‘Wow! Doesn’t that look nice?’
Rebecca glances at me, then nods at Lara.
‘Do you like drawing, Rebecca?’
‘Yes.’
‘Me too. Why don’t we do a wee bit drawing and Debs can get a nice cup of tea? She’ll get you some juice too, won’t you, Debs?’
We’ve already discussed how this will play out. I’ve to give Lara ten or fifteen minutes on her own. She’ll have a chat, assess Rebecca’s language skills, her confidence. See how receptive she is to talking to a stranger. Then we’ll see how things go, take it from there. Lara’s words, not mine.
‘Sure,’ I say. ‘I’ll only be a wee minute. Do you want apple or orange?’
‘ ’Rnge.’
I clamp my hands to my hips, put on a posh voice. ‘I beg your pardon? What is the magic word?’
Rebecca grins. ‘Orange please.’
‘Hmm. That’s better.’
So she toddles off happy and I toddle off feart. Get her juice from the vending machine, sit on a bench in the corridor. My stomach dips and rises. Feels like I’ve been very bad and am waiting to see the heidie. Except the heidie’s my wee sister. Who is scared of pennies. Seriously. When we were kids, I superglued one to the handle of my bedroom door, to stop her coming in. It’s only actual copper coins that freak her. Claims they are ‘full of dirt’. I wonder what Lara would say . . . A door opens. Not her. I make a steeple of my fingers. Then I lock them. Then I do that wee cat’s-cradle thing when you turn them inside out and wiggle. My mum used to say a rhyme about the steeple.
There’s the church (hands together, fingers pointing up)
And there’s the steeple (thread fingers of both hands together)
Open the door (turn hands to reveal wiggling digits)
And there’s the people (ta dah!).
There was another, where she would take my hand, hold it palm upwards. Her fingers walking in teeny circles:
Roon aboot, roon aboot, runs the wee moosie.
Up one stair, up two stair and in a wee hoosie.
Shrieks and gales of laughter as she plunged her hand under my armpit, tickling and tickling and I’d be squealing: Stop it! Don’t stop!
My baby would have learned these rhymes. My mum might have taught them to him. It comes again in a sharp searing rip, that blinding migraine in your belly, that dividing-your-spine pain until the marrow is rendered as fibrous and dry as split bamboo. No matter how resolute your denial, your insistence that it will not be true, it is. You were a mum; now you’re not. You were a child; now you’re not. You were a wife; and that’s gone too, and, like the driven pounding of the tide, there’s not a damn thing you can do.
‘Debs. Can I speak to you a wee minute?’
Lara and her long mauve nails appear round the edge of the door. Steady eyebrows, mouth like a poker. My heart slides from side to side. What has she found? You hear horror stories about what happens in the camps – assaults, sexual abuse – even with babies. I try not to read these things but they’re insidious, they slip in to your field of vision as you’re reading the paper or watching the news and before you know it there’s some vile fat man proclaiming how sex with ‘innocents’ can cure Aids. I have no idea if we’re doing the right thing. An anthropologist would accuse me of imposing my Western values, would insist that our love of self-indulgent psychobabble turns us inside out and stops us healing. Maybe Abdi’s dandelions and Rebecca’s planting would have been enough.
She’s only little.
A fierce, muscular contraction. I love her. It’s not a mother’s love, I realise that, but it’s strong and protective and supersedes this ridiculous need to know.
‘Lara. You promised you’d go easy on her. You said this was just a chat.’
‘It is, it was.’ She comes out full into the corridor.
‘Is she OK in there?’
‘She’s absolutely fine. Playing with a dolly. I just thought you might like to see her drawings. Look.’
There are three different pictures: one of Rebecca in her pink wellies (waving all three of her hands), then the standard one of a mummy, a daddy and a little girl, safe in a big circle. The big and small female figures both wear triangular skirts, and they have pleasingly neat round heads. Rebecca’s a very precise drawer, I‘ve noticed that before. She chooses her colours, takes her time. I’ve seen these types of drawings at in-service days, when the area educational psychologist would come and talk to us about their work.
‘OK,’ says Lara. ‘So what I did was ask her about her, what she likes doing best.’
