Breach

by Olumide Popoola

  It is sunny, thank goodness, and warmer than it should be for the time of year. You have clean new clothes on that were given out yesterday. The hoodie is a deep purple, with little yellow triangles on the front and the back. The stretch denims have that washed-out effect you like. It feels good today, with clean clothes, with the sun shining on your face. Mariam is talking about her mother again. You don’t want to think about anyone. It is enough to call, briefly, and be called. In between you want to forget that you are here and they are at home, and that here is not where you meant to end up at all. You nod along and hear about the ulcer that needs medical attention. Mariam’s mother has been asking her to send money for treatment. The local hospital is booked up, she has been waiting for weeks. The private clinic is too expensive. Mariam hasn’t told her mother that she isn’t anywhere yet. That she is living off donations. You told her from the beginning that that was a mistake: ‘Just tell her and then you can talk to each other like mother and daughter.’ But Mariam is the optimist of the two of you. She thinks of good outcomes; she leaps ahead. It would be three days, one week at the most here. Why worry her ageing mother with details of a place she wasn’t going to stay in long enough to understand its rules?

  ‘You have to tell her. How long will you keep it up? She will be disappointed if you don’t send her money.’

  ‘I could make some.’

  You look at her and raise your eyebrows. It’s easy to make money here, especially for a woman, but there is a price. And it’s not the right one. Someone would think he could own you.

  The wind is picking up. Mariam huddles against you.

  You stand for a second to pull up the tight trousers so they don’t expose your backside. There is a gap between your skin and the jeans. You are tiny but your backside can give any of the big girls a run for their money. Mariam says it all the time and laughs. No one makes trousers for your shape. The pair you picked yesterday aren’t the loose-fitting ones volunteers think are suitable for this place because you can layer them, as someone said. You gave her the silent treatment when she was trying to make the case, holding up an oversized pair of second-hand hiking trousers. Why people think they know what’s best for you when they are not you, you don’t understand. Why you wouldn’t know how you want to dress at your age is beyond you. The woman didn’t say anything else after that; she turned her face away for the rest of their one line, the thing they shout during the distribution of food, clothes, building materials, tents, wood. She stayed, but she didn’t have any more advice to offer. You had asked for leggings, tighter jeans, something that would make you feel like you were still twenty-four and not just a refugee squatting in a camp that the locals want gone. Leggings are in fact more comfortable, more practical. You don’t have to remember to pull them up when stepping over the endless mud. They won’t flap around and you know where they are: close to your body.

  When it was your turn and you stood in front of the open van doors, doors that had two volunteers on each side with outstretched arms to help everyone queue, she let you scramble to the cardboard box in the back of the vehicle and choose your own pair. She didn’t say anything, just pointed. Dignity involves choosing your own outfits, at least, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it?

  Mariam shuffles to create some heat between you. Her phone is ringing and she waits for it to stop.

  ‘What shall I tell her?’

  ‘The truth. You might need her help. You know that.’

  Mariam redials. A van has parked opposite you. It seems that the two women inside have already distributed whatever they had fund-raised for or collected at home. They are in no hurry to get anywhere. They stretch, leaving the front doors open. On a day like this, sunny with its pretence of calm, it’s almost like any other short trip but even better: the satisfaction of having done good work, important in fact. Without these people coming and some of them staying, the camp would be nothing like it is. You would suffer a lot more. You know that.

  One of the women is changing a little baby on the passenger seat. The second one now looks at you and smiles. You are tired of the visitors who all need acknowledgement, who need you to engage so they can feel that they are doing the right thing. It is not that you don’t appreciate their help. What they do keeps you alive. But the rules of it are annoying. You have, in fact, more important things to do. To plan and arrange the next step, if you can even talk about arranging here.

  A song pops into your head as the woman moseys towards you. ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’

  It is of course not Christmas. It is autumn.

  It is the aid thing, the helping syndrome, you think of while you avoid the woman walking towards you. Your mother has told you many times of the great famine. And the great song. And the humiliation.

  She used to say, ‘There are no other pictures. We are always the famished skeletons with the kwashiorkor belly only. It’s not enough, it’s not right, that this is all there is to us.’ Your father would reply that these were exactly the things that got your mother into trouble. Your mother would counter that at least she was still forming her own opinions.

  You wonder what the pictures are now. Of people like you, here, in the camp. What will stick this time? The muddied clothes you try to keep clean but which hang drab and damp on your bodies? The queuing?

  The woman arrives. She wears those practical clothes made for outdoor activities. Her jeans are too tight to have any layers underneath but her jacket is loose and has a few square pockets that look like they can hold a whole loaf of bread. You poke Mariam, who is still waiting for someone to pick up the phone on the other side. She looks up.

  ‘Hi. How are you?’

  ‘Good.’

  The woman crouches down. It’s obvious that you can’t speak to anyone when you tower over them.

  ‘I like your hair,’ she says.

  Mariam hangs up before her mother can answer.

