Читать книгу Street Boys: 7 Kids. 1 Estate. No Way Out. The True Story of a Lost Childhood - Tim Pritchard - Страница 9

I often wonder whether it would have been different. If I hadn’t been abused and beaten by my partner. If I hadn’t taken them out of their school and if we’d stayed in Birmingham, I wonder whether Elijah would have turned out different.

Sharon Kerr

JaJa’s dreadlocks: that’s what first got him into trouble. His father was a Rastafarian and as soon as JaJa’s hair was long enough he wore it in ever-expanding knots of matted hair. It was fine at home where his two younger sisters, his younger brother Naja and his mother and father also wore dreadlocks, but at school there was one kid who kept pulling his hair during fights in the playground. It made JaJa fight even more furiously and soon got him into trouble with the school authorities. One evening, when he was seven years old, he went back to his small family home at 97 Crompton Road in Handsworth, Birmingham, ready for a confrontation.

JaJa’s mum was in the kitchen. He told her that he wanted to have normal hair like other kids. They argued about it all night, but the next day she relented and took JaJa to have his dreads cut off. He knew she didn’t approve of his request because she kept calling him ‘Elijah’. That was his real name: Elijah Kerr, born in 1979 at Dudley Royal Hospital in Birmingham to parents who had left Jamaica as kids to start a new life in England. Most people, though, except schoolteachers and angry parents, just called him JaJa.

JaJa’s parents, Sharon and Delroy, had met when they were young, during their third year at school in Birmingham. They started off just hanging around together as friends but it wasn’t long before they started going out as boyfriend and girlfriend. The trouble was their relationship didn’t go down well with either set of parents. Delroy’s parents objected because they didn’t want him to be distracted from his ambition of joining the army. Sharon’s parents objected because Delroy was a Rasta. In the end, all it did was throw Sharon and Delroy even closer together.

When Sharon became pregnant at 14, it was Delroy’s mum who took control. She grabbed Delroy by the arm and took him round to see Sharon’s parents.

When everyone was sitting down she came straight to the point.

‘Sharon’s pregnant and Delroy’s the father. What shall we do about it?’

Sharon’s dad couldn’t believe it. When Delroy and his mum had gone he glared accusingly at his wife.

‘This is all your fault.’

Then he started slapping his wife around the face.

‘I won’t have a daughter like that living under my roof.’

It was too much for Sharon. The worst thing was seeing her mum submit to the beating. Sharon decided to act. She went upstairs, packed a suitcase, walked out of the family home and never went back.

Sharon moved straight into a squat with Delroy. It was a struggle at first, but her mum used to come round and sneak £10 notes to her without her father noticing. It was only when Elijah was born that her father started to pay any attention to her. Before that, her father had always treated her as the black sheep of the family. Elijah was his first grandson and he started to come round more often, but by then, for Sharon, it was too late.

Sharon and Delroy had their second child, Chantelle, and moved into a house in Crompton Road, Handsworth. They were cosy together and Delroy got work on various building sites. He was a strict vegetarian and cooked delicious dinners for her and the kids. A third child, Saffiya, was born. Every evening they would sit down together over a steaming hot meal of fish and rice and he would tell her all about Rasta culture and her roots in Africa. For Sharon it was an eye-opener. No one had ever told her about slavery, about Africa, about where she came from. For the first time in her life she felt that she was part of a proper family.

But then it started to go wrong. Delroy mentioned a building project he’d been offered in Africa. He began to disappear for weeks on end. Their fourth child, Naja, was born. Then one day Delroy announced he’d signed up for a short contract job in Ghana.

‘I’ll be back in six months.’

It was two years before he returned.

JaJa wasn’t quite sure exactly when he noticed that his dad stopped being around. The biggest sign was when the music on the stereo changed. It had always been a familiar voice that floated down the street as he made his way home after school.

‘Let’s get together and feel all right…’

Bob Marley or some other mellow reggae artist was his father’s music of choice, but lately as his absences became more frequent it was Roberta Flack or Marvin Gaye who greeted him. That was the music his mother liked. One day, out of the blue, his mum told him that his dad had gone to work in Africa, in Ghana, labouring on a building site or some sort of construction project. JaJa had the feeling that there was more to it than that but he didn’t know what it was. But the longer his father stayed away, the more it became some sort of family secret that no one mentioned.

