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1
Follow the Smoke
One o'clock in the morning. Hotfoot, all three of us. Stepping where we had no business.
Tombstone Estate gyals - Caribbean, Irish. No one expects better. We ain't IT. But we sure ain't shit. All we need is a likkle bit of riddim. So we go inna it, deep, into the dance-hall Crypt.
'Come, nuh,' Asase calls. Pushing her way down the stairs. High-priestess glow. Red Ankara cloth wound round her hair like a towering inferno.
Asase is the oldest, twenty-five, a year older than me and Rumer.
Rumer is nothing like her red-haired Irish family. My gyal is dance-taut, tall with a rubber-ribbed belly - androgynous. Blonde, she dyes her hair Obsidian Black, stuffs it underneath a knitted red-gold-green Rasta cap.
We squeeze past chirpsing men. Stand in front of the arched wooden door. Suck in the last of the O2.
I follow Asase inside. My gyal follows the smoke. Beneath barrel-vaulted arches. Dance-hall darkness. Pile-up bodies. Ganja clouds. We lean against flesh-eating limestone walls near two coffin-sized speaker boxes that vibrate us into the underworld.
Runnings: the scene goes the usual way; a Rasta pulls Rumer which is good because that's the only kinda man she'll dance with. 'They're respectful, they're my bredren,' she says. A sweet bwoy pulls Asase.
Testing, testing: one, two, three. Lights go on for a few seconds.
Only one type of man left for me.
A tall, light-skinned man, face the colour of wet sand, stalked green eyes, standing in his silence. Man pulls me with not so much as a 'What's up. Wanna dance?' Nuth'n.
Watchya: there're only three kinda man-pulls - usually from behind.
Pull 1: grip above elbow; pull-back-bend-ram-hard-rubbing.
Options: forget it!
Pull 2: hand-grip-spin-face-to-face-body-check-ram-rub.
Options: none. Best give up your body for one tune - at the very least.
Pull 3: soft bwoy tap on shoulder.
Options: nuff.
This man's trouble. I can tell by his use of Pull 1 and the size of his belt and the way he jooks himself into my centre of gravity. His body's not tuned for riddims; it's flexed for the war zones of history, the battles of the streets.
I tip my arse, inch my pubic bone away from his hard-on.
He puts his mouth to my ear, warm breath: 'Simmer down.' Flattens his palms against my batty, pulls me back in.
Version after B-side instrumental version, he grips me. Wordless. We're in a crypt in the thick of duppy dust; lost rivers, streams and sewers bubbling beneath us.
Smoke's taken over, thickening, choking me. And I wonder why I attract these kinda men, who are just like my father. Men who strike fear in people just by the way they stand. Skewering the silence with their stares.
Four dances in before I make my soft-gyal excuse, mouth 'Gotta go. Toilet.'
Man nods. I exhale. One floor up, I sit in the toilet cubicle. Smell candles and incense and old wood from the church. Light my spliff, suck more smoke into my lungs, feel Muma shoot into my veins.
I hear her song, her voice, treble, reed and flute. She cuts inna me with soundwaves, singing: 'Daughter, I-and-I is tune.'
Spirit or not, Muma's all I've got. The only one I trust.
'Stay,' I whisper. But she's gone.
I imagine my ganja smoke snaking around my dance partner, dragging him into the afterworld beneath the Crypt. But the man's waiting for me downstairs, to raas. One hand clipped on his belt like he's toting a gun.
'Inna it, baby,' he says, and pulls me into the dance hall, positions me against the wall, wedges himself into my body.
I hold my breath, and pray for a rootsy liberation track to put him off his slow-winding moves. But I'm locked in. Tune after tune after tune.
Three o'clock in the morning. We're ten feet below and the town's weighing down on us. Stench of sweat, stale gases and lead.
'Soon come,' man shouts in my ear. 'Need a light.' He takes a cigarette out.
I mek my move quick-time, slip into the mass of closed-eyed skankers, sucked into the slipstream of rippling spines. Try to get as close as I can to the decks, watch the MC, see how he handles the mic and the controls. We're dancing in darkness, skinning up with the dead. I feel them twisting around me, round and round, rattles on their wrists and ankles, broken-beat bodies of sound. The Dub Master spinning versions of delayed time. Slack-jawed, slicking-up words from tongue root. I wanna take the mic from his hand, blaze fire on Babylon. In my head, I'm chatting lyrics:
set it
set it
come mek we hear it from the uptown posse
get down
get down
every posse drive forward
fire!
