by Chris Cleave
“Here? With you?”
“Yes. With me and Charlie.”
I rubbed my eyes. “I do not know. I am illegal, Sarah. The men can come any minute to send me back to my country.”
“Why did they let you out of the detention center, if you’re not allowed to stay?”
“They made a mistake. If you look good or you talk good, sometimes they make mistakes for you.”
“But you’re free now. They couldn’t just come for you, Bee. This isn’t Nazi Germany. There must be some procedure we can go through. Some appeal. I can tell them what happened to you over there. What will happen to you if you go back.”
I shook my head. “They will tell you Nigeria is a safe country, Sarah. People like me, they can just come and drive us straight to the airport.”
“I’m sure we can work something out, Bee. I edit a magazine. I know people. We could kick up a stink.”
I looked at the ground. Sarah smiled. She put her hand on my hand.
“You’re young, Bee. You don’t know how the world works yet. All you’ve seen is trouble, so you think trouble is all you’re going to get.”
“You have seen trouble too, Sarah. You are making a mistake if you think it is unusual. I am telling you, trouble is like the ocean. It covers two thirds of the world.”
Sarah flinched, as if something had struck her face.
“What is it?” I said.
She held her head in her hands. “It’s nothing,” she said. “It’s silly.”
I could not think of anything to say. I looked all around her garden for something to kill myself with, in case the men suddenly came. There was a shed at the far end of the garden, with a large garden fork leaning against it. That is a fine implement, I thought. If the men suddenly come, I will run with that fork and I will throw myself onto those sharp shining points.
I dug my nails into the soil of the flower bed beside us, and I squeezed the sticky soil between my fingers.
“What are you thinking, Bee?”
“Mmm?”
“What are you thinking about?”
“Oh. Cassava.”
“Why cassava?”
“In my village we grew cassava. We planted it and watered it and when it was high—like this—we plucked its leaves so that the growing would go into the root, and when it was ready we dug it up and peeled it and grated it and pressed it and fermented it and fried it and mixed it with water and made paste out of it and ate it and ate it and ate it. When I slept at night I dreamed of it.”
“What else did you do?”
“Sometimes we played on a rope swing.”
Sarah smiled. She looked away into the garden.
“There isn’t much cassava round here,” she said. “Tons of clematis. Plenty of camellias.”
I nodded. “Cassava would not grow in this soil.”
Sarah smiled, but she was crying at the same time. I held her hand. There were tears running down her face.
“Oh Bee,” she said. “I feel so bloody guilty.”
“This is not your fault, Sarah. I lost my parents and my sister. You have lost your husband. Both of us have lost.”
“I didn’t lose Andrew, Bee. I destroyed him. I cheated on him with another man. That’s the only reason we were in bloody Nigeria in the first place. We thought we needed a holiday. To patch things up. You see?”
I just shrugged my shoulders. Sarah sighed.
“I suppose you’re going to tell me you’ve never taken a holiday.”
I looked down at my hands. “Actually, I have never taken a man.”
Sarah blinked. “Yes. Of course. I forget you’re so young, sometimes.”
We sat still for a minute. Sarah’s mobile telephone rang. She talked. When the call was finished she looked very tired.
“That was the nursery. They want me to go and pick up Charlie. He’s been fighting with the other children. They say he’s out of control.” She bit her lip. “He’s never done that before.”
She picked up her telephone again and pressed some buttons. She held the telephone up to her ear while she looked over my shoulder, over the garden. She was still chewing her lip. After a few seconds, there was the sound of another telephone ringing. It was a small, distant sound, from inside the house. Sarah’s face went still. Then, slowly, she took the telephone down from her ear and pressed one of its buttons. From the house, the sound of the other telephone stopped.
“Oh Jesus,” said Sarah. “Oh no.”
“What? What is it?”
Sarah took a deep breath. Her whole body shuddered.
