Little Bee by Chris Cleave

approvin de asylum application? Dat’s a
diffren story.”
    “So
you’re illegal now?”
    Yevette
nodded.
    “Yu an me both, Bug. Yu an me an dem other two also. All four of us gettin let out cos of what I done fo de Home Office man.”
    “Why all four of us, Yevette?”
    “Him
say it look suspicious on im, if it just be me gettin let go.”
    “How
did he choose the rest of us?”
    Yevette
shrugged.
    “Close
is eyes and stick a pin in de list, I dunno.”
    I
shook my head and looked down.
    “What?”
said Yevette. “Yu no like it, Bug? Yu girls should uh preshie -ate what I done fo yu.”
    “But
we can’t do anything without papers, Yevette. Don’t you see? If we had stayed,
if we had gone through the proper procedure, maybe they would have released us
with papers.”
    “Uh-uh,
Bug, uh-uh. It don’t work like dat. Not for pipple
from Jamaica, an not for pipple from Nye- Jirrya neither. Get dis into yore head, darlin: dere is
only one place where de proper procedure ends, an dat
is de-por-tay-SHUN.”
    She
tapped the syllables out on my forehead with the palm of her hand, and then she
smiled at me.
    “If
dey deport us, we gonna be killed when we get back home. Right? Dis way at leas we got a chance, darlin, yu better believe it.”
    “But
we can’t work if we are illegal, Yevette. We can’t earn money. We can’t live.”
    Yevette
shrugged.
    “Yu
can’t live if yu dead, neither. Yu probly too smart to get
dat.”
    I
sighed and I shook my head. Yevette grinned.
    “Dat’s
what I like to see,” she said. “A young ting like yu being
rill- istic. Now, lissen. Yu tink dese English people yu know could help us?”
    I
looked down at the driver’s license.
    “I
do not know.”
    “But
yu don’t know no one else, huh?”
    “No.”
    “ An what we gonna do when we get dere, if I come wid yu?”
    “I
don’t know. Maybe we could find work, somewhere where they do not ask us for
papers.”
    “Easy fo yu. Yu smart, yu talk nice. Plenty work fo a girl like yu.”
    “You
talk nice too, Yevette.”
    “ Me talk like a ooman who swallowed a ooman who talk nice. Me dumb, yu nuh see it?”
    “You
are not dumb, Yevette. All of us who have got this far, all of us who have
survived—how can we be dumb? Dumb could not come this far, I am telling you.”
    Yevette
leaned in toward me and whispered.
    “Are
you sirius ? Yu no see de way Sari
Girl start gigglin at dat taxi back dere?”
    “Okay.
Maybe Sari Girl is not very clever. But she is prettier than all of us.”
    Yevette
made her eyes big and snatched her see-though bag closer to her body.
    “Dat
hurts, Bug. How dare yu say she de prettiest? Me was gonna share me pineapple
slice wid yu, but now yu on ya own, darlin.”
    I
giggled, and Yevette smiled and rubbed the top of my head.
    Then
we turned around very fast because there was a scream from the girl with no
name. She was standing on her bed and she held her bag of documents against her
chest with both hands, and she started to scream again.
    “Make
them stop coming! They will kill us all, you girls do not understand!”
    Yevette
stood up and walked over to her. She looked up at the girl with no name. The
hens pecked and clucked around Yevette’s flip-flops.
    “Lissen darlin. Dese ain’t mens commin to kill yu, I tole yu
before. Dese is chickens. Dey is more scared of us
dan we is of dem. Look yu!”
    Yevette
put her head down and ran into a group of hens. There was a great explosion of
flapping wings and flying feathers, and the hens were jumping up onto the
mattresses, and the girl with no name was screaming and screaming and kicking
at the hens with her Dunlop Green Flash trainers. Suddenly she stopped
screaming and pointed. I could not see where she was pointing because there were
hen feathers everywhere, falling down in the bright beams of sunshine from the
skylights. Her pointing finger was trembling and she was whispering, Look ! Look!
My child!
    All
of us girls were looking, but when the feathers