Nowhere Girl (20 page)

“Fahran, would you like some breakfast?”

He nods, shy but also happy at the prospect of food. I take his little hand in mine and we go down to the kitchen, slowly because he is shaky on the steps and I don’t want him to slip.

As we walk past his bedroom, with the closed door, I do not pause. It is best he does not know about the girl.

In the kitchen I don’t ask him what he wants, as I know that all children like sweet things and also milk, so I get him a glass and put some jam on bread. Pizzie would have enjoyed this meal, and Fahran likes the jam so much that it gets smeared all around his lips which makes me laugh.

“Do you want some more?”

It is then that I realise his muteness is not simply shyness. He is struggling to speak, he has a stammer and the words come out in a gust of exertion. “No thanks.”

I take a piece of kitchen paper, lick it so it’s softer for his cheek, and wipe the jam from his chin, careful not to graze his bandaged eye with my hand. The bandage is looking dirty, but I would never dare to try and change it. That is Auntie’s job, though by the look of it, she forgot yesterday, or was too busy.

“You like jam, young man. It will make you have a fat tummy, like your father!” I place my hand on his tummy and tickle him until he laughs, properly losing his shyness for the first time, and my heart sings for Pizzie and home and for this little boy.

“Fahran, from now on, you may call me sister.”

I don’t want to leave Fahran, but there is work to do, and I am just settling him on Auntie’s bed, in front of a cartoon, when she comes to fetch me.

The first customer is already parked outside, waiting for the shop to be opened. She will look after Fahran now, it is usual that she changes his bandage as he watches the cartoons on the screen. I will not see him, or her, until later when we close for an hour over the lunch period and often he is sleeping then, and has to be woken to have his lunch.

As I turn the lock in the front door I see that Auntie is right. There is a car parked directly opposite the salon and, sitting in what should be the driver’s seat, is a black dog. Next to it, behind the steering wheel, is a woman and it is then that I know that this is a British car, and I see that she is the English woman from Tuesday. Back to have her nails done again, so soon.

I turn the sign to signify we’re open to the outside world, and see the woman leave her car, tugging her dog along with her. I am not so fond of dogs, as the ones we had in the village were often diseased and besides, they would steal food, so I was never encouraged to make friends with them. This dog seems friendly, though.

The English woman greets me, and gestures to the empty seat, the same one she sat in last time. I know Auntie told me not to speak English, but this woman seems to want to speak with me.

“
Oui
, Madame. I shall be with you. Would you like
café
, Madame?”

She says she would, and I fetch some from the filter machine that I switched on earlier. By lunchtime the pot of coffee will be gone, and I will make a second. These Europeans like their coffee.

I give the English woman her drink and take her hand to study her nails. They are still perfect. I am not sure what she can want me to do, and I ask if she wants me to change the colour. She seems uninterested in picking a different colour, so I start to give her a simple hand and arm massage, like Auntie taught me.

“Madame, your nails do not need any work. Maybe another treatment?”

She stares at me, as if it had not occurred to her that we do other things. It is true that there are not many other options.

“We have a tanning booth. You could look like you have turned golden in the sun.”

She laughs at this. I think she says something like, “Well, that would be a first!” which I understand to be a yes.

As I prepare the tanning treatment she tries to speak to me, but I keep my head low, simply nodding at her words. I prepare the lightest shade, a creamy colour just a shade darker than her own. She has pale skin and hair the colour trees turn between summer and winter, just before the leaves fall, when they are most full of fire. It was the best time in Tizi Ouzou, when the heat was not so strong, but we had not yet entered winter, which could be so cold and so long that it felt like summer would never arrive. When Samir first left to live in the mountains, I was worried, as each winter he would get ill with asthma and who would care for him if he had an attack in the hills? But he would not hear of such concerns, he told Omi that he may have a short life but it would be the noble path of jihad. He stopped noticing the leaves or flowers, then, and thought only of the path to God. He said that he hoped to arrive soon, in Allah’s house, and then he left. And it seemed he was not in the hills anyway, but in Paris.

