I am Not A Number

by Lisa Heathfield

  ‘Look straight ahead and not a word,’ a guard shouts as we walk on.

  A hand grabs mine briefly and lets go. I glance back.

  Luke.

  I want to break away from the line, run to him and have him kiss me and somehow take me away from here. I need to be back with him in our railway hut, eating stale biscuits as he draws me. But I force myself not to look at him again. I think of the bruise seeping deep into my mum’s skin and I know I mustn’t give him away.

  Luke is close by. It’s enough, for now, just to know.

  We go through the double doors at the end and we’re in a huge kitchen. Already there are people everywhere and there’s noise and steam and cooking smells that reach inside me into my stomach until I feel sick. I have to breathe to steady myself, but each breath swills the stink into me again.

  ‘You lot, over here,’ a guard shouts. There are long tables pushed together and on the back of them are huge bags of potatoes. ‘You peel these until we tell you to stop. You,’ he says, pointing to the man at the end. ‘Hand out these.’ He kicks a bucket next to him filled to the brim with metal peelers. We’re each given one. I’ve helped Mum do this a couple of times before, but I don’t think Lilli’s ever used one in her life.

  ‘I’ll teach you,’ I whisper to her.

  ‘Once they’re done,’ the guard shouts, ‘you and you –’ he jabs his gun towards the two people closest to him – ‘will take them to get cooked over here. Am I clear?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, along with most of us.

  ‘I know that as Core supporters you aren’t that intelligent, but I’m sure you can manage this.’

  His insult skims above me. Luke is next door. He’s safe and he knows I am too.

  I take two potatoes from the bag and pass one to Lilli. ‘Like this,’ I say, but I’m not much good myself. I drag the peeler over the top of the skin, but barely any of it gets caught properly.

  ‘You have to tip it more,’ the man next to me says. He has a moustache you should only see in cartoons, twisted up at each end. ‘Experiment with it a bit. You’ll find a way.’

  Lilli scratches away at her potato. Scabs of its skin fall to the table.

  ‘What if they come and check?’ she asks.

  ‘I’ll give you an almost-finished one of mine,’ I say quietly. ‘You just keep it with you and when they come over, pretend it’s yours.’

  ‘Will I get in trouble?’

  ‘No. You’ll be fine.’

  ‘Okay,’ she says.

  ‘They can’t exactly get angry if you don’t do it well,’ I reassure her. ‘It’s the first time you’ve done it. You’re learning.’

  ‘Okay,’ she says again. But I know she’s not. Under her sweatshirt her heart will be hammering to break through.

  And so we peel and I start to get better at it. Curls of potato slide through the metal and land in shapes on the table. I’m so hungry that if they weren’t covered in mud I’d eat them. I see a boy further down do it, but he chews it once and spits it out.

  Some other Core supporters come round and they sweep our scraps into bags. Lilli concentrates so hard. At home I’d laugh at her, but here I’m begging her to keep going, to get it right.

  Would a guard hit her if she doesn’t? Hit a child?

  The man with the moustache next to me nudges my elbow. ‘I’m Stan,’ he says. There’s enough kitchen noise in here so we can speak. ‘Are you sisters?’

  ‘Yes.’ People often say we look alike, but I can’t see it.

  ‘You’ve got the same nose,’ he says.

  ‘Mum calls it a ski jump,’ I tell him.

  ‘I think it’s more regal than that,’ he laughs quietly. ‘Are your parents here?’

  ‘Just our mum,’ I say. ‘I don’t think our dad is.’

  ‘Did he vote for the Core Party?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘But he doesn’t live with us.’

  Stan picks up his curl of potato. ‘Look at that,’ he says. ‘All in one.’ He throws it in the air and watches as it lands on the table. ‘My dear mother used to say that if you didn’t break the peel, it’d spell out the initial of the woman you’d marry.’ His laugh sprinkles out of him like glitter. ‘I never had the heart to tell her I preferred men.’

  ‘No talking,’ the guard at the door shouts. He looks nervous standing there with his gun, fidgeting from leg to leg.