‘Wearing her wellies?’
‘Wellies certainly featured. But she also likes planting, and playing at nursery. And “blowing” flowers? I’m not sure what she means by blowing, but see: that’s a flower she’s holding in that first picture.’
So, not a third hand.
‘Then I asked if she could tell me who was in her family and she did this next one. There’s Mummy and Daddy and Rebecca. In the circle.’
‘I got that.’
‘She said all the names when she pointed. I’m guessing Aabo is Dad?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. Then I asked her if there were any other people in her family, and she drew this.’
In bright-blue crayon, we have the circle once more. And in it is Daddy, Mummy and Rebecca. The big female is in the yellow skirt, the wee one in the blue. There’s another circle above them, with a little stick figure hanging on its own. At first, I think she’s drawn a person inside the sun, but the circle’s green, not red or orange.
‘I asked her who that was and she said “baby”. I asked her why it was in the sky and she said he lives there. Then, on the same page, she drew this.’ Lara points to a red circle, with two more stick people in it. They have triangles at their waist and shorter legs. One has a cloud of crazy hair, the other a strange fat hat.
‘And these are?’
‘Mama Coutts and . . .’ she touches the mental curly one. ‘Debba.’
Such a warm whole glow on me. It rounds off the angles of my shoulders, my elbows, my knees. It softens and makes malleable all the hard and sore and sad bits and it’s how I would feel if Abdi’s inflating pills were for real. Filled with warm light air. A wee bit giggly; wee bit weepy.
‘I think she’s captured your hair really well,’ says Lara.
‘Ha ha.’ But I am glad, from the tips of my toes (of which, according to Rebecca’s picture, I have seven) to the very last wire of my unpleasant hair.
‘OK. Now, I know I may have overstepped the mark, but it seemed too good an opportunity to miss. So I asked why the baby was in the sky. And she said he was in Heaven?’
I nod. ‘Abdi did have a son who died. But I’ve no idea if Rebecca knew. He died before she was born, I think.’
‘OK, good. All right – and you have to believe me on this, Debs. I judged it very carefully, I only nudged her. I asked if she knew anyone else who lived in Heaven.’
‘And?’
‘She didn’t answer.’
‘So where does that leave us?’
‘With my next question. Where does Mummy live?’
‘And have you asked that?’
‘Not yet. I wanted you to be there.’
We return to the bright painted room. Rebecca jumps up when she sees me. Flings her arms around my legs, forehead ramming into my stomach. Her tight-sprung hair is escaping from the neat braids Abdi put her in and I stroke a wayward coil, twisting it in my fingers, over and under with the soft fine silk. Her breath is shudders in my belly. I could snip off a strand and keep it. Who would know? I hear Lara cough.
We release each other.
‘Here’s your juice, mucky pup.’
‘Qu’you.’
‘I’ve just been looking at your lovely pictures. Is that me?’
‘Yes.’ Rebecca is shy, straw between her gappy teeth.
‘Should I really make my hair green, d’you think?’
‘Yes!’ She
is delighted at this, nodding so vigorously she spills her juice.
I tut. ‘And that, Lara, is why we call her mucky pup.’
‘I showed Debs all your drawings, Rebecca, and she really liked this one of Mummy and Daddy and Rebecca. Didn’t you, Debs?’ Lara smooths her lovely nails over Rebecca’s drawings, laid out now on the primary red and yellow of the table top.
‘Yes, I did.’ A flutter of panic. She’s not briefed me. Am I meant to join in, ask the questions myself? Thankfully, Lara carries on and I can wait in the margins, neither good cop nor bad. Just neutral. I don’t feel neutral. I feel sick.
‘Now, Rebecca. You told me that the baby lives in Heaven, yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where do you live?’
‘In a flat.’ Rebecca frowns directly at me, then lowers her eyes. She’s looking tired. Or nervous maybe? Or is it betrayed? Shit, I want her to know this is fine, this is safe, but I don’t even know that myself. My voice becomes more shrill than I intended. ‘Good girl! It’s up high, isn’t it? You can see the park and lots of houses from up there, can’t you?’
