The Truth and Lies of Ella Black

by Emily Barr

  Now I know better.

  Julia looks over at me, and I force a smile and turn the page. The newspaper is called O Globo and I don’t know if it’s local or national. Not that it makes any difference, as I know no one outside Rio could possibly have seen me. My hands tremble as I turn another page, and it shakes in an invisible wind.

  I have to find a way to stay here. I don’t even speak the language. The first thing I need to do is learn it.

  ‘Will you teach me Portuguese?’ I ask Julia.

  ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘You help me with English?’

  ‘Deal.’

  After a while she offers me some of her food but I say no. I go to bed early but I can’t sleep.

  I miss Humphrey. It’s ridiculous, but I am thinking about my cat.

  I miss Lily. I miss my friend, the one who kept me on track. The one who helped me try to be good without even knowing it.

  I miss Jack, my gay boyfriend, the boy who told me his secrets and helped me out.

  I miss having a place to go every day.

  I miss my life.

  As a baby I must have missed my mother. Before I was born she was my whole world. I wonder whether they let her cuddle me before they took me away. I think I have been craving her smell all my life. I am a part of her, and I always have been.

  I wipe away the tears. I cannot cry for that woman.

  I think about my adoptive mother instead. I wish I could say, She’s my mum, no matter what, and I love her, because that would make everything easy, but I just can’t. Not now. She has probably spent the past eighteen years feeling sad about the babies she couldn’t have. That must have been complicated, when she actually had a baby but it came from murderers.

  I am second hand. I come from killers. She has done her best all this time, but she must have known that I had a bad thing inside me. She must have known all along.

  She tried too hard to be perfect. She made sure I ate lots of vegetables. She painted my bedroom exactly the way I wanted it. She got me into the best school, encouraged me to work hard and drove me everywhere I wanted to go. She was driving me to school last week, while everyone else walked or cycled or even drove their own car. She cooked dinner for me and Dad every night, and picked at a salad herself.

  The other mothers were different; mine worked harder at it than any of them. Even Jack’s mum dashed around taking his little brothers to Scouts and to church things, and made a point of saying how lovely it was to see me, and that we should help ourselves to juice and always leave the bedroom door open. We laughed about that when she was gone.

  All the other mothers were different from each other, and all were interesting. All seemed like human beings who happened to be temporarily responsible for some children. Mine was the mother who was terrified of everything, who quadruple-locked the door, who would never have to drop everything to help me out because she was never, ever doing anything that she might need to drop.

  I wonder now whether she was on Valium like women used to be in the fifties. I bet she fantasized about the imaginary biological family. The real Ella died in the womb again and again, and they had to put up with me.

  I was the demon all along.

  Real Ella would have had a brother – they would definitely have gone for a nuclear family. He would have been called something unexceptional like Tom. Tom Black would have been a cheeky blond poppet who climbed trees and whom everyone loved even though he was ‘spirited’. In time he would have calmed down and ended up working in the financial sector like his dad.

  But they couldn’t have any of that. My adoptive mother must be devastated that I tried to stab her and I bet she’s a tiny bit pleased that I’ve run away. My so-called parents raised me almost to adulthood, so they did their job. It’s finished. Soon I will write to them and tell them that I’m fine, that I’ve got a job, that I’ll see them again one day. Now she can become whoever Fiona Black really is. She can do her own thing and blossom. Her burden is lifted. I can never trust myself to go near her again: I would probably fly at her again, and this time I might succeed.

  So all I have to do is become fine and get a job.

  I have no idea how you get a job.

  I live in the favela.

  I need a job.

  I will need money. I have never not had money.

  I didn’t have money in the first part of my life.

  I had nothing.

  I was taken

  into

  care.

  I stay awake all night. I don’t seem to need sleep in the way I used to any more.

  I hear Anderson coming home. Julia talks to him, and I know she must be telling him about me. As soon as I hear the low rumble of his voice something changes. I know I should be worrying about him.

  He works at a tourist hotel.

  I realize that I cannot hide in his house. He works at a tourist hotel, and I am in the paper because the police are looking for me. It must say in the paper that I have purple hair. Now I have no hair. A person with distinctive hair, hiding, would cut it off. My baldness is not really much of a disguise.

  I can’t even get a wig now because Julia will have told him about me; she will have said that I have no hair, because that is the most remarkable thing about me.

  And I have the same face as the girl in the paper because the girl in the paper is me.

  And he works at a hotel in tourist Rio, and that is where people are looking for me.

  After a while they go to bed. It is quiet. Sometimes there are voices outside, but there is no gunfire and nothing that sounds like trouble. For a shanty town it seems very peaceful.

  I wish I hadn’t told Julia my name was Lily. My best friend Lily might have been in the papers herself, worrying about me. Julia will have told her husband that I am Lily. At the hotel he will tell everyone that there is an English girl here called Lily. Since people are looking for an English girl, word could get back to the Blacks that there is a bald English girl here, and when they hear the name Lily they will know.

  I can’t stay here.

