Little Bee (9 page)

“It
is hard for me to think about the day I met Andrew and Sarah, Yevette. Now I
cannot decide if I should go to visit them or not.”

“So
tell me all bout it, Bug. Me tell yu if dey sound good
fo
yu.”

“I
do not want to talk about it with you, Yevette.”

Yevette
put her fists on her hips and made her big eyes at me.

“Well
get
yu,
lil miss Africa!”

I
smiled.

“I
am sure there are parts of your life you do not like to talk about, Yevette.”

“Only
so
yu
no get
jealous,
Bug.
Me tell yu some of de tings me done in me life of ease
an
luxury, yu be gettin yu self so jealous you gonna
explode,
and den Sari Girl over dere gonna have to mop up de mess, an she looks tired
enough, yu ask me.”

“No,
I am serious, Yevette. Do you talk about what happened to you, to make you come
to the United Kingdom?”

Yevette
stopped smiling.

“Nah.
Me tell pipple what happen to me, dey ain’t
nivver gonna believe it. Pipple tink Jamaica be all sunshine
an
ganja an Jah Rastafari. But it ain’t. Yu get on de wrong side of de politics,
Bug, dey gonna make yu
suffah.
An
dey gonna make yore
famly
suffah.
An
me don’t mean suffah, like no ice cream fo a week. Me mean suffah, like you
wake up in you chillen’s blood,
an
suddenly yo house
is very very quiet, fo ivver an ivver, amen.”

Yevette
sat completely still and she looked down at her flip-flops. I put my hand on
her hand. Above our heads the chains swung to and fro, and then Yevette sighed.

“But
pipple nivver believe dat about me country.”

“So
what did you tell the man from the Home Office?”

“For me asylum interview?
You wanna know what I tole him?”

“Yes.”

Yevette
shrugged.

“I
tole him if he arrange to get me release from dat place, he can do what he want
wid me.”

“I
don’t understand.”

Yevette
rolled her eyes.

“Well
thank de lord de Home Office man was a lil bit smarter dan yu, Bug. Yu nivver
notice dey interview rooms didn’t have
no
windows? Me
swear to yu, dat man’s ooman mus of kept her legs cross for de las ten year, de
way he took me up on me offer.
An it
wasn’t jus on de
one day, mind. It took de man
four in
terviews fore
he was certain me papers was in order, yu know what I’m sayin?”

I
stroked her hand.

“Oh Yevette.”

“It
was nuthin, Bug. Compare to what dey do to me, if I be sent back to Jamaica?
Nuthin.
”

Yevette
smiled at me. The tears flowed from the corners of her eyes and around the
curve of her cheek. I started to wipe her tears away and then I started crying
as well, so Yevette had to wipe my tears too. It was funny, because we could
not stop crying. Yevette started laughing, and then I was laughing too, and the
more we laughed the more we could not stop crying, until we made so much noise
that the sari girl hissed at us to shush so we would not disturb the woman with
no name, who was making crazy talk to herself in some language.

“Oh,
look at de state of us, Bug. What we gonna do wid ourselves?”

“I
do not know. You really think you were released because of what you did with
the Home Office man?”

“Me
know
it, Bug.
De man even tole me de
date.”

“But
he didn’t give you your papers?”

“Uh-uh.
No papers. Him
say
dere a limit to his powah, yu see
what I’m sayin? He be tickin one little box on de computer to tell dem officers
to let us free, him can jus say,
Me
hand slipped.
But approvin de asylum application? Dat’s a
diffren story.”

“So
you’re illegal now?”

Yevette
nodded.

“Yu
an
me both, Bug. Yu an me
an
dem other two also. All four of us gettin let out cos of what I done
fo
de Home Office man.”

“Why all four of us, Yevette?”

“Him
say it look suspicious on im, if it just be me gettin let go.”

“How
did he choose the rest of us?”

Yevette
shrugged.

“Close
is eyes and stick a pin in de list, I dunno.”

I
shook my head and looked down.

“What?”
said
Yevette.
“Yu no like it, Bug?
Yu girls should uh
preshie
-ate what I done
fo
yu.”

“But
we can’t do anything without papers, Yevette. Don’t you see? If we had stayed,
if we had gone through the proper procedure, maybe they would have released us
with papers.”

“Uh-uh,
Bug, uh-uh. It
don’t
work like dat. Not for pipple
from Jamaica,
an
not for pipple from Nye-
Jirrya
neither. Get dis into yore head, darlin: dere is
only one place where de proper procedure ends,
an
dat
is de-por-tay-SHUN.”

She
tapped the syllables out on my forehead with the palm of her hand, and then she
smiled at me.

“If
dey deport us, we gonna be killed when we get back home.
Right?
Dis way at leas we got a chance, darlin, yu better believe it.”

“But
we can’t work if we are illegal, Yevette. We can’t earn money. We can’t live.”

Yevette
shrugged.

“Yu
can’t live if yu dead, neither.
Yu probly too smart to get
dat.”

I
sighed and I shook my head. Yevette grinned.

“Dat’s
what I like to see,” she said.
“A young ting like yu being
rill-
istic.
Now, lissen.
Yu tink dese English people yu know could help us?”

I
looked down at the driver’s license.

“I
do not know.”

“But
yu don’t know
no one
else, huh?”

“No.”

“
An what
we gonna do when we get dere, if I come wid yu?”