  You too like the woman’s hair. It has just been done: the cornrow lines are sharp and the pattern is unusual. The strip of hair in the middle is twisted and falls to the sides in a straight line from forehead to neck. Mariam does yours. For some reason she took her time when she did it last. It was another sunny day, much warmer than today, and you sat outside chatting and laughing, your head between her legs as she braided it in the traditional style. She gets hers done by someone else because you’re not good at it. But she doesn’t do yours often. You can’t really wash your hair here. It’s a nightmare.

  ‘Thanks,’ you reply. What does this woman want?

  She asks you how things are here. Her shoes are not appropriate for the camp. You wonder if she paid attention to the instructions given to volunteers. Her shoes are flat but dressy, good for the office. They are old but still, not practical at all.

  ‘Difficult,’ you reply. What a waste of a calm minute. You, Mariam, here. A bit of quiet while your friend comes up with more stories for her mother about how she has not been paid by the alteration service she is lending her sewing talents to before she can find proper employment. Her optimism is matched by her ability to create elaborate stories. And she can remember them: she doesn’t make mistakes, draws her mother and the rest of the family into the alternate world she dreams up, distracting them from the details of her stuck-in-transit-ness.

  The woman wants to sit down, you can see it. Her eyes are angling for an invitation.

  ‘It must be hard.’ She’s waiting for your response. ‘Here.’

  Mariam is nodding but she doesn’t say anything either. It’s such a useless question. Your blood is starting to boil. Her five-minute concern is not going to help you keep warm at night, or leave this hellhole altogether. You will still be queuing in one line while she redoes her nappy curls in a salon at the end of next week.

  ‘Is there any camp gossip? Any love stories?’ the woman asks.

  ‘Not really,’ Mariam replies. You want to shake the woman until her hair comes loose.

  ‘No one has time for that. Too much to
think about,’ you say, your lips straight, your teeth hardly lifting. She can understand. Of course she can. You don’t care.

  Mariam leans over and says something to you in Tigrinya. It makes you think. You pull yourself together and smile at the woman. She smiles back.

  ‘Is that your van?’ Your head jerks briefly. The mother has come out and is talking to the people who have parked next to her.

  ‘No, my friend’s there.’

  ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘London.’

  Mariam shrugs her shoulders when you whisper to her.

  ‘Can you take us? We’d hide in the back.’

  The woman still smiles.

  ‘I wish I could. Really, I do.’

  There is no surprise, no resentment. She holds your gaze.

  ‘Nobody would know.’

  ‘It would be smuggling.’

  Mariam is quiet, her phone resting on her chest while she follows the two of you like a close-up tennis match. Back and forth. There is more to be said about the silences than the words that leave your mouths. The way you hide your snigger – almost – so that you are ready to catch it should she change her mind.

  ‘If the police come you just say you didn’t know.’

  ‘She is driving. I’m staying here.’

  ‘No one has to know.’

  Her voice shows you how reasonable she is. ‘The baby is very young. It would be smuggling.’

  ‘No one would know.’

  ‘Then why do you tell me?’

  Mariam is still darting back and forth between you, enthralled. The suspense.

  Now the woman’s friend arrives, baby in arm. ‘Hello.’ She is another optimist; you can see it straight away. ‘She just learned this,’ the mother laughs. ‘Spitting bubbles.’ And on cue the baby blows bubbles.

  What is this? What do they want? You have other things to do. You offer her nothing: no reassuring words, no acknowledging smile.

  ‘I’m sorry. Really. I’d love to. If I could.’ The woman is waiting. She can’t do this. She really can’t. Surely you must agree. But your eyes are on the baby.

  ‘Take care.’ She’s understanding.

  Mariam offers a goodbye, but you move your head only slightly. The two women walk off, baby spitting and gurgling.

  ‘We tried,’ Mariam says. ‘Next time.’

  Back at the camp entrance a guy is threading another man’s eyebrows outside a wooden hut, right next to the new shop. Mariam boxes you in the sides; both of you laugh.

  She pulls out her phone, eyebrows raised, almost excited. She is good at this. She is a manager, a manager of affairs. Hers.

  It is especially busy at the entrance to the camp. You watch the endless back and forth. People are always moving; the everyday is a complicated negotiation, a feat of endurance.

  Mariam is quieter than usual. Normally she speeds ahead, getting in front of whoever is on the other side of the phone. It makes the storytelling easier. It’s not a lie then, she thinks. It’s just a story. When you asked her, ‘How is that different?’ she replied, ‘Because they have not asked me. Not directly. I am just saying something that could happen.’

  ‘It’s not happening, though,’ you replied, but Mariam had wiped away your concern.

  She pulls you along with her. You have now passed the slip road that leads back onto the motorway. The police van is parked on the opposite side, like it has been all day, except for the time when the officers change shifts. Their uniform must be hot on a day like this, the bulletproof vests hanging on them like deadweights. Once in a while they parade in their heavy boots and their helmets with visors through the camp, down the main street and back, showing their presence. A reminder that this is merely an unspoken toleration, the staying here. The empty tear-gas canister another cue.

  Mariam stands very still, doesn’t say anything but ‘Yes’, and ‘I understand’ and ‘I’m sorry’. Her voice is flat, no optimism, nothing.