“I called Andrew. I don’t know why. It was completely automatic, I didn’t even think. You know…if there’s a problem with Charlie, I always call Andrew. I just forgot he was…you know. Oh god. I’m really losing it. I thought I was ready, you know, to hear what happened to you…and your sister. But I wasn’t. I wasn’t ready for it. Oh god.”
We sat there and I held her hand while she cried. Afterward, she passed her telephone to me. She pointed at the screen.
“He’s still in my address book. Do you see?”
The screen of her telephone said ANDREW, and then a number. Just ANDREW—there was no surname.
“Will you delete him for me, Bee? I can’t do it.”
I held her telephone in my hands. I had seen people speaking on mobile phones, but I always thought they would be very complicated. You will laugh at me—there she goes again, that silly little girl with the smell of tea in her skin and the stains of cassava tops still on her fingers—but I always thought there would be a frequency to find. I thought you would have to turn some dial until you found the signal of your friend, very small and faint, like tuning in to the BBC World Service on a windup radio. I supposed that mobile telephones were difficult like this. You would turn the dial through all the hissing and the squeaking sounds, and first you would hear your friend’s voice very strange and thin and nearly drowned out by howling—like your friend had been squashed as flat as a biscuit and dropped into a metal box full of monkeys—but then you would turn the dial just one tiny fraction more and suddenly your friend would say something like, God save the Queen!, and tell you all about the weather in the shipping areas around the offshore waters of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. After that, you could talk.
But actually I discovered that it was much easier than this to use a mobile telephone. Everything is so easy in your country. Next to the name, ANDREW, there was a thing that said OPTIONS, and I pressed it. Option three was DELETE, so I pressed that, and Andrew O’Rourke was gone.
“Thank you,” said Sarah. “I just couldn’t do it myself.”
She looked down at her phone for a long time.
“I feel so bloody frightened, Bee. There’s no one to call. Andrew was absolutely unbearable sometimes but he was always so sensible. I suppose it was crazy of me, to send Charlie straight back to the nursery, after yesterday. But I thought it would be good for him, to get back into the routine. There’s no one to ask anymore, Bee. Do you understand? I don’t know if I can do this on my own. Make all the right decisions for Charlie on my own. Years of it, do you see? The right behavior, the right schools, the right friends, the right university, the right wife. Oh god, poor old Charlie.”
I put my hand on her hand.
“If you want, I can come to the nursery with you,” I said.
Sarah tilted her head and looked at me for a long time. Then she smiled.
“Not dressed like that,” she said.
Ten minutes later I left the house with Sarah. I was wearing a pink summer dress she lent me. It was the prettiest thing I had ever worn. Around the neck it had fine white flowers stitched in, very delicate and fancy. I felt like the Queen of England. It was a sunny morning and there was a cool breeze and I skipped along the pavement behind Sarah and every time we passed a cat or a postman or a woman pushing a pram I smiled and I said, How do you do? All of them looked at me like I was a crazy girl, I do not know why.
I was thinking, That is no way to greet your monarch.
I did not like the nursery. It was in a big house with tall windows, but the windows were not open even though it was a fine day. Inside, the air was stuffy. It smelled of toilets and poster paint, and this was exactly the smell of the therapy room in the immigration detention center, so I was feeling sad from the memory. In the detention center they did not open the windows because the windows did not open. In the therapy room they gave us poster paints and brushes and they told us we must express ourselves. I used a lot of red paint. When the therapeutic assistant looked at what I painted, she said it would be good for me to try to move on. I said, yes madam, it will be my pleasure. If you will just open a little window for me, or even better a door, I will be happy to move on right away. I smiled, but the therapeutic assistant did not think it was a good joke.
In Charlie’s nursery, the play leader did not think I was a good joke either. I knew she was the play leader because she had a badge on her green apron that said PLAY LEADER. She stared at me but she did not speak to me, she spoke to Sarah. She said, I’m sorry, we can’t have visitors, it’s policy. Is this the child’s carer? Sarah looked at me and then she turned back to the play leader. She said, Look, it’s complicated, okay? The play leader frowned. Finally she let me stand by the door while Sarah went into the room and tried to calm Charlie.