I – AM – TALKING – LIKE – THIS, each false bright syllable shone through the prism of my false bright smile.
‘So, if you’re up high,’ says Lara, ‘does that mean you live in the sky, Rebecca?’
‘No. In the flat.’ Her little head is pit-patting from Lara to me to Lara to me, unsure who is sanctioning these ridiculous questions. Not her, certainly.
‘Who else lives in the flat?’ Lara persists.
‘Aabo.’
‘You and Aabo. And where does Mummy live?’
Her bottom lip is trembling. ‘That’s enough,’ I start to say, but Rebecca speaks over me. ‘In the camp.’
‘In the camp? Where’s the camp? Is it in the sky too?’
‘No!’ she shouts, grabbing more sheets of paper. On one she scribbles a lone stick figure with her yellow skirt and a bright red sun, with laser-rays that shoot right off the page. Their angry redness covers everything, and this drawing is not remotely neat. It is all wild lines and jagged fractures.
‘She will be too hot.’
‘Is it very hot there?’
‘Yes! Aabo leaved her!’
‘Ssh, now, Rebecca.’ I try to pull her on to my lap but she will not be held. She jerks away, continues inflicting furious scores and scratches on another page.
Lara holds up a professional hand which says wait, this is fine. It says let Rebecca fill this space. It says I am a narcissist who spends too much time on my nails. Her hand beneath her chin. Rebecca is being observed. I want to slap the psychologist.
‘Bad men hurted her and Aabo leaved her.’
‘Oh darling, I know, I know.’
Bugger Lara. I’m on my knees, reaching for Rebecca’s scrawling arm. What do I say? What do I say; that he would have been killed too? That he couldn’t go back because he’d to protect Rebecca? Yes. Let’s fill her up with the guilt that Abdi ingests every day. That’ll help.
‘They hurted her head. You look, Debba. Look!’
She presents me with her picture. I don’t want to look. There are five, no six shapes now. There is a crowd of three together: one is lying flat and there is gushing red everywhere and the other two stand over it with extra arms, or maybe sticks or guns. The remaining group of two figures and . . . I don’t know – a table? a box? are at the edge of the paper. The box shape has four legs, with a triangle at one end.
‘What’s this, darling?’
‘Horse.’
This chimes with what Abdi told me. It was men on horseback who ambushed the trucks. I force myself into the detail of the scrawls. No red spurts on this side. Here it is mostly yellow. One figure is draped over the horse shape. There’s a triangle for the legs, an arched line for the back, with two straight arms streaming outwards. The head is not round, but an elongated oval, lying parallel to the horse’s back. The final figure has both arms raised, a thin wavy line rising out of them. I glance at Lara. She speaks quietly, over the top of her hand.
‘I think we should contact Freedom from Torture. They have specialists working with children . . .’
I wonder what it is I’m not seeing. Rebecca’s upset, yes, but at our patent, slow stupidity. She is a crackling fuse, not roaring and greeting, nor catatonic. She continues to go over her picture, tracing and retracing the lines of the horse and the two figures by it. Carefully, she changes her yellow pencil to brown, begins to colour in the horse.
‘Lara, look.’ I indicate the initial group of three, the one where all the blood spurts. ‘That isn’t the woman with the yellow skirt. Rebecca. Becky, darling. Show me Mama in the picture.’
Emphatically, she points to the figure on the horse.
‘Is this where you saw Mama? On the horse or on the ground?’
‘Horse,’ she says firmly, without a shade of doubt. ‘And the man was whippin’ at Mama’s head and the horse was runnin’ and runnin’ away.’
You cannot shake this sense of urgency and dread.
You sit at your desk in the Refugee Council and you tap on your plastic keys. Mrs Casci passes by you on her way out for lunch. She is the only senior caseworker in today; you notice she hasn’t locked her office door. Gamu, two empty desks away, is engaged in animated conversation with a tired and tearful man. She looks knackered as well.
You cannot shake this sense of urgency and dread.
Absurd, you know, but you are galvanised by trust. Rebecca’s trust; her stout and placid stare as she pressed that drawing on you. Winding down into you. Her small hands folding gently over yours. You did that, you turned her inside out. And then she smiled at you. A smile against the shadows, and you go back to your plastic keys.
