Pigeon English

“I held my breath and tried to feel my blood going round. I couldn’t even feel it. If I knew my blood was going to run out in five minutes, I’d just fill that five minutes with all my favorite things. I’d eat a hell of Chinese rice and do a cloud piss and make Agnes laugh with my funny face, the one where I make my eyes go crooked and stick my tongue right up my nose. At least if you knew you could be ready. It’s not fair otherwise.” 

Harri considers the nature of death and tries to feel the sensation of it in his own body by holding his breath. In his reflections, he provides a very open, honest, and beautifully simplistic childlike series of desires. What brings him true joy and pleasure are of the most rudimentary nature and it is especially his wish to make his baby sister laugh that shows how much he values family and his particular role as older brother and protector. This is also an instance of foreshadowing, insofar as at the time of his demise, his last recollection is that of Agnes, but it is blurred and indistinct, which again highlights what he sees as the unfairness of not knowing or being able to prepare for the last five minutes of his life. 

“I used Poppy’s hair for my yellow. Mrs Fraser says inspiration for your mood picture can come from anywhere, from the world or inside you. I got my inspiration from Poppy Morgan’s hair. I only didn’t tell her for if it ruined it.” 

For Harri, Poppy is a symbol of young love and affection in its purest sense. He is careful in the way he treats her as his muse, and his fear of somehow ruining it, should she find out, shows his knowledge of how fragile love can be. His “yellow” becomes important to him even beyond the confines of the art classroom, and he returns to this mood picture image when he needs to draw on inspiration for other moments, like his track race.

“Mamma likes it best when it’s a child who died. That’s when she prays the hardest. She prays proper hard and squeezes you until you think you’re going to burst. Grown-ups love sad news, it gives them something special to pray for. That’s why the news is always sad. They haven’t found the dead boy’s killer yet.” 

Harri’s naïve understanding of the news is also sobering, since it emphasizes the bleak nature of the regularity of crime and suffering. He tries to impose his own logic here, attempting to make sense of why adults love sad news. His misinterpretation of his mother’s intense praying shows how he is not fully able to comprehend the world of adults. He says that the only show his mother likes to watch is the news. What he misunderstands, however, is that his mother watches the news so intently because she is concerned for her own children, which is why she is continually overprotective, so that they will avoid the same fate of the other children she finds herself praying for. 

“A killer is the same all over the world, they never change. They have little piggy eyes and smoke cigarettes. Sometimes they have gold teeth and spiderwebs on their neck. Their eyes are red. They’re always spitting and they get their blood from the shadows. The pub is probably full up of killers but we’ll only look for the one who killed the dead boy, he’s the only one we know. If we caught him it would be like getting Forever back. It would be like everything still works the way it’s supposed to. I’ll wait until Dean comes with me so he can be my backup. Detectives only work in pairs, it’s just safer like that.” 

Harri and Dean desperately want to be helpful by bringing the killer to justice and somehow finding redemption for the dead boy. Their understanding of evil, however, is limited to what they know from television and they only consider the physical appearance of evil rather than its deeper, psychological nature. They associate those who are smoking and drinking during the day at the pub as fulfilling the basic requirements of what it means to be a killer, not thinking this early into their investigation that it could be someone young like them. The idea of getting “forever back” shows a hopefulness that could only come from a child who harbors an innocent understanding of the world.

“I think the Dell Farm Crew are my enemy now. That’s what happens when you fail your mission.” 

Harri’s simplistic understanding of bullying and aggression is heartbreakingly true. The gang culture and violence that is part of his neighborhood seems almost inescapable, and you can only be on one of two sides: the Crew or the enemies of the Crew. In this particular instance, he is supposed to set off the fire alarm at their school, causing havoc. Harri’s overall good and kind nature, however, keeps him from being successful at completing his “mission,” which would hypothetically keep him on good terms with the Dell Farm Crew.

“I prayed for the insight so I’d ask the right questions. Dean doesn’t believe in it so I prayed for both the two of us.”

