The Truth and Lies of Ella Black

by Emily Barr

  They won’t look for me because it’s too dangerous.

  Everything is dangerous.

  Bring it on.

  I say: ‘Favela.’

  The driver wants me to clarify. There are lots of favelas.

  ‘The biggest one,’ I say.

  He speaks enough English for us to have a basic conversation. He says a word that sounds like Hosseenya.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘There.’ Whatever that means, it will do.

  This is what I know about favelas: they are shanty towns dotted around the city and they are terrifyingly dangerous. I know that Fiona and Graham Black would never venture there. I know that it would never occur to them to try. Ella Black would have run horrified from such a place. Bella Hinchcliffe-Carr, on the other hand, will walk straight in.

  Right now I need money and I need a place to go. It feels ridiculous to get the taxi to stop at an ATM so that I can get out lots and lots of cash to take into a dangerous, lawless area of a South American city; but I know I need to do it. Even if they trace me to the ATM, they would have to be very quick to catch me before I got back into the waiting cab, and then they still won’t be able to follow me to my brutal destination.

  The driver stops outside a bank which is red all over. Although it’s still early in the morning I am able to open its lobby door and get blasted with freezing cold air-conditioning. I put the card into a machine. It asks what language I would like it to speak, and I press the button next to the word ENGLISH. I put in 1711, my birthday, knowing that it will work, knowing that they use that number for everything even though they didn’t meet me on that day at all. It works. I half expect the shutters to come down and trap me in this room, but nothing happens. When it asks which account I would like the money to come out of, I tap the button next to CHECKING because it’s the first on the list of options, and then it grinds into action and gives me 1,500 reals, which feels like a lot of money.

  I get right back into the taxi and we are on our way again. My heart is pounding. I need to stash most of this cash somewhere secret. I can’t put it in my shoe because I’m wearing flip-flops. I can’t put it all in my bag in case the bag is stolen. I end up separating it out and, when I think the driver isn’t looking, I put most of it into my bra, some of it into my shorts pockets and a bit more into my bag. Whatever happens to me next, I should still have some cash.

  The streets are getting busier and I stare out of the window. Christian will go back to the island to meet me, like we agreed, and he won’t find me. He’ll go to Alex, and Alex will tell him where I was staying, and all about my meltdown, and then he will find my note.

  I stare at a lagoon which has busy roads and traffic jams around it although it’s still early. I know that I can only live from one moment to the next right now. I cannot stop and consider the bigger picture, or even begin to imagine what I will be doing tomorrow. This should be overwhelming, but it isn’t. I don’t know where I am going, but my dark side has taken control and she will deal with this. I am made from badness and I come from criminals and I will survive.

  I am never going back to my old life. I will try to live in the favela. The adrenalin throbs through my whole body. This is madness. It’s probably an elaborate way of killing myself, and that’s why I don’t care.

  The cab follows lines of traffic into a massive tunnel. All the noise is amplified and the sun is gone and everything is tinged with red from the queue of tail lights in front of us.

  Then we are out, in bright sunshine, and the taxi swerves across a lane of traffic and stops.

  ‘Hosseenya,’ says the driver, grinning, and I take a deep breath and step out of the cab. I pay him through the window, and he smiles and waves and says, ‘Good luck to you.’ He drives away, and I am alone.

  I am alone in a slum in Rio and I should be terrified

  but

  I’m

  not.

  Five days ago I was at school.

  A day ago I was falling in love.

  An hour ago I was on a boat.

  Although I am heartbroken in a million different ways, the energy of running away is carrying me through. Ella is hiding inside me, sobbing. Bella is going to get on with things, and there’s one thing she needs to do before all others.

  Shops and stalls are beginning to open up, and there are people and motorbikes everywhere and I don’t speak the language. I hold my bag tightly, half expecting someone to snatch it.

  I know people are noticing my hair. It makes me stand out.

