by Chris Cleave
I showed her the United Kingdom driver’s licence from my see-through plastic bag. It was a small plastic card with Andrew O. ’Rourke’s photo on it. Yevette held it up to look at it.
“What ting is dis?”
“It is a driving licence. It has the man’s address on it. I am going to visit him.”
Yevette held the photocard close and stared at it. Then she held it far from her eyes and squinted down her nose at it. Then she looked up close again. She blinked.
“Dis is a white man, Lil Bug.”
“I know that.”
“Okay, okay, jus checkin. Jus establishin whether yu blind or stupid.”
I smiled but Yevette did not.
“We should stick together, darlin. Why yu no come to London wid me? For sure we gonna find some of your pipple down dere.”
“But I will not know them, Yevette. I will not know I can trust them.”
“What, and yu trust dis man?”
“I met him once.”
“Scuse me, Bug, but dis man don’t look like yo type.”
“I met him in my country.”
“What de hell was dis man’s business in Nye-jirrya?”
“I met him on a beach.”
Yevette threw her head back and slapped her thighs. “WU-ha-ha-ha-ha! Now me see. An dey tole me yu was a virgin?”
I shook my head. “It was not like that.”
“Don tell me it wasn’t like dat, Lil miss Sexy-Bug. Yu mus of done someting to de man, make him want to give yu dis vall-able dockerment”
“His wife was there too, Yevette. She is a beautiful lady. She is called Sarah.”
“So why he give yu his driver licence? His wife be so beautiful, he be tinking, Damn, me won’t be needin dis again, me lady so pretty I ain’t nivver gonna drive nowhere no more, me jus gonna sit home an stare at de wife?”
I looked away.
“What, den? Yu stole dis dockerment?”
“No.”
“What, den? What happen?”
“I cannot talk about it. It happened in another lifetime.”
“Mebbe yu bin spending too much time learnin yore fancy English, Lil Bug, cos dat is crazy talk. Yu only be livin one life, darlin. Don’t matter yu don’t uh-preshie-ate part of it, cos it don’t stop bein part of yu.”
I shrugged and I lay back on the bed and I watched the nearest chain dangling from the roof. Every link was joined to the one before and the one after. It was too strong for a girl like me to break. The whole chain swayed back and fro and it shone in the sun from the skylights. Like you could pull on the grown-up end and sooner or later you would get to the child, just like pulling a bucket out of a well. Like you would never be left holding a broken end, with nothing attached to it at all.
“It is hard for me to think about the day I met Andrew and Sarah, Yevette. Now I cannot decide if I should go to visit them or not.”
“So tell me all about it, Bug. Me tell yu if dey sound good fo yu.”
“I do not want to talk about it with you, Yevette.”
Yevette put her fists on her hips and made her big eyes at me.
“Well get yu, lil miss Africa!”
I smiled. “I am sure there are parts of your life you do not like to talk about, Yevette.”
“Only so yu no get jealous, Bug. Me tell yu some of de tings me done in me life of ease an luxury, yu be gettin yu self so jealous you gonna explode, and den Sari Girl over dere gonna have to mop up de mess, an she looks tired enough, yu ask me.”
“No, I am serious, Yevette. Do you talk about what happened to you, to make you come to the United Kingdom?”
Yevette stopped smiling. “Nah. Me tell pipple what happen to me, dey ain’t nivver gonna believe it. Pipple tink Jamaica be all sunshine an ganja an Jah Rastafari. But it ain’t. Yu get on de wrong side of de politics, Bug, dey gonna make yu suffah. An dey gonna make yore family suffah. An me don’t mean suffah, like no icecream fo a week. Me mean suffah, like you wake up in you chillen’s blood, an suddenly yo house is very very quiet, fo ivver an ivver, amen.”
Yevette sat completely still and she looked down at her flip-flops. I put my hand on her hand. Above our heads the chains swung to and fro, and then Yevette sighed.
“But pipple nivver believe dat about me country.”
“So what did you tell the man from the Home Office?”
“For me asylum interview? You wanna know what I tole him?”
“Yes.”
Yevette shrugged. “I tole him if he arrange to get me release from dat place, he can do what he want wid me.”
“I don’t understand.”
