Nowhere Girl (11 page)

The following morning, Auntie unlocked their room early, when the sun had not yet risen, but Amina comforted herself that at least this meant they didn’t have to put up with the stinking bucket as the day warmed and the air in the small room became thick with dust. Amina couldn’t help but think of her home, of stepping out with bare feet into the canopy of olive trees, calmed by the call of the dunnocks, occasionally spotting a small brown head as they jumped from branches.

Auntie led them to the floor below and showed them the bathroom. “A shower each, yes? But quickly, everything costs money here and you too skinny things won’t take more than two minutes to clean your arses.”

Omi would be shocked at Auntie for using such a rude word, she would never say such things. But this was Europe and so things were different here, and the water was like rain, soft and cleansing. In the lukewarm shower, Amina let her hair go slick and straight, the water run through it until it squeaked. The blessings did not end, as her dress that was filthy and torn from when she jumped into the van was gone and Auntie had placed on the chair a pair of leggings and a t-shirt, both black. They seemed to Amina to be the softest, most modern clothes she had ever worn, but the leggings clung to her skinny legs and made her feel silly, like a scrawny kid. The t-shirt was too big and fell shapelessly to her waist. She didn’t mind this so much, but when she saw Jodie in her red dress, also from Auntie, she realised what was possible. Jodie’s fat stomach and wobbly thighs, her rounded chest, all looked beautiful in the tight cotton, but also made Amina blush. She assumed that Jodie had a different uniform because she was prettier than Amina, she would have looked skinny and silly in the red dress.

Jodie tugged at Amina’s t-shirt. “This is no good for you, Amina. We’ll have to ask Auntie for a thread to bring it in at the waist or you’ll never find a boyfriend.”

“I don’t want a boyfriend,” Amina quietly answered. “I want to go to school.” But the logo on her t-shirt did not mention any school. Just like Auntie’s own t-shirt it said:
Beauty Asiatique
.

Clean and dressed, the girls made their way to the ground floor, where Auntie was waiting. She looked both girls over and nodded her approval. Then she asked them to fetch their prayer mats. They formed a line in the hallway, faced East, and prayed together. Amina was glad when Fahran put his prayer mat next to her. He sneaked a smile at her, but he still didn’t speak.

For breakfast, the girls were allowed to sit in the kitchen, where Auntie had put out tea and bread, a baguette that seemed half full of air and hardly dented Amina’s appetite, a packet of cheese slices that tasted like plastic. Amina wanted to ask what was wrong with Fahran’s eye, but Auntie seemed preoccupied, checking her phone regularly as if waiting for an important message, so she thought she’d better stay silent.

Once they had each eaten a small piece of bread and one slice of cheese the plate was whipped away and Auntie ate the rest while telling them what their jobs would be for that day. “Work is important, for both of you girls. It is how you pay for this here food, for the roof over your heads. Once you have paid for that, then the money will come to you, as your wages.”

Wages! It was magical word, and Amina wondered how much this would be, and how often they would receive it. But neither of these questions were answered.

“You,” she said to Jodie, “will be picked up soon by Jak and Malik. But Amina, she has nicer manners and will stay with me.”

Despite what Auntie said about her manners Amina felt that it was because she was too gormless and girlish to leave the house. Of course Jodie would get a better job, she was prettier and sophisticated.

“And so,” Auntie thumbed Amina, her mouth still full of bread as she spoke, “we’ll train you up to work in the shop. You be nice and happy for the customers, and make sure everything is so clean, Allah himself would be amazed. Okay?”

Amina hadn’t seen the shop yet, and was nervous about dealing with customers, but she nodded eagerly. She wanted Auntie to know that she was willing to work, but there was a question that could not go unanswered. She thought of Pizzie and Omi and took a deep breath.

“Please, Auntie, what about school?” she asked, tentatively.

“The shop will teach you everything you need,” said Auntie. “You learn maths, from working till. You learn science, from the beauty products we use. And you learn languages from the customers. What more you think you need?”

Jodie laughed like this was a big joke, but Amina told herself that if she could learn all of this it may indeed be all she needed.