  In front of me is a stall selling cooked chickens that are lined up under a glass counter. There is a barber working nearby. I walk over to his shop and sit on the bench outside. I smile a hello to the other people waiting, and they don’t actually seem that interested so I just sit there and wait my turn, and while I wait I literally think of nothing. I just stare at the people going by, and I feel nothing and I think nothing. No one robs me or talks to me, and then a barber calls to me and I tell him I don’t speak Portuguese, but I pick up a strand of my hair and make a face, and he laughs. I mime shaving it all off because he doesn’t look like someone who is going to dye it black for me. He checks a few times that it’s what I really want, and then he takes some clippers and runs them over my head, and locks of purple fall on to the ground, and he does it again, and then it’s finished.

  I look in the little mirror and run my hand over the top of my head.

  Just like that, I have no hair.

  I have no name. I have no family. I have no boyfriend. I have no hair.

  Actually I have a little bit of hair. I have a few millimetres of the stuff, and it’s blonde and fuzzy. It feels nice to stroke it. I must look as if I’m having chemo. The man sweeps the purple strands into a pile of everyone else’s dark hair and I pay him a tiny bit of money and walk over to the café that is right there. On the way I pass a bin, and I put my phone down on the ground and stamp on it before dropping it in. I really can’t have it any more.

  I wish I had a guidebook, or any kind of information at all. Right now I am thirsty and bald. I am in a slum, but I can put one foot in front of the other and make my way towards a place to sit, and although it feels hallucinatory that I am even here, it works.

  The café is called Super Sucos. It’s a juice bar so I order a juice by pointing at a picture of a pink one on the menu, and the woman motions for me to sit down. I sit, and am ignored even though I am strange and foreign and have just had my purple hair shaved off. After a while a plastic cup with a lid and a straw arrives in front of me.

  ‘Obrigada,’ I say.

  ‘De nada,’ says the woman.

  The Blacks felt sorry for me because I was the offspring of murderers, and so they wanted me to have a nice life. That was kind of them. I needed parents and they needed a baby. I still managed to grow up demonic.

  Maybe they wanted me to like them so I wouldn’t kill them. Now I hate them. Perhaps I will kill them. Perhaps they are expecting it.

  The juice tastes like strawberries and watermelon. I drink it as slowly as I can, and order another, a green one this time. I sit and sip at it and keep my eyes on the table in front of me and wait for time to pass in the hope that half an hour from now I might know where to go.

  The buildings are made of concrete rather than corrugated iron and cardboard. It’s not how I thought a shanty town would look. This actually feels like the kind of place that might have somewhere for travellers to stay.

  It is less terrifying than it should be.

  I pay for my juice and say to the woman: ‘Do you speak English?’

  She speaks enough English to know that I am asking whether she speaks English, and shakes her head.

  ‘Hotel?’ I say.

  She calls a man over. They talk, and look at me, and talk about me, and I don’t like it because I might have been on the news and they might be going to call the police. They might have seen me getting out of the taxi with my purple hair.

  ‘Actually don’t worry,’ I
say quickly, and shake my head and make a forget-it gesture with my hands. I will just walk up the hill on my own and see what happens. I try to leave the café, but the man stands in my way. I am breathing too fast. My legs tremble.

  ‘You,’ he says. I look for a way past him. ‘You want hotel?’

  I swallow. ‘Yes?’ It comes out as a whisper so I say it again, more bravely: ‘Yes.’

  I am Bella Black and I am keeping us alive. I am a monster and I can do anything. I’m not going to get this far and then crumble. ‘Yes,’ I say again. ‘I want a hotel. Por favor.’

  ‘You come.’

  I follow him over to one of the men with the motorbikes. He speaks to him while I attempt to follow their gestures and catch an occasional word. When he motions for me to get on to the back of the bike I do it immediately, and the guy revs his engine and we are off. The bike vibrates under me, the engine roaring as it climbs the steep hill.

  My life is in his hands.

  Fuck it. Fuck it all.

