by Chris Cleave
Yevette looked at me.
“Forgive me, Bug, but yore ideal man, he don’t sound very rill-istic.”
The girl with the documents, she looked up from her Dunlop Green Flash trainers.
“Leave her alone. Can’t you see she is a virgin?”
I looked at the ground. Yevette, she stared at me for a long time and then she put her hand on the back of my neck. I ground the toe of my boot into the ground and Yevette looked at the girl with the documents.
“How yu know dis, darlin?”
The girl shrugged and she pointed at the documents in her see-through plastic bag.
“I have seen things. I know about people.”
“So how come yu so quiet, if yu know so dam much?”
The girl shrugged again. Yevette stared at her.
“What dey call yu anyway, darlin?”
“I do not tell people my name. This way it is safer.”
Yevette rolled her eyes.
“Bet you don’t give de boys your phone number, neither.”
The girl with the documents, she stared at Yevette. Then she spat on the ground. She was trembling.
“You don’t know anything,” she said. “If you knew one thing about this life you would not think it was so funny.”
Yevette put her hands on her hips. She shook her head slowly.
“Darlin,” she said. “Life did take its gifts back from yu and me in de diffren order, dat’s all. Truth to tell, funny is all me got lef wid. An yu, darlin, all yu got lef is paperwork.”
They stopped then, because the taxi was pulling up. It stopped just in front of us. The side window was open and there was music blasting out. I will tell you what that music was. It was a song called “We Are the Champions” by a British music band called Queen. This is why I knew the song: it is because one of the officers in the immigration detention center, he liked the band very much. He used to bring his stereo and play the music to us when we were locked in our cells. If you danced and swayed to show you liked the music, he would bring you extra food. One time he showed me a picture of the band. It was the picture from the CD box. One of the musicians in the picture, he had a lot of hair. It was black with tight curls and it sat on the top of his head like a heavy weight and it went right down the back of his neck to his shoulders. I understand fashion in your language, but this hair did not look like fashion, I am telling you, it looked like a punishment.
One of the other detention officers came past while we were looking at the picture on the CD box, and he pointed to the musician with all that hair and he said, What a cock. I remember that I was very pleased, because I was still learning to really speak your language back then, and I was just beginning to understand that one word can have two meanings. I understood this word straightaway. I could see that cock referred to the musician’s hair. It was like a cockerel’s comb, you see. So a cock was a cockerel, and it was also a man with that kind of hair.
I am telling you this because the taxi driver had exactly that kind of hair.
When the taxi stopped outside the main gate of the detention center, the driver did not get out of his seat. He looked at us through the open window. He was a thin white man and he was wearing sunglasses with dark green lenses and shiny gold frames. The girl in the yellow sari, she was amazed by the taxi car. I think she was like me and she had never seen such a big and new and shining white car. She walked all around it and stroked her hands across its surfaces and she said, Mmmm. She was still holding the empty see-through bag. She took one hand off the bag and traced the letters on the back of the car with her finger. She spoke their names very slowly and carefully, the way she had learned them in the detention center. She said, F … O … R … D … hmm! Fod! When she got to the front of the car, she looked at the headlights, and she blinked. She put her head on one side, and then she put it straight again, and she looked the car in the eyes and giggled. The taxi driver watched her all this time. Then he turned back to the rest of us girls and the expression on his face was like a man who has just realized he has swallowed a hand grenade because he thought it was a plum.
“Your friend’s not right in the head,” he said.
Yevette poked me in the stomach with her elbow.
“Yu better do de talkin, Lil Bug,” she whispered.
I looked at the taxi driver. “We Are the Champions” was still playing on his stereo, very loud. I realized I needed to tell the taxi driver something that showed him we were not refugees. I wanted to show that we were British and we spoke your language and understood all the subtle things about your culture. Also, I wanted to make him happy. This is why I smiled and walked up to the open window and said to the taxi driver, Hello, I see that you are a cock.
