by Chris Cleave
This was the first time that I smiled.
I began to eat the meals they brought me. I thought to myself, you must keep up your strength, Little Bee, or you will be too weak to kill your foolish self when the time arrives, and then you will be sorry. I started to walk from the medical wing to the canteen at mealtimes, so that I could choose my food instead of having it brought to me. I started asking myself questions like: Which will make me stronger for the act of suicide? The carrots or the peas?
In the canteen there was a television that was always on. I began to learn more about life in your country. I watched programs called Love Island and Hell’s Kitchen and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and I worked out how I would kill myself on all of those shows. Drowning, knives, and ask the audience.
One day the detention officers gave all of us a copy of a book called LIFE IN THE UNITED KINGDOM. It explains the history of your country and how to fit in. I planned how I would kill myself in the time of Churchill (stand under bombs), Victoria (throw myself under a horse), and Henry the Eighth (marry Henry the Eighth). I worked out how to kill myself under Labour and Conservative governments, and why it was not important to have a plan for suicide under the Liberal Democrats. I began to understand how your country worked.
They moved me out of the medical wing. I still screamed in the night, but not every night. I realized that I was carrying two cargoes. Yes, one of them was horror, but the other one was hope. I realized I had killed myself back to life.
I read your novels. I read the newspapers you sent. In the opinion columns I underlined the grand sentences and I looked up every word in my Collins Gem. I practiced for hours in front of the mirror until I could make the big words look natural in my mouth.
I read a lot about your Royal Family. I like your Queen more than I like her English. Do you know how you would kill yourself during a garden party with Queen Elizabeth the Second on the great lawn of Buckingham Palace in London, just in case you were invited? I do. Me, I would kill myself with a broken champagne glass, or maybe a sharp lobster claw, or even a small piece of cucumber that I could suck down into my windpipe, if the men suddenly came.
I often wonder what the Queen would do, if the men suddenly came. You cannot tell me she does not think about it a lot. When I read in LIFE IN THE UNITED KINGDOM about some of the things that have happened to the women in the Queen’s job, I understood that she must think about it all of the time. I think that if the Queen and I met then we would have many things in common.
The Queen smiles sometimes but if you look at her eyes in her portrait on the back of the five-pound note, you will see she is carrying a heavy cargo too. The Queen and me, we are ready for the worst. In public you will see both of us smiling and sometimes even laughing, but if you were a man who looked at us in a certain way we would both of us make sure we were dead before you could lay a single finger on our bodies. Me and the Queen of England, we would not give you the satisfaction.
It is good to live like this. Once you are ready to die, you do not suffer so badly from the horror. So I was nervous but I was smiling, because I was ready to die, that morning they let us girls out of detention.
I will tell you what happened when the taxi driver came. The four of us girls, we were waiting outside the Immigration Detention Centre. We were keeping our backs to it, because this is what you do to a big gray monster who has kept you in his belly for two years, when he suddenly spits you out. You keep your back to him and you talk in whispers, in case he remembers you and the clever idea comes into his mind to swallow you all up again.
I looked across to Yevette, the tall pretty girl from Jamaica. Every time I looked at her before, she was laughing and smiling. But now her smile looked as nervous as mine.
“What is wrong?” I whispered.
Yevette moved her mouth close to my ear.
“It ain’t safe out ere.”
“But they have released us, haven’t they? We are free to go. What is the problem?”
Yevette shook her head and whispered again.
“Ain’t dat simple, darlin. Dere’s freedom as in, yu girls is free to go, and den dere’s freedom as in, yu girls is free to go till we catches yu. Sorry, but it’s dat second kind of freedom we got right now, Lil Bee. Truth. Dey call it bein a illegal immigrant.”
“I don’t understand, Yevette.”
“Yeh, an I can’t explain it to yu here.”
Yevette looked across at the other two girls, and behind her at the detention center. When she turned back to me, she leaned close in to my ear again.
“I played a trick to get us let out of dere.”
“What sort of trick?”
“Shh, darlin. Dey is too many lisseners in dis place, Bee. Trus me, we got to find someplace we can hide up. Den I can explain de situation to yu at leisure.”
Now the other two girls were staring at us. I smiled at them and I tried not to think about what Yevette said. We were sitting on our heels at the main gate of the detention center. The fences stretched away from us on both sides. The fences were as high as four men and they had razor wire on the tops, in nasty black rolls. I looked at the other three girls and I started giggling. Yevette stood up and she put her hands on her hips and made big eyes at me.
“Why de hell yu laughin, Little Bug?”
“My name is Little Bee, Yevette, and I am laughing because of this fence.”
Yevette looked up at it.
“My god, darlin, yu Nye-jirryians is worse dan yu look. Yu tink dis fence is funny, me hope me never see de fence yu considda to be sirius.”
“It is the razor wire, Yevette. I mean, look at us girls. Me with my underwear in a see-through plastic bag and you in your flip-flops, and this girl in her nice yellow sari, and this one with her documents. Do we look like we could climb that fence? I am telling you, girls, they could take away that razor wire and they could put pound coins and fresh mangoes on the top of the fence and we still could not climb out.”
