Little Bee (6 page)

“Why de hell yu laughin, Little Bug?”

“My
name is Little Bee, Yevette, and I am laughing because of this fence.”

Yevette
looked up at it.

“My
god, darlin, yu Nye-jirryians is worse dan yu look. Yu tink dis fence is funny,
me hope me never see de fence yu considda to be
sirius
.
”

“It
is the razor wire, Yevette. I mean, look at us girls.
Me with
my underwear in a see-through plastic bag and you in your flip-flops, and this
girl in her nice yellow sari, and this one with her documents.
Do we
look like we could climb that fence? I am telling you, girls, they could take
away that razor wire and they could put pound coins and fresh mangoes on the
top of the fence and we still could not climb out.”

Now
Yevette started to laugh,
WU-ha-ha-ha-ha,
and she
scolded me with her finger.

“Yu foolish girl!
Yu tink dey build dis fence for to
keep us girls
in
?
Yu crazy?
Dey build dis fence for to keep all de boys
out.
Dem
boys know de quality of de oomans dey keep lock up in dis place, dey be brekkin
down de doors!”

I
was laughing, but then the girl with the documents spoke. She was sitting on
her heels and looking down at her Dunlop Green Flash trainers.

“Where
all of us going to go?”

“Wherever
de
taxi take
us, yu nah see it?
An
den we take it on from dere. Brighten up dat gloomy face, darlin!
We going
dere,
in
England.
”

Yevette
pointed her finger out through the open gate. The girl with the documents
looked up at where she was pointing, and so did the sari girl, and so did I.

It
was a bright morning, I told you this already. It was the month of May and
there was warm sunshine dripping through the holes between the clouds, like the
sky was a broken blue bowl and a child was trying to keep honey in it. We were
at the top of the hill. There was a long tarmac road winding from our gate all
the way to the horizon. There was no traffic on it. At our end the road
finished where we sat—it did not go anywhere else. On both sides of the road
there were fields. And these were beautiful fields, with bright green grass so
fresh it made you hungry. I looked at those fields and I thought, I could get
down on my hands and my knees and put my face into that grass and eat and eat
and
eat.
And that is what a very great number of
cows were doing to the left of the road, and an even greater number of sheep to
the right.

In
the nearest field a white man in a small blue tractor was pulling some implement
across the ground, but do not ask me what
was its function
.
Another white man in blue clothes that I think you call
overalls,
he was tying a gate closed with bright orange rope. The fields were very neat
and square, and the hedgerows between them were straight and low.

“It
is big,” said the girl with the documents.

“Nah,
it ain’t
nuthin,
” said Yevette. “We jus got to get
to London.
Me
know pipple dere.”

“I
do not know people,” said the girl with the documents. “I do not know anyone.”

“Well,
yu jus gonna do yore best, darlin.”

The
girl with the documents frowned.

“How come there no one here to help us?
How come my caseworker she not here
to fetch me? How come they give us no release papers?”

Yevette
shook her head.

“Ain’t
yu got nuff papers in dat bag of yours already, darlin? Some people, yu give em
de inch, dey want de whole mile.”

Yevette
laughed, but her eyes looked desperate.

“Now
where is dat dam taxi?” she said.

“The
man on the phone said ten minutes.”

“Feel
like ten years already, truth.”

Yevette
fell quiet. We looked out over the countryside again. The landscape was deep
and wide. A breeze blew across it. We sat there on our heels and we watched the
cows and the sheep and the white man tying the gates closed around them.

After
some time our taxi came into sight. We watched it from the moment it was a
small white speck at the distant end of the road. Yevette turned to me and she
smiled.

“Dis
taxi driver, he soun cute on de phone?”

“I
did not talk to the driver. I only talked to the taxi controller.”

“Eighteen
month
I gone
without a man, Bug. Dis taxi driver
better be a rill Mister Mention, yu know what I’m sayin? Me like em tall, wid a
bit o fat on em. Me no like no skinny boys.
An
me like
em dress fine. Got no time
fo
loosers, ain’t dat right?”

I
shrugged. I watched the taxi getting nearer. Yevette looked at me.

“What
sorta man yu like, Lil Bug?”

I
looked at the ground. There was grass there, pushing out of the tarmac, and I
twisted it in my hands. When I thought about men, I felt a fear in my belly so
sharp it was like knives piercing me. I did not want to speak, but Yevette
nudged me with her elbow.

“Come
on, Bug, what sorta boy be madam’s type?”

“Oh,
you
know,
the usual sort.”

“What?
What yu mean, de
yoo
-sual sort?
Tall,
short, skinny, fat?”

I
looked down at my hands.

“I
think my ideal man would speak many languages. He would speak Ibo and Yoruba
and English and French and all of the others. He could speak with any person,
even the soldiers, and if there was violence in their heart he could change it.
He would not have to fight, do you see? Maybe he would not be very handsome,
but he would be beautiful when he spoke. He would be very kind, even if you
burned his food because you were laughing and talking with your girlfriends
instead of watching the cooking. He would just say,
Ah,
never mind.
”

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?”