The Other Hand

by Chris Cleave

  The walkway was very wide, and the people stopped in big groups to watch the street artists who were performing in that place. There was a woman dressed all in gold, with a gold crown and gold paint on her face, and she stood on a gold box as still as a statue and only moved when money was dropped into a hat in front of her. Next to her there was a man who had disguised himself to look like a lizard. He hid in a big black box and when money was dropped into the top of the box he would pop out of it, whistling and snapping his hands to make the children laugh and squeal. I watched a little boy go to put a coin into the top of the box. He moved forward very slowly and suspiciously, with the coin held out in front of him. This is exactly how you would approach a giant money-eating lizard in a box, in case the clever idea came into his head to eat you up at the same time as the coin, and go home early with a belly full of boy instead of working all day for small change. The boy kept looking backward at his mother and his father, and they were smiling and urging him forward with an encouraging magic that they were pushing through the air to him with their hands, and they were saying to their boy, Go on, you can do it, go on.

  And I was looking very hard at these people, because this is how it was with them: the boy’s father had dark skin, darker even than my own, and the boy’s mother was a white woman. They were holding hands and smiling at their boy, whose skin was light brown. It was the color of the man and the woman joined in happiness. It was such a good color that tears came into my eyes. I would not even try to explain this to the girls from back home because they would not believe it. If I told them that there were in this city children that were born of black and white parents, holding hands in the street and smiling with pride, they would only shake their heads and say, Little miss been-to is making up her tales again.

  But I saw it with my eyes. I saw the boy finally reach the big black box where the lizard man was hiding, and I saw him stretching up on his toes to release the coin he was holding in his fist, and I saw the coin tumbling through the bright blue sky with the sunshine flashing upon it and the Queen of England’s face upon the coin—with her lips moving and saying Good Lord, we appear to be falling—and I saw the lizard man spring up out of his box and the boy run away giggling and screaming, and I saw his mother and his father lift him up, and I saw the three of them hugging one another tight and laughing while the crowd looked and laughed with them. This I saw with my own eyes, and when I looked around the crowd I saw that there was more of it. There were people in that crowd, and strolling along the walkway, from all of the different colors and nationalities of the earth. There were more races even than I recognized from the detention center. I stood with my back against the railings and my mouth open and I watched them walking past, more and more of them. And then I realized it. I said to myself, Little Bee, there is no them. This endless procession of people, walking along beside this great river, these people are you.

  All that time in the detention center I was trapped by walls, and all those days living at Sarah’s house in a street full of white faces, I was trapped because I knew I could never go unnoticed. But now I understood that at last I could disappear into the human race, like Yevette chose to do, as simply as a bee vanishes into the hive. I did not even tell my feet to do it: they were full of joy and they took the first step all on their own.

  And then they stopped. I thought, Little Bee, you have tried this before. You ran away, but your troubles traveled with you. How will you stop them from finding you this time? How will you stop them from shrieking in the night?

  So I took a step back and I leaned against the railings again, to think. The sun was pleasant on the back of my neck. Lawrence was pointing out something to Charlie. Those columns on the bridge, he was saying. See how the water swirls around them?

  On the walkway in front of me, the crowd kept coming. The adults were all walking but many of the children were gliding. There were children with scooters, children with bicycles, children with wheels hidden in their shoes. I smiled at a beautiful woman with brightly colored clothes. Mothers were calling out their children’s names—strong names like Sophie and Joshua and Jack—names with protecting magic.

  And I thought to myself: that is it. My troubles will find me very easily in this town of stone and iron if I keep my foolish name that I chose at the edge of the jungle. So I will take a name that suits this city instead. I will blend in and I will wear a bright smile and colorful clothes and I will forget all about Charlie and Sarah and Lawrence and Andrew. With my new name, I will not even belong in Little Bee’s story anymore. Her story will end like this: One hot day in early summer Little Bee awoke weary from her troubles and she traveled to the banks of a great river in the company of three sorcerers—a boy with the powers of a bat, a good sorceress who once saved her life on purpose, and a bad sorcerer. And as the three enchanters gazed upon the mighty river, Little Bee turned away and spoke some magic words to herself, and when the others turned around Little Bee had flown away, and when they searched for her she had gone, and there was nothing to tell that the young girl had ever existed in this world except for a man’s large Hawaiian shirt that the good sorceress would wash and iron and fold at the back of a drawer because she would never be able to bear to throw it away.

  I smiled as I looked into the great crowd of people passing by, and my feet started again to take the first steps to join them. I smiled even brighter when I felt the strength of those steps. All the power of the city was flowing up through the warm stones beneath my feet and entering my body. Yes, I thought. This is the moment. Even for a girl like me, then, there comes a day when she can stop surviving and start living.

  To survive, you have to look good or talk good. But to end your story well—here is the truth—you have to talk yourself out of it.