  I realize it with horror. If I want to stay hidden, then I cannot stay in this lovely little room buried in the favela with the friendly landlady who lets me watch Seinfeld with her and is going to teach me Portuguese.

  I stumbled upon a nice place and I paid for a month’s rent, but I have to leave. I need to be on my own. If I stay here the police will come and arrest me for hurting that poor man.

  I desperately want to stay, but I have to go.

  I am terrified. I remember thinking about applying to university or art college. I thought those were the kinds of decisions I was going to have to make. Instead my decisions are: drown myself or run to the favela? Stay here and risk being arrested for hurting someone, or run away into the unknown?

  I stare at the wall and try to make myself strong enough to go out and find a way to live.

  I cannot stay.

  I cannot stay.

  I cannot stay.

  9

  28 Days

  For the second morning in a row I get up early and creep away. I walk out into the favela with no plans and less money than I would like. It is dawn and the light is pale. The door clicks shut behind me.

  That is it: I cannot go back to Julia’s house. The early-morning sun is tickling my face, and I am standing on the hard earth of the alley. Then I am walking away, my few possessions and all my money in a bag over my shoulder.

  The only creature I see is a chicken. She fixes me with a glare and struts away. When I get back to the tarmacked road, however, I see that there are plenty of people around. Across the road a woman in a black-and-white uniform with a name badge is climbing on to the back of a motorbike, and then the bike speeds away down the hill, taking her to work at, judging by her clothes, a tourist hotel.

  A man in a green jumpsuit walks past so closely that I step back in surprise, but he turns and grins and waves a hand in greeting or apology. He too is going to work somewhere in the city; somew
here outside the favela. All the way down the hill I see people walking down to where the buses stop or getting on to the backs of motorbikes.

  There is a police car driving slowly up the hill, and I turn away and walk up a bit and duck down the first alley I see. I go on to the end, turning sharp right and then left, wondering whether I am in someone’s garden but always finding a small gap to squeeze through to the next place. At least no car can follow me here. All I can do is keep walking and hope that I don’t stroll into something terrible and get shot.

  I take a step, and then another. I can only live from one step to the next. A teenage boy, younger than me, is fixing a bike, and he stares as I pass but says nothing. I don’t smile but I don’t not-smile either. We make eye contact, and I keep going.

  When I come to a wider road I follow it uphill because I know that downhill leads to buses and cars and people who might have seen me in the paper. I keep walking, knowing that I am hungry, knowing that I am going to have to make a plan, and then I come to a stretch of grass that, as I get closer, becomes a little football field. It has a view of the entire city and the sea and the mountains.

  I walk across the grass and stand and stare. Below, the water is glinting and gleaming in the sunshine. The mountains are the same ones I painted at school, but they are a million times more beautiful in real life, and now I am standing on one of them. There is a cool breeze blowing into my face, and although it is early it’s warm. In spite of everything – in spite of the fact that I have gone into exile in a Brazilian shanty town and have no particular future in sight – I must be in the most beautiful place on the planet.

  I am homeless in paradise. I cannot hear anything except the buzz of distant engines somewhere behind me. The air is fresh and smells of the sea. A cluster of chickens peck at the ground in the distance.

  I am thankful that it’s early. I have a day to find myself a new place to stay.

  I can’t last until night time without sleep, so I end up on a beach, dozing while trying to look like a tourist. If I curled up on someone’s doorstep and dozed, the police would find me. However, if I sleep on the beach behind a pair of cheap sunglasses, with a cotton scarf wrapped around my head, I look enough like everyone else to get away with it. I hope I do, anyway.

  I bought the glasses and the scarf at a little stall on my way down the hill. They are my disguise and my protection. My head was burning, and now it is covered in factor 30 and the stubble has gone all weird, and it’s covered with my scarf anyway.

  I’m at the end of a beach I found by walking in the opposite direction to the city. I should stay away from tourist places. This beach is busy enough to make me feel I can blend in a little, but it’s different from the glossy beaches in the city. There aren’t as many people selling things. It feels very different from the favela, and very different from Copacabana too.

  I don’t have a bikini with me, but I think I could go into the water in my underwear without anyone particularly noticing. My underwear needs a wash anyway.

  My mind races, even as I lie flat on the beach, but I can’t decide anything. I go round in circles. I could find another guest house and hide out for a week or so, and then go back to the Blacks and face whatever is coming to me because I can’t really avoid it forever. I could find out where people learn English, like Julia said, and try to become a teacher, even though I should be at school myself. I could take the credit card back into the city and get more money out. I think I’ll try that, and ask at Super Sucos for another hotel. I try to stop thinking; I try to empty my head of all its stuff. I won’t be able to think straight without some sleep. I’ll end up making a mad, hallucinatory plan that makes no sense.

  I lie so still that I must look like yet another person soaking up the sunshine without a care in the world. Nobody can tell that I’m the child of murderers, brought up by liars. They can’t tell that I met the love of my life and had to walk away so he would never know what I am. They can’t tell that I cut a man’s face when I was trying to hurt my adoptive mother.