  ‘They haven’t got a clue what to do with us,’ Stan whispers. ‘Amateurs the lot of them.’ Under his moustache his mouth hardly moves. ‘That one by the door looks so scared I’m surprised he doesn’t piss himself.’ He lowers his head, so this time his laugh disappears on to the table.

  ‘They’re scared?’ I ask.

  ‘Can’t you tell?’ Stan says. ‘They’re terrified about what to do with us but equally terrified in case we try to escape.’

  ‘That’s good, isn’t it?’ I say. ‘If they’re scared, they’ll all fall apart.’

  Stan looks at me steadily. ‘Don’t you listen in your history class?’ His voice smiles but he doesn’t. ‘Fear is what turns people into monsters. It’s the pivot on which the devil himself stands.’

  ‘Look, Ruby,’ Lilli whispers from next to me. ‘I’ve done it.’ And from her peeler, a perfect curl of potato falls.

  The dining room is empty when they walk us back through it. The bowls and the spoons have gone. There’s no sign that anyone was ever sitting here.

  Maybe I imagined Luke? Maybe I wished too hard to see him? I’m hungry enough for my brain to be working wrong. I scan the table for a scrap of bread to pick up, but there isn’t any. I thought they’d be feeding us now, but we’re just made to go outside, our stomachs as empty as the room.

  Another coach is sitting there. A new group of people line up by the wall. I know Lilli looks at them too and I wonder if she’s thinking that our dad might turn up. It’s strange how at home I barely miss him any more, but in here everything feels different and I just want to see him. I need him to see where we are, that we’re safe, before he escapes over the wall and runs to tell everyone what’s going on.

  Although, if what Stan says is true – that deep down these soldiers don’t really know what they’re doing – maybe we’ll all walk out of here this evening in any case. After our meal, though. The sight of all that food has eaten further into my hunger.

  I keep looking at the line of Core supporters, before we’re walking back through the door and up the stairs.

  ‘Do we have to go and sit in that room again?’ Lilli asks me.

  ‘I reckon so,’ I say.

  ‘It’s boring.’

  ‘You’re not making it easier,’ I say.

  ‘Neither are you,’ she snaps back.

  At home when she irritates me I can walk away, or be so horrid that she gets up and goes, but here I’m stuck beside her as we stomp up the final few stairs and along the corridor.

  I see Luke as soon as I step into the bunk room. He’s sitting talking to my mum and Darren, his back towards me. My hunger vanishes, my nerves disappear as I run to him, jumping on his back and wrapping my legs round his waist. I keep my hands over his eyes.

  ‘Guess who?’ I laugh.

  ‘Get off him, Ruby,’ Mum says, glancing at the door.

  But I ignore her and cover his neck in kisses. His smile seeps down to my bones as I move round to his lap.

  ‘Fancy seeing you here,’ he says, his arms tight around me. The smell of him makes me want to push him back on the bed and kiss him properly, even with everyone here.

  ‘I’m serious, Ruby,’ Mum says.

  ‘Your mum is right.’ Luke’s dad, Robert, is standing next to us now. ‘You can’t risk being that close in here.’

  Luke moves me from his lap, until we’re sitting squeezed in together, side by side.

  ‘Can we at least hold hands?’ I ask Mum. ‘Or will we get beheaded for that?’

  ‘This isn’t a joke,’ Darren says. But him getting involved makes my blood burn like it does at
home.

  ‘You’re not my dad,’ I tell him. I’m embarrassed as soon as I say it in front of Luke. He can’t see what I’ve got against Darren and it makes me sound like an eight year old.

  ‘And neither am I,’ Robert says. ‘But we all know that the Trads won’t like seeing you and Luke together in here.’

  ‘But it’s stupid,’ I say, keeping Luke’s hand clasped in mine. I don’t mean to sound rude but I’m sure I do.

  ‘It may well be,’ he says. ‘But they have their vision for their new society and we know now that they’ll do anything to get it.’

  ‘Dad thinks they want to keep us here for a while,’ Luke tells me. All I can see is his lips that I need to kiss.

  ‘How long is a while?’ Mum asks.

  ‘Who knows?’ Robert says.

  ‘They can’t expect us to come round to their way of thinking just because we’re cooped up here,’ Darren says.

