Chris Cleave - Little Bee

I looked across to Yevette, the tall pretty girl from Jamaica. Every time I looked at her before, she was laughing and smiling. But now her smile looked as nervous as mine.

“What is wrong?” I whispered.

Yevette moved her mouth close to my ear.

“It ain’t safe out ere.”

“But they have released us, haven’t they? We are free to go. What is the problem?”

Yevette shook her head and whispered again.

“Ain’t dat simple, darlin. Dere’s freedom as in, yu girls is free to go, and den dere’s freedom as in, yu girls is free to go till we catches yu. Sorry, but it’s dat second kind of freedom we got right now, Lil Bee. Truth. Dey call it bein a illegal immigrant.”

“I don’t understand, Yevette.”

“Yeh, an I can’t explain it to yu here.”

Yevette looked across at the other two girls, and behind her at the detention center. When she turned back to me, she leaned close in to my ear again.

“I played a trick to get us let out of dere.”

“What sort of trick?”

“Shh, darlin. Dey is too many lisseners in dis place, Bee. Trus me, we got to find someplace we can hide up. Den I can explain de situation to yu at leisure.”

Now the other two girls were staring at us. I smiled at them and I tried not to think about what Yevette said. We were sitting on our heels at the main gate of the detention center. The fences stretched away from us on both sides. The fences were as high as four men and they had razor wire on the tops, in nasty black rolls. I looked at the other three girls and I started giggling. Yevette stood up and she put her hands on her hips and made big eyes at me.

“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.”