Little Bee (8 page)

He
took us to a long building beside a stream. The building had low brick walls,
as high as my shoulder, but it had a high metal roof that rose in an arch from
the walls, so that the building was like a tunnel. The metal roof was not
painted. There were no windows in the walls but there were plastic skylights in
the roof. The building stood in a dirt field where pigs and hens were
scratching at the ground. When we appeared, the pigs stayed where they were and
stared at us. The hens moved away with a nervous walk, looking behind them to
make sure we were not following.

The
hens were ready to run if they needed to. They picked up each foot with a jerky
movement and when they put the foot back down you could see the claws
trembling. They moved closer to one another and made a muttering sound. The
pitch of the noise rose each time one of us girls took a step closer, and it
fell each time the hens put the distance back between them and us. It made me
very unhappy to watch those hens. The way they moved and the noise they made,
this is exactly how it was when Nkiruka and
me
finally
left our village back home.

We
joined a group of women and girls and we ran off into the jungle one morning
and we walked until it was dark and then we lay down to sleep beside the path. We
did not dare to make a fire. In the night we heard gunshots. We heard men
screaming like pigs when they are waiting in the cage to have their throats
cut. There was a full moon that night and if the moon had opened its mouth and
started screaming I would not have been more terrified. Nkiruka held me tight.
There were babies in our group and some of them woke up and had to have songs
sung to them before they would settle. In the morning there was a tall, evil
line of smoke rising over the fields where our village was. It was black smoke
and it curled and boiled as it rose up into the blue sky. Some of the very
young children in our group asked what the smoke was from, and the women smiled
and told them,
It
is just the smoke from a volcano, little ones. It is nothing to
worry about.
And I watched the way the smiles left their faces when they
turned away from their children’s eyes and stared back into the blue sky
filling with black.

“You all right?”

Albert
was staring at me. I blinked.

“Yes.
Thank you mister.”

“Daydreaming,
were you?”

“Yes
sir.”

Albert
shook his head and laughed.

“Honestly,
you young people.
Heads in the clouds.”

He
unlocked the long building and let us in. Inside there were two rows of beds,
one row on each long wall. The beds were made of metal and they were painted
dark green. There were clean white mattresses on the beds, and pillows without
pillowcases. The floor was concrete painted gray, and it was shining and swept.
The sunlight came down in thick stripes from the skylights. There were long
loops of chain hanging down. They stretched right up into the roof, which was
the height of five men at the center of the building. Albert showed us how to
pull on one side of each chain loop to open the skylight, and on the other side
of the chain to close it. He showed us the cubicles at the end of the building
where we could take a shower or use the toilet. Then he winked at us.

“There
you go, ladies. The accommodation ain’t up to ’otel standard, I’ll grant you,
but then show me the ’otel where you can get twenty Polish girls sharing your
room and the management don’t even bat an eyelid. You should see some of the
things our harvesters get up to after lights-out. I’m telling you, I should
chuck in the livestock work and make a film.”

Albert
was laughing but the four of us
girls,
we stood there
just looking back at him. I did not understand why he was talking about films. In
my village, each year when the rains stopped, the men went to the town and they
brought back a projector and a diesel generator, and they tied a rope between
two trees, and we watched a film on a white sheet that they hung from the rope.
There was no sound with the film, only the rumble of the generator and the
shrieking of the creatures in the jungle. This is how we learned about your
world. The only film we had was called
Top Gun
and
we watched it five times. I remember the first time we saw
it,
the boys in my village were excited because they thought it was going to be a
film about a gun, but it was not a film about a gun. It was a film about a man
who had to travel everywhere very fast, sometimes on a motorbike and sometimes
in an aeroplane that he flew himself, and sometimes upside down. We discussed
this, the children in my village, and we decided two things:
one,
that the film should really be called
The Man Who Was in a Great Hurry
and
two,
that the moral of the film was that he should get up earlier so that he would
not have to rush to fit everything into his day, instead of lying in bed with
the woman with blond hair that we called
The Stay-in-Bed
Woman.
That was the only film I had ever seen, so I did not understand
when Albert said he should make a film. He did not look like he could fly an
aeroplane upside down. In fact I had noticed how Mr. Ayres did not even let him
drive his blue tractor. Albert saw us girls staring back at him, and he shook
his head.

“Oh,
never mind,” he said. “Look, there’s blankets and towels and what ’ave you in
them cupboards over there. I daresay Mrs. Ayres will be down later with some
food for you. I’ll see you ladies around the farm, I shouldn’t wonder.”

The
four of us girls, we stood in the center of the building and we watched Albert
as he walked out between the two lines of beds. He was still laughing to
himself when he walked out into the daylight. Yevette looked at the rest of us
and she tapped her finger on the side of her head.

“Nivver
mind im. De white mens is all crazy.”

She
sat down on the edge of the nearest bed and she took a dried pineapple slice
out of her see-through plastic bag and she started to chew on it. I sat down
next to her, while the sari girl took the girl with no name down the room a
little way to lie down because she was still crying.

Albert
had left the door open, and a few hens came in and began to look for food under
the beds. The girl with no name screamed when she saw the hens coming into the
building, and she pulled her knees close to her chest and held a pillow in
front of her. She sat there with her wide eyes poking out over the top of the
pillow, and her Dunlop Green Flash trainers sticking out underneath it.