  We swerve in between people because they are walking in the street. They are everywhere: the place is busier than I would have thought possible. A tiny child perches on the handlebars of a bicycle as her mother pedals uphill (I assume it is her mother, though of course you never know). Other motorbikes buzz around the place. People sit at plastic tables on the pavement drinking coffee and Coke and beer. A man carries a huge bag with something with white plastic edges in it. A group of young men walk, laughing, down the street. Every type of thing is for sale. There is more meat, electrical appliances, a man doing some welding with sparks flying through the air, another barber. Every corner has a trader on it.

  As we get off the main street it stops being commercial and becomes houses. I stare at them, packed together, painted in bright colours. Children are messing around with a football, and they stop to watch me pass. A young man sits on a doorstep having a shouted conversation with someone I can’t see. Two girls in white T-shirts and blue shorts, dressed identically, are doing handstands.

  I pass it all, glad to be removed from it, to be on this motorbike, even though I am entirely in the hands of a stranger in a Brazilian slum and have no idea where he is taking me.

  The roads become smaller, and then we are in an alleyway so narrow that I could put an arm out on either side and touch the walls as we pass. When the bike stops I am ready. If the man mugs me I’ll hand over the cash from my front right-hand pocket and run away. I should be able to find my way back to the place with the buses and the taxis and the juice bar, just by running down the hill.

  However, he bangs on a door and calls something. A woman comes out. She is tiny like a little bird, and looks young, and when she sees me she smiles and nods and talks at me. The driver says something to her, and she says: ‘Hello. I speak English very bad.’

  ‘I speak Portuguese very bad too,’ I say, amazed at how brave I feel. ‘But I’m going to learn.’

  ‘My name is Julia.’

  I pause, unsure of who I am. I can’t be Ella. I can’t be Chrissy, much as I’d like to remind myself of Christian, because I used that name on the island.

  ‘Lily,’ I say. As soon as the word is out of my mouth I wish I’d said something different, but it’s too late. I should say things that have no association with my old life. I am not Ella Black. Lily is Ella Black’s best friend, so that was stupid, and now it’s too late. I can’t say that I actually meant Jessica, for example. That would be crazy, and my bald head and everything else about me is already crazy enough.

  I pay the motorbike driver the small amount of money he asks for by holding up fingers, and add a tip to show that I’m grateful for the lack of kidnap and robbery. He nods, turns his bike round and drives off. Then I am just here, deep in the slum, following the woman called Julia into her house.

  It really is a guest house. The room is nicer than I expected it to be, like the whole favela so far. It’s small, with white-tiled floor and walls, and the single bed has a green nylon cover. The only window, high up in the wall, doesn’t let in much light. This feels like a place to hide. I put my bag down on the bed and ask how much it costs.

  ‘How much time?’ Julia asks.

  I take a deep breath. ‘Could I stay for a month?’ I ask.

  ‘One month? Yes, of course. You work? Teaching English?’

  ‘Yes.’ It is much easier to agree with this than it would be to attempt to explain myself in any other way, and I’m grateful I don’t have to make something up.

  We agree on a rate for a month’s rent and I don’t bother to convert it because I know I have enough money just in my bra. I insist on paying up front because that means I will have less cash for anyone to steal. I have money on me now, so I’m not going to use the credit card again for a long time. This is it. I am hiding, and I have a place to live until December.

  The bathroom is next door. Julia shows me that there is one other guest room, currently empty, and tells me that she and her husband, Anderson, live in another bedroom. The kitchen, with a table in it, is completely available to me, and there is a little sitting room with two comfy chairs. All the floors are tiled in white, and everything is faded but spotless.

  ‘I go out to work,’ she says. ‘I work here, in Rocinha. Anderson works many hours in a hotel in Ipanema.’

  It didn’t occur to me that people who work in hotels live in places like this; but of course they do. Everything I know about slums and shanty towns comes from geography lessons and City of God, and the overriding idea I had is wrong. In the school version, a slum or shanty town or favela is chaotic and desperate, with houses made from cardboard and corrugated iron, stuck together any old way. No one has a job: they are beggars, or root through bins and rubbish heaps, or sell drugs. They are different from me.