  After six steps I was inside the crowd, getting pushed this way and that way. I did not mind and I did not look back. I let myself be taken along by this river of human souls that flowed beside the water. I was happy. I smelled the mud on the banks of the river and the dust of the gray pigeons’ wings and the flat dry smell of the ancient stone buildings and the hot breath of cigarettes and chewing gum that floated through the crowd. Everyone was talking and shouting in all the languages they had carried with them to release in that place, and the words mingled in the London air which understood them all. I listened very carefully to the sound of the city and I wondered what name it would whisper me to call myself.

  The crowd took me up onto a bridge and I started to cross it. It was good to watch the passenger boats pass out of sight underneath my feet, with the people relaxing in their chairs, and the bald tops of the old men’s heads turning pink in the sun, and the children shouting under the bridge to hear the echoes of their voices, and the tourist guide on the boat’s loudspeakers booming out, WELCOME WILLKOMMEN BIENVENUE BENVENUTO BIENVENIDO À LONDRES.

  Near the middle of the bridge there was a boy selling magazines. He had a shaved head and a sliver ring in his nose, like a bull, and a green coat with a fur hood even though it was so hot, and he had light brown skin and he smiled when he saw me staring at him.

  “What?” he said.

  I smiled back. “Nothing.”

  “Big Issue?” he said.

  “No,” I said, “I am going to be fine now, I think.”

  The boy laughed. “No! I mean, do you want to buy one of these?” He spoke slowly and he held up a magazine. “See? It’s called, the Big Issue.”

  I giggled and I bit the side of my hand because I was embarrassed.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I am new in this town.”

  The boy nodded. “Me too,” he said. “What’s your name?”

  I looked behind him at the huge city rising out of the river, mighty and illuminated. Then I looked back in the boy’s eyes.

  “My name is London Sunshine.”

  The boy grinned. “What kind of a name is that?”

  “It is the kind of name that starts off heavy but ends up light.”

 
The boy blinked at me, and the next moment we were both laughing together. This was a good trick. In this moment I very nearly named myself back to life.

  But while I was laughing I looked back across the river, and my eyes fell on something they could not look away from. Sarah and Charlie and Lawrence were still there, standing at the railings, talking and looking out over the river. They had not seen me, but I could not stop looking at them. The smile disappeared from my face.

  “What’s wrong?” said the magazine-seller boy.

  Sarah and Lawrence had their arms around each other’s shoulders, but Charlie was looking very small and sad. He was staring down at the mud on the banks of the river. He was firing some kind of a weapon at the mud, but the weapon was having no effect. I put my hand up to my mouth.

  “You all right?” said the magazine-seller boy. “Looks like someone walked on your grave.”

  I could not answer. How should I start to explain to him that I did not trust Lawrence? How was I supposed to tell him how all of the bad stories begin: The men came and they…?

  It would be a long story to explain why I did not like to leave Charlie like that.

  “I have to go,” I said.

  I turned away from the magazine seller and I walked back across the bridge with heavy steps.

  When I got back to the place where the three of them were standing, Sarah turned and smiled at me.

  “Where did you disappear to?” she said.

  I shrugged. “Nowhere.”

  I looked down at the river. Something swam close to the bank but it did not break the surface. All you could see were the swirls in the water where it passed beneath. I looked at Sarah and she looked back at me and we found that we could not smile anymore.

  “What’s wrong?” She lowered her voice. “I’m sorry. Is all this water reminding you of the beach?”

  I said, “It is only water.”

  Charlie was pulling my hand. He wanted to play, so we went down some stone steps that were slimy with some green river plant, down to a thin strip of yellow sand at the edge of the river. There were other children down there too, wearing just their underwear in the hot sun, building sand castles with their mothers and their fathers. We built sand castles too. We built towers and bridges. We built roads, railway lines, and schools. Then we built a hospital for injured superheroes and a hospital for sick bats, because Charlie said his city needed these things. Charlie was concentrating very hard. I said to him, Do you want to take off your Batman costume? But he shook his head.

  “I am worried about you. You will be exhausted by this heat. Come on, aren’t you too hot in your costume?”

  “Yes but if I is not in mine costume then I is not Batman.”

  “Do you need to be Batman all the time?”

  Charlie nodded. “Yes, because if I is not Batman all the time then mine Daddy dies.”

  Charlie looked down at the sand. He squeezed his fists so tight that I could see the small white bones of his knuckles through the skin.

  “Charlie,” I said. “You think your daddy died because you were not Batman?”

  Charlie looked up. Through the dark eye holes of his bat mask, I could see the tears in his eyes.

  “I was at mine nursery,” he said. “That’s when the baddies got mine Daddy.”

  His lip trembled. I pulled him toward me and I held him while he cried. I stared over his shoulder at the cold black drainage tunnels that disappeared into the tall stone wall of the river embankment. I stared into the black mouth of one of them, as wide as my shoulders across, but all I could see was Andrew spinning slowly round on the electrical cord with his eyes watching me each time he revolved. The look in his eyes was the look of those black tunnels: there was no end to them.

  “Listen Charlie,” I said. “Your daddy did not die because you were not there. It is not your fault. Do you understand? You are a good boy, Charlie. It is not your fault at all.”

  Charlie pulled himself out of my arms and looked at me.

  “Why did mine Daddy die?”

  I thought about it.