Bodies rippling like seagrass. Synthesising air and bass.
Inna caves of sound, we skank low, spirits high. Drop moves as offerings to the soundboxes, wooden deities full of fading voices.
The regulars are scattered around the square, pillared vault. Rocked by storm sounds, swaying under the shelter of arches, some pressed tight against the walls. Others bubbling in the epicentre, below low-hovering smoke clouds. Strangers pass through, hold position on the edges. There's Eustace, the owner of Dub Steppaz Records, skanking next to the decks, one hand behind his back, the other steering the air. There's Cynthia, the lovers-rock queen with a bronze-sprayed Afro, who cradles her sagging womb when she sings, rocking from side to side to reggae love songs. And Lego in the middle of the dance floor, two-stepping best he can with his artificial leg. Skanking hard-hard, using his walking stick like a spear, firing it inna the air, shouting, 'Mash down Babylon.' Nobody knows if he's lost his mind or found a higher consciousness, like our men who lead the marches and rallies, chanting 'Black Power' over the heads of the sistren.
Lovers-rock time and our bodies are ships rolling through smoke and heat, under pressure from treble and bass. I sway in the broiling centre, far from the walls where men move with mute biological urgency, stabilising themselves with the weight of women.
The MC calls out over the mic, a voice in the darkness, shouting above the waves of sound. The deck's where I've always wanted to be. Changing the sonic direction. I'd fling down a rootsy dub track of the ancients chanting stories about the divinity of our emperors. Tek it to the outtasphere.
Someone takes my hand. Eases me around.
I wipe sweat from my eyes, look up. Dim lights from the decks flash on and off and I make out a face that's a smile resting on rocks. He's looking down at me as if he's known me from beyond time, cables of blue smoke twisting above his head.
He puts his mouth to my ear, says his name is Moose.
'OK for this dance?' he asks.
I see a wide-bridged nose, thick lips scrunched like he's chewing his thoughts. Yeah, he's one of dem men whose beauty is a throwback from the past.
'I'm Yamaye,' I say and give him the nod.
He positions a thigh between my legs. Puts his arms on my shoulders, keeps his crotch a polite distance away from my pubic bone. Electric guitars riffing. Groaning vocals. We dance, rub-a-dub-squatting, and his cheek grazes mine. Drifting scents of vanilla, cocoa beans and pine trees waft off his neck. I tremble as we sway under the limewashed roof.
With my body pressed against his, I feel the ancient songs vibrating beneath his ribs: Tambu, Sa Leone, Jawbone. This man's different. From the electricity running through me, I feel like my ending is gonna be charged inna his fate.
Everyone's in their power. The room's a furnace, sweating bodies. Moose takes my hand, pushes his way out of the Crypt.
'Let's get air,' he says.
We go up the metal stairway and the man's still holding my hand. When was the last time anybody held my hand besides Rumer or Asase? I slip my fingers out of his fist; pull myself together.
Out the side door into the churchyard where the paved walkway leads on to the high street. Into the cold November air.
Norwood is one of those small industrial towns on the western edge of London. Part village, part suburb, an overgrowth of the city. It's 1978, but the town feels outside of time, trapped somewhere in its past. The history books say it was built in the clearing of a forest of thorn trees that was once the site of pagan rituals, not far from the marshy banks of a prehistoric river. Mammoth bones and teeth are sometimes found by workmen ploughing deep inna the earth.
I blink my stinging eyes, take long, slow breaths of oxygen and exhale into the deep-blue night. Micro-bubbles of sound float in the air. The smell of rotting weeds from the old graveyard and the feeling that the dead might rise with the sensimilla smoke and supra-watt riddims.
Lighting from the side windows of the church backglows us. I take a better look at Moose: bronze-brown skin, irises patterned like the grain of trees. He's smiling at me from some shaded internal space.
Heat in my veins and a stabbing feeling in my groin.
'I came for the Dub Master,' he says, his voice the sing-song-bling of Caribbean islands. Says he's been in the country eight years.
'Nothing else round here,' I say. 'Unless you count the Wolf Pub or the cattle market.'