  I had to be brave to come here, but in fact it’s just a place like other places, and so far the people here have helped me out in every way I’ve asked them to. They have cut off all my hair and sold me juice and taken me on a motorbike to the exact right place and given me a bedroom.

  I remember how, a million years and also four days ago, my pretend father said that ‘they’ did tours of the favela, and the three of us winced at how horrible that would be. Actually this neighbourhood is alive. It is scary because it’s different from anything I’ve ever known, but really it’s just a place like any other, with people living in it.

  My fake parents would never have imagined that. Because they’re comfortably off they are scared of people who have nothing. They wouldn’t look for me here; and if they tried, they would struggle to find me. They’ll be looking for a girl with purple hair: I need to keep my bald head down and stay away from everyone who knows me, and also from anybody who might like the cash I’m carrying. For now, at this moment, I am all right. In fact I am bursting with adrenalin and I feel like I could fight anyone and anything.

  However, even though I have all the energy in the world, I don’t have a plan beyond hiding out. I’ll have to find some analogue entertainment. I wonder if there is a book in English anywhere nearby. If I could find a sketchbook and some pencils I would like to do some drawing. I wonder whether a bald girl sketching would be a curiosity or just ignored.

  I know I can’t really sit around reading and drawing for a month, even if I did have the materials. I would still need to eat, and so I would spend money, and eventually my money would be gone. Then I would have nothing to do and nowhere to live. I’ll try it out for a few days while I get used to being here, and then I’ll see.

  Julia gives me a glass of water and I close my door and sit on my bed. Even though I’m so wired, the moment I lie down I fall asleep, and when I wake up it’s the middle of the afternoon. I have absolutely no idea what to do and I’m scared to go out, now that my energy has been snoozed away. I look at the wall for a while and nothing happens. Then I go to find Julia, and sit with her watching the telly in the sitting room. I want to check that there’s nothing about me on the news; but actually she’s watchi
ng Seinfeld, dubbed, and I manage to concentrate on it and not think about anything else at all for several minutes. I pick up a newspaper and stare at it, and flick through the pages, trying to use my GCSE French and logic to work out the words. It’s a lot easier written down than when it’s spoken, that’s for sure.

  When I turn a page and find my face staring back at me, my head starts to ring and I think I’m going to be sick. There are blotches all over my vision. I can’t remember how to breathe.

  It’s me. I am in the paper.

  I am on page fifteen, buried but very much there, on display to anyone who picks up this newspaper and flicks through the pages. I want to translate the words, but I can’t ask Julia to help. I pick out my old name, Ella Black, and the adoptive parents’ names, Graham and Fiona Black. There is no Amanda Hinchcliffe in there, no grainy photographs, no notorious murderers. There is no waiter with a mutilated face, though he might feature in the article.

  The headline says: O MEDO AUMENTA SOBRE O DESTINO DO ADOLESCENTE DESAPARECIDA. Adolescente desaparecida. Disappeared adolescent? Desperate adolescent? Despicable adolescent? Whatever it says, this is about me and my destino. I’ve seen stories like this in the papers at home. They usually end with the discovery of a body. This one won’t. Not yet.

  The photograph is one that Dad – Graham – took on the beach three days ago, just after I did the sketch of Copacabana. In the black-and-white photo my hair looks light grey and it is long and loose. I touch the stubble on my head and wonder whether Julia thinks I have been terribly ill. In the picture I am squinting a bit because the sun is in my eyes. I’m wearing my halter top, the one I have in my bag, so I need to get rid of that. The flat line of the ocean horizon is behind me. I look happy. I am actually smiling. I attempt it now, but it feels like a strange thing to do with my mouth. The Ella in that photograph is the same as the Ella I am in my earliest memory, in which I am held up to stroke a horse’s nose. I am two. When I was two I believed what I was told about the world. Last week, although I was suspicious, I essentially believed that the world was the way I’d always known it to be.