How To Be a Boy (3 page)

So I stroll back down the road and I find Gorgeous sittin’ there cryin’ like a little girl
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“Hey boy,” I say. “You stop that now. I have a plan. A good and simple plan.”

A stupid, foolish plan. Pee Wee, he want to see my head mashed for certain. I myself am thinking maybe violin and beatbox not the future of rap music after all. Even Pee Wee disses me, saying this instrument is a gay instrument. Maybe just let the violin go. But by this point Pee Wee is convinced this business is one of principle. “It’s about respect due,” he says. He make us trudge all the way back to the Bluethorn den and before I can think of an excuse not to, Pee Wee has me throwing bits of gravel at the front window, while he’s sneaking down the side path and squeezing through the little window.

Them boys come charging out the door like murder. They chase me all the way down the street, but I outrun them. I’m not usually fast, on account of my big bones, but on this occasion I put in the extra effort.

The only stress being that I run straight into the police. Well, community police, but still police. They grab a hold of me, going, “Well, well,” this, and, “What have we here?” that. Next thing I know, I’m in cuffs. What’d I do?

Gorgeous attracts trouble all the time, just on account of being big, black and ugly. No fair, he is too much of a goody two shoes to do anything bad. Sit in the middle and say yes to everything is Jordan’s mantra. Stupid mantra that never works. Not for Gorgeous
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So while he gets chained by the police for grannie-bothering, I’m tumbling head-first into some dirty boy toilet bowl. I push my hand out to save myself, and land with a clatter and a splash. Turns out not all the Bluethorn crew have chased after Gorgeous. Two of them are skulking round the house, the first of which barges into the loo and has to be despatched by a lethally wielded bog brush, but not before he’s given me a split lip
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Blood dripping over their posh cream hall carpet, I leap to face up to the second boy. Time for my encore
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“Hand over the violin, fool,” I snarl, and he does. I grab a purse that’s sittin’ on a table too, tax for messin’ with my day
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Police take me to the station, which must be wrong because the crime committed is against me. They take my prints and my mugshot and swab spit from my mouth and cuss me like they listenin’ to the same gangsta rap tracks as me. Then I start to blub and they laugh and push me around.

In the end they get as bored as me and bell my ma and suss out I’m only twelve and wasn’t giving bull about my stolen violin. They let me go, muttering out sorries. I hear them on their radios calling all patrols to be on the watch for bad boys carrying a violin case.

I thought that might happen. Not Gorgeous getting nicked by the police, but that he’d go blabbin’ on about them boys who nicked his violin. Proves he had no faith in my ability to get it back
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There’s me, striding down the street pleased as a piggy and swaggering like a proper little Beethoven. When a squad car pulls over and two police climb out, I’ve already started planning what I need to say
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No need, is there? These police are let’s-get-down-with-the-youth, kindly pointing out how I should take care, young boy like me, as gangs round here going round stealing violins just like mine. They see my bloodied lip and ask if I’m all right, and do I need a lift home to be safe?

“Thank you, officer, very kind. But I’ll be OK. I’m sure. Yes, I will take care now.”

So next day we practisin’ our beats an’ tings, Pee Wee callin’ me fool fur running away and callin’ me girlfriend with my violin bow, but he spits out some wicked rhymes about damaging those Bluethorn fools, strangling them with violin strings. Sick stuff, and we fallin’ about laughin’. But them just words, don’t mean nothin’.

Pee Wee once brought a blade into school – back in Year Six, little school – but he was just showing off, yeah? He doesn’t carry now. I know, ’cos the police have stopped and searched us three times this year. He’s smarter than that, and nobody we know is willing to mess with him anyway. Everybody know he’s mean.

One time me, Pee Wee and Pee Wee’s li’l sister were hanging at the multiplex when some bigger girls started picking on his sis. I called them out. But their boyfriends turn up and I had to hide in the toilet.

There were four of them, Year Eight boys, and they sniffed me out. I’d locked myself in a cubicle. They were kickin’ the door, chucking soggy toilet roll over the top and braggin’ they gonna shove my head down the bowl. Pee Wee barges in and stands there blocking the exit to the toilets, saying, “Any fool want to get out of here has to get through me, see?”

From inside the cubicle I brag, “You bet you in trouble now – Pee Wee never going to let you go.”

