The Truth and Lies of Ella Black

by Emily Barr

  ‘Yes, please.’

  ‘Good call. No cars here so it’s the best way to see the island.’

  His English is fluent. He speaks like an American, with the very smallest of accents. His voice is a bit like Christian’s.

  ‘No cars?’

  ‘That’s right. Didn’t you notice? That’s what makes it cool.’

  I am thinking of Christian now, and I have to stop for a moment and pull myself together. Christian will have told my parents about our night out in Lapa. I’m sure he will. It was only last night. I told them and they didn’t believe me. They’ll believe Christian when he’s saying exactly what I said.

  ‘Is there a place to stay?’ I manage to say.

  ‘Sure there is. You backpacking?’ He looks dubiously at my little bag.

  I look at it too. ‘I left my backpack with a friend in Rio.’ That sounds convincing, and anyway he won’t care.

  ‘Sure,’ he says. ‘Well, there are a few hotels. Are you looking for a hostel?’

  ‘I’m looking for a place that’s cheap. I don’t care how basic.’

  ‘Right. Look, take the bike and go explore. One of my friends rents out rooms, and I’m sure she’ll have a bed for you. I’ll give her a call while you’re out, OK? There are many places to sleep here. It’s a touristy place. It’s totally easy.’

  ‘Thank you!’

  ‘How long do you want the bike? It’s ten for an hour.’

  I shrug. ‘Two hours?’

  ‘Sure.’ We both look at the clock on the wall, and I realize I have no concept of the time at all. It is nearly five o’clock.

  ‘Seven,’ I say. I hand him twenty reals.

  ‘We close around seven,’ he says. ‘So that’s perfect.’

  He asks my name so I say Chrissy because I am thinking of Christian, and he writes it down, and then he shouts to his colleague, and they both look at my legs in an objective way, and then a bike is produced that is approximately the right size.

  ‘We got you one with a basket,’ he says, ‘so you can carry your bag.’

  I stare at him, this wizard boy who is making everything all right. I don’t know what to say to his kindness.

  ‘What’s your name?’ I say.

  ‘Alex.’ He extends a hand, mock-formally, and shakes mine.

  I wheel my new bike into the dusty road, and turn and wave, and get on and start to ride towards the sea at the end of the street. I am wobbly at first, and the road is a bit stony, and the sun is harsh on the top of my head even though it’s late in the afternoon. There are people riding huge tricycles – two people side by side, usually laughing – but those things look like gimmicks for the tourists. I am glad I’m on a real bike, the sort you could ride in Rio or London or Hong Kong. A bike is a proper piece of independent transportation and I am on my own now. I pedal hard, making my legs burn. I have always loved cycling.

  At the end of the road I turn right and ride alongside the sea. I take a path leading inland, and then I ride furiously around the island, to different beaches and past huge crumbling houses, past trees with drooping vines and plants with massive tropical leaves. The breeze makes my hair stream out behind me and blasts warm air into my face. People watch me pass, and sometimes they say, ‘Hola.’ I ride and ride and focus on the details – on the caterpillars and the tiny birds and the flowers and the peeling paintwork. All the time, though, I am thinking about my biological parents.

  She was young when she had me.

  She was forced to put me up for adoption.

  She has missed me every day, and she’s looking for me now because she knows I’m nearly eighteen.

  She wants to find me. I know that this part is true.

  I want to find her. I want to know where I came from.

  The real mother who takes shape in my head as I ride is someone like me (of course, because I am her daughter). She was young, she got pregnant, she had no family support, and she gave me up for adoption because she had no other option. I forgive her. Over and over again I forgive her.

  After some time I stop and push the bike on to a beach and lean it against a tree. I kick off my flip-flops which, I realize, have rubbed between my toes and given me a blister, and I walk to the shoreline and step into the water. It is brown, which I wasn’t expecting, but there are some girls further down the beach who are splashing and swimming, so I am sure it’s fine. I paddle into the water, and then I reach down and scoop it up and wash my face in dark, possibly polluted, Brazilian sea water from a strange corner of the edge of the Atlantic.

