Little Bee

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Book: Little Bee by Chris Cleave Read Free Book Online
Authors: Chris Cleave
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

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