He stood blocking the door, cackling like a serial slasher. “Come on, who wants some fun?”

During the following silence I unlock the cubicle door and stick my head out. I see Pee Wee pointing at their general – the biggest, ugliest of them – and he says, “You.”

Booyaka!
Pee Wee steps aside, saying, “The rest of you: out!”

That big boy ended up real sorry and left the toilets looking much uglier than when he come in. Pee Wee a nasty man. Everybody know it.

Oh yeah, I remember that. What a laugh. Back in the day
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Creepy sounds floating up from my violin like a proper hard-core orchestra. Classical gangsta. We practisin’ hard and due a break, so Pee Wee say, “Come on, let’s get a burger.” I’m broke, see, but Pee Wee say, “No sweat,” and brings out a purse.

“What’s that then?”

He give me that funny look he sometimes has, like I’m stupid. “From that Bluethorn yard, yeah?”

“What you mean?”

“Tax,” he says.

Oh.

Gorgeous is weak. What, those fools can rob us and pay no retribution? Plenty cash in that purse, not just for grub and smokes, but enough aside for a nice gold chain, proper bling. Spoils of battle – and we got to look buff enough for the slam battle comin’ up next week. After we stuff ourselves, Gorgeous listens good when I tell him he needs serious threads for that battle
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“Wid what?”

“Use your head, man.”

I swear that blood’s got no brains. No brains at all, man
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Two nights later the police have me back in the cells. This time they ain’t messin’.

I’d had another music lesson with Mr Aspinall. I wasn’t meetin’ wid Pee Wee, so hurry straight home ’cos I did not want to cross with Bluethorn. Anyway, Ma makin’ my favourite, jerk chicken.

I am just tuckin’ into puddin’ when the police come knockin’. Even though Ma fusses and yells at them, they still haul me away like a bad man. Ma comes along, also, looking well shamed.

The situation serious. Mr Aspinall’s next-door neighbour, she an old lady. It turn out she been bashed up bad – just minutes after my lesson. She lyin’ in hospital, not lookin’ good.

When Ma goes out the interview room, the police cuss me even worse than before, aged twelve or not, they say. Do I think I am a big man now?

They tell my ma I am guilty, for sure.

She look at me like I grown an extra head, and mumbles, “You growin’ up too fast, boy,” and she look at her feet. “Changin’, too.”

Gorgeous can’t complain about no readies for gear for the battle. Gorgeous can’t complain his best boy doesn’t do right by him. Gorgeous going to groove right alongside me, aiming his violin like an AK-47. Deadly enough. We going to sound tough, look buff and strut our stuff. Psycho rap, d’ya get me?

So I’m sittin’ here, waiting with the threads I’ve bought him, dropping beats and thinking how invincible we be, but he ain’t showing. Time passes, and even by Jordan’s slack standards he a little late for the scene. I’m stressing, vexed at what might be holding him back
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“It’s no use turning on the waterworks now,” the policeman snarl at me. “You thought yourself man enough to bash up an old lady – try being a man now.” He swipe at the tissue I’m usin’ to dry my cheeks, sendin’ it tumblin’ to the floor. It isn’t my fault I’m sobbin’; they’ve been diggin’ at me for hours, same ting over and over. They tell me that once that old lady wake and ID me proper, my game’ll be up. I might as well save myself the grief, they say, ’fess up now.

More tears trickle down my cheek. Ma sneak me a fresh pack of Handy Andies.

See, Gorgeous just makin’ me madder and madder. He know damn well how hard we got to work to win this battle. He just not takin’ the damn thing serious. He a lightweight, he a deadweight, he be dead-wood. Boy, that boy just dead. Don’t call me no blood, man. No blood be slack as you be, fat boy. Where are you, man? I waiting. D’ya hear me?

Finally, the old lady wake up. The police, being keen to pin the evil deed on me, are waitin’ right by her bedside, for what they call a “positive identification”, having taken along my mugshot to show her.

But no. Old lady say the boy that messed her up look nowhere near as ugly as me, and nowhere near as scary. So are the police convinced? Do they let me go? Say sorry and give me a bag of sweets? No. They say she must be an unreliable witness, bein’ old as she is. Same way I’m an unreliable suspect, on account of bein’ so ugly, I suppose. So they dig around for what they call “concrete evidence”.