Yevette rolled her eyes. “Well tank de lord de Home Office man was a HI bit smarter dan yu, Bug. Yu nivver notice dey interview rooms didn’t have no windows? Me swear to yu, dat man’s ooman mus of kept her legs cross for de las ten year, de way he took me up on me offer. An it wasn’t jus on de one day, mind. It took de man four interviews fore he was certain me papers was in order, yu know what I’m sayin?”
I stroked her hand. “Oh, Yevette.”
“It was nuthin, Bug. Compare to what dey do to me, if I be sent back to Jamaica? Nuthin.”
Yevette smiled at me. The tears flowed from the corners of her eyes and around the curve of her cheek. I started to wipe her tears away and then I started crying as well, so Yevette had to wipe my tears too. It was funny, because we could not stop crying. Yevette started laughing, and then I was laughing too, and the more we laughed the more we could not stop crying, until we made so much noise that the sari girl hissed at us to shush so we would not disturb the woman with no name, who was making crazy talk to herself in some language.
“Oh, look at de state of us, Bug. What we gonna do wid our selves?”
“I do not know. You really think you were released because of what you did with the Home Office man?”
“Me know it, Bug. De man even tole me de date.”
“But he didn’t give you your papers?”
“Uh-uh. No papers. Him say dere a limit to his powah, yu see what I’m sayin? He be tickin one little box on de computer to tell dem officers to let us free, him can jus say, Me hand slipped. But approvin de asylum application? Dat’s a diffren story.”
“So you’re illegal now?”
Yevette nodded. “Yu an me both, Bug. You an me an dem other two also. All four of us gettin let out cos of what I done fo de Home Office man.”
“Why all four of us, Yevette?”
“Him say it look suspicious on im, if it just be me gettin let go.”
“How did he choose the rest of us?”
Yevette shrugged. “Close is eyes and stick a pin in de list, I dunno.”
I shook my head and looked down.
“What?” said Yevette. “Yu no like it, Bug? Yu girls should uh-preshie-ate what I done fo yu.”
“But we can’t do anything without papers, Yevette. Don’t you see? If we had stayed, if we had gone through the proper procedure, maybe they would have released us with papers.”
“Uh-uh, Bug, uh-uh. It don’t work like dat. Not for pipple from Jamaica, an not for pipple from Nye-jirrya neither. Get dis into yore head, darlin: dere is only one place where de proper procedure ends, an dat is de-por-tay-shun.”
She tapped the syllables out on my forehead with the palm of her hand, and then she smiled at me. “If dey deport us, we gonna be killed when we get back home. Right? Dis way at leas we got a chance, darlin, yu better believe it.”
“But we can’t work if we are illegal, Yevette. We can’t earn money. We can’t live.”
Yevette shrugged. “Yu can’t live if yu dead, neither. Yu prcfbly too smart to get dat.”
I sighed and I shook my head. Yevette grinned.
“Dat’s what I like to see,” she said. “A young ting like yu being rill-istic. Now, lissen. Yu tink dese English people yu know could help us?”
I looked down at the driver’s licence.
“I do not know.”
“But yu don’t know
no one else, huh?”
“No.”
“An what we gonna do when we get dere, if I come wid yu?”
“I don’t know. Maybe we could find work, somewhere where they do not ask us for papers.”
“Easy fo yu. Yu smart, yu talk nice. Plenty work fo a girl like yu.”
“You talk nice too, Yevette.”
“Me talk like a ooman who swallowed a ooman who talk nice. Me dumb, yu nuh see it?”
“You are not dumb, Yevette. All of us who have got this far, all of us who have survived—how can we be dumb? Dumb could not come this far, I am telling you.”
Yevette leaned in towards me and whispered, “Are you sirius? Yu no see de way Sari Girl start gigglin at dat taxi back dere?”
“Okay. Maybe Sari Girl is not very clever. But she is prettier than all of us.”
Yevette made her big eyes and snatched her see-though bag closer to her body. “Dat hurts, Bug. How dare yu say she de prettiest? Me was gonna share me pineapple slice wid-yu, but now yu on ya own, darlin.”
I giggled, and Yevette smiled and rubbed the top of my head.