  I have no idea if the green and black and the crusted zombie blood have actually come off, but I probably look a bit more human. The water is cool on my feet, and I stand in it for a long time. When I stare out to sea I realize there is some land, but I don’t know whether it’s another island, or this island curving around, or the Brazilian mainland. I could probably work it out if I tried.

  I try to feel things, but I’m really just numb.

  The sun is as hot as ever and the rules don’t apply any more. There are no grown-ups to tell me what to do. I don’t want to be arrested. I sit in the shade of a tree and look at the sand that is glued to my feet.

  I take out my phone, take a deep breath and switch it on.

  It has full reception. I watch as more texts drop in, as the number of voicemails goes up and up as it counts them. I don’t want to look at any of the communications from the Blacks, so I skim past them. I only want to hear from one person, and he still hasn’t texted me.

  I need to listen to the voicemails, and I do it, deleting them as soon as I hear ‘Ella, it’s Mum,’ or ‘Ella, it’s your dad’. I am cold with horror when I imagine what those messages might be saying.

  Then it is there.

  ‘Hi. Ella. It’s Christian. I’m really worried about you as your parents say you’ve run away and the place is swarming with police. I know everyone is trying to find you. I hope you’re OK. Um. Thanks for giving me your number. I guess you got your cellphone. So. You’ll need to do the plus one for the States, and then it’s 555 849 5923. I hope you’re safe, Ella. I miss you.’

  I draw the number in the wet sand by the shore, with the +1 in front. I take a photograph of it, then put it into my phone. I call it without stopping to think whether or not it’s a good idea.

  ‘Ella?’

  It is his voice. It is Christian’s voice.

  ‘Hi.’ My voice barely comes out at all.

  ‘Jesus. Ella, are you OK? Where are you? They’re going insane looking for you.’

  ‘Would you …? Could you come and meet me tomorrow?’

  ‘Could I? Yes, sure. Of course.’ I close my eyes and make myself breathe deeply. He said of course. He didn’t have to stop and think about it. He has no idea what I did. ‘You have to tell your parents you’re OK though, Ella. You really do. They’ve been talking to the police. They’re insanely worried.’

  I cannot tell him.

  ‘I’ll tell you what it’s about tomorrow.’

  ‘OK. Where are you?’

  I hesitate. I can’t tell him I’m on this island. If he realizes that the police aren’t looking for me because they’re worried about my safety, but because I’ve hurt someone’s face, he might tell everyone I’m here. If he doesn’t know he can’t say anything.

  ‘I’ll text you in the morning at nine. Promise you’ll come without telling anyone. Until I’ve told you what’s going on.’

  I listen to him thinking.

  ‘Sure,’ he says in the end. ‘Sure. OK.’

  I am back at the bicycle place at seven. The boy looks up from an old-fashioned laptop.

  ‘Right on time,’ he says. ‘So, Chrissy, I’ve got you a bed at the Hostel Paquetá. It’s not far away. You can easily walk there. You can rent a bike for a couple of days if you like. I’ll draw you a map of how to get there. The lady who runs it, Ana-Paula, is expecting you.’ He pats his stomach when he says her name, as if her main attribute is being fat.


  ‘Thank you, Alex.’ I beam at him. I have a bed, and in the morning Christian is coming and I will tell him everything, even the bad things.

  The hostel is actually a big house with crumbling plaster and yellow windowsills. A huge tree in the garden trails vines over my head as I walk down the path. I can hear insects making wild little noises from all directions. The grass is short, and the plants have huge leaves. I watch a beetle walking along one. The air is perfectly still.

  When I feel ready I knock on the door, first softly, then, when nothing happens, a bit louder, and eventually, when that still doesn’t work, as loudly as I can. The silence is oppressive and I can smell ripe things beginning to rot. Even though I know that the sea is all around us and that literally just across it is a huge wonderful city, this could be anywhere. It could be in the middle of any tropical place. It could be any spot in Latin America.

