Sour: My Story: A troubled girl from a broken home. The Brixton gang she nearly died for. The baby she fought to live for.. Tracey Miller

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ after school, no free time, no fun.

      She would tell my poor mum, “When school done, if mi spit pon de floor, yuh better reach home before it dry.”

      If not, a beating was waiting. I didn’t believe Mum when she told me about the grater.

      “She put a grater in the yard, till it got hot, hot, hot in di sun.”

      Then she’d make Mum kneel on it. Oh my days, what a wicked witch! I’d have put that grater where the sun don’t shine.

      Weird thing is, my mum still sticks up for the woman who raised her.

      “Cha man, her heart did inna di right place.”

      And where exactly would that be?

      Still, I’ll give her something. She taught my mum to cook all the hardcore soul food that me and my brother love. Chicken, rice and peas, all the meats – no one cooks it better than my mum.

      Aged 12, Mum finally got the call. Her mother finally sent a plane ticket for London. She said in the letter she was doing well and life was good. Mum dreamed of a big house with servants. She dreamed of the high life, in a country where people drove shining cars, girls wore short skirts and their wallets overflowed with Queen’s head.

      But Brixton in the early 1970s wasn’t quite the paradise she’d imagined. For starters, she stepped off the plane in a cheap, yellow dress and was welcomed by snow. It pretty much got worse from there.

      “In Jamaica we went to church because we suffered so much,” she said. “When we came to London, nobody went to church no more.”

      “Me did know seh dere was a God in Kingston, becah he used to answer my prayers. Nobody nah answer no prayers inna Brixton.”

      Oh yeah, quite a character, my mum. On her good days, she likes watching EastEnders, Coronation Street and Al Jazeera.

      Whenever there’s something on the news about “feral youths”, as all those suited-and-tied BBC broadcasters like to call ’em, she always shakes her head and mutters, “Yuh pickney haffi learn to rass.”

      Or, in other words, people’s kids need to learn to behave.

      She loves baking, and makes a mean Jamaican punch. Oh my days! Nestlé milk mixed with pineapple juice, nutmeg, vanilla, ice cubes. Mix in rum or brandy and you’ve got a wicked pineapple punch. And a good chance of getting Type 2 diabetes, just like her.

      I know I shouldn’t laugh, because of her illness, but there were wild times too.

      Like that time she insisted on driving me and my brother to school in her speedy little Ford Capri, instead of letting us take the bus.

      “Hold on!” she screamed, leaning back and putting one arm across my brother in the front seat and one arm on the steering wheel, as she slammed down her foot on the accelerator.

      “Me taking di kids to school!”

      She whizzed down Coldharbour Lane that day like she was bloody Nigel Mansell, cutting up cars and swerving wildly down the street. I remember screaming as we jumped the red lights and brought a big-assed bus screeching to a halt. She crashed into a van and folded up the front of the car. Mum didn’t even notice.

      She just turned the radio up full volume and started chanting whatever weird shit came into her head. Oh my days, it was like Mrs Doubtfire meets Grand Theft Auto.

      Yusuf and I clung on to our seatbelts and just prayed to God to get there safely. I swear I’ve never been so happy to get to school.

      “Me go pick yuh up later,” she shouted, depositing the pair of us, shaking, traumatised heaps at the no-parking zone by the gates. “Make sure yuh did deh when me reach at tree tirty!”

      With that, we heard the wheels spin, the engine roar, then she was gone.

      Lo and behold, 3.30pm came and went, but Mum and her Ford Capri were nowhere to be seen.

      The policeman told us later they had to give high-speed chase through Brixton.

      “Rassclat!” she said, when we told her what happened. “Me did what? Yuh sure? I just remember seh me ah drive tru traffic, me put dung me foot annah drive fast, one minute me ah get weh, next minute dem got me.”

      We tried not to giggle.

      “Den I had to fight a whole heap ah policeman, and dem fling me down inna dem bloodclart van and take me down the station, bastards. Den dem take me go ahahspital.”

      That was my first day at a police station. We spent the whole day there. They fed us, showed us the horses, the police cars. I’m not gonna lie – it was like a fun day out.

      It was less fun, I imagine, for that poor Ford Capri.

      She was remorseful about some things. Like the time she dangled my sister off the balcony.

      “Me can’t believe seh mi woulda do dat to yuh,” she told Althea, once she came back down to earth. “I’m so sorry, girl, please forgive me, yuh mum wasn’t well.”

      Althea and her always had problems after that.

      Then there were the afternoons she used to pick up her baseball bat and walk through the streets, speaking to herself. Or the time she stripped stark naked and walked calmly down the road at rush hour. Or the time – this is my favourite – when she brought an elderly Russian lady home, and held her hostage.

      How many other kids come home from school to find a confused and frail old woman perched on the settee, saying they’ve been kidnapped by your mum?

      “Mum, what you doing?” we screamed.

      “Me ah ask de woman, where ye live? And she come with me. Me haffi look after her.”

      I looked at the frail old woman, clutching an untouched plate of rice and peas in her trembling hands.

      Mum came into the front room, brandishing more food.

      “Yuh hungry? Eat dis cake, it’s nice. Drink some tea. If yuh want, gwarn go sleep and drink.”

      The sweet old lady reached up for my hand.

      “Please,” she whispered, “I want to go home.”

      Yusuf helped her escape, while I kept Mum distracted. She was horrified when she found the front room empty.

      “Which one ah yuh let her out? Where’s she gaarn? I’m looking after her!”

      Oh yeah, every year it was something, and it always seemed to be round Christmas.

      You know that song, “Love and only love will solve your problems” by Fred Locks?

      That’s the one she liked to listen to during her episodes. That’s the one she’d listen to over and over again and all through the night. The bass would shake the house.

      Whenever that came on, and the volume was turned up, we knew to brace ourselves.

      As СКАЧАТЬ