Anyway, his dad never wrote to him and soon it was as though he had been away forever. From then on Elijah didn’t even miss him that much. He was close to his mum, though. His mum was like a sister to him. She’d got pregnant with him when she was only 14 years old and the bond was tight. From a young age he recognized how difficult it was for her to bring up four kids alone. He did his best to help out by giving the younger kids their cornflakes in the morning, getting them ready for school and packing their lunch boxes with sandwiches, crisps and chocolate bars.

Then, one morning, when he was eight years old, his dad suddenly reappeared. JaJa woke up and there he was, standing at the foot of the bed. He recognized him straight away even though the long dreadlocks he’d had before he went away were now cut short. He ruffled their hair and gave them each a hug.

‘You grown big, you’re getting big now.’

He started to tell them a story about being in Africa and that he was on a construction project building a house. He said how he was on the beach and how he got his leg caught in seaweed and how it pulled him under and he nearly drowned. The best bit though was when he gave them presents: T-shirts, ornaments and African wooden carvings. The carvings were of ugly faces. They laughed and joked over the funny wooden faces. They each got a sugarcane stick to suck on. It was a laugh having his dad back.

The good times didn’t last. His dad became moody. Then the beatings started. It was true that JaJa was the sort of kid who often got up to mischief. He was always out and about and things would sometimes just happen. Things would get broken. People would get upset with him. It started with a few lashes of his dad’s belt. But one day his father really lost it. He ran upstairs to JaJa’s bedroom and started hitting him with anything he could lay his hands on.

He gave me a beating that has always stuck in my head. Not because of the beating itself but because he beat me for so long. He spent an hour beating me. He hit me all over with his hand, belt and slipper in my bedroom. It happened again after a couple of weeks. I started to think, that’s just what dads do.

His father’s moods darkened. They moved out of Crompton Road to a new house in Birchfield Road, Perry Bar, just outside Birmingham. A few weeks later his mum and dad started rowing even more frequently. JaJa didn’t know what the arguments were about but they were pretty ferocious. He stood, unseen, at the top of the stairs and listened as the voices of his parents got louder and more strained. He was too young to care what they were talking about. Instead he just focused on the terrible shouts that escalated into screaming and clattering. It was terrifying. He knew something bad was happening but didn’t know what it was. One day, without warning, his mum took him and his brother and sisters back to Crompton Road. JaJa wanted to know why they moved but his mum wouldn’t tell him.

The truth was that, for Sharon Kerr, life had never been the same since Delroy had gone to live in Ghana. For two years she hadn’t heard a word from him. Not a word. No phone call. No letter. Nothing. She’d tried to find out from his friends what had happened but nobody would tell her. When he finally did come back she found it difficult to regain what they’d once had. That’s why she’d decided to take the kids and move out. Sharon thought that after the temporary separation they might be able to rebuild a life together. Instead it got worse. Much worse.

Even though they weren’t living together, Delroy kept turning up at the house ready for a fight. Sharon felt he was bullying her, implying that she wasn’t a good mother.

His complaints came thick and fast.

‘Why are you putting the kids in playschool? The staff will feed them the wrong food.’

He tried to make them wear African clothes that he’d brought back with him from Ghana.

‘They should be wearing clothes that reflect where they are from.’

The rows exasperated Sharon Kerr and she hit back.

‘It’s cold. Why are they going to wear African clothes in this weather? You can’t be telling them what clothes to wear.’

The kids had grown up and formed their own opinions while he was away. He couldn’t take it. He couldn’t take me backing the kids. I was brought up to be seen not heard and as far as I was concerned my kids were going to be heard. No one was going to come between me and my kids.

Delroy kept turning up at Crompton Road. Sharon tried to keep him out. But one day he just kicked the door down. This time JaJa wasn’t in bed. He saw it all from the hallway. His father walked in and punched his mum. She came running out of the kitchen with a black eye. JaJa stood staring at her, tears forming in his eyes.

His mum tried to reassure him.

‘Don’t be crying. Please don’t cry.’

Then she ran upstairs and locked herself in the bathroom.

When he hit my mum that’s when it changed. When you are young your mum is everything in the world. And this guy hasn’t been around very much and he comes back and punches her in the face, you think, what the hell?

JaJa was nine years old. He ran into the kitchen and got hold of a kitchen knife. When he came out his dad had already slammed the door and gone. Under his breath, though, he made a vow: Just wait till I’m older.

