He got himself to Heathrow and flew alone from Heathrow to Toronto. Fat Si was 11 years old. His trip started to go wrong from the moment he landed.
I’d wanted to be with my mum and sisters but forgot that my dad wouldn’t be there. My mum wasn’t at the airport to meet me. Just my grandma and my sister. And the house was worse than in England. My mother had another little girl with a different dad and it was chaotic. There were eight of us in a three-storey house. But the front room was mum’s bedroom. There was three feet of snow and that. There was rats and moths. The house wasn’t fit for no one to live in it. It was not a good environment to raise kids in. I had to go to school in my sister’s cast-off clothes and wear her sweaters and jeans and trainers. It was embarrassing, weren’t it?
The house was in an area near the Jane and Finch corridor in a district of Toronto called ‘the Jungle’, named after a West Kingston neighbourhood back in Jamaica. There were jerk chicken and jerk fish shops and Jamaican grocery stores in the surrounding streets. Reggae blasted out from boom boxes all day and all night long. But Fat Si wasn’t happy. Even though his mum had family in Toronto, there was never enough money to go round. Fat Si felt that his maternal grandmother had misled them. She had persuaded Fat Si’s mum to leave England for a rich, new life in Canada. Instead they were living in a damp, cold house that was falling down with hardly enough money for basic food. And Fat Si didn’t react well to his new surroundings.
They were difficult times. Instead of helping, I added to the problem. I got into bad company straight away. I was going to the community centre and smoking weed and getting drunk. The family from my mum’s side were there. I got on all right with them. But I spent my time stealing and causing havoc.
After a few months he got into so much trouble that no one minded when he said that he wanted to go back to England. He missed his dad. He made a reverse charge call and asked for a ticket back home. He didn’t know how his dad got hold of the money but it wasn’t long before he was booked on a ticket back to London. He didn’t ask his mum whether he could go. Ever since he was eight years old he didn’t ask anybody anything. He just did everything himself.
When he got to the airport in Toronto he was lucky to leave without problems. He’d already outstayed his six-month tourist visa. He’d been in Canada illegally. He hadn’t known it but his mother had been given refugee status and had applied for residency for herself and her six daughters. But not for Fat Si, her only son. It was summer 1990, and Fat Si was on a plane back to London, and Angell Town.
Maybe he felt incarcerated. Maybe that’s what got him into trouble in the first place. Elijah was always that child who could never sit still. He never got enough freedom. Putting us on that estate made life worse. Maybe that’s where it went wrong. Because he stayed on the estate, he used the resources on the estate. That was all he knew and so that’s all he took.
Sharon Kerr
The nocturnal activities outside Marston House fascinated JaJa. From the age of 11 he stood on tiptoes looking out of the kitchen window at the procession of outsiders coming into Angell Town. He had a view over the whole estate. He watched them wander towards the open stairwell at Marston House and engage in some sort of shady business with the older boys who were gathered down below. Evening after evening he would stand there and watch them until he began to figure out the routine.
I see guys out there from my window and I used to see things going down. I got to see street life properly. There is a block of flats over there and another one over there and I see the drug addicts and I see them walk up to guys over there smoking weed. I’m seeing loads of transactions and loads of different things. I watch closer, day after day, and I start realizing their routine. That’s the drug dealer. He’s selling drugs to those guys and that guy sells weed to those people there. There are some girls over there but I don’t know what they are doing but there are a set of thieves over there and burglars over there.
He worked out that as soon as it got dark someone would bring plastic bags full of weed into the estate. Then one of the others would go out into the streets of Brixton and let the punters know that the drugs were available. He learned that punters were called ‘cats’ and that they would sometimes hand over large amounts of money in return for the bags of weed. He learned to distinguish between the different groups that hung around in the streets below. The ones in the open stairwell underneath Marston House sold weed to one group of ‘cats’. Another group of older boys in the streets by Pym House were selling blocks of something called ‘Brown’ to a different group of ‘cats’. He learned to distinguish between the British-born black boys who used to hang around the block and who called themselves ‘the 28s’ and the older boys who were born in Jamaica and who everyone called ‘Yardie Men’.
It wasn’t long before the older boys started to recognize JaJa too.
These boys come up to me and were saying where are you from, what accent is that. We talked and they introduced me to others on the estate. I saw the big boys and the block where the crack house was. There was always people hanging outside. The crack addicts and drug dealers were always hanging around. That’s how I got to know the big boys. People knew me because of my accent. They called me ‘Birmingham’. The big boys would say, ‘There’s little Birmingham. Come Birmingham, come.’ That’s how I got to hang around with the big boys.
His mum started a night job which meant that as the summer went on he went to bed even later and could stand at the window, undisturbed, observing the goings on in Angell Town till late at night.
As the moon came out he noticed that a new breed of nightlife would take over the streets. Girls would gather and stroll around in the open areas of the estate and either go into someone’s house or get into a passing car. Another group of Yardies would gather and talk about stolen TVs and snatched handbags. They talked about ‘tiefing tings’ or stealing things.
A whole new set of wild people come out. They are on the landing and talking and they can’t see me and I can hear everything they are saying so I would hear stuff about shootings and robberies and tiefing car stereos. I heard everything.
‘You bin hearing about dat big somebody dat got shot in Stockwell?’
‘Dat other big man him tief nuttin’ but ganja.’
‘You wahn se de money he tief?’
‘Dat man he got shot dead. He da one with da stolen car.’
One evening he couldn’t quite hear what the group of men were saying so he leaned further out of the window. One of the older boys looked up and saw him.
‘Hey, Birmingham. What ya doin’? You should be in de bed. I’ll tell you mama.’
JaJa looked down and, because he was nosy, threw back a question of his own.
‘What’s that in your hand?’
The older boy looked up at him and held up a car stereo and a small bit of white metal. JaJa didn’t know it at the time but it was a spark plug.
‘What’s that?’
‘You throw dis at de car window and de window i’