Forest Gate (9 page)

Trevor Carrick paused for a moment.

'What is it?' he asked.

'Why are you speaking like that?'

'Like what?'

'I don't know like what. You sound funny.'

'I can assure you none of this is meant to be funny, young man.'

Trevor Carrick adjusted himself in his seat and then he continued.

'How do you feel today about what has happened?'

'T'riffic.'

'Are you avoiding the subject?'

'No.'

'Can you tell me what you imagine other people's feelings and reactions are to your suicide attempt?'

'They're upset, I guess.'

'Do you understand the consequences of your attempt to commit suicide?'

'I was supposed to die.' James sighed. 'Look, I don't want to waste your time. I don't know how I feel.'

'Can you try?'

Trevor looked at James like he wanted him to speak so James did.

'I always feel like something bad is going to happen. I can't get over it,' he said.

'We call that feeling anxious. It's normal but once it hits a certain tipping point, it can become a problem.'

'Yeah, well, I feel anxious all the time for no reason.'

'What desires, feelings and wishes do you have today based on what you have experienced?'

'I'm a bit hungry. I wanna go home.'

'Can you distinguish between inner and outer reality at this moment in time?'

'As opposed to what other time?'

'Let me rephrase. Do you know the difference between pretend mode and real mode?'

'Yes.'

'Can you tell me how you go through your emotional processes?'

'Emotional processes?'

'OK,' said Trevor and he crossed and uncrossed his legs. 'My grooming rites can take up to three hours, shaving, brushing my teeth, moisturising, applying mousse to my hair, putting on clothes and taking them off again until they feel right. Emotional processes.'

'OK.' James thought for a long moment. 'When I get a McDonald's burger I always take the top bun off and check the position of the gherkins. I like them dead in the centre. What does that mean?'

Trevor shrugged. 'Fine. It is what it is. Your mother tells me you're an avid reader and you love to draw. Is that right?'

'Yes.'

'Who is your favourite author?'

'I don't have a favourite. Books get better and better.' At home James had a pile of books, stacked neatly next to his futon.

'I brought you a pencil and some paper. Would you like to draw something for me?'

He dug into his bag. James caught a glimpse of a crisp white towel, a paperback and a magazine with Matt Damon on the cover.

Trevor handed him a pencil and a large sheet of white paper. James didn't even raise his head. He sketched a noose and a bowline knot and returned the paper. Trevor's expression did not change. He dug deeper into his bag for another pencil and he used it to draw six stickmen around James's picture of the noose. He wrote the names of James's brothers and his mother beside each of the stick figures.

'How does your picture make you feel now?' he asked.

'Why would you do that?' James asked. 'You're trying to bait me up.'

'No, not at all. Without those people, your picture is incomplete. If you want to kill yourself you have to consider other people and the consequences. What you leave behind is pretty much a disaster.'

James shook his head. 'When I was up on that roof I thought of my family at my funeral. It was the thought that gave me the courage to jump.'

'Why did you jump
and
use the ropes?'

'What sort of question is that? We tried to kill ourselves.'

'Why not one or the other? You would have probably died if you'd jumped. Why the rope?'

'We argued about it. Ash wanted to jump. I thought we should send a message.'

'What do you think the message was?'

'Like the lynchings in America. To me everything kind of feels the same. There aren't any violent mobs, but . . . it was meant to be a symbol.'

'Can you explain what you mean by that?'

James couldn't explain.

'Do you feel a lack of human connection? Don't you know people care about you?'

'Yes.'

'Yes what?'

'Yes, I know people care.'

'What is the meaning or purpose of your life?'

James was silent for a moment.

'To finish school, get a good job, get a hot wife, get a car and be happy.'

'Good answer,' Trevor said. 'Now tell me, what do you want most?'

'What do you mean?'

'What do you think would make you happy?'

'I've always wanted to own a bookshop.' He paused and studied his hands intently as if waiting for the next sound. 'There's an empty shop in Forest Gate with a place in the back where I can paint.' He began to cry.