Poor Charlie. They had made him take off his Batman costume—that was what had started it. They had made him take it off because he had urinated in it. They wanted him to be clean, but Charlie did not want to be clean. He preferred to be stinking in his black mask and cape than to smell fresh in the white cotton overall they had put him in. His face was red and dirty with poster paint and tears. He was howling with rage. When anyone came near him he hit at them, with his small fists banging into their knees. He bit and he scratched and he screamed. He stood with his back pressed into the corner. He faced out into the room and he screamed, NO NO NO NO NO!
Sarah went up to him. She knelt down so her face was close to his. She said, Oh darling. Charlie stopped shouting. He looked at Sarah. His bottom lip trembled. Then his jaw became firm again. He leaned toward his mother, and he spat. He said, GO AWAY I WANT MY DADDY!
They were making the other children sit cross-legged on the floor, in the far corner of the room. They were having story time. The other children were facing away from Charlie’s corner, but they kept wriggling around to look over their shoulders with pale, scared faces. A woman was reading them the story. She wore blue jeans and white trainers and a turquoise sweatshirt. She was saying, and Max tamed them by the trick of TURN AROUND AND FACE FRONT, CAITLIN by the trick of staring straight into their eyes and saying EMMA, PLEASE CONCENTRATE, JAMES, STOP WHISPERING of staring straight into their eyes and saying WILL YOU FACE FRONT, OLLIE, THERE’S NOTHING GOING ON BEHIND YOU.
Sarah knelt on the floor and she wiped Charlie’s spit off her cheek. She was crying. She was holding her arms out to Charlie. Charlie turned around and hid his face in the corner. The woman reading the story was saying, be still.
I went toward Sarah. The play leader gave me a look which meant, I told you to stay by the door. I gave her a look back which meant, How dare you? It was a very good look. I learned it from Queen Elizabeth the Second, on the back of the British five-pound note. The play leader took one step back and I went up to Sarah. I touched her on the shoulder.
Sarah looked up at me.
“Oh god,” she said. “Poor Charlie, I don’t know what to do.”
“What do you normally do when he is like this?”
“I cope. I always cope. Oh god, Bee, I don’t know what’s happening to me. I’ve forgotten how to cope.”
Sarah covered her face with her hands. The play leader took her away and sat her down.
I went into the corner with Charlie. I stood next to him and I turned my face into the corner too. I did not look at him, I looked at the bricks and I did not say anything. I am good at looking at bricks and not saying anything. In the immigration detention center I did it for two years, and that is my record.
I was thinking what I would do in that nursery room, if the men came suddenly. It was not an easy room, I am telling you. For example, there was nothing to cut yourself with. All the scissors were made of plastic and their ends were round and soft. If I suddenly needed to kill myself in that room, I did not know how I was going to do it.
After a long time Charlie looked up at me. “What is you doing?” he said.
I shrugged my shoulders. “I am thinking how to escape from this place.”
Silence. Charlie sighed. “They tooked mine Batman costume.”
“Why did they do that?”
“Because of why I done a wee in my Batman costume.”
I knelt down and looked into Charlie’s eyes. “We are the same, you and me. I spent two years in a place like this. They make us do the things we do not want. Does it make you cross?”
Charlie nodded.
I said, “It makes me cross too.”
From behind us I could hear that the rest of the nursery was going back to its own business. Children were talking and shouting again, and the women were helping and laughing and scolding. In our corner, Charlie looked at the ground.
“I want mine daddy,” he said.
“Your daddy is dead, Charlie. Do you know what this means?”
“Yes. In heaven.”
“Yes.”
“Where’s heaven?”
“It is a place like this. Like a nursery, or a detention center, or a strange country far away. He wants to come home to you, but he can’t. Your daddy is like my daddy.”
