Читать книгу Street Boys: 7 Kids. 1 Estate. No Way Out. The True Story of a Lost Childhood - Tim Pritchard - Страница 12
ОглавлениеThat’s how advanced I was as a little boy. I was forced to fend for myself. Ever since I was eight years old I’ve lived on the streets and had to look after myself.
Phat Si
Fat Si’s father hadn’t been able to cope with his son. Fat Si’s wild behaviour and constant truancy got too much for him. He paid for Fat Si to get on a plane and go and live with his mother. She was in Toronto, Canada. Fat Si was delighted to be going. He’d heard good stories about Canada. His grandmother had told him that his mum had relatives there and that’s why she’d moved. It still bothered him that his mum hadn’t taken him with her but he wanted to see her and his sisters again so badly that he pushed it from his mind. He wanted to get out of England. He’d got frustrated living with his grandmother in her small house in Camberwell. What sort of life is that for a young kid, living with an old woman? He’d ended up spending most days kicking around Angell Town and most nights kipping with friends who lived on the estate.
He got himself to Heathrow and flew alone from Heathrow to Toronto. Fat Si was 11 years old. His trip started to go wrong from the moment he landed.
I’d wanted to be with my mum and sisters but forgot that my dad wouldn’t be there. My mum wasn’t at the airport to meet me. Just my grandma and my sister. And the house was worse than in England. My mother had another little girl with a different dad and it was chaotic. There were eight of us in a three-storey house. But the front room was mum’s bedroom. There was three feet of snow and that. There was rats and moths. The house wasn’t fit for no one to live in it. It was not a good environment to raise kids in. I had to go to school in my sister’s cast-off clothes and wear her sweaters and jeans and trainers. It was embarrassing, weren’t it?
The house was in an area near the Jane and Finch corridor in a district of Toronto called ‘the Jungle’, named after a West Kingston neighbourhood back in Jamaica. There were jerk chicken and jerk fish shops and Jamaican grocery stores in the surrounding streets. Reggae blasted out from boom boxes all day and all night long. But Fat Si wasn’t happy. Even though his mum had family in Toronto, there was never enough money to go round. Fat Si felt that his maternal grandmother had misled them. She had persuaded Fat Si’s mum to leave England for a rich, new life in Canada. Instead they were living in a damp, cold house that was falling down with hardly enough money for basic food. And Fat Si didn’t react well to his new surroundings.
They were difficult times. Instead of helping, I added to the problem. I got into bad company straight away. I was going to the community centre and smoking weed and getting drunk. The family from my mum’s side were there. I got on all right with them. But I spent my time stealing and causing havoc.
After a few months he got into so much trouble that no one minded when he said that he wanted to go back to England. He missed his dad. He made a reverse charge call and asked for a ticket back home. He didn’t know how his dad got hold of the money but it wasn’t long before he was booked on a ticket back to London. He didn’t ask his mum whether he could go. Ever since he was eight years old he didn’t ask anybody anything. He just did everything himself.
When he got to the airport in Toronto he was lucky to leave without problems. He’d already outstayed his six-month tourist visa. He’d been in Canada illegally. He hadn’t known it but his mother had been given refugee status and had applied for residency for herself and her six daughters. But not for Fat Si, her only son. It was summer 1990, and Fat Si was on a plane back to London, and Angell Town.
