Little Bee

“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 lef 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 center, 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 straightaway. 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 center, 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 center. 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 realized 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 realized 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 tires 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 cows to the left of the road and the sheep to the right 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 yu so smart but yu ignorant.”