  It couldn’t, of course. I know nothing about Latin America. But this place reminds me of Gabriel García Márquez, of the stories of weird things happening in strange fertile places. Anything could happen here. Strange things do happen. I know that.

  Nobody answers the door. It doesn’t matter. I have nowhere to go, so I sit on the stone doorstep, which is warm and cracked, and put my bag down next to me, and lean back. It’s starting to get dark. My parents might find me here. The police could track me down easily enough, thanks to my hair. Christian might tell them I’m here the moment I text him.

  While I’ve been riding around the island my plans have been forming. Tomorrow I will see Christian (I hope he comes I hope he comes I hope he comes). And unless anything else changes I will stay here and be Chrissy for a few days. When I find an internet connection I will do everything I can to help my real mother find me, and then I will show myself.

  I will go back to the Blacks so they know I’m all right, and I’ll hand myself in to the police. If they let me, I’ll go home. I have no idea what might happen then.

  A woman comes round the side of the house and I see what the Harry Potter boy meant when he patted his stomach. She is heavily pregnant, and I think of the zombie woman in the parade earlier today, with the bloody baby doll bursting out of her bump. This woman has very long black hair and she is wearing a little vest and a long skirt that she has pulled down to go under her belly. She looks exhausted, but she smiles when she sees me and says, ‘Oi,’ and then some things in Portuguese.

  I stare at her baby bump. I try to imagine what it would be like to grow a baby like that, inside your actual body, and then give it to someone else to look after. No one would choose to do that. It would only happen if someone was forced into it. I feel sad for my mother: she has probably missed her baby for nearly eighteen years.

  I wish I spoke Portuguese. For now, the pregnant woman and I manage to communicate by speaking our own languages while miming, and she says her name is Ana-Paula and I remember that mine is Chrissy so I say that, and I follow her round the house and in through a side door.

  It is dark in there after the outside world, and the floor is covered in cool tiles. I seem to be the only person staying here: Ana-Paula opens a squeaky door and shows me into a dark room with trees outside the window: there are four bunk beds in it and no sign of anyone else. I put my bag on a top bunk, because why would you choose to sleep on the bottom when you can sleep up in the air? Until a year ago I slept on a top bunk of my very own; or rather in a ‘high sleeper’, which meant that, in the absence of a sibling, I had a desk under my bed. I think high sleepers are supposed to be for rooms that don’t have much space, but there was plenty of space in my bedroom at home. I just wanted to go up a ladder to get into bed.

  I have a little wooden ladder to climb to go to bed tonight, and I am so exhausted and so confused that I want to go to sleep right away. The last thing I want is to have to go out and find something to eat, but I cannot ignore the fact that I haven’t had anything since the hotel breakfast, back in my other life, and that all ended up being puked down the toilet. I am absolutely starving.

  Ana-Paula looks at me and asks something, miming eating.

  Some time later I am sitting in the kitchen with her, eating rice and beans. The beans are in a gorgeous brown meaty sauce, and this is definitely the best thing I have eaten in my life. I smile at Ana-Paula and she smiles back and says things to me. I want to ask about her baby but I can’t, and anyway if I think too much about her baby I will fall apart. A woman was this heavily pregnant with me eighteen years ago, and I don’t know her. I don’t know her face or her voice. I don’t know anything beyond the fact that she was forced to give me up. That is not a good only-fact to know about your mum.

  She must have looked at me. I must have looked at her. We must have been each other’s worlds for a moment.

  I blink back tears. Ana-Paula pats my arm. I know she would let me sob on her shoulder but I can’t do it. I need to control myself.

  I wake up in the middle of the night and stare at the ceiling. I lie awake, certain that I will never sleep again.

  7

  31 Days

  At nine in the morning I send Christian a text.

  Ilha de Paqueta, I write. You can get a boat here from Rio. PLEASE DON’T tell my parents I’m here. And particularly don’t tell the police. Come and talk to me first at least. I promise I’ll contact them all if you think I should, after you’ve heard the story.

  I stare at the words ‘my parents’. I don’t like writing that, but I have to if I don’t want to tell Christian what’s wrong just yet.