“I
don’t know. Maybe we could find work, somewhere where they do not ask us for
papers.”

“Easy fo yu.
Yu smart, yu talk nice.
Plenty work fo a girl like yu.”

“You
talk nice too, Yevette.”

“
Me
talk like a ooman who
swallowed
a ooman who talk nice. Me
dumb,
yu nuh see it?”

“You
are not dumb, Yevette. All of us who have got this far, all of us who have
survived—how can we be dumb? Dumb could not come this far, I am telling you.”

Yevette
leaned in toward me and whispered.

“Are
you
sirius
? Yu no see de
way Sari
Girl start
gigglin at dat taxi back dere?”

“Okay.
Maybe Sari Girl is not very clever. But she is prettier than all of us.”

Yevette
made her eyes big and snatched her see-though bag closer to her body.

“Dat
hurts, Bug. How dare yu say she de prettiest? Me was gonna share me pineapple
slice wid yu, but now yu on ya
own,
darlin.”

I
giggled, and Yevette smiled and rubbed the top of my head.

Then
we turned around very fast because there was a scream from the girl with no
name. She was standing on her bed and she held her bag of documents against her
chest with both hands, and she started to scream again.

“Make
them stop coming! They will kill us all, you girls do not understand!”

Yevette
stood up and walked over to her. She looked up at the girl with no name. The
hens pecked and clucked around Yevette’s flip-flops.

“Lissen darlin.
Dese ain’t mens commin to kill yu, I tole yu
before. Dese is
chickens.
Dey is more scared of us
dan we
is
of dem. Look yu!”

Yevette
put her head down and ran into a group of hens. There was a great explosion of
flapping wings and flying feathers, and the hens were jumping up onto the
mattresses, and the girl with no name was screaming and screaming and kicking
at the hens with her Dunlop Green Flash trainers. Suddenly she stopped
screaming and pointed. I could not see where she was pointing because there were
hen feathers everywhere, falling down in the bright beams of sunshine from the
skylights. Her pointing finger was trembling and she was whispering,
Look
! Look!
My child!

All
of us girls were looking, but when the feathers finished falling there was nothing
there. The girl with no name, she was just smiling at a bright beam of sunlight
on the clean gray-painted floor. There were tears falling from her eyes.
My child,
she said, and she held her arms outstretched
toward the beam of light. I watched her fingers trembling.

I
looked at Yevette and the sari girl. The sari girl looked down at the floor. Yevette
shrugged at me. I looked back at the girl with no name and I spoke to her.

“What
is your child’s name?”

The
girl with no name smiled. Her face shone.

“This
is Aabirah. She is my youngest. Isn’t she beautiful?”

I
looked at the place she was looking.

“Yes.
She is lovely.”

I
looked at Yevette and made my eyes wide at her.

“Isn’t
she lovely, Yevette?”

“Oh.
Yeah. Sure.
She a rill heartbrekka.
What yu say yu
callin her?”

“Aabirah.”

“Dat’s
nice. Lissen, Aa-BI-rah, why don’t yu come wid me,
an
help me chase de fowls outta dis barn?”

And
so Yevette and the sari girl and the youngest daughter of the girl with no
name, they started chasing the hens out of the building. Me, I sat and held the
hand of the girl with no name. I said,
Your
daughter is very helpful. Look how she chases those hens.
The girl with no name, she was smiling. I was smiling too. I think it was nice
for both of us that she had her daughter back.

If
I was telling this story to the girls from back home, then one of the new words
I would have to explain to them is
efficiency.
We
refugees are very efficient. We do not have the things we need—our children,
for example—and so we are clever at making things stretch a little further. Just
see what that girl with no name could make out of one little patch of sunlight.
Or look how the sari girl could fit the entire color of yellow into one empty
see-through plastic bag.

I
lay back on the bed and looked up at the chains. I was thinking,
That
sunshine, that color yellow, maybe I will not see very much of these now.
Maybe the new color of my life was gray. Two years in the gray detention
center, and now I was an illegal immigrant. That means
,
you are free until they catch you. That means
,
you
live in a gray area. I thought about how I was going to live. I thought about
the years, living as quiet as could be. Hiding my colors and living in the
twilight and the shadows. I sighed, and I tried to breathe deeply. I wanted to
cry when I looked up at those chains and thought about the color gray.

I
was thinking, if the head of the United Nations telephoned one morning and
said,
Greetings, Little Bee, to you falls the great honor
of designing a national flag for all the world’s refugees,
then the flag
I would make would be gray. You would not need any particular fabric to make
it. I would say that the flag could be any shape and it could be made with
anything you had. A worn-out old brassiere, for example, that has been washed
so many times it has become gray. You could fly it on the end of a broom
handle, if you did not have a flagpole. Although if you did have a spare
flagpole, for example in that line of tall white flagpoles outside the United
Nations building in New York City, then I think that old gray brassiere would
make a fine spectacle, flying in the long colorful line of flags. I would fly
it between the Stars and Stripes and the big red Chinese flag. That would be a
good trick. Thinking about this, I made myself laugh.

“What
de hell you laughin at, Bug?”

“I
was thinking about the color gray.”

Yevette
frowned.

“Don’t
yu go crazy too please, Bug,” she said.

I
lay back on the bed and I looked up to the ceiling, but all that was there were
those long chains dangling down. I thought
,
I could hang myself by the neck from those, no problem.