Harri does not seem to question Dean’s lack of religion or belief system, but instead reasserts religion’s value by ensuring that he prays for both himself and for Dean. Not many of the children in Harri’s neighborhood or apartment complex seem to have any interest in prayer or religion, so for Harri, this becomes a connection to his old life in Ghana. Asking for insight (a new word and concept for Harri) can be seen as uncharacteristic for a young boy, but shows one of the sharper moments in Harri’s thinking, since he feels so passionately about this mission to uncover the dead boy’s murderer’s identity, seeing it as his proper duty.

“They’re just stupid. The tree doesn’t belong to them, it belongs to everyone. I only let them take it because they had chainsaws. The hole where the tree used to be just felt too crazy. It made me proper sad, I don’t even know why.” 

When a tree falls down in the neighborhood, all the children are excited to climb on it and see what they can find. When Harri goes to climb and explore the tree, the sawmen are already there breaking it down with their chainsaws, which makes Harri angry. Disappointingly, the nest that had been in the tree is empty as well. Harri does not understand how the sawmen have the right to take the tree away, seeing it as part of nature and therefore universally shared by the entire community. He can only feel but not really comprehend the sadness he feels because of this loss.

“Asweh, if I ever see an escalator with no blocks, I’m going to slide all the way down to the bottom! It’s even my new ambition.” 

Here, we see evidence of Harri’s use of pidgin, his Ghanaian-English combo of “asweh” (“I swear”). Often, he becomes enthusiastic about small matters, and makes sweeping declarative statements about his plans. He is on the London tube and mesmerized by the moving stairs underground that remind him of being in the airport. He is annoyed that there are blocks that prevent anyone from sliding down the median between the escalators and is determined to one day find a set of escalators without a barricade, so he can have the pleasure of sliding all the way down the center line. 

“We tested Auntie Sonia’s fingers. We gave her a hell of different things to feel and she had to say if she could feel them or not. We tried the remote control from her TV. She couldn’t even change the volume at first.” 

Auntie Sonia’s plight is not something Harri or Lydia fully understand. Instead, they see her burnt fingers as a strange and interesting novelty that, like most things for them, turns into a game. They want to know what it feels like and what she can and cannot feel. Their mother is not happy about how candid Auntie Sonia is when she speaks to the children about her hands, especially the burning process itself. She describes the smell of cooking your own skin and explains that it is easier to do when you have had enough alcohol, a comment that their mother disapproves of. 

“Auntie Sonia says she’ll stop burning them when she finds the perfect place. When she can stay in that place forever and there’s nobody to ruin it or send her away, then she’ll let her fingerprints grow back for good.”

Auntie Sonia is in search for a place where she can feel safe and actually feel like home, which she definitely does not feel in the apartment with Julius. Even though she has money and can buy nice things for Harri and Lydia and can call in favors for her sister, ultimately, she is under Julius’ control. The painful ritualistic burning of her fingerprints is her only way to keep her identity safe from anyone who could use it against her. Only when she feels like she can be herself will she allow her identity to be open and free. 

“‘The only friends a man needs, his bat and a drink. One to get you what you want, the other to forget how you got it. You’ll see what I mean one day. Just stay good for as long as you can, eh? Just stay the way you are.’”

Julius has just returned from visiting someone who presumably owes him money. He offers Harri a sip of his drink and he is holding his bat, The Persuader, as if it is a beloved and loyal pet that needs tending to after a long and messy day. He gives the bat to Auntie Sonia to wash, removing any of the ugly aftermath from his visit to one of his unfortunate clients. Julius recognizes that what he does for a living is gruesome and immoral, explaining that he drinks to erase the memory, which reads like a desire to eradicate his guilt as much as possible. His appeal to Harri to stay good as long he can suggests that it is fairly inevitable to fall into committing evil acts in this environment. 

“Those kinds of missions are the best, when everybody helps and you get a reward after. Somebody should tell the Dell Farm Crew about them. I could pass on the message.” 

