Free Black Sheep by Na'ima B. Robert

trying to act casual.
    “But I’m not sure what my mum will think of him,” I confided in Effie, my mentor in all matters of the heart. “He’s not exactly the kind of boy she encourages me to
date: polite, well spoken and well brought-up, from a good family, a boy with ‘prospects’...”
    “You mean boring as hell?” Although Effie was the daughter of two Ghanaian professors – Dr and Dr Mensah – she was probably the wildest girl in the school.
    Amongst the other black girls at our school, Effie was most definitely the Queen Bee. Now that she had passed her GCSEs and was doing her ‘A’ Levels, she had cemented her reputation
as a good-time girl – she lived hard and fast, although her parents had no idea.
    “As far as I’m concerned,” she would say, “life would be unbearable without two things: hot guys and a healthy dose of excitement.”
    “Don’t you mean living dangerously?” I was constantly in awe of Effie’s double life – and the risks she was prepared to take.
    “Yup, I’ll own up to that. You only live once, right? What’s the point if everything is boring and predictable? In my book, there is no such thing as ‘safe sex’.
It’s either maximum excitement or a cold shower, sweetheart, so deal with it!”
    Effie remembered Dwayne from the party in South London so she had been impressed when I told her that we had been talking on the phone and that I was considering going out with him.
    “Oooh,” she crowed, “baby Misha is finally growing up, huh? A roughneck boyfriend, eh? Congratulations, darling!”
    I ignored her patronising tone.
    “Not quite as rough as your latest, I see,” I said, eyeing the two purple lovebites on her neck. Her shirt collar wasn’t quite high enough to hide them.
    “I’ve been wearing a lot of scarves at home,” she smirked. “Anyway, don’t change the subject! I want to know if you’ve asked your mum’s permission. You
know what a total control freak she is...”
    “I prefer the term ‘caring parent’ myself,” I remarked, shooting her a look. “And anyway, I don’t even know whether anything will come of it so I’m not
going to mention anything yet.”
    My initial plan was to keep Dwayne a secret for a while, just to see how things turned out. But the way things were developing, I was going to have to come clean. So, two months after I started
seeing Dwayne, I told Mum about him, and how I felt about him.
    “Mum,” I began while we were having our regular Saturday morning coffee at Starbucks, “I’ve met this guy.”
    “Really?” said Mum, taking a sip of her latte. “Tell me about him...”
    “Well, his name’s Dwayne, Dwayne Kingston and, oooh, he’s
wonderful
!” I practically shivered with delight, causing Mum to raise an eyebrow. “I swear, Mum,
this is it, I know it! He is ‘the one’!”
    “Oh, really?” Mum smiled, amused by all the giggles and girly emotion. “So when do I get to meet this young Romeo?”
    “Whenever you like, Mum,” I responded breathlessly. I was so high on Dwayne-love that I was sure Mum would be as taken with Dwayne as I was, that she would see what I saw: a diamond
in the rough.

Closing In
    DWAYNE
    After weeks of bugging me, my little brother Jay finally cornered me as I was coming out of the shower on Saturday morning.
    “You’ve
got
to take me bowling today, bro,” he said, his arms folded across his puny little chest. “No excuses.”
    I mentally checked my diary: all good until six. There was a jam happening up in Tottenham and I wanted to go down and spit some bars. I preferred to leave my endz to do my music: mans around
here were hard to please and every local jam I’d ever done had ended with man cussing each other and someone throwing a fist, a bottle or both. Jukkie loved the excitement and went out of his
way to start a fight, but for me it was about the beats, not the beef.
    “OK, little brother,” I said, punching him lightly on the shoulder. “You’re