I do not think the driver understood me. The sour expression on his face became even worse. He shook his head from side to side, very slowly. He said, Don’t they teach you monkeys any manners in the jungle?
And then he drove away, very quickly, so that the tires of his taxi squealed like a baby when you take its milk away. The four of us girls, we stood and watched the taxi disappearing back down the hill. The cows to the left of the road and the sheep to the right of the road, they watched it too. Then they went back to eating the grass, and we girls went back to sitting on our heels. The wind blew, and the rolls of razor wire rattled on the top of the fence. The shadows of small high clouds drifted across the countryside.
It was a long time before any of us spoke.
“Mebbe we shoulda let Sari Girl do de talkin.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Damn Africans. You always tink yu so smart but yu ignorant.”
I stood and walked up to the fence. I held on to the chain link and stared through it, down the hill and over the fields. Down there the two farmers were still working, the one driving the tractor and the other tying up the gates.
Yevette came and stood beside me.
“What we gonna do now, Bug? No way we can stay here. Let’s jus walk, okay?”
I shook my head.
“What about those men down there?”
“You tink dey gonna stop us?”
I gripped on tighter to the wire.
“I don’t know, Yevette. I am scared.”
“What yu scared of, Bug? Maybe dey jus leave us be. Unless yu plannin on callin dem names too, like you done dat taxi man?”
I smiled and shook my head.
“Well all right den. Don be fraid. Me come wid yu, any road. Keep a check on dem monkey manners you got.”
Yevette turned to the girl with the documents.
“What bout you, lil miss no-name? You commin wid?”
The girl looked back at the detention center.
“Why they didn’t give us more help? Why they didn’t send our caseworkers to meet us?”
“Well, cos dey did not elect to do dat, darlin. So what yu gonna do? Yu gonna go back in dere, ask em fo a car, an a boyfren, an mebbe some nice jool-rie?”
The girl shook her head. Yevette smiled.
“Bless yu, darlin. An now fo yu, Sari Girl. Me gonna make dis easy fo yu. Yu comin wid us, darlin. If yu agree, say nuthin.”
The girl with the sari blinked at her, and tilted her head to one side.
“Good. We all in, Lil Bug. We all walking out of dis place.”
Yevette turned toward me but I was still watching the girl. The wind blew at her yellow sari and I saw there was a scar across her throat, right across it, thick like your little finger. It was white as a bone against her dark skin. It was knotted and curled around her windpipe, like it did not want to let go. Like it thought it still had a chance of finishing her off. She saw me looking and she hid the scar with her hand, so I looked at her hand. There were scars on that too. We have our agreement about scars, I know, but this time I looked away because sometimes you can see too much beauty.
We walked through the gates and down the tarmac road to the bottom of the hill. Yevette went first and I was second and the other two went behind me. I
looked down at Yevette’s heels all the way. I did not look left or right. My heart was pounding when we reached the bottom of the hill. The rumbling noise of the tractor grew louder until it drowned out the sound of Yevette’s flip-flops. When the tractor noise grew quieter behind us I breathed more easily again. It is okay, I thought. We have passed them, and of course there wasn’t any trouble. How foolish I was to be scared. Then the tractor noise stopped. Somewhere nearby a bird sang, in the sudden silence.
“Wait,” said a man’s voice.
I whispered to Yevette, Keep walking.
“WAIT!”
Yevette stopped. I tried to go past her but she held on to my arm.
“Be sirrius, darlin. Where yu gonna run to?”
I stopped. I was so scared, I was struggling to breathe. The other girls looked the same. The girl with no name, she whispered in my ear again.
“Please. Let us turn around and go back up the hill. These people do not like us, can’t you see?”