He looks me up and down, smiling. 'Looks like plenty going on.'
We walk to the front of the church, cotch on the wall, check the people on the other side of the main road: youth quabs with dead-route eyes and back-pocket knives, heading north towards the railway line that cuts through the heart of the town; an old man wiping down the tables in Delhi Wala cafe, preparing for the morning shift, the lights flickering above him.
'You're shivering,' Moose says. He takes off his suede Gabicci and drapes it over me.
I pull it around my shoulders.
'It's intense down there,' I say.
The man I was dancing with earlier skulks past with another man. They're talking on the down-low; they both seem vex.
Moose sees the way I look at him and asks if I know who he is.
'Never met him before tonight,' I say. 'Man pulled me to dance and wouldn't let me go.'
'Mind yuhself. Name's Crab Man, check the way he walks. Feet go one way, eyes the other. Watch his eyes. Never worry 'bout the legs.'
''Nough man like that round here.' I look at Moose in his black silk shirt, shimmering like dark water, and wonder what kinda man he is.
'No, this man holds women down inna his yard. Does what he wants.' He throws his arms outwards. 'Dashes them out like trash. Stabbed a few brothers. Never does time. Finds another hiding hole - like this town.'
I cross my arms, holding on to the empty sleeves of his jacket. 'How do you know him?'
'I rave all over. Don't check me so. That ain't my style.'
'Man dem carrying on a-ways.'
He puts an arm across my shoulder, rests his head against mine, and points to the purple universe braided with beads and sequins.
'Look,' he says, and I feel his breath against my face, soft and sweet and warm. 'Planets, stars,' he says.
'My ears and guts are ringing from the bassline, can't focus on anything else.'
'Hard-hitting down there. Voltage strong enough for a nosebleed.'
We laugh and he presses his body closer, takes my hand.
I look at the side of his face. Profile like mountain ridges; wanna trace my finger from his forehead to nose to lips to chin back to lips so I can push my finger in.
'We're all travelling,' Moose says. 'Like stars.'
There are shouts nearby. Crab Man and the other man are arguing at the entrance to the church. Crab Man's deep, rasping voice makes me shudder.
'It's cold,' I say. 'Let's go inside. I need to link with my friends.'
We go into the dance hall. Lovers rock is still playing. Moose presses his face into my hair and we dance, winding low, our thigh muscles trembling against each other. Bassline coming through his heart into mine, jooking us together. There's no oxygen now. We're high on duppy gas, more spirits than earthly bodies.
I rest my face against his chest, lean against the raft of his ribs. Close my eyes, wonder how long this feeling can last.
When the lights go on, the MC announces next week's dance and an upcoming Misty in Roots concert. Asase and Rumer wind back through the crowd. They stand on either side of me, checking Moose. I introduce them.
Moose nods, but I check the way he looks at Asase - how all men do, like everything has blurred and she's the only thing they can see.
Rumer is coughing and wheezing. The damp Crypt sometimes sets off her asthma. I lay my arm across her back.
Asase stands in front of Moose, arms folded, head cocked, lips curled like red fuse wire. 'Which parts you from?'
'East,' he says.
'Where's your crew?'
'Man can go solo now and then, can't he?'
At five foot ten, Asase's eyes are only a few inches below Moose's.
The Dub Master is calling, 'Last dance, last dance. Tek your partners.'
Asase sways her hips to the lovers rock cry, tipping forward. Next thing her arms are around Moose's neck and they're dancing. Close rub-a-dub style.
Moose looks at me over Asase's shoulder, raises his eyebrows into a question. I cut my eyes on him. A dread weight drops inna my belly. I look at the back of Asase's head. Never know how far she'll go. But it's gonna go the way it always does; Asase will get whatever the raas she wants.
Lights flash on and off. On again.
Six in the morning.
The MC calling out, 'Dis yah dance is done!'
I link arms with Rumer and she leans on me as we walk out. Asase walks in front, stepping the language of the streets, a bounce in her feet that says dis gyal's got things under control. Moose hangs back a little. We follow a slow line of linked lovers, groups and lone ravers up the stairs to the ground floor. And I swear two hundred people pile into the Crypt each night and five hundred leave, ancient spirits reanimated by sensimilla and body heat.