Finally, they ask me, “Do you wear a gold chain?” They can see I don’t. “Do you wear a gold chain?” Over and over, even though they can plainly see my neck is bare.

So they take me home – at last – but first they ask Ma’s permission to search my room. She sighs and says yes.

I blub again when they start rummagin’ through my comic-book collection, puttin’ the piles out of order and creasin’ up some of my mint first issues.

Ma asks them what they be looking for exactly. They say I wrapped a gold chain round my knuckles, punched that lady in the face. They say I punched her so hard that the disc attached to the chain – a dollar sign – cut raw into her cheek.

Ma say, “My baby don’t wear no gold chain. You can see that. I think you men better leave.”

When the police left, she gave me a long hug and a wet, sloppy kiss. She fetched me a whole tub of ice cream, just like when I was younger. But even though I’d been in the police station most of the night, I wasn’t hungry. Not any more.

Next day, the fat boy finally turns up. I’m still sore, but glad he’s back so we can get to business
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First, he spins me his story about bein’ at the cop shop last night, and I’m grievin’ at him for being so useless. If he ever put a foot wrong, I wouldn’t care, but Gorgeous gets into trouble just for being Gorgeous. He gets into trouble just for being good
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“Oh man,” I say, “don’t start cryin’ on me now, man.” At this rate, we ain’t gonna get down to no rehearsing. “Hey boy, feast your eyes on this,” I say, and I show him my shopping
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“This is yours,” I say. I’m figurin’ he needs instant cheerin’, so I show him the designer gear I bought him, and his eyes light up, and I know we can turn this whole thing round, and win this forthcoming battle
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Then I show him my gold medallion, ’cos I know he just gonna die for that
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Oh my days. Pee Wee drapes the bling round his neck and I look at the chain and everything hits at once.

That ain’t no winner’s medal. That ain’t the glint of ambition in his eyes. That a dollar sign he be displayin’ like some badge of honour.

I need to heave. I leap up, brushing the fancy strides from my lap, and rush to the toilet. I almost fall into the bowl, hang my head in disgust and shame. The badness pours out of me.

When I finish flushing, I notice Pee Wee standing in the doorway. “What’s up wid you, blood?” he says.

I flash him a look and see the chain hangin’ around his neck. I look in his eyes and I see something there, something that tells me he knows that I know. He wants me to know, and doesn’t care. He wants me to big him up, baddest boy in school. He’s daring me not to. He’s daring me to diss him, because he thinks I’m soft, weak.

I say, “It was you.”

“What?” he snaps.

“You. You did it.”

“What? Say what?”

“You sick, man. What’s up with you?”

And he’s coming at me and pushes my head with the palm of his hand and kisses his teeth. He puts his mouth to my ear and snarls, “Pussy.”

It feel like when I was at the police station. But I ain’t scared no more.

Gorgeous looking at me with a funny look in his eye I’ve never seen. I’m expecting him to whinge and bleat, but he brushes my hand away and gets to his feet, like he’s making a big fat fool decision, something both of us will regret
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He say nothing, just give me that evil eye, like we can read each other’s minds, like when we battling on the stage, breathing as one, as brothers, as blood
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“You ain’t gonna snitch,” I tell him, but he don’t answer, just keep staring at me, like he lost his mind
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So I turn round and stride back into my room. I feel him following. I smell him following. That smell is messed up. This ain’t Gorgeous, not the Gorgeous I know
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In my room, I bend down and feel around beneath the bed. Y’all thought that just because I’m bad enough to get myself searched, that I don’t still carry. But no fool can predict when a situation is going down, when you need to have what you need to have
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I turn round and flash him the blade. “You ain’t gonna snitch,” I remind him
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He smiles, and slowly, oh so slowly, the big fat piggy nods his head
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It is time for a lesson
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*  *  *

I feel cold. Pee Wee coming at me in slow motion, but I seem to move in normal time. Everythin’ in my brain crystal clear. Pee Wee just want to teach me a lesson. He just goin’ to carve a small warning into my arm, maybe snick a little message into the flesh of my shoulder. He does not mean to take my life.

But in my new, crystal-clear brain, I understand that Pee Wee cannot help but do what he will do. He has already crossed the line.