Pigeon English (5 page)

One time me and Lydia were in the lift when it broke down. It stopped for about one hour. It wasn’t even hutious. Lydia was screaming like a maniac. I had to stop her going crazy with rock, paper, scissors. I saved the day all over again.

Lydia: ‘Advise yourself! I didn’t scream!’

Me: ‘Yes you did. This was Lydia: Make it go, make it go! I hate being stuck!’

Lydia: ‘Shut up Harrison. He’s lying.’

We were showing Auntie Sonia our lift. Auntie Sonia says she doesn’t have a lift where she lives, only stairs. It didn’t even feel fair.

Me: ‘It only makes your belly turn over at the beginning. You won’t get sick.’

Lydia: ‘Advise yourself, she’s seen a lift before. She’s been to America. They go up to one hundred over there.’

Me: ‘How! I don’t believe you!’

Auntie Sonia: ‘It’s true. They call them elevators. They even make your ears go pop like on the aeroplane.’

Me: ‘Cool!’

Auntie Sonia’s been everywhere. She’s met a hell of famous people. One time she made Will Smith’s bed (he’s in I Am Legend). They’re not in the room when she’s making their bed, they wait outside. Sometimes they give you a tip. One time they gave Auntie Sonia a twenty dollars. One time a hotel man gave Auntie Sonia a hundred dollars just to shag it up with him. She said no because he was too ugly. Mamma went proper red-eyes when she told her. She hates shagging talk.

Mamma: ‘Not in front of them!’

Me and Lydia: ‘We don’t mind!’

Next time Auntie Sonia goes to America she’s bringing back some Fruit Loops. They’re the sweetest of all the cereals. I’m going to have them for breakfast every day for the rest of my life.

Mamma: ‘Are you planning another trip then? You just got here.’

Auntie Sonia: ‘It’s been six months.’

Mamma: ‘And your feet are itchy already?’

Auntie Sonia: ‘It’s not my feet I’m thinking of.’

Mamma looked at Auntie Sonia’s fingers where they were all black and cracked. You had to pretend like you didn’t know about them and everything was normal. My favourite word of today is fuzzy-wuzzy. Mamma and Auntie Sonia were smashing the tomatoes for palaver sauce. It was like a race to see who could kill them first. Asweh, it made me glad I’m not a tomato!

Mamma: ‘So she says to Janette, are there any other midwives there? And Janette ask her why. And she says it’s her first baby, do I know what I’m doing. She says she don’t want no fuzzy-wuzzy just got off the boat.’

Auntie Sonia: ‘Fuzzy-wuzzy? That’s a new one.’

Mamma: ‘I swear by God. I said I didn’t come on a boat, I came on a plane. They have planes now where I come from. I shouldn’t have said anything really. I had to apologise to her.’

Auntie Sonia: ‘How! You had to apologise? I would rough her. I’d tell her I gave her a juju curse, her baby will come with two heads. She’d probably believe it.’

Mamma: ‘You can’t say that, it’s not professional.’

Auntie Sonia: ‘Fuzzy-wuzzy. I’ll have to remember that one.’

Me: ‘What’s a fuzzy-wuzzy?’

Mamma stopped smashing the tomatoes. You wanted them to escape while they had the chance. Run for your lives!

Mamma: ‘It’s what they call you when you’re new at the hospital. Sometimes if you’re new the patient doesn’t trust you to do the job. It just means somebody who’s new.’

Me: ‘Why fuzzy-wuzzy though? I don’t get it.’

Mamma: ‘I don’t know. Don’t disturb.’

Auntie Sonia: ‘It’s for the noise the nurse’s shoes make. When they’re new they squeak on the floor. The noise just sounds like fuzzy-wuzzy, that’s all.’

Me: ‘How come your shoes don’t make that noise in here?’

Mamma: ‘It only works on shiny floors.’

It sounded quite crazy. It could be true. Next time I get new shoes I’m going to try it. The corridors in the flats have proper shiny floors. I bet they’ll make the dope-finest squeaking you’ve ever heard.

Next time we’re going to Auntie Sonia’s house. She lives in Tottenham, you have to go on the tube. Connor Green says the tube police have machine guns and if you run away they shoot you. I’ll just have to hold my running in, that’s all. It’s only until I get to the other side.

Jordan doesn’t go to school. He got excluded for kicking a teacher. Excluded means thrown out. I didn’t believe it at first, but even his mamma said it was true. She thinks it’s brutal. Jordan’s mamma smokes black cigarettes. The paper is liquorice flavour. Jordan’s lighter than me because his mamma’s obruni. I told you, everything’s crazy around here!

Jordan: ‘My mum’s trying to get me in another school but no one wants me, innit. I don’t even care man, school’s shit anyway.’

Me: ‘What do you do instead?’

Jordan: ‘Play Xbox. Watch DVDs.’

Me: ‘Does your mamma make you do jobs?’

Jordan: ‘No way! Why, does yours?’

Me: ‘Sometimes.’

Jordan: ‘That’s so gay.’

Me: ‘Only the man’s work. Locking the doors, checking for invaders, things like that.’

Jordan: ‘It’s still gay.’