  ‘That could be exactly what they’re hoping,’ Robert says. ‘Although they must see it’ll never work. They can’t do this with every Core supporter in the country.’

  ‘Can’t they?’ Darren says.

  ‘You seriously think that’s what they want?’ Mum asks.

  ‘Well, they clearly want us out the way. But there’s no point just keeping us here and then releasing us.’

  ‘We’d protest even louder when we get out,’ Luke says.

  ‘Precisely,’ his dad says. ‘In which case, we’d better get comfortable. We could be here for quite a while.’

  ‘I knew you’d manage to sneak it in somehow,’ I say.

  ‘No one takes away my sketchbook,’ Luke smiles. We’ve found a spot in the corner where we can sit together away from our parents, although we’ve had to promise them we won’t kiss. And we’ll separate hands every time anyone opens the door. ‘You know Conor was on our coach.’

  ‘Conor’s here? Is he okay?’

  ‘Not really,’ Luke says. ‘His mum’s here too.’

  ‘But what about her treatment? She’s right in the middle of her chemo.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘They wouldn’t even let her stay for that?’

  ‘No. She looks really ill too.’

  ‘Conor’s going to flip out.’

  ‘I know. His mum already had to pull him back from a guard.’

  ‘Where is he now?’ I ask.

  ‘They split up our coach,’ Luke says. ‘Half went in a different room.’

  The door opens and the unease in here is instant. ‘Line up in pairs,’ the guard shouts at us. Instantly people stand up and start doing as he says.

  Mum comes across the room to find me. ‘You’re not to walk with Luke,’ she says.

  ‘Agreed,’ Robert pulls Luke back, as though he’s ten years old again.

  ‘You’re going a bit over the top,’ I say to Mum.

  ‘If they find out he’s your boyfriend,’ Mum says, ‘they’ll separate you completely.’

  ‘Or worse,’ Darren chips in.

  Worse? They can’t do much worse than this. I can barely talk to Luke as it is.

  I’m getting more used to the weird light in the corridor, the cold stairs going down, before the shock of natural sunshine as we’re led outside. It’s colder than earlier and I wish I’d put on my coat, but it’s only a short walk to the eating place.

  There are so many people in here already, yet none of them are speaking. Just the quick dunking of spoons into bowls. There are more guards than earlier and they look nervous. Too many of us have piled in with nowhere to sit and you can tell that they don’t quite know what to do. This must be as new for them as it is for us.

  ‘You!’ one of them shouts to the man at the end of our line. ‘Move along.’ We shuffle forwards and stand with our backs against the wall.

  ‘Eat faster,’ a soldier at the end of the table yells. ‘Or we’ll take your bowls away.’

  The heads bend lower, the spoons move quicker. There are some children who screw up their noses at the soup and have hardly touched it.

  I’ve enough time to look at each of the faces and none of them are Dad. But there, almost at the end, is Conor. He nods at me when he sees me and does a smile that doesn’t look like his. I want to try and make him laugh, but he looks away and I see him tear off the corner of his bread and drag it through his bowl.

  It’s like torture with the food just there when I’m this hungry. I’ve never had so little to eat and it makes me realise that I’ve never really been properly hungry before. I thought I had, but it’s nothing compared to this.

  The guards move away everyone who’s eaten. They leave the dirty bowls and spoons on the table and two people come out with a huge pan and start ladling out more soup.

  ‘That’s disgusting,’ I whisper to Mum. ‘They’re putting it in the dirty bowls.’

  ‘Aren’t they going to wash the spoons?’ I hear Lilli ask.

  ‘You’ll both eat it,’ Mum says. ‘All of it.’

  ‘Sit!’ the guard shouts. I want to ask him what’s happened to his proper sentences. Does he think we’re not worth more words?

  We all push forwards. Somehow I’m separated from Mum, but everyone gets a place. Luke is two people away, on my side.

  ‘Okay?’ he mouths at me. I nod at him, too hungry to reply. I soak up soup with the bread and hardly chew before I swallow. It’s only lukewarm, so it’s easy to eat quickly and every mouthful makes me feel more human again.

