The Truth and Lies of Ella Black

by Emily Barr

  No one cares. Zombies and spectators smile at me. No one knows I just slashed a man’s face with a broken bottle. People are watching with cameras, and I don’t care if by some freaky chance the parents or the police see me on the internet or the news because by the time they see it I will be gone. I don’t know where, but I will be gone. I don’t care what I’m walking towards.

  I have enough money to keep me going for a few days, and that is all I need right now.

  WE’RE NEVER GOING HOME. Bella is triumphant.

  I know we’re not, I tell her. We should get some water though.

  WHO CARES ABOUT WATER?

  I hope I see Lily and Jack one day.

  YOU WILL. NEVER MIND ABOUT THEM NOW.

  There is a drum beat somewhere at the back of the march. The sun is heavy on my head. I know I should be drinking water but Bella stops me caring. Now I am myself for the first time since I was a tiny baby, when they took me away from my real mother and gave me to the Blacks.

  A pregnant woman is walking beside me, with a plastic baby’s head and arms, covered in fake blood, bursting out of her real baby bump. A little child in a Snow White outfit is covered in gore; she holds a doll with a severed head. Two small twin boys are both dressed as zombies from the old movies, lurching along in ragged clothes with their hands out in front of them, laughing helplessly. I keep walking, up the beach and up the beach, and when I am far enough from the hotel I will dart away and be lost.

  I keep walking. I snarl at photographers. I take my hair in both hands and twist it around itself, tying it in a knot on its long side to get it off the back of my neck. I try to smear my make-up more, but the gore has dried, and after a while a boy passes me a pot of some kind of green greasepaint and I cover myself with it, rubbing it all over my face to make me as unrecognizable as I can, though I know my hair will give me away instantly if they see me.

  I wait for a hand on my shoulder any moment. I knew that Bella would attack somebody one day, and now it’s happened. I am Bella, and I went after my mother with a broken bottle, and I slashed a man across the face, and now the police will be after me.

  Every now and then the procession pauses and there is a staged battle between zombies and people dressed as police and soldiers. Zombies grab bystanders and pretend to bite them, and they turn into zombies too, either joining the parade or melting back into the crowd. At one of these performances a monster zombie grabs me and pretends to bite my shoulder, even though I’m already a zombie, and I scream as loudly as I can, and then I find that everything I am feeling – all the feelings I cannot put names to and all the horror and all the fury – is coming out in that scream. I scream so long and so loud that people begin to gather around me. They are laughing. They are admiring me for getting so fully in character, and I realize that this is a place of extremes and I can do anything here, anything at all. I can be anybody. I don’t have to be Ella Black because I didn’t come into the world as Ella Black.

  I don’t know my own name.

  I keep on screaming.

  After a while I know that I need to go. The waiter will have called the police, and my parents will be mobilizing everyone they can to look for me, even though they’re clueless in Brazil.

  I need to find a place with an internet connection and start the process of discovering who my real mother is. This Mr Vokes is weirdly determined to keep her away from me, which doesn’t make sense, and anyway it’s not going to happen because I’m going to find her myself. No one asked me what I wanted, but I’m going to do it anyway.

  If I hadn’t just attacked two people I would go to the airport and fly home and wait for my real mother there: she knows where we live and is supposedly coming to look for me. I could just sit in our house and hope she arrives. But I can’t do that because I hurt a man with a piece of glass and there was blood all over his face, and I knew that Bella would do that one day and she has, and I don’t want to go to prison.

  As the parade reaches the top of Copacabana Beach I duck out and cross the road, dodging between cars, turning and giving them a zombie snarl if they beep at me. I run down a street and then I am back on the road where our hotel is – Avenida Nossa Senhora de Copacabana. This road is the worst place to be. I need to get off it as quickly as I can. There’s a bus, so I get straight on. I find some coins in my pocket and give them to the driver and push through a metal turnstile and sit down by a window and stare at everything. I wish I had a hat. Everyone will be looking for a white girl with purple hair.