“Oh. Is yours daddy dead too?”
“Yes Charlie. My daddy is dead and my mummy is dead and my sister is dead too. All of them are dead.”
“Why?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “The baddies got them, Charlie.”
Charlie twisted his hands together and bent down to pick up a small scrap of red paper from the floor. He tore at it, and he put it on his tongue to see how it tasted, and then it got stuck on his fingers because of the dampness. He held his tongue between his teeth so he could concentrate on peeling the paper off his fingers. Then he looked up.
“Is you sad like me?”
I made my face go into a smile. “Do I look sad, Charlie?”
Charlie looked at me. I tickled him under his arms and he started to laugh.
“Do we look sad, Charlie? Hey? You and me? Are we sad now?”
Charlie was laughing and wriggling finally, so I pulled him close to me and I looked in his eyes. “We are not going to be sad, Charlie. Not you and me. Especially not you, Charlie, because you are the luckiest boy in the world. You know why this is?”
“Why?”
“Because you have a mama, Charlie, and she loves you, and that is something, no?”
I gave Charlie a little push toward his mother and he ran to her. He buried his face against her dress and they hugged each other. Sarah was crying and smiling at the same time. She was speaking into Charlie’s ear, saying Charlie, Charlie, Charlie. Then Charlie’s voice came, and it was muffled against his mother’s dress. He said, I’m NOT Charlie, Mummy, I’m Batman.
Sarah looked at me over Charlie’s shoulder and she just said, Thank you, not making any sound but just moving her lips.
We walked home from the nursery with Charlie swinging between us. The day was beautiful. The sun was hot and the air was buzzing with bees and the scent of flowers was everywhere. Beside the pavement there were the front gardens of the houses, full of soft colors. It was hard not to be full of hope.
“I think I shall teach you the names of all of the English flowers,” said Sarah. “This is fuchsia, and this is a rose, and this is honeysuckle. What? What are you smiling about?”
“There are no goats. That is why you have all these beautiful flowers.”
“There were goats, in your village?”
“Yes, and they ate all the flowers.”<
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“I’m sorry.”
“Do not be sorry. We ate all the goats.”
Sarah frowned. “Still,” she said. “I think I’d rather have honeysuckle.”
“One day I will take you where I come from and you will eat only cassava for a week and then you will tell me if you would rather have honeysuckle or goat.”
Sarah smiled and leaned over to smell the honeysuckle blossom. Now I saw that she was crying again.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Sarah. “I can’t seem to stop. Oh look at me, I’m all over the place.”
Charlie looked up at his mother and I rubbed the top of his head to show him everything was okay. We started to walk again. Sarah blew her nose on a tissue. She said, “How long am I going to be like this, do you suppose?”
“It was one year for me, after they killed my sister.”
“Before you could think straight again?”
“Before I could think at all. At first I was just running, running, running—getting away from where it happened, you know? Then there was the detention center. It was very bad. It is not possible to think clearly in there. You have not committed a crime, so all you can think of is, When will I be let out? But they tell you nothing. After a month, six months, you start to think, Maybe I will grow old in here. Maybe I will die here. Maybe I am already dead. For the first year all I could think about was killing myself. When everyone else is dead, sometimes you think it would be easier to join them, you know? But you have to move on. Move on, move on, they tell you. As if you are stubborn. As if you are chewing on their flowers like a goat. Move on, move on. At five P.M. they tell you to move on and at six P.M. they lock you back in your cell.”
“Didn’t they give you any help at all in that place?”
I sighed.
“They tried to help us, you know? There were some good people. Psychiatrists, volunteers. But there was only so much they could do for us in there. One of the psychiatrists, she said to me, Psychiatry in this place is like serving an in-flight meal in the middle of a plane crash. If I wanted to make you well, as a doctor, I should be giving you a parachute, not a cheese-and-pickle sandwich. To be well in your mind you have first to be free, you see?”