Harri fondly recalls a moment back in Ghana with his friends when they would go out on “fine missions” that involved philanthropic, helpful tasks, like collecting empty soda bottles from the road, or assistingwith housework. These missions would result in a reward in the form of a refreshing bottle of Fanta and everyone feeling pleasant and silly. In this recollection, Harri considers that if he could be a part of the Dell Crew Gang, he would use his position to tell them about God, in the hopes that it would invite change. Another naïve but heartbreaking moment of wishful thinking.

“I wanted to turn the crying off but she had to learn her lesson. Doing something bad on purpose is worse than doing it by mistake. You can mend a mistake but on purpose doesn’t just break you, it breaks the whole world bit by bit like the scissors on the rock. I didn’t want to be the one who broke the whole world.” 

Harri catches Lydia in the middle of a lie. She claims that the blood on the clothes she bleached at the launderette was just paint. Harri insists that he saw blood, and the lie continues to grow as he calls her out for denying it. She then explains it is Miquita’s blood, insinuating that it came from menstruation, hoping to throw Harri off his questioning and stop the conversation altogether. Harri does not understand the menstruation suggestion and keeps pressing the matter until Lydia breaks and locks herself in their mother’s bedroom. Even though he does not want his sister to be crying, he believes it is more important for her to realize she did something wrong and learn that all of these small intentional lies have the ability to build up into something greater. Harri fears being a participant in something that could have such a negative, lasting effect on the world. 

“Mr Frimpong is the oldest person from church. That’s when I knew why he sings louder than anybody else: it’s because he’s been waiting the longest for God to answer. He thinks God has forgotten him. I only knew it then. Then I loved him but it was too late to go back.” 

At the Jubilee Center where Harri and his family go to church, Harri is always irritated by Mr. Frimpong’s loud singing. He reasons that he must be singing so loudly because he is desperate for God to hear him and since he is the oldest in the church community, by default he has been waiting the longest to receive some response from God. Singing loudly will somehow make God hear him better and he will hopefully get the answer he is looking for. When he views the matter this way, he is no longer annoyed by the loud singing. This realization occurs right before one of Harri’s “missions” with the Dell Farm Crew, who are intent on attacking Mr. Frimpong on the street and stealing his wallet. Though Harri feels love for the old man, he is already too deep in with the Dell Farm Crew’s plan. 

“We gave you the map, it’s inside you. The lines all point to the same place in the end, all you have to do is follow them. Home will always find you if you walk true and taller than those weeds. You can be a tree, you can be as big as you want to be.” 

Harri’s pigeon is speaking here, complaining about the magpies who bully him (like the Dell Farm Crew does to Harri). He wants to keep helping Harri while he is able tobut admits that he is limited in his abilities. The “we” seems to refer to a godly force. The map is Harry’s destiny and this hardwired internal map will give him the tools and the strength to navigate past all of the evil and negative influences he encounters in his environment. Home in this case is the eternal home of heaven, which Harri will go to as long as he continues to follow his moral map, allowing him to grow above the “weeds” of bad influence. This monologue immediately proceeds the Dell Farm Crew’s attack on Mr. Frimpong, which left Harri feeling terrible and guilty and wishing he could stand up for himself and what he believes to be right and good.

“In England nobody helps you if you fall over. They can’t tell if you’re serious or if it’s a trick. It’s too hard to know what’s real. I even miss Mr Frimpong singing. It felt too crazy when it wasn’t there.” 

At the Jubilee Center, Mr. Frimpong is telling his story to the other church members, lamenting the shocking fact that no one tried to help him or stop the attack as it was happening. In light of Mr. Frimpong’s unfortunate run-in with the Dell Farm Crew, Harri thinks more about the difference in society between Ghana and England. For Harri, England is more a cold, closed-off place, where people do not easily trust one another, for fear that they will somehow find themselves in a compromising, unsafe situation.

“I pretended like God forgot me so I could do all the bad war things and not even have to feel it.” 