Auntie takes Fahran upstairs, leaving Amina to wash the pots. Jodie stands by the window, waiting to be collected, tugging at the hem of the red dress to try and pull it down. Though she doesn’t speak, Amina can hear her breathing, fast and heavy, like it was when they were on the boat. She knows Jodie is scared.

The white van finally arrives and Amina wonders where Uncle Jak had spent the night, or if it is simply that he woke before them. He is sitting in the driving seat and another man, who looks younger, is beside him. Whilst the younger man jumps out, Jak remains in the van, dabbing at his cheek with a tissue. Amina sees him use the rear-view mirror as a guide, he licks the tissue then dabs again. When he pulls it away Amina sees that Uncle Jak is bleeding.

Now that the other man has left the van, Amina can see that he is not much older than she. He has curly dark hair, but most of it is hidden inside a green woollen hat. His eyes are like the gorse in the winter, a very fine copper, and his skin is as dark as Amina’s. He could be Samir, if not for his smile, which Samir stopped doing long ago. Jodie has noticed the boy too, and as he walks into the kitchen she stands taller and sucks in her stomach. She thrusts out her hand to him. “
Salam alaikum
. I’m Jodie.”

He takes her hand, holds it for what seems to Amina to be too long, appraising Jodie in her tight red dress. “
Wa alaikum
. I’m Malik. I think you are coming with us today.” He barely notices Amina, shrunk as she is against the sink.

Jodie looks over her shoulder at Amina and winks, following Malik back to the white van with the swimming pool picture on the side. It is then that Amina remembers to call, “Ask them about Reza and Safiyya. Please find out where they are.”

But the van door shuts and Amina is not sure if Jodie heard her. She returns to tidying the kitchen.

Satisfied that everything is clean and neat, Amina heads to the stairs, wanting to return her prayer mat to her bedroom and to comb her hair through now it is dry. On the first landing she sees that Fahran’s bedroom door is open. She slows, eager to see him, resolving to speak with him this time.

But when she looks inside the room Fahran is lying on his bed and Auntie is cradling him. Beside her, on the floor, is a white tub of water and a roll of bandage, some scissors. She is trying to soothe him but the boy won’t be soothed, his mouth is open in a silent scream. Auntie looks up to where Amina is standing, revealing the desperation she is feeling. It is something Amina recognises, she had seen it on Omi’s face when Pizzie had the fever. And also more recently, when the Algerian police came and asked questions about Samir. Both times Omi had looked desperate, fearful that she was losing a child, and Auntie now reveals that same madness in her eyes; she would do anything to help her boy.

“What’s wrong with him, Auntie?” Amina asks gently.

Auntie shakes her head, as if even saying the words would be bad luck. Seeing her like this, and thinking of her own mother, Amina takes a brave step forward, longing to comfort her or help the boy if she is allowed. Fahran is barely moving, his face his pressed into the bedding as he emits a long, low sound of suffering. If she was at home, she would run to the elders for help, as Omi used to say, “Ask the experienced one, not the doctor.” The elder would boil herbs and make a poultice to take away whatever curse has taken hold. But here, in the west, it is the doctor that knows best.

“Why you not take him to the hospital, Auntie?”

Inside her gnarled hands she holds her son’s smaller pale hands. She rubs them gently, as if to bring the blood back there.

“I am afraid.”

Amina understands then, that they are in Luxembourg without papers. They are illegal. And if Auntie takes her boy to the doctor she would have to tell them so. They would send them all home, and the local Brotherhood would punish her for trying to leave, for breaking sharia law. And then there would be no schools and no jobs and no better life. Not ever.

“You are afraid of being sent back to Algeria,” Amina whispers, but Auntie looks at her like she is a fool.

“Not that,” she says, in her usual voice, the one she reserves for reminding the girls how stupid they are. “I am afraid to hear what is wrong.”

And this is something Amina finds harder to understand, but she is not a mother, and she reasons to herself that maybe she will one day.

“But the doctor would give medicine, Auntie.”

She looks at Amina again. This time there is nothing but unbearable sadness in her eyes. “I don’t know if there is enough medicine, Amina. I fear this is an illness that even the clever doctors here cannot cure.”