It never reached that point.

JaJa didn’t know it, but his mum had already decided to act. She was going to take things into her own hands. She was finally sick of all the fighting, all the punch-ups. One evening, after months of abuse, the violence came to an abrupt conclusion.

Sharon had gone to play netball. It was the one activity that took her out of the home and gave her the chance to meet up with other women. She played on a team and had made some good friends. It was what she enjoyed doing. That evening, she’d taken the kids with her. She’d learned to drive some weeks before and she used to ferry herself and the kids to and from netball practice. She could tell that it had become an issue for Delroy. He resented the fact that Sharon was now independent and could drive herself around without his help. In spite of everything that had happened, JaJa’s dad still liked to be the man of the house. He still turned up when he wanted and expected to find the family waiting. He expected everybody to ask his permission if they wanted something. Sharon had felt for some days that it was going to explode. So when Delroy turned up unexpectedly at the house after netball practice she almost knew what was going to happen.

‘Where the fuck have you been?’

His face was pinched, his lips tight. He was a dense ball of festering rage.

‘Tell me. Where the fuck were you?’

It was like a red rag to a bull. Sharon had grown up with a father who used to bully and intimidate both her and her mother. Her childhood had been miserable. Life had only got better when her parents had separated and her father had moved back to Jamaica. She had sworn then that she wouldn’t let a man push her around again.

‘You’ve got no fucking right to talk to me like that.’

She told him that she was allowed to do what she wanted and that they were separated and he couldn’t just keep coming back into her life and ordering her around.

Delroy locked JaJa and the other kids upstairs in their bedrooms, and put their German shepherd dog Sam in the kitchen.

Sharon knew what was going to happen. Whenever Delroy was going to hit her he would lock the dog away so the dog wouldn’t attack him.

She took a deep breath. Here we go again.

He smashed Sharon’s brand new television that she had just bought from Currys. He turned over chairs and smashed a glass.

Then he punched her in the face.

Sharon fought back but he pushed her over, held her down on the ground and laid into her with his feet. She struggled and shouted and screamed at him. But he carried on kicking her as he held her down. It was during the kicking that Sharon made up her mind what she was going to do.

When the worst was over and he had gone upstairs she gingerly got to her feet, sat on the couch and called her friend.

‘This can’t go on. It’s got to stop. I can’t live like this. I’m gonna kill him.’

She had already planned it in her head. She was going to wait for him to fall asleep, then she would put a cushion over his face and stab him.

‘I’m going to do it now. I have to do it.’

Her friend was silent for a while. Then she reminded Sharon that she had other responsibilities.

‘If you kill him you’ll be locked up and there won’t be nobody to look after the kids.’

That sobered Sharon up. But she still knew that she would have to do something. If she didn’t get out of there the next day she really would kill him. She meant it. She would kill him.

By that evening she had worked out her plan.

The next morning Sharon waited until she heard the door slam. It meant that Delroy had gone off to his job making bracelets and necklaces in Hockley, the jewellery quarter of Birmingham. She packed the kids off to school and went straight to social services.

‘I need to get out of here.’

The woman at the counter could see how urgent it was. Sharon’s face was black and blue.

‘Where do you want to go?’

‘I need to get far. We’re going to London.’

Sharon’s mother lived in north London. It was the only place where she knew someone she trusted and which was far enough away to be safe.

Social services rang round and found a women’s refuge hostel in Tulse Hill near Brixton, south London.

Sharon thought that Brixton sounded good. She knew that Brixton had a large black community similar to Handsworth. It would help the kids fit in.

She went home, packed a suitcase and collected her passport and bank book. Then she walked, bent almost double with the pain from the kicking, to the bookies down the road where she worked. She explained to her boss what had happened. He was good about it. He gave her £400 in wages and wished her luck.

Then she went to the kids’ school and spoke to the head teacher, Miss Dillon. The head teacher understood immediately and wrote her a letter to help get the kids into another school in London. Then she collected JaJa, Chantelle, Saffiya and Naja, took them home, sat them down and talked to them.

JaJa was shocked when his mum came out with it.

‘I’m leaving. You can either stay here with dad or come with me.’

But he didn’t hesitate.

‘I’m coming with you.’

