Little Bee (7 page)

I
smiled and shook my head.

“Well
all right den. Don
be
fraid. Me come wid yu, any road.
Keep a check on dem monkey manners you got.”

Yevette
turned to the girl with the documents.

“What
bout you, lil miss no-name?
You commin wid?”

The
girl looked back at the detention center.

“Why
they didn’t give us more help? Why they didn’t send our caseworkers to meet
us?”

“Well,
cos dey did not elect to
do
dat, darlin. So what yu
gonna do? Yu gonna go back in dere, ask em
fo
a car,
an a boyfren, an mebbe some nice
jool
-rie?”

The
girl shook her head. Yevette smiled.

“
Bless
yu, darlin. An now
fo
yu, Sari
Girl. Me gonna make dis easy
fo
yu.
Yu
comin wid us, darlin.
If yu agree, say nuthin.”

The
girl with the sari blinked at her, and tilted her head to one side.

“Good.
We all in, Lil Bug.
We all walking
out of dis place.”

Yevette
turned toward me but I was still watching the girl. The wind blew at her yellow
sari and I saw there was a scar across her throat, right across it, thick like
your little finger. It was white as a bone against her dark skin. It was
knotted and curled around her windpipe, like it did not want to let go. Like it
thought it still had a chance of finishing her off. She saw me looking and she
hid the scar with her hand, so I looked at her hand. There were scars on that
too. We have our agreement about scars, I know, but this time I looked away
because sometimes you can see too much beauty.

We
walked through the gates and down the tarmac road to the bottom of the hill. Yevette
went first and I was second and the other two went behind me. I looked down at
Yevette’s heels all the way. I did not look left or right. My heart was
pounding when we reached the bottom of the hill. The rumbling noise of the
tractor grew louder until it drowned out the sound of Yevette’s flip-flops. When
the tractor noise grew quieter behind us I breathed more easily again.
It is okay,
I thought.
We have passed
them, and of course there wasn’t any trouble. How foolish I was to be scared.
Then the tractor noise stopped. Somewhere nearby a bird sang, in the sudden
silence.

“Wait,”
said a man’s voice.

I
whispered to Yevette,
Keep walking.

“WAIT!”

Yevette
stopped. I tried to go past her but she held on to my arm.

“Be
sirrius,
darlin. Where yu gonna run to?”

I
stopped. I was so scared, I was struggling to breathe. The other girls looked
the same. The girl with no name, she whispered in my ear again.

“Please.
Let us turn around and go back up the hill. These people do not like us, can’t
you see?”

The
tractor man got down from his cab. The other man, the one who was tying up the
gates, he came and joined the first man. They stood in the road, between us and
the detention center. The tractor driver was wearing a green jacket and a cap. He
stood with his hands in his pockets. The man who had been tying the gates—the
man in the blue overalls—he was very big. The tractor driver only came up to
his chest. He was so tall that the trousers of his overalls ended higher than
his socks, and he was very fat too. There was a wide pink roll of fat under his
neck, and the fat bulged out in the gaps between the bottom of his overalls and
the top of his socks. He was wearing a woolen hat pulled down tight. He took a
packet of tobacco out of his pocket, and he made a cigarette without taking his
eyes off us girls. He had not shaved, and his nose was swollen and red. His
eyes were red too. He lit his cigarette, and blew out the smoke, and spat on
the ground. When he spoke, his fat wobbled.

“You
escaped, ave you, my children?”

The
tractor driver laughed.

“Don’t
mind Small Albert,” he said.

We
girls looked at the ground. Me and Yevette, we were in front, and the girl with
the yellow sari and the girl with no name stood behind us. The girl with no
name, she whispered in my ear.

“Please.
Let us turn around and go. These people will not help us, can’t you see?”

“They
cannot hurt us. We are in England now. It is not like it was where we came
from.”

“Please,
let’s just
go.
”

I
watched her hopping from one foot to the other foot in her Dunlop Green Flash
trainers. I did not know whether to run or to stay.

“But
ave you?” said the tall fat man. “Escaped?”

I
shook my head.

“No
mister. We have been released. We are official refugees.”

“You
got proof of that, I suppose?”

“Our
papers are held by our caseworkers,” said the girl with no name.

The
tall fat man looked all around us. He looked up and down the road. He stretched
up to look over the hedge into the next field.

“I
don’t see
no
caseworkers,” he said.

“Call
them if you do not believe us,” said the girl with no name. “Call the Border
and Immigration Agency. Tell them to check their files. They will tell you we
are legal.”

She
looked in her plastic bag full of documents until she found the paper she
wanted.

“Here,”
she said. “The number is here. Call it, and you will see.”

“No.
Please. Don’t do dat,” said Yevette.

The
girl with no name stared at her.

“What
is the problem?” she said. “They released us, didn’t they?”

Yevette
gripped her hands together.

“It
ain’t dat simple,” she whispered.

The
girl with no name stared at Yevette. There was fury in her eyes.

“What have you done?”
she said.

“What
me had to do,” said Yevette.

At
first the girl with no name looked angry and then she was confused and then,
slowly, I could see the terror come into her eyes. Yevette reached out her
hands to her.

“Sorry,
darlin. I wish it weren’t
dis
way.”

The
girl pushed Yevette’s hands away.

The
tractor driver took a step forward, and looked at us, and sighed.

“I
reckon it’s bloody typical, Small Albert, I really do.”

He
looked at me with sadness and I felt my stomach twisting.