“
Re-LAX,
darlin.
Dey int gonna hurt yu, dey is only
chickens, yu nah see it?”

Yevette
sighed.

“Here
we go again, huh Lil Bug?”

“Yes.
Here we go again.”

“Dat girl in a bad way, huh?”

I
looked over at the girl with no name. She was staring at Yevette and making the
sign of the cross.

“Yes,”
I said.

“Mebbe
dis is de hardest part, now dey is lettin us out. In dat detention center dey
was always tellin yu,
do dis, do dat.
No time to
tink.
But now dey all ovva sudden gone quiet, no?
Dat dangerous, me tellin yu.
Let all de bad memory come
back.”

“You
think that is why she is crying?”

“
Me
know it, darlin. We all gotta mind our heads now, truth.”

I
shrugged and pulled my knees up to my chin.

“What
do we do now, Yevette?”

“No
idea, darlin. Yu ask me, dis gonna be our nummer one problem in dis country. Where
me
come from, we ain’t got no peace but we got a
thousand rumors. Yu always got a whisper where yu can go for dis or dat. But
here we got de opposite problem, Bug. We got peace but we ain’t got
no
in-fo-MAY-shun, you know what I’m sayin?”

I
looked Yevette in the eyes.

“What
is going on, Yevette? What is this trick you have done? How come they let us
out of that place without papers?”

Yevette
sighed.

“Me
did a
favor
for one of dem immigration men, all
right? He make a few changes on de computer, jus put a tick in de right box, yu
know,
an—
POW!—up come de names for release. Yu, me
an
dem two other girls. Dem detention officers don’t be
askin
no
questions. Dey jus see de names come up on
dere computer screen dis morning and—BAM!—dey take yu from your room and dey
show you de door.
Dey don’t
care if yore caseworker be
dere to pick yu up or not.
Dey too busy peekin at de
titty-swingers in de newspaper, truth.
So here we
is
.
Free and ee-zee.”

“Except we don’t have papers.”

“Yeah.
But I ain’t afraid.”

“I
am afraid.”

“Don
be
.”

Yevette
squeezed my hand and I smiled.

“Dat’s
me girl.”

I
looked around the room. The sari girl and the girl with no name, they were six
beds farther along. I leaned in close to Yevette and I whispered to her.

“Do
you know anyone in this country?”

“Sure,
darlin. Williyam Shakespeare, Lady Diana, Battle of Britten.
Me
know dem all.
Learned de names for me Citizenship Exam.
Yu can test me.”

“No.
I mean, do you know where you will go if we can get out of here?”

“Sure
darlin. I got pipple in London.
Got de half of Jamaica livin
down on Cole Harbour Lane.
Probly bitchin on how much dey vexed by all
de Nye-
Jirrians
livin
nex
door. How bout yu? Yu got famly dere?”

I
showed her the United Kingdom Driver’s License from my see-through plastic bag.
It was a small plastic card with Andrew O’Rourke’s photo on it. Yevette held it
up to look at it.

“What
ting is dis?”

“It
is a driving license. It has the man’s address on it. I am going to visit him.”

Yevette
held the photo card close and stared at it. Then she held it far from her eyes
and squinted down her nose at it. Then she looked up close again. She blinked.

“Dis
is a
white man,
Lil Bug.”

“I
know that.”

“Okay,
okay, jus checkin.
Jus establishin whether yu blind or
stupid.”

I
smiled but Yevette did not.

“We
should stick together, darlin. Why yu no come to London wid me? For sure we
gonna find some of your pipple down dere.”

“But
I will not know them, Yevette. I will not know I can trust them.”

“
What,
and yu trust dis man?”

“I
met him once.”

“Scuse
me, Bug, but dis man don’t look like yo
type.
”

“I
met him in my country.”

“What
de hell was dis man’s business in Nye-
Jirrya
?”

“I
met him on a beach.”

Yevette
threw her head back and slapped her thighs.

“
WU-ha-ha-ha-ha!
Now
me
see.
An
dey tole me yu was a
virgin
!”

I
shook my head.

“It
was not like that.”

“Don
tell
me it wasn’t like dat, Lil Miss Sexy-Bug. Yu mus
of done
someting
to de
man,
make him want to give yu dis
vall-able dockerment.
”

“His
wife
was there too, Yevette. She is a beautiful
lady. She is called Sarah.”

“So
why he give yu his driver license? His wife be so beautiful, he be tinking,
Damn, me won’t be needin dis again, me lady so pretty I ain’t
nivver gonna drive nowhere no more, me jus gonna sit home
an
stare at de wife
?”

I
looked away.

“What,
den? Yu stole dis dockerment?”

“No.”

“What,
den? What happen?”

“I
cannot talk about it. It happened in another lifetime.”

“Mebbe
yu bin spending too much time learnin yore fancy English, Lil Bug, cos dat is
crazy talk. Yu only be livin
one
life, darlin. Don’t
matter yu don’t uh-
preshie
-ate part of it, cos it
don’t
stop bein part of yu.”

I
shrugged and I lay back on the bed and I watched the nearest chain dangling
from the roof. Every link was joined to the one before and the one after. It
was too strong for a girl like me to break. The whole chain swayed back and fro
and it shone in the sun from the skylights. Like you could pull on the grown-up
end and sooner or later you would get to the child, just like pulling a bucket
out of a well. Like you would never
be
left holding a
broken end, with nothing attached to it at all.