It scares Amina, what Auntie says. Surely the clever doctors here can cure every illness? And how can the boy be so very sick, when he is so young? There must be something that can be done. She moves forward, hoping to comfort the boy, and hearing her approach he lifts his head. Auntie is quick to place a bandage, skilled with snipping and taping it in place, but it is too late. Amina has already seen. Where an eye should be is a black space, a hollow hole rimmed with yellow puss.

“Fuck you!” she screamed, again and again, as loud as she could. She used her nails, and when one cut the bulldog’s cheek, making him yell in Arabic and then French, she stabbed him again, this time into his eye, and was glad that he screamed. As he doubled over, she kicked him in the groin.

“You fat fuck,” she yelled, pushing past him to where the back of the van was open, but squeezing in the tight passageway between the van and caravan, jumping down and landing in a heap on the gravel.

Other caravans were packed together, closed doors and drawn blinds, and Ellie could see it was very early. No-one was looking out, though someone must have heard her scream. She knew the fat fuck couldn’t wedge himself easily to follow her, but she could hear him breathing, speaking in swift French into his mobile.

She ran, down and through the maze of caravans, turning at each corner, to find a way out of the Glacis. She was so close to home, just a few miles away, if only her pounding heart and pumping feet would take her there.

She could see the ferris wheel, high above. If she could make it there she would be close to the road, she could make a car stop for her. The fairground was a ghost town, all of the rides boarded up and she pushed herself on, though the sickness was back, her head pounded and her muscles ached. She ran, passing the roller coaster, the waltzers, energised by her freedom which was so close, so close she could hear the cars on the road, and also the blood in her ears, the beat of her heart in her throat.

The fairground was surrounded by a metal barrier, but she could climb it. She had to climb it. She reached the grill, her trembling fingers finding the holes in the metal and her feet stumbling, straining to climb, but there was nothing to grip. The cars went past too fast, she screamed at them for help, sore-throated and open-mouthed, but if they could see her they couldn’t hear, and didn’t stop.

She slammed her palm onto the wire, pressed her face to it as if she could push her body through the metal, turned at the sound of running feet, bracing herself for a fight.

It wasn’t him. It was Malik. Relief flooded her, made her weak, she slid as he put his arms around her.

“You’re shaking!” he said. “Ellie? It’s okay.”

And, needing to believe him, she let him hold her, support her as she stumbled away from the fence as the bulldog rounded the corner, stopped, put his hands on his knees to draw raggedy breathe.

“It’s okay, no need to be scared,” Malik said again, and she thought he was speaking to her. But then he added, “I found her for you, Uncle. But I think it’s time we left the Glacis.”

Her mother stood at the lounge window, still waiting. Watching the street, though the only movement was people leaving for work, a couple of keen joggers.

Bridget felt like screaming, she was so close to it that she had to put Ellie’s rabbit into her mouth to stop herself. And she had to stop herself because if she started screaming she feared she’d never be silent again. The feeling started when Achim announced that he was once again abandoning her.

“The Parents’ Association are having a meeting at the school, so I’m going to go. The more attention we can get, the quicker we’ll find her.”

“Don’t leave me, Achim.”

“There’s nothing I can do here,” he’d said reasonably. But nothing about this was reasonable, and the fact that he could have sat with her, for him to simply share her pain, would have been doing enough.

But he had disappeared, out into the world that hid Ellie, leaving her to wait by the window with only the police officer for company, returning with no news, but looking a decade older, and disappearing upstairs to his study.

She bit the rabbit again, driving away the frustration she felt towards Achim. He was so busy pushing the police to do something, hounding Ellie’s friends and the school, pacing the city, that he had forgotten her. He hadn’t given her any of the attention she so desperately needed, not a moment of love. In fact, he acted with the same disregard and absence that had defined their relationship since they had moved from Heidelberg to Luxembourg. She knew their marriage was in trouble, but she had believed it was fixable. Until now.

And still, life had to go on. Gaynor had to be taken to and then collected from school, and thank God that Cate had offered to do that for her. Bridget simply couldn’t face seeing the other mothers, their sympathy and pity. Achim may be able to handle it, but she couldn’t.