We greeted the rubbish pipe (it’s a special pipe where the rubbish goes. Inside is metal and it smells like shit, it goes all the way down to Hell). We have to greet it every time for luck, it’s a tradition. Just stick your head in and shout:

Me and Jordan:
‘Bollocks!’

and it makes a dope-fine echo. Only don’t stick your head in too far for if it sucks you in. Jordan jumped on my back and tried to push me down the pipe but I spun around just in time. Then I had to hold the lift door while Jordan did a big spit all on the buttons. When he got out Fag Ash Lil got in. We waited for the doors to close. We could hear her when she pressed the button Jordan did a spit on. She didn’t know about the spit.

Fag Ash Lil: ‘Bloody hell!’

She said bloody hell! It was very funny. I only felt scared after. Fag Ash Lil killed her husband and ate him in a pie. Everybody agrees. That’s why her eyes are all mad and watery, it’s from eating human meat.

Jordan: ‘Bloody hell bloody hell! Stupid bastard!’

Me: ‘Bastard!’

You can say bastard, it just means somebody who doesn’t have a papa. Fag Ash Lil’s papa died a hundred years ago so it’s not even lying. Bollocks are just the same as nuts.

In Art Tanya Sturridge was absent and Poppy sat in her chair instead. Then she was almost right next to me. She stayed there for the whole lesson, she didn’t even move away. It made me go all hot. I couldn’t concentrate because I wanted to see what Poppy was doing. She was painting her fingernails. She actually used the paint for pictures to paint her fingernails with. I watched her the whole time. I couldn’t even help it.

She painted one fingernail pink and the next fingernail green, and then the next one pink again, in a pattern. It took a very long time. She was very careful, she didn’t make a single mistake. It was very relaxing. It made me feel sleepy just watching it. I used Poppy’s hair for my yellow. Mrs Fraser says inspiration for your mood picture can come from anywhere, from the world or inside you. I got my inspiration from Poppy Morgan’s hair. I only didn’t tell her for if it ruined it.

Colour Theory teaches you about using different colours to mean different moods or to tell a story. The colours tell them what you felt like inside. It doesn’t need a shape, it can just be colours. It doesn’t have to look like anything. Mine is made of green, yellow and red. The yellow is sunshine and Poppy Morgan’s hair. The green is for the time Agnes was crawling on the grass in children’s park and she saw a cricket and tried to catch him. That was very funny. You should see her face when the cricket jumped away, she was very surprised. She wasn’t suspecting it in a million years. When he landed she tried to catch him again. She didn’t give up, she just carried on trying and trying. In the end I caught the cricket for her. She squeezed his leg. She squeezed too hard at first and nearly broke it off but after that she just touched it nice and gentle. Her fingers are very tiny but fat at the same time. I love them the most. Only babies can be tiny and fat at the same time, they’re very lucky like that.

The red is the dead boy’s blood. I couldn’t get it dark enough so I mixed some black with it, just a little bit at a time. It still didn’t look how it was in my head. I couldn’t get it to match. Asweh, it was very vexing.

Mrs Fraser: ‘You’ll wear a hole in the paper if you carry on like that!’

In the end I just gave up. My eyes were all blurry and Poppy was looking at me funny like she thought I was a spaz. That’s when I knew it was time to give up.

There are warnings everywhere. They’re only there to help you. They’re very funny. The big fence around the front of school has hutious spikes on top to stop the robbers climbing over. There’s a sign on the fence:

Asweh, it’s very funny. There are signs all over school telling you to turn off your mobile phone:

Connor Green: ‘It’s ’cause the teachers are all robots and the signal from the phones messes with their circuits, innit.’

Nathan Boyd: ‘There should be a warning sign on you. No talking to this boy. Serious risk of bullshit.’

Connor Green: ‘F— off.’

We found another crazy sign by the river:

We love that sign. It’s our new alltime favourite.

Me: ‘We should dare Nathan Boyd to eat the watercress.’

Dean: ‘Good idea. He’ll never do it.’

The river is behind the trees. It’s only dark. It’s too small for swimming and the water is acid, if you fell in all your skin would burn off. There’s a platform that goes over the shit pipe that’s big enough for both the two of you to sit on. You can just sit there and watch all the things in the river go past. It’s usually just sticks or cans or paper. Whoever sees a human head first gets a million points.

We were looking for the knife the dead boy got killed with. It’s called the murder weapon. If we see it, we’re going to fish it out and take it to the police.

Me: ‘Keep your eyes peeled, it could be anywhere.’

Dean: ‘Roger that. I’m on it, Captain.’

We’re proper detectives now. It’s a personal mission. The dead boy even told the rogues to leave me alone one time when they were hooting me for wearing ankle-freezers (that’s when the legs of your trousers are too short). I didn’t even ask him, he just helped me for no reason. I wanted him to be my friend after that but he got killed before it came true. That’s why I have to help him now, he was my friend even if he didn’t know about it. He was my first friend who got killed and it hurts too much to forget. There’d be fingerprints and blood on the murder weapon. If we found it we could identify the killer, that’s what Dean said. He’s seen all the shows.

Dean: ‘And if we help catch the killer we’ll get a reward, innit.’

Me: ‘How much?’

Dean: ‘Dunno. A grand. Maybe more.’

A grand is a thousand. It sounded like too much. If I got a grand I’d buy a ticket for Papa and Agnes and Grandma Ama and if there was any left over I’d buy a proper football made of skin that doesn’t fly away.

Me: ‘Keep looking. He definitely came this way.’

Dean: ‘Are you sure it was a knife?’

Me: ‘Yes! It was this big.’

I showed him how long with my hands.

Dean: ‘Right you are, Chief.’ (That’s how detectives talk. It’s just a rule.)