  After a couple of minutes the bus passes the hotel. As we bump past I look out, then quickly lean down to fiddle with my shoe. In that fraction of a second I saw a police car parked outside, in the space where taxis stop. Inside the hotel reception I glimpsed two police officers, and a crying woman, and a man who I think caught my eye before I ducked out of sight.

  Then I am past, and they are gone.

  I want to get off at the next bus stop and run back to them.

  THE POLICE WILL ARREST YOU.

  I know, but I want to go back anyway.

  YOU’RE A CRIMINAL. DO YOU KNOW WHAT BRAZILIAN PRISONS ARE LIKE?

  No. Do you?

  SHALL WE FIND OUT? WOULD YOU LIKE THAT?

  I hold my breath and try to imagine it. Much as I have always been sheltered and treated like a baby, I’m pretty sure the Brazilian justice system would consider me an adult, responsible for her own violent actions.

  No, I tell Bella. No, let’s not.

  I hold my bag on my lap and look through it. I seem to have packed reasonably well for going on the run. I have some clothes and a toothbrush. I have my passport and what I think is quite a lot of money. I have a credit card without a PIN. I have the letter from boring Mr Vokes, who knows a lot more about me than I do myself. I have nowhere to go and nobody to talk to. I have no friend in the world. I’d give anything to have Lily here. To have Jack.

  All I can do is find a place to hide and track down my birth parents so they can tell me who I actually am. I am going to look into the eyes of the woman who gave birth to me and tell her that it’s OK that she gave me up, because there must have been a good reason, and at least she was honest about the fact that she couldn’t look after me. At least she’s never lied to me. At least she wants me back.

  When I’ve done that I will happily hand myself over to the police.

  Will I?

  I don’t want to go to Brazilian prison.

  I gave Christian my phone number. I hope he calls me. I switch on my phone, making sure the volume is off. I ignore all voicemails for now and look at the texts. There are loads of them from my parents, of course, and I don’t read any of them. There are messages from Lily, Jack, Mollie and even Tessa. There is nothing from Christian.

  When I am sure there is nothing I turn off the phone. If they trace it to this spot they won’t know I was on a bus, or where it was going.

  Tears are running down my face, and when I wipe them away with the back of my hand they leave green and black trails on my skin. I must look like a mess, but there’s a zombie apocalypse and I look undead and nobody cares because that is the point. I stay on the bus, staring out of the window, feeling my heart pounding and seeing nothing until it stops and everyone gets off. After a while I do too.

  I am on the pavement in the hot sun, in some suburb of Rio. The air is very still and nothing is happening. I have no idea where I am. Everyone who got off the bus has gone.

  Everything I thought I was has melted away.

  Every bit of me is a lie.

  I should be feeling a lot of things, but all I am is numb.

  There is nothing much around. Cranes poke into the air nearby. The buildings are big and warehousey, and there are no cafés, no houses and no people. I start to walk.

  I walk and walk, and I would really like some water and some sunscreen. I follow all the touristy-looking signs, and after a long time I find myself on a huge road with cars and buses travelling in each direction. This road seems t
o be lined with banks and things, and they are all empty and deserted. I am the only person walking, and I am very, very tired and very hot and the most thirsty I have ever been in my life.

  I feel like a character in a computer game, on a quest, knowing where I’m trying to get to (my real parents) but not having a clue how to pass this level. Sometimes everything goes blurry and I tell myself that if I just press the right part of a wall or the pavement, a new level will open up and I’ll be closer, but when I try it, that doesn’t work because I am an actual human girl and this is really happening.

  I pull myself back from that. This isn’t the time to let things go weird. I can’t look around for some magical solution that might work in a dream. I can’t indulge in anything. I need to focus and find a way to walk into the next stage of my life.