Trevor remained silent for a moment. 'Tell me why you're crying.'

'Because it's such a small thing to ask, but I know I'll never get it, no way, no how.'

Trevor scribbled in his notebook. 'Do I remind you of anyone?' he asked without looking up.

'Yes,' James said. 'You look a bit like whassisname, that gay guy off the telly.'

'Let me rephrase. The way I'm speaking to you, does it remind you of the way anyone else has spoken to you in your past? Like your father perhaps?'

James took a deep breath. 'No.'

'How often do you think of your father?'

'Hardly ever.'

'Do you miss him?'

'Nope.'

'How connected do you feel to what is going on around the world?'

'Such as?'

'Such as the war on terror, say.'

'I don't have any views on the war on terror except that Bush is a complete wanker. I don't think we should have gone to Iraq. The thing is, and I have thought about this a lot, no one really cares about what people like me think. No matter what I do I'm never going to matter.'

'You shouldn't think like that, you're only seventeen. Give yourself a break. You're in a crisis, it will pass. You have your whole life in front of you. You have to be patient, work hard like everybody else.'

'It won't pass. Do you know that Nigerian boy who got stabbed in the leg on his way home from the library and died? He was ten. The boys that did it, the Preddie brothers, they moved from Peckham onto our estate just before they got arrested. Most of their gang, the Young Peckham Boys, live around here now. There are seven gangs I know of in my area. Some all black, some mixed. It all comes down to post codes – except with the RTS, they're from everywhere.'

'RTS?'

'Rough Tough Somalis. When boys say hello to me on the street I say hello back but I worry because I keep forgetting who is who and who owns what. That guy Nassirudeen Osawe who got killed at the bus stop on Upper Street in broad daylight the other day by the Shakespeare gang. His sister goes to my school and those guys who did it are at my house with my brothers almost every day. They all know my brothers. I may only be seventeen but I have lived with this shit every day. What I'm feeling won't pass. This doesn't go away.'

'I hear what you're saying, but do you think killing yourself is a solution? You can't take all this on, James. You have to put it in a drawer somewhere in the back of your mind like the rest of us. Try not to worry about that stuff for a while.'

James couldn't explain any more. He couldn't understand why he was even trying. His throat burned.

'What book are you reading at the moment?'

'I'm not. I gave up with the books.'

'Why? I thought you loved them.'

'I do.'

'Did you read that one about Arsenal?'

'Hornby? Course I did.'

'What about Malcolm?'

'Malcolm? You mean Malcolm X? You want me to read Malcolm X in the mess I'm in? No. I read Malcolm when I was like eight. It was the one book all my brothers read, like the Bible.'

'OK, so who do you like to read?'

'Baldwin.'

'Giovanni's Room
?'

'I haven't read that. I've read
The Fire Next Time
.
Beale Street
and that other one –
Another Country
. I've read that shit like a zillion times.'

'I liked
Another Country
too.'

'You read that?'

'Yes, I read all the gay fiction I can lay my hands on.'

'
Another Country
is not gay.'

'Maybe you need to read it again. You do know about James Baldwin?' Trevor crossed his legs and smiled, waved his arm dismissively.

'Know what?'

Trevor glanced up but than lowered his head to avoid James's eyes and his mouth tightened involuntarily. 'Sorry, forget it. Your mother says you also like to write.'

'I used to, until they took one of my notebooks and started making fun of me. Then I stopped.'

'Who did?'

'Two of my brothers.'

'Do you like football?'

'I'm from east London. That's what we do.'

'What team do you support?'

'Arsenal.'

'Oh, you're a Gooner. So you see we do have some things in common. They won 5–nil on Saturday. How does that make you feel?'

'T'riffic. Who scored?'

'Not sure.'

Gooner my arse, James thought.

'Why did you choose that particular tower?'

'You mean to jump? I didn't choose. It was Ashvin's idea. He'd heard that lots of people were doing it from there. Because they're disgusting, they're ugly.'

'They're thinking of knocking them down,' said Trevor.