The English woman sips her drink, and seems more interested in looking around than in making a start with the tanning. But it is just she and I in the room, there is no real hurry, so I relax. She smiles back, though she looks tired.

Finally, she steps towards the tanning room, which is just a curtained off side area with white paper on the floor and a pop-up plastic tent. She stands within it, and I wait until she is wearing only her underwear, and then I begin to spray her.

“This will not take long, Madame. Ten minutes.”

She is shaking slightly, there is some tension running through her body that I can see as surely as a charge of electricity. I work carefully but also quickly as Auntie told me to, and soon her skin is turning a shade darker.

Often customers watch my every move, inspecting my work as I spray, but she looks behind me, towards the back of the salon where the bamboo curtain is pulled back and the door is ajar, though as far as I can tell there is not much to see beyond. Just the flowers on the hallway table, Auntie’s scarves tacked to the wall. It is a simple place.

As we are not talking we can hear the television coming from the room above, the cartoons, and she lifts her head to listen.

“My brother is watching his favourite show,” I say, though I know Auntie wouldn’t approve of me divulging this, or of calling Fahran my brother. But the woman looks like she needs some conversation.

She smiles. “That’s nice. How old is he?”

I don’t know how old Fahran is, so I guess. “Five.”

I think that I’ve made a mistake, a five-year-old should be in school, wouldn’t they?

“He’s off school because he’s not well.”

“Oh,” she says. “I’m sorry to hear that. What’s wrong with him?”

She seems to shiver again, so I reassure her. “Nothing catching, Madame. And now, we are finished.”

“Thank you.”

Two minutes later she is dressed once again, she takes her purse to pay me, turning to pat her dog, patiently waiting.

“How old are you, Tina?”

She has remembered my new name from last time, and this alarms me, but pleases me too. It is a strange feeling, to want a thing that you know you shouldn’t have.

“Sixteen, thank you Madame.”

She looks closer at me, and I see she doesn’t believe this. She is about to ask me something else, and Auntie will get mad if she hears. If she sees me talking too much English she might send me back into the house. I try not to think about the girl in Fahran’s bedroom, curled on the mattress, sad and lonely. I’d rather be down here, with the bright polishes and scarves, the smell of remover and glue.

The woman’s hands still shake as I take her credit card, though I don’t know why they should.

“Are you okay, Madame?”

She looks at me. I give her my best smile, glad that Auntie is not here. She wouldn’t like that I asked a customer if she was okay.

“I’m thinking about a girl. She’s older than you, though not by very much. She’s missing and it makes me feel very sad. She was last seen at the fair. Perhaps you’ve heard about it?”

“No, Madame,” I say in my best voice. “Where has she gone?”

“No-one knows. But everyone is very worried about her.”

I put my head down, so she can’t see my face. The dandelion girl upstairs is the same one she is talking about, she must be.

“So, what is wrong with your little brother?”

The abrupt change of subject surprises me, and I realise that this woman has been listening to every word I say, making connections, even though she appeared distracted.

“He is poorly, Madame. With cancer.”

Her face falls and her free hand rises to touch her throat. “Oh, but that’s awful. Where?”

“In the head, Madame. The doctors, they took the tumour away, but he is still not as a boy his age should be. He is too tired to play.” We are silent, both listening to the cartoon jingles above our head.

“Is he having chemotherapy? Radiotherapy?”

I shake my head. I think I might cry.

“There are some excellent treatments available now,” she says. “There was a case in England, recently. A boy travelled to Prague for a special procedure, maybe you heard about it? It’s been in the news.”

“No, Madame. I do not know about this boy.”

“Well, they were saying on the news that he’s now cured. Proton therapy, that’s it. I think it’s easier to get here in Europe. What has the doctor said about your brother?”

“I am not sure, Madame. But I will ask about this new treatment.” I repeat the words in my head. I have not heard them before.