  I keep walking and I try to do it normally. One foot in front of the other. I am in a part of the city with more people around now, and then there is a shop and it is open, and so I buy a huge bottle of water and drink it in one go. I buy a little bottle of sun cream and smear it on my pink arms and legs and face.

  Then I need to go to the loo. There are no cafés anywhere nearby and, as far as I can see, no public toilets either. It suddenly feels so urgent that I contemplate finding a corner and just doing it right there.

  Across the road is a square surrounded by huge buildings, and at the far end I can see a kiosk selling tickets of some sort. There are pictures of boats so I walk towards it. If I got on a ferry it would probably have a loo. I ask for a ticket on the next boat, in English, and the woman frowns and tries to work out what I mean. I think she is trying to ask which boat I want, where I want to go and I try to convey that I just want the next boat and I don’t care about the destination.

  She passes me a plastic ticket shaped like a credit card, and I slide a large bill under the security screen. She sighs and pushes lots of change back, and points to a set of turnstiles, off to my left.

  I manage to say, ‘Obrigada,’ and she says, ‘De nada,’ and then I push my ticket into the turnstile, but I’m doing it wrong, and a man comes and does it for me, and I push through the barrier and walk straight on to the back of a huge metal boat, and I see a sign for the ladies’ loo and follow it, because that is all I can think about right now.

  I open the metal door, and at first all I see is that there is indeed a bathroom in there and that I will be able to pee. Then I smell it and note that I am very definitely not the first person to use it. I can hardly get near the toilet because the smell is making me retch, but I have to because I need to use it more than I need anything else in the world. I want it, right now, more than I want my real mother, and that is a lot.

  I have to breathe through my mouth – I cannot bear the smell. But I know that breathing through my mouth means that I am gulping down particles of sewage, and that makes me retch even more. I hover over the metal toilet, which is of course blocked and clogged and full almost to the top with strangers’ shit, and I pee because I have to, and of course the flush doesn’t work, and then I stumble to the basin and stare at myself in the tiny mirror that is nailed to the wall.

  My face is covered in blotches of green and black. My eyes are so bloodshot that the whites are actually pink, and I truly do look like a zombie. My hair – my lovely purple hair – is slicked back with sweat and grime, tied at the side of my neck in a knot. I’m wearing a dark red T-shirt and a pair of small denim shorts, and I could be anybody.

  I breathe deeply. There is something calming about that because it’s true.

  I could be anybody.

  I

  could

  be

  anybody.

  That means I can be whoever I like.

  Though the only thing I’ve done since I found out that I could be anybody is lunge with a bottle and cut someone’s face.

  There is a jolt and a small crash and the boat begins to move. I hope we’re going somewhere far away. If it’s a place that has somewhere to sleep, then I will sleep there. If it has internet I’ll try to track down my birth mother. When I can’t stay away any longer I will go back and hand myself in to whoever wants me.

  I step out of the bathroom, smiling apologetically at the girl who’s waiting (hoping she doesn’t think its rancid state is entirely my fault), and find a small deck at the back of the boat. I stand there and fill my lungs with gorgeous fresh air as I stare at the water. The engine is roaring, and there is land receding behind us. I don’t care what happens now; I only care about putting water between me and everything else. They can’t come after me because they don’t know where I am. The air is hot on my face. The boat is moving slowly, noisily, and the stretch of water between me and the land grows as I stare at it.

  I am leaving. I am running away.

  My legs feel weak. I walk back down to the inside of the boat and find a place to sit beside a window. Up ahead there is a huge bridge, with arch after arch after arch. We are going to go under it. It looks like a bridge from a story; a bridge that spans the whole ocean.

  I close my eyes; the movement of the boat rocks me and, although I know that I will never actually sleep again, I find myself yawning. I will just close my eyes for a moment. I will just shut it all out. I will just rest for a few seconds.

  Waking on a random boat that is taking me, made up as a zombie, to an unknown destination feels like it’s part of a strange and horrible dream. Then I remember.

