Free The Other Hand by Chris Cleave

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.”
    “So how come yu so quiet, if yu know so dam 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 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