I worry about Fahran. I worry about Jodie too. Last night she hardly spoke when she came back to our room, and when she sat on the bucket to pee she took a long time, wincing like it hurt her. I don’t know if there is a new job she is doing or if she is still fooling people at the fair, but she talks about it less than she did and I have the feeling that although she is going out into the city and seeing Luxembourg, while I have not left the house, I may have been the lucky one.

Something has changed with Jodie, and now the other girl is here too, both these things make me frightened.

These thoughts run through me as I finish my work. I have forgotten the English woman is still watching me.

Before she leaves she slides a piece of paper into the palm of my hand so that I understand it is just for me. I see it is a twenty euro note.“Thank you, Madame.”

I slip the note into my sleeve before Auntie can see. Because this is for me, a tip for my work, and I will send it home to my mother.

Once the salon is closed for lunch and I have cleaned all of the surfaces, I mop the floor. Auntie will be in the kitchen, starting to heat up the soup we will all have for our lunch. I slide the note from my sleeve to study. I haven’t had any money of my own, I don’t know when I will get paid. But this money is mine, given to me by the kind English woman. Then I see that she has written on the note, or someone has. Six numbers. A phone number.

I don’t have a phone, but there is one in the salon. I’ve used it, to call clients who have left messages, or to take calls and book appointments. My language skills have got much better since being here. But to use the phone now, when the salon is closed, is risky.

Still, I call the number, watching the door for Auntie who may appear at any moment.

“Hello?”

It is the same woman’s voice, I recognise it. It is enough, to know that she has given me her phone number. She is offering me her help, if I should need it.

I replace the phone quietly and leave the salon, the note safely hidden in my sleeve. It makes me feel safer, to have some money of my own in this world that I hardly understand. To have the phone number of a woman who looks kind.

I go back into the house, eager to go upstairs to see Fahran. I pass his bedroom but the door is still closed, and I imagine the dandelion girl. It makes my heart beat fast with fear and not knowing, and I touch the money for luck.

And then I hear the girl calling:
Please
, she says, and I know she is desperately calling out to me.
Please help me
. I feel unable to walk away, even though my brain tells me this is the sensible thing to do.

I reach for the door handle, and to my surprise I find that the room is unlocked.

Inside, Auntie is bent over the girl and I see then that she is crying for help because Auntie is roughly trying to pull her up. I move closer, coming up behind Auntie, and can see that the girl is frightened.

“Auntie, let me help her.”

I offer the girl my hand, which she doesn’t take, so I kneel down beside the bed. I can smell her, the sweet urine and something stronger and foul too. The smell of fear. Her body is curled away, she is twisting from Auntie, and seems unaware that someone is now trying to help her. When I touch her on the shoulder she flinches.

“She thinks she is the queen of England, acting like this?” Auntie says, and I don’t reply because I think the reason is something different to this. Jodie and me, we are also away from our homes and families, but the dandelion girl looks broken by it. I think her story is not our story.

“I can look after her, Auntie. Why not go and sit with Fahran? I can help the girl.”

Auntie is so mad at the girl, so relieved to have an escape offered to her, that she agrees.

“Make her clean, Amina. It is not decent, the way she is carrying on. But don’t talk to her. I am trusting you to be a good girl. You understand?”

And then she leaves.

I begin by fetching a wet flannel from the bathroom, and I give it to the girl, urging her to get up and sit on the wooden stool chair, which is painted blue and Fahran-sized, but at least means I can set about stripping the mattress so I can scrub it.

“We could make a life, you know. This isn’t such a bad place to be.”

She doesn’t seem to understand what I am saying, and first I think that maybe I am wrong and she doesn’t speak English, but then she says, “What is your name?”

I hesitate, and then decide there can be no harm in telling her. “Amina.”

“Where is this place, Amina?”

I am surprised she doesn’t know. “It’s a beauty salon. At the front, anyway. This is where we live.”

“No,” she says, shaking her head, looking the wet sheet and soiled mattress. “It’s a prison.” She leans back in the stool, so her back is supported by the wall, holding her stomach as if it pains her.