'They been thinking about a lot of things around here, but let me tell you, they ain't gonna do shit.'

'How do you feel about being rescued from the roof?'

'T'riffic.'

'Do you want to tell me why you tried to kill yourself?'

'Because I know who I want to be and I keep getting forced into being someone else.'

'What do you mean by that?'

James lifted the plaster holding the IV tube in his arm and tried to scratch around the needle. He breathed deeply.

'Think of every tired cliché you've ever heard about black men. I'm trying desperately hard not to be that. I don't want to become a stereotype. Everyone thinks they know me but they don't. I don't suppose it matters to you. Everything I think has already been thought,' said James. 'Everything I feel has already been felt. Everything I want to do has been done. It's like I don't matter. People who don't even know me are already tired of me. I'm only ever going to be what I don't want to be.'

'You keep saying that. What do you mean?'

James wanted Trevor to take him seriously. 'I was on the train last week,' he said, 'and I got into a fight. I sat down opposite a black guy. He looked a few years older than me. He had on baggy jeans, big Timberland boots and a T-shirt three sizes too big. He was just looking at me. Out of the blue he asked me what I was looking at. "Nothing," was all I said. We spent the next three or four stops staring each other down. Like,
really
staring each other down. I didn't want to look at him but I didn't want him to think I was backing down or scared, even though I was. I was really scared but I wanted to be strong. You know? I wanted to let him know I wasn't afraid of him being up in my face the way he was. By the sixth or seventh stop I gave up. I looked away but he just wouldn't stop staring. "What?" I finally asked him at the ninth stop. He didn't answer but he got up when I did and followed me off the train. After we got through the ticket barrier he called me a faggot, said something about the tightness of my jeans. I told him his old man and the whole line of men in his family were faggots and that his mother had sucked my dick.'

'And?'

'And he slapped me, which is supposed to be a big dis.'

'What do you mean?'

'My brother 4 bitch-slaps people when he knows they can't fight him.'

'Oh. Right. So what happened next?'

'We fought. The only reason I fought him was because 4 said that real tough guys don't talk. When they want to fight they fight. And this guy was all talk. Plus he followed me off at my stop. With a real tough guy, it would have kicked off on the train. It didn't last long, a bunch of people pulled us apart. I had marks on my neck from his fingernails. It was nothing really, but for about a week, every time I saw the marks in the mirror I felt the shame of fighting with another black guy. I was pushed into doing what I would never want to. The thought stalked me, this idea of being forced into things that I don't want to do. That's the story of my life and of the lives of everyone I know. We get pushed around. In the end we become what we never imagined we would. I don't want to live like that, not ever. I know nobody gives a shit. Who would?'

Trevor was silent for a while. He looked at James intently and then he wrote something else down.

'Were you reading Baldwin at the time?'

'What time?'

'On the train, the fight?'

'No.'

'What's so bad about being called a faggot?'

'Nothing,' James said quickly, 'I guess.'

'One last question, if you don't mind. If you could be anywhere right now, where would it be?'

'Far away from here on a hill surrounded by tall trees and a lake and some grass.'

'Do you mean marijuana?' Trevor held up his clipboard poised to make note.

'I don't smoke weed. I mean grass like in a garden.'

Trevor looked at James and he smiled. 'Do you ever leave your estate?'

James sighed and closed his eyes. Sometimes he went to the City at lunchtime. He would buy a frothy coffee and sit in the window of Starbucks or eat a pub lunch in the Seven Stars, that 400-year-old pub behind the Royal Courts of Justice. He liked watching the robed barristers and white men in suits, trying to see where he might fit in one day. Once he saw a tall and angular dark-skinned black man, in his late thirties, wearing a pen lodged in the breast pocket of a navy blue suit with a clean white shirt with initials fancily sewn into his cuffs. At first he just walked by and they merely eyed each other. Than he stopped and turned back to face James, moved his
Financial Times
from under his left armpit to his right. Then he looked at his wristwatch, a Rolex Oyster Perpetual, the same as 4 bought 3 for his last birthday.