  I don’t use my spoon. The thought that someone else was licking from it will make me spew all the food back up. Destiny is sitting almost opposite. She waggles her eyebrows at me when I look up, so I go cross-eyed. She scrunches up her face like a pig and laughs so suddenly the soup spurts from her mouth. I swear it even comes out of her nose.

  ‘Destiny,’ her mum says, clamping her hand over her daughter’s. The look on her face makes my bubbling laughter stop sharp. There’s terror in her eyes as a female guard steps closer.

  ‘Our food isn’t good enough for you?’ she says, over Destiny’s shoulder.

  ‘It’s great,’ Destiny says, not looking up. ‘I just had an itch.’ I can see her nerves folding tight towards laughter again. I stare at her, willing her to be calm. ‘A sneeze,’ she says and she laughs enough again for the soup to fall off her spoon.

  The guard grabs the back of Destiny’s head and forces her face into the bowl. The violence is so sudden I can’t understand what I’m seeing.

  ‘Let her go,’ her mum shouts, pulling back the guard’s arm. She’s stronger and taller than the woman when she stands up. ‘Don’t you ever touch my daughter again.’

  Destiny is wiping the smears of soup from her face when the male guard opposite points his gun at them. The air is sucked out of the room. There’s nothing left for any of us to breathe.

  ‘Take your dirty Core hands off the guard,’ he tells Destiny’s mum, his voice wrapped in wire. She puts her hands in the air as she sits down. ‘And you –’ the guard turns the gun on Destiny.

  No.

  Destiny doesn’t blink. Every part of her looks towards the bullet in that metal case.

  ‘You,’ he continues. ‘Lick up every drop of spilled soup. And when you’ve finished, you’ll clean the table with your tongue.’

  Still, Destiny doesn’t move.

  ‘Now!’ the woman behind her yells, forcing Destiny’s head towards the table again.

  How can they make her do it? Destiny swallows her humiliation along with the spots and drops of dirty soup. No one looks at her. I think we all want to spare her an audience.

  But when they make us leave, I look at her until she glances up. The only thing I can think to do is to put my hand close to my heart. I think I’m telling her to keep strong. Maybe she nods, I’m not sure, before she bends her mouth to the table again.

  There are four basins in a row, one toothbrush on each. As the line goes past it, some women stop to use them.

  ‘I’m not doing that,’ Lilli whispers to Mum. />
  ‘You don’t have to,’ Mum says.

  There’s no way I will either. I want clean teeth, but the thought of sharing a toothbrush with a stranger makes me want to gag.

  We walk past the basins and stay waiting in line for the showers.

  ‘We didn’t bring any towels,’ Mum says when we’re almost at the front of the queue.

  ‘No one did,’ the woman behind us says.

  ‘How are we going to dry ourselves?’ Lilli asks.

  ‘You can each use my shirt,’ Mum says.

  ‘Did you bring another one?’ I ask.

  ‘It won’t take long to dry,’ Mum says. ‘I’ll hang it off the edge of a bed and just wear my jumper.’

  We move a bit further forward. A woman is holding open the door, so I can see the rows of shower cubicles. Apparently we’re only allowed in them for two minutes, so barely even enough time to get off our clothes.

  ‘That one.’ The woman guard points me to the empty shower at the end. ‘Move.’

  Mum strips off her shirt right where we’re standing and passes it to me. The guard seems too embarrassed to say anything as she pushes me along the room and I go where I’m told.

  I have to be quick. There’s nowhere to hang my clothes apart from over the top of the door and I’m sure they’ll get wet. I haven’t got any soap, but it’s nice to feel the warm water on my skin. I close my eyes and let it run over my face, over the necklace Luke gave me and I’m home again.

  After this, I’ll put on my slipper socks and go downstairs to argue with Darren about me being on my phone. Lilli will complain that she’s not allowed to stay up later.

  ‘Out.’ There’s a banging on the shower door. I try to shake the water from my body so I don’t make Mum’s shirt too wet, but I don’t dry myself enough and it’s difficult to get my clothes back on. And I don’t like having to use the same pants I’ve worn last night on the coach and all today. It makes it feel like I haven’t even had a shower. ‘Out! Now!’ the guard shouts again. I haven’t time to put on my socks and hoodie, so I grab them and walk out, my hair still dripping down my T-shirt.