Then we turned round very fast because there was a scream from the girl with no name. She was standing on her bed and she held her bag of documents against her chest with both hands, and she started to scream again.
“Make them stop coming! They will kill us all, you girls do not understand!”
Yevette stood up and walked over to her. She looked up at the girl with no name. The hens pecked and clucked around Yevette’s flip-flops.
“Lissen, darlin. Dese ain’t mens commin to kill yu, I tole yu before. Dese is chickens. Dey is more scared of us dan we is of dem. Look yu!”
Yevette put her head down and ran into a group of hens. There was a great explosion of flapping wings and flying feathers, and the hens were jumping up onto the mattresses, and the girl with no name was screaming and screaming and kicking at the hens with her Dunlop Green Flash trainers. Suddenly she stopped screaming and pointed. I could not see where she was pointing because there were hen feathers everywhere, falling down in the bright beams of sunshine from the skylights. Her pointing finger was trembling and she was whispering, “Look! Look! My child!”
All of us girls were looking, but when the feathers finished falling there was nothing there. The girl with no name, she was just smiling at a bright beam of sunlight on the clean grey painted floor. There were tears falling from her eyes. “My child,” she said, and she held her arms outstretched towards the beam of light. I watched her fingers trembling.
I looked at Yevette and the sari girl. The sari girl looked down at the floor. Yevette shrugged at me. I looked back at the girl with no name and I spoke to her. “What is your child’s name?”
The girl with no name smiled. Her face shone. “This is Aabirah. She is my youngest. Isn’t she beautiful?”
I looked at the place she was looking. “Yes. She is lovely.” I looked at Yevette and made my eyes wide at her. “Isn’t she lovely, Yevette?”
“Oh. Yeah. Sure. She a rill heartbrekka. What yu say yu callin her?”
“Aabirah.”
“Dat’s nice. Lissen, Aa-BI-rah, why don’t yu come wid me, an help me chase de fowls outta dis barn?”
And so Yevette and the sari girl and the youngest daughter of the girl with no name, they started chasing the hens out of the building. Me, I sat and held the hand of the girl with no name. I said, “Your daughter is very helpful. Look how she chases those hens.” The girl with no name, she was smiling. I was smiling too. I think it was nice for both of us that she had her daughter back.
If I was telling this story to the girls from back home, then one of the new words I would have to explain to them is ‘efficiency’. We refugees are very efficient. We do not have the things we need—our children, for example—and so we are clever at making things stretch a little further. Just see what that girl with no name could make out of one little patch of sunlight. Or look how the sari girl could fit the entire colour of yellow into one empty see-through plastic bag.
I lay back on the bed and looked up at the chains. I was thinking, That sunshine, that colour yellow, maybe I will not see very much of these now. Maybe the new colour of my life was grey. Two years in the grey detention centre, and now I was an illegal immigrant. That means, you are free until they catch you. That means, you live in a grey area. I thought about how I was going to live. I thought about the years, living as quiet as could be. Hiding my colours and living in the twilight and the shadows. I sighed, and I tried to breathe deeply. I wanted to cry when I looked up at those chains and thought about the colour grey. I was thinking, if the head of the United Nations telephoned one morning and said, Greetings, Little Bee, to you falls the great honour of designing a national flag for all the world’s refugees, then the flag I would make would be grey. You would not need any particular fabric to make it. I would say that the flag could be any shape and it could be made with anything you had. A worn-out old brassiere, for example, that has been washed so many times it has become grey. You could fly it on the end of a broom handle, if you did not have a flag-pole. Although if you did have a spare flag-pole, for example, in that line of tall white flag-poles outside the United Nations building in New York City, then I think that old grey brassiere would make a fine spectacle, flying in the long colourful line of flags. I would fly it between the Stars and Stripes and the big red Chinese flag. That would be a good trick. Thinking about this, I made myself laugh. “What de hell you laughin at, Bug?”
“I was thinking about the colour grey.” Yevette frowned. “Don’t you go crazy too please, Bug,” she said.
I lay back on the bed again and I looked up to the ceiling, but all that was there were those long chains dangling down. I thought, I could hang myself by the neck from (hose, no problem.
