Spider was from a poor family. A family so poor, in fact, that he used to come to Captain’s house most nights for something to eat. That still amazed Captain. He’d always thought it was impossible to have a poorer family than his. That was the commonality between them, Captain thought. They both came from poverty, and they both burned with the desire to escape it. And that was what they were doing with the Godfathers.
3
He woke at exactly half past six, as he usually did – without the help of an alarm clock. Still groggy, Kyle swung his legs over the side of the bed. But instead of cold, naked cement, he felt something else beneath his bare feet. Looking down, he saw the pale photograph of a shorthaired, bearded blond man nestling a grey skull to his cheek. It was an old, tattered copy of Shakespeare’s Hamlet that had belonged to his late grandfather. He and Anthony had found it, along with a box containing many other books, in the storage shed in the back yard. Although their grandfather had been illiterate, he had collected as many books as he could.
Kyle picked the book up off the floor and laid it on the bed next to him. He had swooped on this and other Shakespearean works, as well as a few classic novels, when the box was found and opened. Anthony had claimed the biography of Malcolm X, Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand and a few other books as his own. Anthony – or Captain, as most people called him – was still asleep in his bed. A soft, snoring lump beneath the covers. Kyle could see the spines of other books beneath Captain’s bed. He saw a copy of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War and the corner of The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli.
Kyle had heard Captain returning home late the previous night, about twenty minutes after he had curled up beneath his covers. Captain had probably been out partying with his boys, or with Nazneen. Probably a combination of both, so Kyle was not surprised that he was still asleep.
With a heavy sigh, Kyle stood up and yanked aside the curtain that served as a door. He squeezed his way into the tiny kitchen. The space between the rusting refrigerator and the rusting cupboard was only slightly wider than shoulder width. He removed the large breyani pot from the stove, carried it into the bathroom and set it down in the rough cement bath. He opened the tap and let the cold water gush in. The stream pinged off the thin metal. The geyser hung precariously over the bath. It had broken long before Kyle arrived here three months ago, and it looked as if it would remain broken for quite a while longer. In order to get hot water for a bath, they had to boil the water on the stove.
Kyle took his toothbrush from the windowsill and swept it under the stream of cold water. He took the cut-open tube of Colgate toothpaste and scraped the soft bristles around the inside. The next part he hated. The part when he had to look at himself in the mirror. He raised his eyes to his reflection and a brown-faced boy with full lips and sharp cheekbones looked back at him. His jet-black hair looked greasy. It straggled untidily across his head and begged to be cut – his fringe reached his eyebrows. His jaw-line and chin showed slight stubble, but he could wait another day before he had to shave. Shaving blades were not cheap, and he and Captain shared a packet between them. A few girls had told him once that he was cute, but he could not see why they thought so. He did not like that boy looking back at him in the mirror.
What he hated most was his eyes. Those dark, almost black orbs that had seen so much. Too much. Every time he had to look into them, he saw an emptiness that disturbed him. Behind those eyes, he saw nothing but a hollow, black void. Then, as if someone had pressed the play button on a video machine inside his brain, he would see a repeat of all the things he had witnessed. All that blood. All those tears. And then there was the audio. He would remember the screaming and crying. The cursing and begging. Those damn eyes of his were the eyes of a frightened little boy. A weak little boy. He wanted to hurt that boy looking back at him. To put his fist through the reflective glass, right between the eyes, and to tell that boy: “MAN UP! Stop being a bloody baby and be a man, dammit. Get over it!”
He fought the urge. Instead, he bowed his head to the stained toilet and began to scrub his teeth. Pretty soon, he got the rusty taste of blood. He had brushed too hard again.
He rinsed out his mouth, carefully carried the heavy pot back to the stove and turned the plate on high.
“Is that for me? Damn, bru, you shouldn’t have.”
Captain had woken and made his way into the kitchen. Kyle turned to face his cousin, who was only two months older than he was.
“Did I?” Kyle smiled. “I think you’re still sleeping, Captain. The only time I’ll put water on for you is in your dreams.”
Captain grinned. “Oh, it’s like that, cuz? Aight, I will remember that.”
Captain sidestepped his way through the kitchen and into the lounge. With a swagger, he made his way over to the television set and switched it on.
Kyle eased himself into the single chair opposite the couch on which Captain was lounging. The closed door to his right led to a bedroom. Aunt May’s snores were reverberating off the walls; they seemed to be trying to drown out Bill Flynn on The Toasty Show. The sour smell of the previous night’s wine and cigarettes still lingered in the air. Captain’s mother had been having a good time again.
“So what time did you get home last night?” Kyle asked.
“’Bout half past one. I was over at Nazneen’s place, then went past the brus at the Boggies. Then we met up with Lazarus to do some business at the beach.”
Kyle nodded slowly. Captain and the Godfathers always hung out in a park behind Disney Heights, a block of flats in the area, and the Boggies was a specific bench they liked to sit on. He always thought of the Boggies as Captain’s throne.
“What business at the beach?”
Captain cocked his head to the side and gave Kyle a look that said: Really? You know better than to ask me about my business.
Kyle smiled. “Forget it.”
Captain was a few inches taller than Kyle and his frame was thinner. Kyle was far more muscled, thanks to Charlie’s insistence on a high-protein diet and weightlifting at the gym to build his bulk. Charlie loved to say, “English football is not a walk in the park. You can’t be a poof. You must get big. You must get strong.”
Captain shared Kyle’s complexion and his straight black hair, except Captain’s hair was cropped short. He had a home-made tattoo on the right side of his chest, with the letters “GF” above a gun in green ink. His lower abdomen showed a small circular scar, from where a bullet had pierced his body when he was fourteen years old. Around this bullet wound was another green tattoo, shaped like a star surrounding the scar tissue, with above it the letters “BAMN”. This had two meanings. The first was the sound of the gunshot that had sent the bullet into his body. But BAMN also stood for “By Any Means Necessary”, a life motto that their grandfather had greatly believed in and had taught them. If Captain turned his back to Kyle at that moment, Kyle knew he would see a long, thin scar by his left shoulder blade. This had been made by a knife. There was a smaller scar made by another knife on his right forearm, and another on his left forearm. The one on the left arm, though, had not been made by a weapon. It had been caused when Kyle and Captain climbed a mango tree in a neighbour’s back yard when they were about ten years old. Captain had fallen and his arm had been impaled on a branch. There was more body art on his back, but this had been professionally done. Or rather, done by their artist friend Wahied with the professional tattoo kit he had bought. The tattoo was a phrase stretched across his upper back and his shoulders. It read in an arc of black ink: Only God Can Judge Me.
Kyle looked at his cousin and could not help but wonder at how things had changed. Kyle, Captain and their cousin Jimmy had grown up together and had spent almost every weekend in each other’s company. In primary school, Kyle and Captain used to beat up any kid who teased young Jimmy about his lisp. Kyle, too, had had a lisp. It had taken him countless hours of staring at his mouth in the mirror as he spoke to conquer his affliction. But even before he won the battle of the slurred speech, it would have taken a brave person to tease him. Just like Captain, Kyle would not hesitate to get physical. They both understood the language and