Now Yevette started to laugh, WU-ha-ha-ha-ha, and she scolded me with her finger.
“Yu foolish girl! Yu tink dey build dis fence for to keep us girls in? Yu crazy? Dey build dis fence for to keep all de boys out. Dem boys know de quality of de oomans dey keep lock up in dis place, dey be brekkin down de doors!”
I was laughing, but then the girl with the documents spoke. She was sitting on her heels and looking down at her Dunlop Green Flash trainers.
“Where all of us going to go?”
“Wherever de taxi take us, yu nah see it? An den we take it on from dere. Brighten up dat gloomy face, darlin! We going dere, in England.”
Yevette pointed her finger out through the open gate. The girl with the documents looked up at where she was pointing, and so did the sari girl, and so did I.
It was a bright morning, I told you this already. It was the month of May and there was warm sunshine dripping through the holes between the clouds, like the sky was a broken blue bowl and a child was trying to keep honey in it. We were at the top of the hill. There was a long tarmac road winding from our gate all the way to the horizon. There was no traffic on it. At our end the road finished where we sat—it did not go anywhere else. On both sides of the road there were fields. And these were beautiful fields, with bright green grass so fresh it made you hungry. I looked at those fields and I thought, I could get down on my hands and my knees and put my face into that grass and eat and eat and eat. And that is what a very great number of cows were doing to the left of the road, and an even greater number of sheep to the right.
In the nearest field a white man in a small blue tractor was pulling some implement across the ground, but do not ask me what was its function. Another white man in blue clothes that I think you call overalls, he was tying a gate closed with bright orange rope. The fields were very neat and square, and the hedgerows between them were straight and low.
“It is big,” said the girl with the documents.
“Nah, it ain’t nuthin,” said Yevette. “We
jus got to get to London. Me know pipple dere.”
“I do not know people,” said the girl with the documents. “I do not know anyone.”
“Well, yu jus gonna do yore best, darlin.”
The girl with the documents frowned.
“How come there no one here to help us? How come my caseworker she not here to fetch me? How come they give us no release papers?”
Yevette shook her head.
“Ain’t yu got nuff papers in dat bag of yours already, darlin? Some people, yu give em de inch, dey want de whole mile.”
Yevette laughed, but her eyes looked desperate.
“Now where is dat dam taxi?” she said.
“The man on the phone said ten minutes.”
“Feel like ten years already, truth.”
Yevette fell quiet. We looked out over the countryside again. The landscape was deep and wide. A breeze blew across it. We sat there on our heels and we watched the cows and the sheep and the white man tying the gates closed around them.
After some time our taxi came into sight. We watched it from the moment it was a small white speck at the distant end of the road. Yevette turned to me and she smiled.
“Dis taxi driver, he soun cute on de phone?”
“I did not talk to the driver. I only talked to the taxi controller.”
“Eighteen month I gone without a man, Bug. Dis taxi driver better be a rill Mister Mention, yu know what I’m sayin? Me like em tall, wid a bit o fat on em. Me no like no skinny boys. An me like em dress fine. Got no time fo loosers, ain’t dat right?”
I shrugged. I watched the taxi getting nearer. Yevette looked at me.
“What sorta man yu like, Lil Bug?”
I looked at the ground. There was grass there, pushing out of the tarmac, and I twisted it in my hands. When I thought about men, I felt a fear in my belly so sharp it was like knives piercing me. I did not want to speak, but Yevette nudged me with her elbow.
“Come on, Bug, what sorta boy be madam’s type?”
“Oh, you know, the usual sort.”
“What? What yu mean, de yoo-sual sort? Tall, short, skinny, fat?”
I looked down at my hands.
“I think my ideal man would speak many languages. He would speak Ibo and Yoruba and English and French and all of the others. He could speak with any person, even the soldiers, and if there was violence in their heart he could change it. He would not have to fight, do you see? Maybe he would not be very handsome, but he would be beautiful when he spoke. He would be very kind, even if you burned his food because you were laughing and talking with your girlfriends instead of watching the cooking. He would just say, Ah, never mind.”
Yevette looked at me.
“Forgive me, Bug, but yore ideal man, he don’t sound very rillistic.”
The girl with the documents, she looked up from her Dunlop Green Flash trainers.
“Leave her alone. Can’t you see she is a virgin?”
I looked at the ground. Yevette, she stared at me for a long time and then she put her hand on the back of my neck. I ground the toe of my boot into the ground and Yevette looked at the girl with the documents.
“How yu know dis, darlin?”
The girl shrugged and she pointed at the documents in her see-through plastic bag.
“I have seen things. I know about people.”
“So how come yu so quiet, if yu know so dam much?”
The girl shrugged again. Yevette stared at her.
“What dey call yu anyway, darlin?”
“I do not tell people my name. This way it is safer.”
Yevette rolled her eyes.