The tractor man got down from his cab. The other man, the one who was tying up the gates, he came and joined the first man. They stood in the road, between us and the detention center. The tractor driver was wearing a green jacket and a cap. He stood with his hands in his pockets. The man who had been tying the gates—the man in the blue overalls—he was very big. The tractor driver only came up to his chest. He was so tall that the trousers of his overalls ended higher than his socks, and he was very fat too. There was a wide pink roll of fat under his neck, and the fat bulged out in the gaps between the bottom of his overalls and the top of his socks. He was wearing a woolen hat pulled down tight. He took a packet of tobacco out of his pocket, and he made a cigarette without taking his eyes off us girls. He had not shaved, and his nose was swollen and red. His eyes were red too. He lit his cigarette, and blew out the smoke, and spat on the ground. When he spoke, his fat wobbled.
“You escaped, ave you, my children?”
The tractor driver laughed.
“Don’t mind Small Albert,” he said.
We girls looked at the ground. Me and Yevette, we were in front, and the girl with the yellow sari and the girl with no name stood behind us. The girl with no name, she whispered in my ear.
“Please. Let us turn around and go. These people will not help us, can’t you see?”
“They cannot hurt us. We are in England now. It is not like it was where we came from.”
“Please, let’s just go.”
I watched her hopping from one foot to the other foot in her Dunlop Green Flash trainers. I did not know whether to run or to stay.
“But ave you?” said the tall fat man. “Escaped?”
I shook my head.
“No mister. We have been released. We are official refugees.”
“You got proof of that, I suppose?”
“Our papers are held by our caseworkers,” said the girl with no name.
The tall fat man looked all around us. He looked up and down the road. He stretched up to look over the hedge into the next field.
“I don’t see no caseworkers,” he said.
“Call them if you do not believe us,” said the girl with no name. “Call the Border and Immigration Agency. Tell them to check their files. They will tell you we are legal.”
She looked in her plastic bag full of documents until she found the paper she wanted.
“Here,” she said. “The number is here. Call it, and you will see.”
“No. Please. Don’t do dat,” said Yevette.
The girl with no name stared at her.
“What is the problem?” she said. “They released us, didn’t they?”
Yevette gripped her hands together.
“It ain’t dat simple,” she whispered.
The girl with no name stared at Yevette. There was fury in her eyes.
“What have you done?” she said.
“What me had to do,” said Yevette.
At first the girl with no name looked angry and then she was confused and then, slowly, I could see the terror come into her eyes. Yevette reached out her hands to her.
“Sorry, darlin. I wish it weren’t dis way.”
The girl pushed Yevette’s hands away.
The tractor driver took a step forward, and looked at us, and sighed.
“I reckon it’s bloody typical, Small Albert, I really do.”
He looked at me with sadness and I felt my stomach twisting.
“You ladies are in a very vulnerable situation without papers, aren’t you? Certain people might take advantage of that.”
The wind blew through the fields. My throat was closed so tight I could not speak. The tractor driver coughed.
“It’s bloody typical of this government,” he said. “I don’t give a damn if you’re legal or illegal. But how can they release you without papers? Left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is up to. Is that everything you’ve got?”
I held up my see-through plastic bag, and when the other girls saw me they held up theirs too. The tractor driver shook his head.
“Bloody typical, isn’t it Albert?”
“Wouldn’t know, Mr. Ayres.”
“This government doesn’t care about anyone. You’re not the first people we’ve seen, wandering through these fields like Martians. You don’t even know what planet you’re on, do you? Bloody government. Doesn’t care about you refugees, doesn’t care about the countryside, doesn’t care about farmers. All this bloody government cares about is foxes and townspeople.”
He looked up at the razor wire of the detention center behind us, then he looked at each of us girls in turn.
“You shouldn’t even be in this situation in the first place. It’s a disgrace, that’s what it is, keeping girls like you locked up in a place like that. Isn’t that right Albert?”
Small Albert took off his woolen hat and scratched his head, and looked up at the detention center. He blew cigarette smoke out of his nose. He did not say anything.