  “The baddies got him, Charlie. But they are not the sort of baddies Batman can fight. They are the sort of baddies that your daddy had to fight in his heart and I have to fight in my heart. They are baddies from inside.”

  Charlie nodded. “Is there lots?”

  “Of what?”

  “Of baddies from inside?”

  I looked at the dark tunnels, and I shivered.

  “Everyone has them,” I said.

  “Will we beat them?”

  I nodded. “Of course we will.”

  “And they won’t get me, will they?”

  I smiled. “No, Charlie, I don’t think those baddies will ever get you.”

  “And they won’t get you either, will they?”

  I sighed.

  “Charlie, there are no baddies here by the river. We are on an adventure, okay? Maybe you can take one day off from being Batman.”

  Charlie frowned, as if this was another trick of his enemies.

  “Batman is always Batman,” he said.

  I laughed, and we went back to building the city out of sand. I put a big handful on top of a pile that Charlie said was a multistory Batmobile park.

  “Sometimes I wish I could take one day off from being Little Bee,” I said.

  Charlie looked up at me. A drop of sweat fell from inside his bat mask. “Why?”

  “Well, you see, it was hard to become Little Bee. I had to go through a lot of things. They kept me in prison and I had to train myself to think in a certain way, and to be strong, and to speak your language the way you people speak it. It is even an effort now just to keep it going. Because inside, you know, I am only a village girl. I would like to be a village girl again and do the things that village girls do. I would like to laugh and smile at the boys. I would like to do foolish things when the moon is full. And most of all, you know, I would like to use my real name.”

  Charlie paused with his spade in the air.

  “But Little Bee is yours real name,” he said.

  I shook my head. “Mmm-mmm. Little Bee is only my superhero name. I have a real name too, like you have Charlie.”

  Charlie stared.

  “What is yours real name?” he said.

  “I will tell you my real name if you will take off your Batman costume.”

  Charlie frowned. “Actually I have to keep mine Batman costume on forever,” he said.

  I smiled. “Okay, Batman. Maybe another time.”

  Charlie started to build a sand wall between the wilderness and the suburbs of his city.

  “Mmm,” he said.

  After a while Lawrence came down the green steps and walked up to us.

  “I’ll take over here,” he said. “Go up and see if you can talk some sense into Sarah, will you?”

  “Why, what is wrong? Why didn’t she come down here with you?”

  Lawrence held his hands out with the palms upward, and he sent air upward out of his mouth so that his hair blew. “Just go and see her, will you?” he said.

  I walked up the steps. Sarah was still standing by the railings.

  “That bloody man,” she said when she saw me.

  “Lawrence?”

  “Sometimes I’m not so sure I wouldn’t be better off without him. Oh, I don’t mean that, of course I don’t. But honestly. Don’t I have the right to talk about Andrew?”

  “You were arguing?”

  Sarah sighed.

  “Lawrence still isn’t happy about you being around. It’s putting him on edge.”

  “What did you say, about Andrew?”

  Sarah looked out across the river.

  “I told him I was sorting out Andrew’s office last night. You know, looking through his files. I just wanted to see what bills I’m meant to pay now, check we don’t owe money on any of our cards, that sort of thing.”

  She looked at me. “The thing is, it turns out Andrew didn’t stop thinking about what hap
pened on the beach. I thought he’d put it out of his mind, but he hadn’t. He was researching it. There must have been two dozen folders in his office. Stuff about Nigeria. About the oil wars, and the atrocities. And…well, I had no idea how many of you ended up in the UK after what happened to your villages. Andrew had a whole binder full of documents about asylum and detention.”

  “Did you read it?”

  Sarah chewed her lip. “Not all of it. He had enough in there to read for a month. And he had his own notes attached to each document. It was very meticulous. Very Andrew. There was so much detail in there. I only read a couple of papers, but it was enough to see where he was going with it all. I read an inspectors’ report about the immigration detention centers. How long did you say they kept you in that place, Bee?”

  “Two years.”

  “Oh Bee. I had no idea how hellish they are. I was imagining, I don’t know, a sort of high-security hotel, I suppose. Is it true they keep it deliberately cold in there? Is it true you have to apply in writing if you just need a paracetamol?”

  I smiled. “If you are planning to have a headache, you need to apply twenty-four hours in advance.”

  Sarah sighed. “So it is true, then. Andrew highlighted this one passage that said, We find the humiliating procedures excessive. We do not see how anyone could abuse an excess of sanitary towels. Did you really have to apply for them too?”

  I nodded. “They would only give them to us one at a time. You had to fill in a form.”

  Sarah twisted her hands together on the top bar of the iron railings. “The thing is,” she said, “I think I know why Andrew highlighted that passage. I mean, people would skim-read the barred windows and the perimeter fence. But if you really wanted to bring it home, you’d show how a girl has to apply in writing for Kotex Ultra. Right?”

  She stopped, and she looked down to where Lawrence and Charlie were laughing and kicking sand at each other. When she spoke again, her voice was quiet. “I think Andrew was planning a book,” she said. “That’s what I told Lawrence.”