In his family’s apartment, Harri is thinking about the start of the war between himself and the Dell Farm Crew, in addition to all of the other types of war existing in the world around him, from Kids vs. Teachers, to Arsenal vs. Chelsea, to Chicken Joe’s vs. KFC. In light of this, he goes into the kitchen while his mother is showering and takes out the knife she uses to cut fruit, imagining what it would be like to use the knife on an enemy. He immediately imagines also that God would temporarily forget who he was so he would feel less weighed down by the guilt of his actions. 

“Now everybody who sits at my desk will know me and Poppy belong to each other. You can’t even take it back. It’s the same as being married. It’s better than that because you don’t even have to sex them.”

Poppy shows Harri how to write their initials on a school desk, an act that functions as a testament to their love. Harri sees this written declaration as permanent and binding, a type of contract similar to marriage, but without the unappealing parts of marriage, like sex. Harri does not have a carnal desire for Poppy. He simply enjoys her company and laughing with her, and there is a safe comfort in their relationship that he cherishes.

“I even felt sorry for him then. I didn’t even have to burn Poppy to make her admire me, I only had to make her laugh.” 

Harri is both disgusted and saddened by the way Killa treats Miquita. He thinks about their relationship and observes, through his binoculars, the several burns on Miquita’s skin from Killa’s lighter. Remembering Auntie Sonia’s burns, he remarks to himself that Miquita’s burns do not even have a practical purpose like his aunt’s; they are only there are a sign that she belongs to Killa and it is how Killa gets Miquita to “admire him.” He is grateful that he does not have to stoop to such matters in his own relationship with Poppy, whose admiration comes because he makes her laugh. He does not consider that Killa does it to exert power and ownership over Miquita, and thinks that someone should just tell him that laughing is both better and easier than burning. 

“Mamma just washed the plates faster like she was trying to scrub the sin off them. I’d rather be killed with the Persuader than with a knife. A knife’s too sharp, it tears too much spirit up. A bat’s rounder so more spirit stays together.” 

Auntie Sonia introduced her sister to Julius when they first arrived in England. Though the nature of the business transaction between Mamma and Julius is not fully explained, whatever “favors” Mamma took from him are now coming back to haunt her. She pays her proper dues to him to avoid any trouble for herself and her children. However, the more she witnesses Julius’ abuse of Auntie Sonia and his aggressive and flippant demeanor regarding his other clients, she feels guilty that she has been dealing with evil. Reminiscent of Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth obsessively washing her hands after murder, Mamma washes the dishes as if she is trying to make them clean from sin. 

“All the things you think are just there for no reason are actually to help you or protect you from something.” 

Harri places a certain trust in the world and relying on his faith when it comes to matters he cannot fully understand. From the basic superficial parts of the human, like eyebrows and eyelashes, which exist to keep out dirt and sweat, to other less tangible forces that exist and happen without the immediate reason always knowable to the observer, Harri harbors the belief that it is necessary to accept that certain events and experiences occur for a greater good.

“Lydia felt the iron burn on her face where it was nearly faded away. She got my message and the blood I sent her. She woke up.” 

Lydia calls off Miquita’s unwanted advances towards her brother, which escalates into a verbal argument. Lydia feels the traces of her burn, which remind her that she has not been living the truth, and she finallybreaks her burdened silence and blurts out ‘At least my boyfriend’s not a murderer,’ which makes Miquita instantly fall silent. Lydia had been treading carefully for months around Miquita and the Dell Farm Crew, but in this moment, when she “wakes up,” Harri is there by her side to support her. Standing up for herself and refusing to stay silent any longer, she demands that Miquita leave their apartment. With the emotional and moral strength and support that Harri gives her, Lydia remains resolute in establishing the truth. 

“Aunt Sonia’s foot is in plaster up to her knee. I think it was the Persuader but Lydia thinks Julius ran over it in his car. Whoever’s right gets a hundred points.” 

These speculations regarding Aunt Sonia’s injury show Harri’s subtle awareness of the type of relationship his aunt has with Julius. While acknowledging the aggressive, abusive nature of Julius, he does not spend too much time remarking or reflecting upon it. He quickly reverts into his childlike impulse to make everything into a game, assigning points to whomever guesses correctly.