The Other Hand (8 page)

“Yu foolish girl! Yu tink dey build dis fence for to keep us girls m? 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?”

76

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 through 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 arme.

“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 damn 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 left 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 centre, 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 straight away. 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 centre, 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 centre. 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 realised 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 realised 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 tyres 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 sheep to the right of the road and the cows to the left 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 you 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?”

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 centre. “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 towards 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 near by 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
sirius
, 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, “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 centre. 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 woollen 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.