  I will tell him everything when he gets here. It will be a relief to say it out loud, to have someone here who knew me before I found out the truth about myself, even if it was only for a day.

  A magical day.

  I stare at the phone until he replies. It takes an agonizing seven minutes, but then there is a text from him that says the words I most want to hear:

  On my way.

  I stand at the ferry terminal and just stare at every person who gets off each boat, waiting for Christian to arrive and hoping the police won’t turn up. In between boats I get a bottle of water and drink it. Other than that I just stare. I shut off my brain and look at the sun glittering on the sea, and try to think of nothing at all.

  He might be bringing my parents with him, or worse. If the Blacks arrive I will tell them I don’t want to see them yet. If they bring the police I’ll admit what I did. I can do that, I think.

  I run through things in my mind. I must have needed my birth certificate sometimes, because people do, but I’ve never seen it. My parents – my adoptive parents – must have made sure of that. It never occurred to me to look. But I’m about to be eighteen, and to leave school. They wouldn’t have been able to keep this a secret much longer, no matter what. It was always a time bomb.

  I’m sure if you grew up being told that you were adopted it would be perfectly all right. Adoption is a brilliant thing. There are two girls at my old school who were adopted from China, so they could never not have known. At least then you’d know approximately who you were. You would have the right feelings about your adoptive parents: you would know all along that they weren’t the people who gave birth to you, but the people who rescued you and gave you a family and a better life. Adoptive parents are wonderful, in theory. Other ones are; mine are not, because they deferred to me when I refused to hear them say that I was adopted. They let me have my own way, when actually they did know better than me: I was only a tiny child and they should have told me.

  I feel second best. Actually I’m ninth best. The real Ella Black, the one they told me I was, actually died in the womb many times over. I am her shoddy replacement, the best (the only) one they could get.

  They told me I was her because that was who they wanted. They didn’t want someone else’s cast-off baby; they wanted me to be their own child come to life. And so they bought me everything I needed, and sent me to a posh school, and got me a kitten, and made me eat healthily and go to ballet lessons, and di
d all the things they would have done for their real child, if they’d been able to have one.

  By the time Christian steps off the boat I am determined to move out of the Blacks’ house and get a job, if I manage to get home. Phrases like ‘actual bodily harm’ and ‘aggravated assault’ chase each other around my brain, and I have no idea what is in store for me when the authorities catch up. Luckily Christian is on his own, and even more luckily he walks straight over to me, takes me in his arms and kisses me properly.

  I allow it all to drift away for a few minutes. I relax into his arms. I feel his mouth on mine. I smell his smell. He knows me for who I am; or, rather, he doesn’t actually know me very well at all. I can be any Ella I want with him. He doesn’t care who gave birth to me.

  I love him, even though I hardly know him. I love him.

  I nuzzle in as close as I can, wishing we could merge into the same person. In the end we have to break apart just a little so we can talk.

  ‘So,’ he says. ‘Ella. It’s so great to see you. I cannot tell you how relieved I am. Want to tell me about it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Should we get lunch?’

  ‘Lunch?’

  ‘It’s midday. That’s good enough for me. Lunch and a beer. How did you find this place?’

  I smile as we start to walk down the sandy street. ‘I think it found me. Literally. I needed the bathroom, and I saw a boat and thought there’d be a toilet on it so I got on.’

  ‘That’s it? That’s what brought you here?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘Was there a bathroom on the boat? I didn’t look for one.’

  ‘Yes, but it was disgusting. It was, like, the most disgusting bathroom you could possibly imagine. I was desperate.’

  I said ‘bathroom’ like an American and I like that. This is not the romantic conversation I was imagining; but we’re both giggling, and that makes it better than anything that happened in my head. Laughing feels strange and wonderful. I wish I deserved this.

  Christian sits opposite me at a rickety metal table, and I stare at him. I gaze at his cheekbones and his jaw, at the lovely shiny hair that frames his face so perfectly. I stare at his huge dark eyes, and he looks back at me. We both smile.