There is a woman on my
street whom I can honestly say I hate. I don’t use the word often but she makes
my beast rise inside me when I pass her on the street and I will her to just
say something to me, anything. Any excuse too punch her in her horrid head. I
have lived here for 15 years and so has she, longer probably. She has a drink
and drug problem, hangs out on Gilette square with the regulars (before it was
cool to skateboard and hang with the locals… she was there) and she thought it
was funny one night to call me a dyke while protected by her junky pals. I
walked passed with clenched fists while my girlfriend at the time eyed me
nervously waiting for me to do something stupid. I did not because I am not.
We could hear her
wailing and screaming during the day; putting her family through shear hell
with her darkness. Her mum having to call the police almost every week to have
her taken away from the house and her kids. Sometimes ambulances came and
people were loaded up, sometimes I wondered if it was her and she died, would
they be relieved?
It was summer and the
windows were open. She was screaming and shouting ‘fuck you’ slurring hard and
thick all her words mashed together in an ugly throaty sound. It’s a sound I
know and recognise, when people use drink and drugs their voices deepen and
crack. I hate the sound; its often coupled with violence and desperate acts
resulting in pain of some degree.
I look out my second
floor window and see a white boy of 7 or 8 in off white baggy underwear
riffling through my bin. I shout Oi! Get out of my bin!’ He looks up at me and
shouts, “But she hit my Nan, pointing at the red face dragon staggering around
wildly on the road screaming for her dog “Poppy’ Come ‘ere’! Poppy, an
overweight terrier type hates her, but comes to avoid a kicking later. (Poppy
and her other dog were taken by the police a few years later and destroyed
because they were on the dangerous dogs list. Oh the irony). I look at him and
realise that this kid is her son and I feel so sorry for him. I tell him to
‘get back inside and put some clothes on’. He looks at me and goes back to his
house.
Over the next 10 years
I watch her get arrested, scream outside her house, smash her mums house up,
raised a girl child that now seems to be a younger a deadler version of
herself. Screaming at the police when they come to take her away also. And the
boy? I watch him grow up on the streets, literally on the street because going
home (Inside his house ) was not bearable. I made effort say hello and have a
little chat if we walked on the same pavement. I would come home and he would
be chilling on his doorstep at midnight when he was 12. I have no idea what
type of person he has grown up to be. He is in the local gang that can get
quite scary at times.
About a year ago I got
a dog and have to go out a night to walk him. One morning I found an iphone. I
got it back to the owner who was a young black kid. A week or so later I found
out the two of them are friends in the same gang. We say hi when I pass them
all hunched up plotting badness and pointlessness but when they are with their other friends we just have eye contact and an ever so slightly raised eyebrow. There's because they don't want to seem rude but equally do not want there friends to take the piss and mine, in recogition of the possibly that will happen...
So I expect you are
wondering why the hell I am writing this?
Tonight I took my dog
out as usual about 10.15pm. I leave my house and notice that some Yout are
chasing each other on the road, some on bikes (this lad being one of them). I
choose to go the other way in order to avoid them, there are 5 of them. I cut
down to the estate and try to encourage my dog to piss. He wont, as usual he
just wants to pull me off in the search for white bread crusts and chicken
bones. Sol is not really paying attention and I find myself in the position of
hearing that they have decided to come the other way; I try to quicken my
step. I round the corner, hearing them making noises and saying some things which
I cant make out. A moped comes around the corner with a guy I recognise on it
(my dog has barked at him before because he wears his helmet on top of his head
like some sort of giant egg on wheels); followed by a figure with a hood and
the familiar walk of a bad boy; you know, one hand in his pants and the other clutching
his phone.
At this stage I am in
the middle of the road and swearing that I will kill my dog for stopping and
crunching away like nothings happening. So much for feeling safe with him he
can be bribed with a carrot. They start barking behind me and then Sol looks
back. I pull him towards me and we have a battle of wills, I win. The guy on
the scooter is saying to them – ‘Let him off Let him off –do it’. I didn’t
notice that they had a dog with them.
I am now dragging Sol
away but trying to not appear to care… And this is the moment.
‘Na man wait stop,
She’s safe man. She’s Safe’.
Followed by laughter and taunts that he is 'soft' and they
should let the dog off…
But he repeats it again and I dont wait to hear the rest of the sentence.
I don’t wait to hear
the explanation of why I’m safe; I’m just fucking glad I am.