  You hold her hand and wait. As soon as the conversation finishes she drops the phone, her hand limp.

  ‘I need to send money immediately.’

  ‘Yes,’ you say, and pick up the phone.

  ‘You don’t understand, Habena. I really have to make money. Today!’

  ‘OK, no problem. Don’t worry, it will be OK. All of this, it’s just a glitch, a minor delay.’

  You feel like a traitor, using Mariam’s own words when her eyes are much heavier than yours and starting to leak. She turns away from the police, her back stiff.

  ‘Her ulcer… it burst. I took too long.’

  The silence between you is painful. It is too familiar: the impossibilities, the out-of-options.

  ‘Listen, Habena, she is in hospital, but now it’s even more expensive. It’s not the time to tell them I am not working, that I have nothing.’

  You can’t say anything. It’s not the time to say that you were right all along, that she should have told them.

  Her eyes. You can’t look at her.

  ‘Tonight. Where the lorries park.’

  You know the spot she is talking about. Other women have come back and told you about rude drivers, unwashed and sweaty. It is so bad that one truck company has started checking on their drivers; anyone caught is thrown out. The story made the rounds. You thought it was a good sign – at least someone was thinking about the women here. ‘They just don’t want to get caught. No one cares at all. Don’t be fooled,’ someone corrected you.

  Even though her face is not showing it, Mariam is still optimistic. In that everything will work out, I have a plan way of hers.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ you say.

  ‘What else can I do?’

  Her phone is ringing again. She taps on the red symbol and calls straight back.

  ‘Yes. Tomorrow or the day after. Western Union.’

  It’s colder than you expected, so you pull the hood over your head. Mariam had suggested you leave in a cardigan, with a blouse underneath, to attract business. You looked at her; she dropped it. Yes, she is your friend, but she’d better not push you too much. This is more than you wanted to do for anyone. ‘Once only, for you,’ you said.

  It’s a long walk. The lorries used to come up close to the camp but since the last police crack-down they’ve had to find a new spot. You walk along the street, on the grassy slope.

  The parking place has a row of trees that shield it from the road. There the drivers who need to rest park before they cross the Channel. You recognise one of the women and pull your hood closer around your face.

  ‘If you’re like this, no one is going to pay you.’

  There is anger in her voice. It is not directed at you, you know that. Still, it is cold. Two women are walking between the lorries, knocking at the doors, high up.

  ‘Come.’

  ‘Mariam, it’s not the right thing.’

  ‘Are you going to leave me hanging?’

  She is not the same. Not optimistic, not the lighter of you two. She hurries towards the lorries at the other end, where the two women have already disappeared into parked vehicles.

  ‘I will start with that one.’ And she’s gone. You watch her exchange a few words, but the lorry door closes again. She goes to a smaller red vehicle that looks old and dusty. No one even opens. Then, as she walks to the next one, a man jumps from the driver’s cabin. A couple of minutes later he helps her climb up. The door shuts.

  You are still standing where Mariam has left you.

  ‘You all right, sweetheart?’ A driver has returned from behind the bushes. His podgy hands are on his fly, pulling at the zip.

  ‘Looking for something?’

  A couple of strides and he is close to you.

  What were you supposed to ask? Mariam and you have not spoken about the details. No time. She said, ‘Once. Once is nothing. I need your help today. I can’t go alone.’ You replied, ‘But I don’t want any of the others to know. No one, nothing!’

  ‘How are you?’ You cough, your mou
th dry.

  ‘If you want to make some money I can help you out.’

  You lower the hoodie.

  ‘Nice!’ The driver whistles, bending his torso to the right, looking you up and down. ‘Must get the guys all crazy down there in the Jungle.’

  You check the rest of the parking area. It’s quiet.

  ‘Where are you parked?’

  He points over to a new model in silver.

  ‘After you.’

  The cabin is cramped but warm. He pulls the curtain shut behind him. You sit in the middle, he on the outside passenger seat. He starts fumbling your breast, opens the zipper to the hoodie and reaches inside. You put your hand on his.

  ‘Money first.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that. I’ll pay.’ He pulls his zip back down. His hands are cold on your breast, but you are sweating. Mariam would do the same. Her mother will die if she doesn’t receive the right treatment, fast. She is right, you will forget it. Quickly. It will be another part of this journey. There are so many things to forget, this is not the worst of it.

  You take off your hoodie, lift the top underneath, showing your body.

  ‘Money first.’

  He laughs, a bit of spit falling on your exposed tummy. The others were right. It does smell inside but he looks very eager. It won’t take long. He is touching his thing through his trousers. His penis hard. You haven’t even touched him.

  ‘You’re the nervous type, aren’t you?’ he says. He tries to soften his voice, as if you’re sharing something. ‘Don’t worry. I never cheat a woman. I’m not that sort.’

  ‘It’s business.’

  He laughs again. He doesn’t stop looking at you, at your breasts, while he pushes his trousers down and takes his thing out of the fly. He reaches for your hand, places it on his penis, but you pull back and hold up your palm.