They were each allowed to pack their stuff into a small bag. They wanted to take their bikes and their other toys but Sharon explained that they couldn’t take everything. Naja was the most upset. He wanted to take his Ninja robot that he had got the previous Christmas. It was too big to fit in his one bag. They left it behind with everything else. The TV and stereo and everything. They left it all behind. Before they closed the front door Sharon turned to JaJa.

‘I know this is gonna be hard and you are going to hate me but I’ll make it up to you.’

JaJa followed his mum out of the house, into a black taxi and from there to the coach station in New Street. His mother never told them why they were leaving. But he wasn’t stupid. He knew why they’d left. He knew that they’d left there because his dad was hitting her. He knew that his dad was living with another woman.

‘Where are we going?’

‘We’re going to London.’

On the coach JaJa tried to keep the strange feelings rising up in his stomach at bay by looking out at the changing landscape.

At Victoria coach station he watched his mum dial the telephone number of a women’s hostel in south-west London.

JaJa knew that he wasn’t going back to Birmingham. What he didn’t know was that he would never see his father again.

The family was given temporary accommodation in a small room in the hostel. It was five metres by three metres. It was for the whole family; five of them with all their belongings. JaJa stood and looked out of the window.

I thought what the hell is this? We just come from a nice house, a big place, to somewhere new, somewhere I got no friends, and I thought I’m going to have to start all over again. I realized this was for real and we’re not going back to Birmingham. In Birmingham I had mixed friends, Chinese, black, Asian friends. Now I had no friends and nothing and no one.

Sharon could see that her son was upset. She did what she could to comfort him.

‘We’re staying here now. Don’t worry, we’ll sort ourselves out. We’ll find a house. We’ve just got to wait a little while. We’ve got to go through this rough stage for a bit. It’s going to be hard at first, it’s going to be horrible, but I’m going to make it right.’

JaJa felt like crying.

I went to the window by myself and I remember I looked out and tears started to go down my face. It was a little window and I thought, ‘No way, where are we?’ and the tears kept coming. I remember it was a grey day and it had just finished raining and it was dull outside. It just looked strange. The whole atmosphere was just strange.

His mum sat him down and talked to him again.

‘Don’t worry. It will get better. You’ll start school soon and meet some new friends.’

That calmed JaJa down a bit.

But he wasn’t sure that he believed her. He just felt like crying and crying. And he was amazed that his mum wasn’t in tears too.

The truth was that even if Sharon Kerr had felt like crying there was no time to fall apart. For the sake of the kids she had to show that she wasn’t scared. But she was scared. She was leaving a nice house in Birmingham and heading into the unknown. She knew it was going to affect the kids, uprooting them from their schools and their friends. But she could see no other way out. She now had a plan and she was determined to make it happen. Her back was still hurting from the kicking that Delroy had given her in Birmingham. That spurred her on and reminded her of why she had left.

As soon as she got settled into the Tulse Hill hostel she called her mother who lived in Tottenham. Sharon hadn’t brought with her any of the kids’ sheets or pillows or blankets and the hostel didn’t provide them so her mum told her to go to the TSB bank in Tulse Hill and she would speak to her branch and get the money sent over straight away. Within hours of arriving, Sharon was clutching £300 to spend on bedclothes. She deliberately didn’t tell her mum where she had taken the kids because she knew that Delroy would try and find them and force them to go back to Birmingham.

The next day that’s exactly what he tried to do.

Delroy turned up at Sharon’s mum’s house and banged on the door demanding to know where they were. When she refused to let him in, he kicked down the door. Sharon was glad that she hadn’t told her mum where they were because she knew that she would try and get them to reconcile. That’s the sort of person her mother was. She saw the good in everyone. She even saw the good in her violent and abusive boyfriend.

Talking to her mum the next day it was clear that Delroy was in shock. He couldn’t and wouldn’t believe that Sharon had just upped and left.

To this day he’s still suffering from shock. To this day he has never got over the fact that we just walked out. We had to walk out. I had to protect me and my kids.

It was only a year or so later, when Sharon thought they were finally safe from being hassled by her former partner, that she told her mum where they were.

The hostel in Tulse Hill was small and dingy. But the next hostel they moved to was even worse. The room was even smaller and more cramped. There were six other families – Moroccan people and a white woman with mixed-race kids. Sharon was happier though. She began to talk to the other families and discovered that they’d all been through the same thing. JaJa too was happier. Gradually he got into the vibe and started playing with the other kids. On occasions he even managed to forget that they had come to a new place and that he would never go back to Birmingham.

