The Other Hand

could think straight again?”
    “Before I could think at all. At first I was just running, running, running—getting away from where it happened, you know? Then there was the detention center. It was very bad. It is not possible to think clearly in there. You have not committed a crime, so all you can think of is, When will I be let out? But they tell you nothing. After a month, six months, you start to think, Maybe I will grow old in here. Maybe I will die here. Maybe I am already dead. For the first year all I could think about was killing myself. When everyone else is dead, sometimes you think it would be easier to join them, you know? But you have to move on. Move on, move on, they tell you. As if you are stubborn. As if you are chewing on their flowers like a goat. Move on, move on. At five P.M. they tell you to move on and at six P.M. they lock you back in your cell.”
    “Didn’t they give you any help at all in that place?”
    I sighed.
    “They tried to help us, you know? There were some good people. Psychiatrists, volunteers. But there was only so much they could do for us in there. One of the psychiatrists, she said to me, Psychiatry in this place is like serving an in-flight meal in the middle of a plane crash. If I wanted to make you well, as a doctor, I should be giving you a parachute, not a cheese-and-pickle sandwich. To be well in your mind you have first to be free, you see?”
    Sarah pressed the tissue into the corners of her eyes. “I’m not sure it’s easier out here, Bee.”
    “But I will help you.”
    Sarah smiled. “You’re sixteen years old, Bee. You’re a refugee. You’re an orphan, for god’s sake. I’m the one who ought to be helping you.”
    I pulled on Sarah’s shoulder to stop her. I took her left hand and I held it up to her. Charlie stood and looked up at us with big eyes.
    “Look, Sarah. You have helped me enough already. You cut off your own finger for me. You saved my life.”
    “I should have done more. I should have saved your sister too.”
    “How?”
    “I should have thought of something.”
    I shook my head. “You did everything you could, Sarah.”
    “But we should never have been in that situation, Bee. Don’t you see? We went on holiday to a place we had no right to be.”
    “And what if you had not been there, Sarah? If you and Andrew had not been there, then Nkiruka and me, we would both be dead.” I turned to Charlie. “Your mummy saved my life, did you know that? She saved me from the baddies.”
    Charlie looked up at his mother. “Like Batman?” he said.
    Sarah smiled, the way I was used to now, with the tears starting to come to her eyes again. “Like Batmum.”
    “Is that why you isn’t got your one finger?”
    “Why I haven’t got one finger. Yes, darling.”
    “Did the baddies take it? The Penguin?”
    “No, darling.”
    “Was it the Puffin?”
    Sarah laughed.
    “Yes darling, it was that awful Puffin.”
    Charlie grinned. Naughty naughty Puffin, he said, and he ran ahead of us down the pavement, shooting baddies with a gun that was not visible to my eyes. Sarah turned to me.
    “Bless you,” she said.
    I held tight to her arm and I placed the palm of her left hand on the back of my left hand. I arranged my fingers underneath hers so that the only one of my fingers you could see was the one that was missing from Sarah’s hand. I saw how it could be. I saw how we could make a life again. I know it was crazy to think it but my heart was pounding, pounding, pounding.
    “I will help you,” I said. “If you want me to stay then this is how it will be between us. Maybe I will only be able to stay for one month, maybe only one week. Someday, the men will come. But while I am here I will be like your daughter. I will love you as if you were my mother and I will love Charlie as if he was my brother.”
    Sarah stared at me. “Goodness,” she said.
    “What is it?”
    “Well, it’s just that on the way home from the nursery, with the other mothers, we usually talk about potty training and cakes.”
    I dropped Sarah’s hand and I looked down at the ground.
    “Oh Bee, I’m sorry,” she said. “This is all just a little bit sudden and a little bit serious, that’s all. I’m so confused. I need a bit more time to think.”
    I looked up at Sarah again. In her eyes I saw that it was new for her, this feeling of not knowing straightaway what to do. Her eyes were the eyes of a creature who has only just been born. Before it is