Once upon a time, they would have provided a tracing service here. Not any more. Another victim of the cutbacks, that pervasive snipping at the fabric holding this fragile mesh intact. Soon, it will fray too far and we will rip and plunge into oblivion. All of us. Don’t they see that? This net holds every one of us. If a girl like Rula slips and I fail to catch her? Well, I slip too.
For now, I consign Rula back to the dark and scavenge in my brains. There was a conference paper circulating; I took a note in case people ever asked. Surprisingly few do, though. It seems that, once you scrabble ashore, you just keep struggling forwards. Unless you’re a mother adrift from her kids, it’s rare that refugees go searching for their past. All those loved ones, scattered. Perhaps it’s better to imagine them still at home, waiting in the warmth.
Family Tracing Services.
I know I’m chasing ghosts. Rebecca was what, three or four when she saw her mother dragged away. At that age, you see fairies. You have whole imaginary worlds in which you live. But what if this is not imagination? It can’t hurt to explore the possibility. All Abdi saw was blood, all he heard was Rebecca’s cries. And Rebecca is adamant that she saw what she saw. Lara spent a long time talking to her afterwards. Filling the room with calm. It was like she’d unwrapped Rebecca, then was rebandaging her. Better, cleaner. There were no more allusions to Azira, no false promises. We talked a little about talking, about why sometimes we don’t. Rebecca consented to it all. She let herself be swaddled. Even sat up on my knee. But that child is suffused with fierce intelligence. I know it. And she wants to be heard, about so many things. With Abdi’s agreement, I think we should push for school. There used to be a second entry after Christmas, I can’t see that it’d be impossible to let her start then. In the interim, we could ask for speech and language therapy – though I hardly think she needs it. We might even consider these Freedom people. Might. For now, I will say nothing to Abdi of the strange table-horse and its living cargo, and I don’t think Rebecca will either.
To her, it’s not a revelation. It’s a long-borne fact.
Red Cross provides limited . . . That was who they mentioned in the conference paper. I click, search, scan . . . there’s a form to be filled in, phone numbers to be called. As much detai
l as possible, it says. Where you last saw your missing person, when and how and why you lost them . . . I realise I don’t even know Azira’s full name. Mrs Casci is still at lunch. I’m pretty sure she’s the line manager for Abdi’s caseworker, who’s away on leave. Volunteering in Namibia, God love him. There’s no limit to the generosity of some of the people working here. If I were a full-time employee, I’d need a luxury spa break, where the world came wrapped in towelling robes. I ponder, muse, rationalise.
My fingers hover. I succumb.
We can access most of our client files on the database. It’s quiet today. Lunchtime sun is shining, after the cold snap we’ve had. Folks’ troubles ease on a ripe September day; they seem slow and grateful for a glimmer of extra sun. We’ll sook it up, deal with the shit tomorrow. Even the phones are quieter. Into the uncanny stillness flies a rainbow peal of praise.
Blessed God!
It’s Gamu’s tired man, and he’s literally jumping for joy. Gamu’s clasping him to her bosom – against all protocols, but he doesn’t seem to mind. The letter they hold between them drifts palely to the floor. The man dips with grace, swoops it up, and I am witnessing his rebirth as the years and dust shake off him. His height and girth increase; he turns, bows, includes me in his ebullient glow.
‘I am to stay!’ he booms. ‘You have invited me to stay!’
‘That’s wonderful,’ I call, glad for him and for Gamu. Too often, we have to read out bad news to our clients. But the days when you get that letter, when a shaking hand passes you an unread sheet of paper and you say the words out loud:
You have been granted refugee status.
That’s why you do this.
That is why I’m doing this. I return to my computer screen. The files we’ve got here are basic: a log of when and what help clients have received. I type in Abdi’s name, just to see. Up it comes: age, address, children. Interactions with SRC. As I suspected, the self-sufficient bugger hasn’t asked for much: help with that perennial, housing; wee bit of advice on learning opportunities; no complaints lodged about his mentor (yet). I scroll down, flicker when I see his wife’s full name:
This Is Where I Am Page 27