  That fact is worse now that I know the truth about myself. I hurt someone like my birth parents did. I could have killed that man. Perhaps I did. I have bad blood. I was showered with every material thing; and I still grew up violent. I kill little creatures. I have tried to hurt myself on occasion, to stop me hurting anyone else.

  I told Christian about Bella and he didn’t hate me. I thought I could tell him everything, until I found out the worst thing of all. I cannot tell him that. I just can’t.

  The thoughts make me too agitated to sleep. I gather my stuff into my arms and carry it to the water’s edge. I leave it there, on the last bit of dry sand, and take off my T-shirt and shorts and scarf and run into the sea in my underwear. The water is murkier than it is round the corner on the big showpiece beaches, but I don’t care. It’s cleaner than it was on the island. I wade in and sink down so it covers my shoulders. I swim out, even though I’m swimming into murk. I hold my head underwater and rinse the place where my hair used to be. I spring back up and check my clothes are where I left them, with my bag underneath them. They are. No one is looking at me. People are probably fighting their own battles.

  I swim along parallel to the beach, and it makes me remember how tired I am, so I head out of the water to pick up my things. The sand is hot under my feet.

  I go back to the spot I left, further up the sand. There are more people around now, but I don’t pay them any attention because if I did I would become paranoid about them looking at my bald head and recognizing my face from the paper. I quickly pull my T-shirt on over my wet body and squeeze into my shorts, and I lie back and close my eyes.

  When I wake up I am lying on the powdery sand of a beach whose name I don’t know, in the glare of a perfect sun, sweating and overdressed in shorts and a T-shirt. I have no hair. I am in Brazil. I am alone. It comes back to me in a rush.

  The loneliness hits me in the face for the first time because I’m not running any more. I am just here, in a random place, on my own. The excitement of the running-away has gone. I don’t know if I’m Ella or Bella or someone completely new. I’m limp and exhausted and I try to list the things that are important.

  I need a place to sleep tonight. So I have to go and ask for another guest house.

  I don’t want to go back to the Blacks or to Julia and I don’t want the police to find me, so I must find somewhere else to stay round here, even if it’s just for a bit.

  I’m going to be eighteen soon so I need to make my own decisions.

  I could go somewhere else in Brazil, or I could fly home. If I got through the airport without being arrested and thrown into scary Brazilian prison, I could go home and find a job and a flat. But I don’t have any qualifications and I know that Britain will absolutely not hand me such things. I don’t want to go back there.

  I could go to the Amazon, up in the north of Brazil. I’d be impossible to find up there. Someone would want to learn English, or I could just clean out the Blacks’ credit card and go off and see what happens. I will need to learn Portuguese and keep my head down.

  I reach for my bag to check how much money I have left.

  I feel around. I have cash and the credit card in here. I can get a bus to the north; that feels like the best plan. I feel into the corners. It is in here. I put it here. It has been right next to me the entire time. I checked it was all there when I came out of the sea.

  I sit up and look around. There are a few groups of people nearby. No one is looking. No one is holding up my money and card and laughing. I turn my attention back to the bag, noticing that my scarf has gone. I pile my things on the sand and turn it inside out and shake it, but there is no money in there.

  There is definitely no money.

  I have lost all my money.

  Lost my money.

  I

  have

  nothing.

  Someone stole my money and my credit card while I was asleep.

  I should have
put some money in my pockets again. It was so much less money than yesterday but I was wet from the sea and I didn’t even think of it.

  I try to imagine a human being creeping right up to me while my eyes were closed, and picking up my bag, and taking every last real out of it, as well as the card, which I had already stolen.

  I stand at the edge of the water and scream as loudly as I can out to sea. I scream and scream and scream. I cry. I shout. I swear. My voice is carried away on the breeze.

  This is as far as I can go. I cannot carry on without money. I need to find a police station and hand myself in and see what happens. I need to get a police car to take me away.

  I can’t. I can’t go to prison. I’m too scared. I can’t look Fiona Black in the eye, knowing that I tried to attack her with a broken bottle. I can’t look at the man I wish was my real dad, knowing that he grabbed my arm to stop me slashing at his wife. I can’t. That is a bare fact.

  It takes me ages to walk to Leblon, which is the name of Ipanema Beach at the favela end. I get there, sweaty and smelly, hungry and desperately thirsty, and I know that this is it. I will either flag down a police car and give myself up, or I’ll dodge the police and do something else. I have no idea, at the moment, which it is going to be. I walk along the edge of a different favela, which goes up the hillside, and then I head down into the smart, shiny, tourist part of the city.

  I don’t look like Ella Black. I look like Bella Carr. I don’t bother about being recognized because either I will be or I won’t and there is nothing I can do to change it. The beach is busy, and the water is crystal clear, so the first thing I do is go for another swim. I wash my head in salt water and kick around listlessly with tired legs. This time I don’t worry about anyone stealing my stuff because I haven’t got anything worth stealing. For a moment this feels like freedom.

  I stand on the sand and look around. A man catches my eye and smiles and mimes stroking my head but I frown and he looks away. I walk along the beach, looking at the people.