me let you into a secret: lawlessness reigned supreme long before then. What happened to that man was a tragedy, no two ways about it. I’m only surprised it didn’t happen sooner.
First off, if I wanted to be respected at Dick Shits I knew I was going to have to step up a gear to thrive and survive. St Martin’s was junior league. This was the Premiership.
My uniform was angelic, my pleats were proper fresh, but I was determined to be demonic.
I wore my new knife in a belt under my blazer. It was made of rabbit skin and had a rabbit’s foot dangling from the belt. I’d bought it from a gypsy boy, and wore it with the kind of pride the other girls wore their Claire’s Accessories.
I wasn’t at Dick Shits to learn. I was there to make money. It was time to become top dog.
I soon found that if you’re loud enough and strong enough, there’s always someone quieter and weaker who wants to follow you. Over time, I recruited several associates willing to take my lead. They were the Two-Tails to my Sonic. Some of them, as a joke, even started calling me “Mum”.
“Y’alright, Mum?” they’d shout at me in the corridor.
“Yes datter, yes son,” I’d reply, with a grin. “How are you?”
“Me alright still, y’naw?”
If any of my sons or daughters got into a little scuffle, I’d know about it.
It helped that a lot of the Somalian kids were tiny. Three foot nothing, some of them. It was easy to pick them up by their ankles and shake them.
Sometimes, a brave friend would try to step in.
“Put him down, what’s wrong wit you? He said he ain’t got no money.”
Lo and behold, the coins would fall from upside-down pockets. I’d leave the two-tails to pick up the change.
The kids soon learned at lunchtime to step aside and let me through. There were plenty boys doing the same. But a girl? That caught their attention.
If a girl got a bit rude to a blood, someone I considered an ally, she’d get slapped about. Spin and turn and kick. Just like the video games. I had no interest in female friends. I liked being one of the boys.
Now, you might think a place like Dick Shits would have a problem with truancy. Perhaps. But the really bad kids, the ones who caught my attention, were the ones who weren’t even meant to be there at all. Dick Shits wasn’t somewhere to learn, it was somewhere to meet, somewhere to talk business.
Doing the register was hilarious, man. You could have a room full of children with only 15 of their names on the list. A teacher could walk into a classroom dotted with grinning, unfamiliar faces.
What were they going to do? Tell them to go home?
Those who did try to eject them soon learned life was easier just letting them stay where they were.
Some had been expelled elsewhere, and didn’t have much else to do. Others just didn’t want to attend their own schools. Ours was like a youth club. A youth club where we were in control.
Yeah, Man Dem came to Dick Shits because it was loose and relaxed.
Better to be here with the rest of your bloods in a lesson, rather than out in the street alone.
Killer P – he used to crack me up, man. Don’t know which school he had ever belonged to. He was an MC. A real talent. He didn’t shank no one or nuttin like that. They called him Killer because of his killer lyrics. He had that Shaggy, Sean Paul ragamuffin style going on.
He liked the class of this poor little Asian lady the best. She taught Social Science. Used to put on documentaries and films and shit, so it was her own fault really. Victim of her own success, innit. Her class was meant to have been around 30. Instead, 40 would turn up. She was slim and frail and her voice barely carried beyond the first cramped row of tables.
Just as she’s got the class under control, having settled in the nerds trying to learn, and soothed the disruptive ones who couldn’t care less, this black boy bursts through the door, singing a cappella.
Gyal dem ah wine anna move mek di man dem take notice,
Gyal look so hot, when she move but she already know diss.
They were his own lyrics. That boy had talent. We jumped up and cheered Killer P as he started MC-ing from the front of the classroom.
“Alright!”
Bloods who knew the lyrics started singing with him, drowning out Miss Deng who looked like she was about to cry. Classmates started to whine on the tables, like they were dutty dancehall girls. I sat back in my seat, enjoying the spectacle.
Gyal shake up your batty let mi see, gyal come over an whine pun mi,
Gyal dem ah call me Killer wid da P, mi just waant pure love and harmony …
The door slammed shut. Miss Deng had gone.
“Miss, come back!” shouted Killer P. “I just spitting out a ragga song.”
For some of the teachers, that woulda been a good day.
There was a maths teacher with dreadlocks. Probably fancied himself as a bit of a Rasta, knew his music, the kind of guy who tolerated no shit, one of the few who tried to keep things in order. We liked him. Poor man. He’d tire himself out chasing bloods down whole corridors. Even he gave up eventually.
As for the unpopular teachers, well, they used to get slapped down. Simple as.
Come November, there would always be fireworks getting let off in the classrooms. When it was snowing, dirty snowballs went off everywhere.
We