Mr. Ayres looked at the four of us girls.
“So. What are we going to do with you? You want me to go back up there with you and tell them they’ve got to hold on to you till your caseworkers can be contacted?”
Yevette’s eyes went very wide when Mr. Ayres said this.
“No way mister. Me ain’t nivver goin back in that hell place no more. Not fo one minnit, kill me dead. Uh-uh.”
Mr. Ayres looked at me then.
“I’m thinking they might have let you out by mistake,” he said. “Yes, that’s what I’m thinking. Am I right?”
I shrugged. The sari girl and the girl with no name, they just looked at the rest of us to see what was going to happen.
“Have you girls got anywhere to go? Any relatives? People expecting you somewhere?”
I looked at the other girls, and then I looked back at him and shook my head no.
“Is there any way you can prove that you’re legal? I could be in trouble if I let you onto my land and then it turns out I’m harboring illegal immigrants. I have a wife and three children. This is a serious question I’m asking you.”
“I am sorry, Mr. Ayres. We will not go on your land. We will just go.”
Mr. Ayres nodded, and took off his flat cap, and looked at the inside of it, and turned it around and around in his hands. I watched his fingers twisting in the green cloth. His nails were thick and yellow. His fingers were dirty with earth.
A large black bird flapped over our heads and flew away in the direction where our taxi had disappeared. Mr. Ayres, he took a deep breath and he held up the inside of his cap for me to see. There was a name sewn in the lining of the hat. The name was written in handwriting on a white cloth label. The label was yellow from sweat.
“You read English? You see what that name label says?”
“It says AYRES, mister.”
“That’s right. Yes, that’s it. I am Ayres, and this is my hat, and this land you girls are standing on is Ayres Farm. I work this land but I don’t make the law for i
t, I just plow it spring and autumn and parallel with the contours. Do you suppose that gives me the right to say if these women can stay on it, Small Albert?”
The wind was the only sound for a while. Small Albert spat on the ground.
“Well Mr. Ayres, I ain’t a lawyer. I’m a cow-and-pig man at the end of the day, ain’t I?”
Mr. Ayres laughed.
“You ladies can stay,” he said.
Then there was sobbing from behind me. It was the girl with no name. She held on to her bag of documents and she cried, and the girl with the yellow sari put her arms around her. She sang to her in a quiet voice, the way we would sing to a baby who was woken in the night by the sound of distant guns and who must be soothed without being further excited. I do not know if you have a word for this kind of singing.
Albert took the cigarette from his mouth. He pinched it out between his thumb and forefinger. He rolled it into a little ball and dropped it into the pocket of his overalls. He spat on the ground again, and he put his woolen hat back on.
“What’s she blubbin for?”
Yevette shrugged.
“Mebbe de girl jus ain’t used to kindness.”
Albert thought about this. Then he nodded, slowly.
“I could put em in the pickers’ barn, Mr. Ayres?”
“Thanks Albert. Yes, take them there and get them settled in. I’ll get my wife to dig out what they need.”
He turned to us girls.
“We have a dormitory where our seasonal laborers sleep. It’s empty at the moment. It’s only needed around harvest and lambing. You can stay there a week, no longer. After that, you’re not my problem.”
I smiled at Mr. Ayres, but Mr. Ayres waved away my smile with his hand. Maybe this is the way you would wave away a bee before it came too close. The four of us girls, we followed Albert across the fields. We walked in a single line. Albert walked in front in his wool hat and blue overalls. He was carrying a large ball of bright orange plastic rope. Then it was Yevette in her purple A-line dress and flip-flops, then me, and I was wearing the blue jeans and the Hawaiian shirt. Behind me there was the girl with no name, and she was still weeping, and then there was the girl in the yellow sari, who was still singing to her. The cows and the sheep moved aside to watch us as we walked across their fields. You could see them thinking, Here are some strange new creatures that Small Albert is leading.
