An Olive Grove in Ends by Moses McKenzie

Author:Moses McKenzie [Mckenzie, Moses]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2022-05-30T00:00:00+00:00

I wasn’t confronted with my past life at all throughout the first month of living with the Jenningses, mainly because I never left the house without any of their company. And the few times I saw anyone I recognised, I did my best to avoid them seeing me. But on the last Sunday of July, the four of us were walking from church to the Jenningses’, where we found Karma posted outside, smoking.

My heart sank.

It wasn’t that I was unhappy to see him, I loved Karma like family, but with him leant against the street sign, tracksuit matching, clouds in the air, trauma in the lines on his face and suspicion in the slouch of his back, it wasn’t difficult for me to imagine what the Jenningses were thinking. And besides, Shona knew Karma. And putting aside any nostalgic affection she had for him (on account of going to the same school), I imagined he fell firmly on the wrong side of her morality.

‘Sayon,’ Pastor Lyle said, ‘deal wid dis.’ He took ahold of Marcia’s hand and led her into the house without so much as looking at Karma again.

‘Wagwan, killy,’ Karma said, his puffer jacket swallowing me whole as he stood and wrapped me in a bear hug. ‘Long time. Wagwan, Shona.’

She returned his greeting, kissed my cheek, then went after her parents.

Karma was the friend everyone deserved to have. He was comfortable with silence. Capable of the most passionate debates. We could see each other every day for a summer and I wouldn’t tire of his company, or we could not talk for months and pick up right where we’d left. Once he considered you his friend, that was it.

Back home he came from a notorious family; both his father and uncle were ardent members of Al-Shabaab, which, in school, had only served as another reason he was treated differently.

I’d always known, but it’d never bothered me since I was in no position to judge. So when people said that when Karma and his family came to England they brought the rules of Al-Shabaab with them, I didn’t care, because I loved him already. Besides it was true enough; Karma was one of the more tapped niggas I knew, something that had come in handy on more than a single occasion.

I’d never been embarrassed by the company I kept before, but with the pastor stomping up the steps to his house, Marcia by his side, and Shona behind them, I felt like the same child rebuked for the stolen biscuits in my pocket. Years had passed since the Sunday school incident, and yet here I was, still bringing the outside in.

‘Wagwan?’ I asked.

‘You ain’t spoke to Cuba in a minute, nah?’ he asked, licking his lips as he leant back on the street sign.

‘Nah.’

‘You need to chat to my man, fam; he ain’t doin good, wallah. After what happened wid you man and Cordell, shit’s been wild, akh. Dem man from Pauls heard wagwan, put two and two together, and shit, dey got four, akh.

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