By the time they were moved to temporary accommodation in Streatham Vale, JaJa even managed to feel as though he was blending in. He got put into a primary school in Brixton called Effra, and every morning he would take his brother and two sisters to school on the bus. Or rather buses. It took three buses and forty-five minutes to get to school. He hardly saw his mum. She had taken two jobs, one at McDonalds, the other a cleaning job. Most nights she wasn’t back till very late, when he was already in bed. Sometimes he didn’t see her for three days.

‘Can you look after the others?’

‘Yeah, don’t worry, I can do it.’

He knew he was young but he believed he was sensible. It was a way of helping his mum. Sometimes he’d catch her in the morning and she’d ask how his day had been and he’d have to tell her that Naja had lost his bus pass or his lunch money, or that there had been some other mishap. She’d leave some money for him the next day and tell him to make sure that he looked after the younger ones. He grew up quickly. He could see how much his mum was doing for them and was determined to help her out. Help out, help out. That’s the thought that went round and round his head.

One day he went up to his mum.

‘Why do we live so far from school?’

Even from a young age he realized how much more difficult life was for them all if they had to travel an hour and a half to school and back every day.

‘Don’t worry; we’ll get another flat closer by.’

His mum’s promise, that they would soon be moving on, made life more bearable for JaJa.

Most of the time he and his brother and sisters just stayed indoors. His mum’s friend had driven her back to Birmingham and they’d returned loaded up with clothes, a television and a computer. They’d stolen into the Crompton Road house while his father had been out and taken what they could fit in the van. With a television and a computer JaJa and his brother and sisters felt happier about staying inside.

At the weekends and on summer evenings they would play with the two white kids, Luke and Perry, who lived next door, sometimes borrowing their bikes to ride up to the gypsy camp in the park. The Irish people there, intrigued by JaJa’s strong Brummie accent, always had questions for him.

‘You sound different. Where you from?’

He started getting nosier and nosier, venturing further and further afield. And then one day, Ross, a friend from the Effra School, asked him if he wanted to hang out at his house after school. That evening, JaJa asked his mum and she said it was OK.

A week later, when the bell rang at the end of the school day, Ross and JaJa walked out of the school gates, through the streets of Brixton to an estate just off the Brixton Road. JaJa was amazed. He had never been on an estate before. It was not the sort of thing he’d ever seen in Birmingham. But he immediately liked the area. There were raised pedestrian walkways connecting blocks of flats. There was a small park and a football pitch where other kids hung out. This is OK here. This is a whole new area. It’s totally different. He liked the vibe. The atmosphere felt better, as though there was more going on. He felt he could fit in. He went back home and told his mum.

‘We should try and live in Brixton. It’s a good area for us. Streatham Vale is too full of grannies. Let’s go and live in Brixton. It’s our kind of place.’

A month later his mum said they were going to look at a flat. They got off the bus and started walking along a road and into an estate. It took him some time to realize that the estate they had entered was the one where his friend Ross lived.

‘This is where I come the other day.’

‘Well, this is where we’ve got our new flat.’

They went to a large block of council flats called Marston House. They stood outside number 124.

‘This is where we are going to live as soon as they’ve finished painting it.’

JaJa was so happy. There was music on the streets. Reggae and ragga music was blasting out from cars and open windows. Musicians called Shabba Ranks and Ninja Man rapped about sex and guns and violence. Kids were running around. It was a totally different atmosphere from the streets of Streatham Vale.

‘What’s this place called?’

‘This is Angell Town.’

If Streatham Vale was a kid’s nightmare, Angell Town, London SW9, was a kid’s dream.

JaJa’s mum hadn’t picked Angell Town out. The truth was she didn’t have a choice. The flat in Angell Town was the only one that came up and she had to take it. Life in Streatham Vale had become unbearable. The furniture there was from the 1970s, and the neighbours, particularly the old couple who lived next door, soon began to object to the presence of a single black mum with four noisy kids. They were always complaining that JaJa and his brother and sisters were making too much noise, that they played their music too loud, that they didn’t belong there.