In the afternoon the farmer’s wife came. She brought food. There was bread and cheese in a basket, and a sharp knife to cut the bread with. I thought, I can cut open my veins with that knife, if the men come. The farmer’s wife was a kind woman. I asked her why was she doing this good thing for us. She said it was because we were all human beings. I said, Excuse me, miss, but I do not think Yevette is a human being. I think she is another species with a louder mouth. Yevette and the farmer’s wife started laughing then, and we talked for a little while about where we had all come from and where we were going to. She told me the direction to go to Kingston-upon-Thames, but she also told me that I shouldn’t. You don’t want to go to the suburbs, dear, she said. Neither fish nor flesh, the suburbs. Unnatural places, full of unnatural people. I laughed. I told her, Maybe I will fit right in.
The farmer’s wife was surprised when we asked for five plates instead of four, but she brought them anyway. We divided the food into five portions, and we gave the biggest helping to the daughter of the woman with no name, because she was still growing.
That night I dreamed about my village before the men came. There was a swing that the boys had made. It was the old tyre of a car, and the boys had tied ropes around it and suspended it from the high branch of a no tree. This was a big old limba tree and it grew a little way apart from our homes, near to the schoolhouse. Even before I was big enough to go on the swing, my mother would sit me down in the dark red dust by the trunk of the limba, so I could watch the big children swinging. I loved to listen to them laughing and singing. Two, three, four children at once, all ways up, with legs and arms and heads all tangled up and dragging in the red scrape of dust at the lowest point of the swing. Aie! Ouch! Get off me in the name of God! Do not push! There was always a lot of chatter and joking around the swing, and up above my head in the branches of the limba tree there were grumpy hornbills that shouted back at us. Nkiruka would get down from the swing sometimes and pick me up in her arms and give me little pieces of soft uncooked dough’to squeeze between my chubby fingers.
Everything was happiness and singing when I was a little girl. There was plenty of time for it. We did not have to hurr
y. We did not have electricity or fresh water or sadness either, because none of these had been connected to our village yet. I sat in between the roots of my limba tree and I laughed while I watched Nkiruka swinging back and fro, back and fro. The tether of the swing was very long, so it took a long time for her to travel from one end of its swing to the other. It never looked as though it was in a rush, that swing. I used to watch it all day long and I never realised I was in watching a pendulum counting down the last seasons of peace in my village.
In my dream I watched that tyre swinging back and fro, back and fro, in that village we did not yet know was built on an oilfield and would soon be fought over by men in a crazy hurry to drill down into the oil. This is the trouble with happiness—all of it is built on top of something that men want.
I dreamed of watching Nkiruka swinging back and fro, back and fro, and when I woke up there were tears in my eyes and in the light of the moon I was watching something else swinging back and fro, back and fro. I could not tell what it was. I wiped the tears from my eyes and I opened them fully, and then I saw what it was that was swinging through the air at the end of my bed.
It was a single Dunlop Green Flash trainer. The other one had fallen off the foot of the woman with no name. She had hanged herself from one of the long chains that reached up to the roof. Her body was naked apart from that one shoe. She was very thin. Her ribs and her hip-bones were sharp. Her eyes bulged open and pointed up into thin blue light. They glittered. The chain had crushed her neck as thin as her ankle. I watched the Dunlop Green Flash trainer and the bare dark brown foot with its grey sole swinging back and fro past the end of my bed. The Green Flash trainer glowed in the moonlight, like a slow and shining silver fish, and the bare foot chased it like a shark. They swum circles around one another. The chain squeaked quietly.
I went and touched the bare leg of the girl with no name. It was cold. I looked over at Yevette and the sari girl. They were sleeping. Yevette was muttering in her sleep. I started to walk over to Yevette’s bed to wake her, but my foot slipped on something wet. I knelt down and touched it. It was urine. It was as cold as the painted concrete floor. A puddle of it had collected underneath the girl with no name. I looked up and I saw a single drop of urine hang from the big toe of her bare foot, then sparkle as it fell to the floor. I stood up quickly. I felt so depressed about the urine. I did not want to wake up the other girls because then they would see it too, and then we would all be seeing it, and then none of us could deny it. I do not know why the small puddle of urine made me start to cry. I do not know why the mind chooses these small things to break itself on.