  My parents are not actually my parents.

  I attacked my adoptive mother with a broken bottle.

  I cut a man across his face, on purpose.

  Those things are real. That is my new truth.

  They brought me to Rio because my mother was trying to find me. My mum. My birth mum; the unknown woman who grew me.

  She wants me back.

  She could be anyone.

  I could be anyone too.

  I have paid no attention to the people on this boat, and they in turn have left me completely alone. It’s about half full. There are families with young children. There are young and old men, on their own and in groups. There are women, with babies, with children, alone. People are walking around offering things for sale, but they’re not pushy about it and it’s easy to shake my head. A woman sitting nearby spends ages looking at big pieces of jewellery. The man with her drapes them over his arm and she fingers each in turn, holding the big fake rubies on cheap metal chains.

  If I can sit still like this and watch the world going on without having to interact with anybody ever again, then I might be all right. I could live on a boat and go nowhere forever.

  Of course, even though I am willing it not to, the boat stops. We are at our destination, wherever that may be. I stand up when everyone else does and file off. A man grins at me, and I know I look ridiculous with my face covered in smeared zombie gunk and my eyes red and a cloud of desperation and running-away all around me.

  ‘Hola,’ I say to him, just to see if my voice is still working.

  He says something back in Portuguese, but there are too many words and I don’t understand them, and so I smile and shake my head and walk off the boat behind a family with two children – a girl and a boy who are fighting and bickering until their mother tells them to stop.

  They are a family. That woman is their mother, and they are brother and sister; and I bet none of those facts are lies. Though they might be. Most people don’t think to question the basic foundations of their existence.

  A crowd of people are waiting for the boat but there are no police. A young man walks up and hands me a flyer, and I force a smile and keep walking. Another man, an elderly one, does the same. He laughs and points to his own face, and says something and puts on a scary expression. I think he’s saying that his face is scarier than mine even without any make-up, and so I laugh too and keep going. I push both flyers into my back pocket and keep walking because I don’t want to look lost or vulnerable. I don’t want anyone to talk to me, to ask if I’m all right, to
report me to the police as a teenage runaway or as the criminal they saw on the news. I look fierce right now and I want to stay fierce.

  I will never blend into a crowd with purple hair. I need to change that.

  I don’t know what to do. I don’t belong here, or anywhere. I feel Bella laughing inside me. She is crowing. She is telling me that she always knew it.

  She doesn’t blur my vision or make my ears ring any more. She doesn’t need to.

  The ground under my feet is sandy and stony. I walk over to a display board and look at a map. This place seems to be an island: according to the map it is called Ilha de Paquetá.

  I walk down the street in front of me, breathing the warm air, walking on the stony road. I pass restaurants and cafés and souvenir shops, and step aside to let a horse and cart go by.

  I am not the real Ella Black. I try to process that fact, now that I have escaped. The child I thought I was actually died in the womb eight times over, and I’m the imposter, the changeling, the next best thing. I thought I had come into the world as someone, but I actually arrived as somebody else, and I don’t know who that person is, who I would be if I had stayed where I started.

  I wished for this. I wanted to be anyone but myself. Only the other day, just after I killed the bird with the hammer, I wished to be a different girl. I’ve got my wish. There is someone else out there who wants to find me and to be my mum.

  I want to find my mum. I want my real mother.

  It’s not straightforward. I have done the terrible thing I knew I would do one day, and I don’t know what I can do except hope that the poor man is all right.

  There is a bike-hire shop on my right. I stop.

  ‘Hola,’ says a boy sitting behind a desk. He has little round glasses and curly black hair, and if he had a scar he would look like Harry Potter.

  I take a deep breath and say, ‘Hola.’ That is pretty much all my Portuguese used up already.

  ‘Hi. You speak English?’ he says.

  ‘Yes.’ I smile my relief. ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘Are you interested in hiring a bike? Special rates for zombies.’