I don’t blame them coz they bought their nice house in a residential area and the people next door rented it out to any Tom, Dick and Harry. That was us, a single mum with four rough kids from Handsworth in Birmingham and she had two nice little boys with blond hair. I don’t blame them at all.

But soon the complaints turned into abuse. Sometimes Chantelle, JaJa’s sister, would come home and tell Sharon that there were some kids who were spitting on her brother. When Sharon walked up to collect her kids from the park at the end of the road, curtains would twitch and people would throw things at her. One day there was a message written in black paint on her door.

‘Go back home.’

She went straight to the housing department.

‘Please move us. You got to move us. I don’t care where you move me, just move me.’

It was one of the worst times of her life. Every week she went to the housing department at Lambeth Town Hall. There was always a queue of people waiting in line just to get a ticket. Sometimes the queue went right round the block. When she finally got a ticket she would find that she had number 105 and there were still fifty people in front of her. She would sit in a bare-walled waiting room with hard chairs and wait for hours for her number to be called. It was better when the kids finally got into school, but in the early days, while she was still in the hostel, she had to take them with her. After hours of hanging around in a boring waiting room they would get increasingly frustrated and Sharon would lose her temper.

‘Elijah, stop that. Chantelle, stop crying.’

The four kids would start running around the waiting room, climbing on chairs and crawling around on the floor, making a racket. She would try and shut them up with food from packed lunches that she’d brought with her, but once the crisps and the Curly Wurly chocolate bars were gone the kids would go back to causing havoc. That’s when the sly glances from other people in the waiting room would start and the muffled mutterings. The glances from other mothers in the waiting room would turn nasty and the huffing and puffing would become more exaggerated. Sharon knew what they were doing. They were looking at her and talking about her under their breath. They were saying she was a bad mum.

Finally her number would come up and it would be her turn at the counter.

‘Have you got anything for me today?’

‘No, sorry. Nothing today.’

What do you do? Do you go, ‘I’ve been waiting here all day and that’s all you can do? That’s all you can say to me? I’ve waited six months and you still haven’t got any accommodation you can put me in?’ ’Course I said I’ll take anything.

Sharon found the waiting and the hanging around for proper accommodation unbearable. So when a letter eventually arrived saying that somewhere had come up on an estate in Brixton she didn’t think twice.

When that envelope from the housing people arrived saying that we could move to Angell Town, it was a proper relief. Finally, our own home. It was the best thing what happened to me.

The housing people took her to a council block in Angell Town called Marston House. She was amazed. Like JaJa she’d never seen an estate before. When they opened the door of 124, Marston House, she was delighted. She had been in Streatham Vale for so long that she didn’t mind that it looked like a dump. It had five bedrooms. It’s the biggest place I’ve ever seen. It’s like a palace.

When she finally got the keys, the kids ran in and each chose a room. The joy didn’t last long. When Sharon opened the door later that day, a group of kids were standing there, looking at her threateningly.

It was proper scary when we first moved there but because we were desperate we didn’t have no choice, so I didn’t care. So I said to my kids I said, ‘Remember where we come from, we’re from Birmingham and no matter what happens, don’t change the way we are.’ And I don’t think we never have. But that helped us because we got tested. From the same day we moved in we were tested. I was tested by them kids standing in front of the front door. It was like America. When I went out they were standing there and when I came back they were standing there.

The flat had been a squat. A crack house. It was used by kids on the estate as a place where they could ‘coch’; it was a place to smoke and drink, away from the prying eyes of their parents. The housing department had taken the flat back, given it a lick of paint and put in new, sturdy locks. But the kids still hung around. Sharon felt that she was marked. She got her kids together.

‘Let’s just stick together, nobody can’t farce with us. Nobody can’t mess with us coz if they do we are gonna fight.’

And she was ready to fight.

The next time she went out, she opened the door and spoke firmly to the kids hanging round outside.

‘Can you move away from my door, please?’

It helped that she and her family were black but she was conscious that they weren’t Londoners and that the other people living on the block were testing her to see how she would react.

When she came back she repeated her request.

‘Can you move from my door, please?’

Slowly she began to ask the kids their names and even throw questions at them.

‘Angell Town. Is it good? Is it nice round here? Where are the shops?’

It worked. They began to realize that they couldn’t intimidate her. It wasn’t long before Sharon, Elijah, Chantelle, Saffiya and Naja Kerr weren’t the new kids on the block any more.