Little Bee

I read a lot about your Royal Family. I like your Queen more than I like her English. Do you know how you would kill yourself during a garden party with Queen Elizabeth the Second on the great lawn of Buckingham Palace in London, just in case you were invited? I do. Me, I would kill myself with a broken champagne glass, or maybe a sharp lobster claw, or even a small piece of cucumber that I could suck down into my windpipe, if the men suddenly came.

I often wonder what the Queen would do, if the men suddenly came. You cannot tell me she does not think about it a lot. When I read in LIFE IN THE UNITED KINGDOM about some of the things that have happened to the women in the Queen’s job, I understood that she must think about it all of the time. I think that if the Queen and I met then we would have many things in common.

The Queen smiles sometimes but if you look at her eyes in her portrait on the back of the five-pound note, you will see she is carrying a heavy cargo too. The Queen and me, we are ready for the worst. In public you will see both of us smiling and sometimes even laughing, but if you were a man who looked at us in a certain way we would both of us make sure we were dead before you could lay a single finger on our bodies. Me and the Queen of England, we would not give you the satisfaction.

It is good to live like this. Once you are ready to die, you do not suffer so badly from the horror. So I was nervous but I was smiling, because I was ready to die, that morning they let us girls out of detention.

I will tell you what happened when the taxi driver came. The four of us girls, we were waiting outside the Immigration Detention Centre. We were keeping our backs to it, because this is what you do to a big gray monster who has kept you in his belly for two years, when he suddenly spits you out. You keep your back to him and you talk in whispers, in case he remembers you and the clever idea comes into his mind to swallow you all up again.

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.”