“Bet you don’t give de boys your phone number, neither.”
The girl with the documents, she stared at Yevette. Then she spat on the ground. She was trembling.
“You don’t know anything,” she said. “If you knew one thing about this life you would not think it was so funny.”
Yevette put her hands on her hips. She shook her head slowly.
“Darlin,” she said. “Life did take its gifts back from yu and me in de diffren order, dat’s all. Truth to tell, funny is all me got lef wid. An yu, darlin, all yu got lef is paperwork.”
They stopped then, because the taxi was pulling up. It stopped just in front of us. The side window was open and there was music blasting out. I will tell you what that music was. It was a song called “We Are the Champions” by a British music band called Queen. This is why I knew the song: it is because one of the officers in the immigration detention center, he liked the band very much. He used to bring his stereo and play the music to us when we were locked in our cells. If you danced and swayed to show you liked the music, he would bring you extra food. One time he showed me a picture of the band. It was the picture from the CD box. One of the musicians in the picture, he had a lot of hair. It was black with tight curls and it sat on the top of his head like a heavy weight and it went right down the back of his neck to his shoulders. I understand fashion in your language, but this hair did not look like fashion, I am telling you, it looked like a punishment.
One of the other detention officers came past while we were looking at the picture on the CD box, and he pointed to the musician with all that hair and he said, What a cock. I remember that I was very pleased, because I was still learning to really speak your language back then, and I was just beginning to understand that one word can have two meanings. I understood this word straightaway. I could see that cock referred to the musician’s hair. It was like a cockerel’s comb, you see. So a cock was a cockerel, and it was also a man with that kind of hair.
I am telling you this because the taxi driver had exactly that kind of hair.
When the taxi stopped outside the main gate of the detention center, the driver did not get out of his seat. He looked at us through the open window. He was a thin white man and he was wearing sunglasses with dark green lenses and shiny gold frames. The girl in the yellow sari, she was amazed by the taxi car. I think she was like me and she had never seen such a big and new and shining white car. She walked all around it and stroked her hands across its surfaces and she said, Mmmm. She was still holding the empty see-through bag. She took one hand off the bag and traced the letters on the back of the car with her finger. She spoke their names very slowly and carefully, the way she had learned them in the detention center. She said, F…O…R…D…hmm! Fod! When she got to the front of the car, she looked at the headlights, and she blinked. She put her head on one side, and then she put it straight again, and she looked the car in the eyes and giggled. The taxi driver watched her all this time. Then he turned back to the rest of us girls and the expression on his face was like a man who has just realized he has swallowed a hand grenade because he thought it was a plum.
“Your friend’s not right in the head,” he said.
Yevette poked me in the stomach with her elbow.
“Yu better do de talkin, Lil Bug,” she whispered.
I looked at the taxi driver. “We Are the Champions” was still playing on his stereo, very loud. I realized I needed to tell the taxi driver something that showed him we were not refugees. I wanted to show that we were British and we spoke your language and understood all the subtle things about your culture. Also, I wanted to make him happy. This is why I smiled and walked up to the open window and said to the taxi driver, Hello, I see that you are a cock.
I do not think the driver understood me. The sour expression on his face became even worse. He shook his head from side to side, very slowly. He said, Don’t they teach you monkeys any manners in the jungle?
And then he drove away, very quickly, so that the tires of his taxi squealed like a baby when you take its milk away. The four of us girls, we stood and watched the taxi disappearing back down the hill. The cows to the left of the road and the sheep to the right of the road, they watched it too. Then they went back to eating the grass, and we girls went back to sitting on our heels. The wind blew, and the rolls of razor wire rattled on the
top of the fence. The shadows of small high clouds drifted across the countryside.
It was a long time before any of us spoke.
“Mebbe we shoulda let Sari Girl do de talkin.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Damn Africans. You always tink yu so smart but yu ignorant.”
I stood and walked up to the fence. I held on to the chain link and stared through it, down the hill and over the fields. Down there the two farmers were still working, the one driving the tractor and the other tying up the gates.
Yevette came and stood beside me.
“What we gonna do now, Bug? No way we can stay here. Let’s jus walk, okay?”
I shook my head.
“What about those men down there?”
“You tink dey gonna stop us?”
I gripped on tighter to the wire.
“I don’t know, Yevette. I am scared.”
“What yu scared of, Bug? Maybe dey jus leave us be. Unless yu plannin on callin dem names too, like you done dat taxi man?”
I smiled and shook my head.
“Well all right den. Don be fraid. Me come wid yu, any road. Keep a check on dem monkey manners you got.”
Yevette turned to the girl with the documents.
“What bout you, lil miss no-name? You commin wid?”
The girl looked back at the detention center.
“Why they didn’t give us more help? Why they didn’t send our caseworkers to meet us?”
“Well, cos dey did not elect to do dat, darlin. So what yu gonna do? Yu gonna go back in dere, ask em fo a car, an a boyfren, an mebbe some nice jool-rie?”