Read Online The Other Hand by Chris Cleave - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Chris Cleave
Ads: Link
that my sister Nkiruka showed me. It was a big day’s work for a small girl. I was proud. At the end of that whole day alone in my sick bed working on my suicide tower, I realised I could just have climbed a jungle tree and jumped with my silly head first onto a rock.
This was the first time that I smiled.
I began to eat the meals they brought me. I thought to myself, you must keep up your strength, Little Bee, or you will be too weak to kill your foolish self when the time arrives, and then you will be sorry. I started to walk from the medical wing to the canteen at mealtimes, so that I could choose my food instead of having it brought to me. I started asking myself questions like: Which will make me stronger for the act of suicide? The carrots or the peas?
In the canteen there was a television that was always on. I began to learn more about life in your country. I watched programmes called Love Island and Hell’s Kitchen and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? and I worked out how I would kill myself on all of those shows. Drowning, knives, and ask the audience.
One day the detention officers gave all of us a copy of a book called Life in the United Kingdom . It explains the history of your country and how to fit in. I ‘planned how I would kill myself in the time of Churchill (stand under bombs), Victoria (throw myself under a horse), and Henry the Eighth (marry Henry the Eighth). I worked out how to kill myself under Labour and Conservative governments, and why it was not important to have a plan for suicide under the Liberal Democrats. I began to understand how your country worked.
They moved me out of the medical wing. I still screamed in the night, but not every night. I realised that I was carrying two cargoes. Yes, one of them was horror, but the other one was hope. I realised I had killed myself back to life.
I read your novels. I read the newspapers you sent. In the opinion columns I underlined the grand sentences and I looked up every word in my Collins Gem. I practised for hours in front of the mirror until I could make the big words look natural in my mouth.
I read a lot about your Royal Family. I like your Queen more than I like her English. Do you know how you would kill yourself during a garden party with Queen Elizabeth the Second on the great lawn of Buckingham Palace in London, just in case you were invited? I do. Me, I would kill myself with a broken champagne glass, or maybe a sharp lobster claw, or even a small piece of cucumber that I could suck down into my windpipe, if the men suddenly came.
I often wonder what the Queen would do, if the men suddenly came. You cannot tell me she does not think about it a lot. When I read in Life in the United Kingdom about some of the things that have happened to the women in the Queen’s job, I understood that she must think about it all of the time. I think that if the Queen and I met then we would have many things in common.
The Queen smiles sometimes but if you look at her eyes in her portrait on the back of the five-pound note, you will see she is carrying a heavy cargo too. The Queen and me, we are ready for the worst. In public you will see both of us smiling and sometimes even laughing, but if you were a man who looked at us in a certain way we would both of us make sure we were dead before you could lay a single finger on our bodies. Me and the Queen of England, we would not give you the satisfaction.
It is good to live like this. Once you are ready to die, you do not suffer so badly from the horror. So I was nervous but I was smiling, because I was ready to die, that morning they let us girls out of detention.
I will tell you what happened when the taxi-driver came. The four of us girls, we were waiting outside the immigration detention centre. We were keeping our backs to it, because this is what you do to a big grey monster who has kept you in his belly for two years, when he suddenly spits you out. You keep your back to him and you talk in
This was the first time that I smiled.
I began to eat the meals they brought me. I thought to myself, you must keep up your strength, Little Bee, or you will be too weak to kill your foolish self when the time arrives, and then you will be sorry. I started to walk from the medical wing to the canteen at mealtimes, so that I could choose my food instead of having it brought to me. I started asking myself questions like: Which will make me stronger for the act of suicide? The carrots or the peas?
In the canteen there was a television that was always on. I began to learn more about life in your country. I watched programmes called Love Island and Hell’s Kitchen and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? and I worked out how I would kill myself on all of those shows. Drowning, knives, and ask the audience.
One day the detention officers gave all of us a copy of a book called Life in the United Kingdom . It explains the history of your country and how to fit in. I ‘planned how I would kill myself in the time of Churchill (stand under bombs), Victoria (throw myself under a horse), and Henry the Eighth (marry Henry the Eighth). I worked out how to kill myself under Labour and Conservative governments, and why it was not important to have a plan for suicide under the Liberal Democrats. I began to understand how your country worked.
They moved me out of the medical wing. I still screamed in the night, but not every night. I realised that I was carrying two cargoes. Yes, one of them was horror, but the other one was hope. I realised I had killed myself back to life.
I read your novels. I read the newspapers you sent. In the opinion columns I underlined the grand sentences and I looked up every word in my Collins Gem. I practised for hours in front of the mirror until I could make the big words look natural in my mouth.
I read a lot about your Royal Family. I like your Queen more than I like her English. Do you know how you would kill yourself during a garden party with Queen Elizabeth the Second on the great lawn of Buckingham Palace in London, just in case you were invited? I do. Me, I would kill myself with a broken champagne glass, or maybe a sharp lobster claw, or even a small piece of cucumber that I could suck down into my windpipe, if the men suddenly came.
I often wonder what the Queen would do, if the men suddenly came. You cannot tell me she does not think about it a lot. When I read in Life in the United Kingdom about some of the things that have happened to the women in the Queen’s job, I understood that she must think about it all of the time. I think that if the Queen and I met then we would have many things in common.
The Queen smiles sometimes but if you look at her eyes in her portrait on the back of the five-pound note, you will see she is carrying a heavy cargo too. The Queen and me, we are ready for the worst. In public you will see both of us smiling and sometimes even laughing, but if you were a man who looked at us in a certain way we would both of us make sure we were dead before you could lay a single finger on our bodies. Me and the Queen of England, we would not give you the satisfaction.
It is good to live like this. Once you are ready to die, you do not suffer so badly from the horror. So I was nervous but I was smiling, because I was ready to die, that morning they let us girls out of detention.
I will tell you what happened when the taxi-driver came. The four of us girls, we were waiting outside the immigration detention centre. We were keeping our backs to it, because this is what you do to a big grey monster who has kept you in his belly for two years, when he suddenly spits you out. You keep your back to him and you talk in
Similar Books