“You
ladies are in a very vulnerable situation without papers, aren’t you? Certain
people might take advantage of that.”

The
wind blew through the fields. My throat was closed so tight I could not speak. The
tractor driver coughed.

“It’s
bloody typical of this government,” he said. “I don’t give a damn if you’re
legal or illegal. But how can they release you without papers? Left hand
doesn’t know what the right hand is up to. Is that everything you’ve got?”

I
held up my see-through plastic bag, and when the other girls saw me they held
up theirs too. The tractor driver shook his head.

“Bloody
typical, isn’t it Albert?”

“Wouldn’t know, Mr. Ayres.”

“This
government doesn’t care about anyone. You’re not the first people we’ve seen,
wandering through these fields like Martians. You don’t even know what planet
you’re on, do you?
Bloody government.
Doesn’t care
about you refugees, doesn’t care about the countryside,
doesn’t
care about farmers. All this bloody government cares about is foxes and
townspeople.”

He
looked up at the razor wire of the detention center behind us,
then
he looked at each of us girls in turn.

“You
shouldn’t even be in this situation in the first place. It’s a disgrace, that’s
what it is, keeping girls like you locked up in a place like that. Isn’t that right
Albert?”

Small
Albert took off his woolen hat and scratched his head, and looked up at the
detention center. He blew cigarette smoke out of his nose. He did not say
anything.

Mr.
Ayres looked at the four of us girls.

“So.
What are we going to do with you? You want me
to go back up there with you and tell them they’ve got to hold on to you till
your caseworkers can be contacted?”

Yevette’s
eyes went very wide when Mr. Ayres said this.

“No way mister.
Me
ain’t nivver goin
back in that hell place no more. Not
fo
one minnit,
kill me dead. Uh-uh.”

Mr.
Ayres looked at me then.

“I’m
thinking they might have let you out by mistake,” he said. “Yes, that’s what
I’m thinking. Am I right?”

I
shrugged. The sari girl and the girl with no name, they just looked at the rest
of us to see what was going to happen.

“Have
you girls got anywhere to go?
Any relatives?
People
expecting you somewhere?”

I
looked at the other girls, and then I looked back at him and shook my head no.

“Is
there any way you can prove that you’re legal? I could be in trouble if I let
you onto my land and then it turns out I’m harboring illegal immigrants. I have
a wife and three children. This is a serious question I’m asking you.”

“I
am sorry, Mr. Ayres. We will not go on your land. We will just go.”

Mr.
Ayres nodded, and took off his flat cap, and looked at the inside of it, and
turned it around and around in his hands. I watched his fingers twisting in the
green cloth. His nails were thick and yellow. His fingers were dirty with earth.

A
large black bird flapped over our heads and flew away in the direction where
our taxi had disappeared. Mr. Ayres, he took a deep breath and he held up the
inside of his cap for me to see. There was a name sewn in the lining of the
hat. The name was written in handwriting on a white cloth label. The label was
yellow from sweat.

“You
read English? You see what that name label says?”

“It
says AYRES, mister.”

“That’s
right. Yes, that’s it. I am Ayres, and this is my hat, and this land you girls
are standing on is Ayres Farm. I work this land but I don’t make the law for
it, I just plow it spring and autumn and parallel with the contours. Do you
suppose that gives me the right to say if these women can stay on it, Small
Albert?”

The
wind was the only sound for a while. Small Albert spat on the ground.

“Well
Mr. Ayres, I ain’t a lawyer. I’m a cow-and-pig man at the end of the day, ain’t
I?”

Mr.
Ayres laughed.

“You
ladies can stay,” he said.

Then
there was sobbing from behind me. It was the girl with no name. She held on to
her bag of documents and she cried, and the girl with the yellow sari put her
arms around her. She sang to her in a quiet voice, the way we would sing to a
baby who was woken in the night by the sound of distant guns and who must be
soothed without being further excited. I do not know if you have a word for
this kind of singing.

Albert
took the cigarette from his mouth. He pinched it out between his thumb and
forefinger. He rolled it into a little ball and dropped it into the pocket of
his overalls. He spat on the ground again, and he put his woolen hat back on.

“What’s
she blubbin for?”

Yevette
shrugged.

“Mebbe
de girl jus ain’t used to kindness.”

Albert
thought about this. Then he nodded, slowly.

“I
could put em in the pickers’ barn, Mr. Ayres?”

“Thanks
Albert. Yes, take them there and get them settled in. I’ll get my wife to dig
out what they need.”

He
turned to us girls.

“We
have a dormitory where our seasonal laborers sleep. It’s empty at the moment. It’s
only needed around harvest and lambing. You can stay there a week, no longer. After
that, you’re not my problem.”

I
smiled at Mr. Ayres, but Mr. Ayres waved away my smile with his hand. Maybe
this is the way you would wave away a bee before it came too close. The four of
us girls, we followed Albert across the fields. We walked in a single line.
Albert walked in front in his wool hat and blue overalls. He was carrying a
large ball of bright orange plastic rope. Then it was Yevette in her purple
A-line dress and flip-flops, then me, and I was wearing the blue jeans and the
Hawaiian shirt. Behind me there was the girl with no name, and she was still
weeping, and then there was the girl in the yellow sari, who was still singing
to her. The cows and the sheep moved aside to watch us as we walked across
their fields. You could see them thinking,
Here
are some strange new
creatures that Small Albert is leading.