Excerpt from Little Bee by Chris Cleave, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

So the girl with the telephone receiver, she asked her again. What? she said. Yu' no talk neither? How come yu' not know the name dis place we at?

Then the third girl in the queue, she just pointed her eyes up at the ceiling, and so the girl with the telephone receiver pointed her own eyes up at the ceiling for a second time. I was thinking, Okay, now the detention officer has looked at the ceiling one time and girl three has looked at the ceiling one time and girl one has looked at the ceiling two times, so maybe there are some answers up on that ceiling after all. Maybe there is something very cheerful up there. Maybe there are stories written on the ceiling that go something like the-men-came-and-they-

brought-us-colorful-dresses-

fetched-wood-for-the-fire-

told-some-crazy-jokes-

drank-beer-with-us-

chased-us-till-we-giggled-

stopped-the-mosquitoes-from-biting-

told-us-the-trick-for-catching-the-British-one-pound-coin-

turned-the-moon-into-cheese-

Oh, and then they put me in here.

I looked at the ceiling, but it was only white paint and fluorescent light tubes up there.

The girl on the telephone, she finally looked at me. So I said to her, The name of this place is the Black Hill Immigration Removal Centre. The girl stared at me. Yu' kiddin' wid me, she said. What kine of a name is dat? So I pointed at the little metal plate that was screwed on the wall above the telephone. The girl looked at it and then she looked back to me and she said, Sorry darlin', I can not ridd it. So I read it out to her, and I pointed to the words one at a time. black hill immigration removal centre, high easter, chelmsford, essex. Thank you precious, the first girl said, and she lifted up the telephone receiver.

She said into the receiver: All right now listen mister, the place I is right now is called Black Hill Immigration Removal. Then she said, No, please, wait. Then she looked sad and she put the telephone receiver back down on the telephone. I said, What is wrong? The first girl sighed and she said, Taxi man say he no pick up from dis place. Then he say, You people are scum. You know dis word?

I said no, because I did not know for sure, so I took my Collins Gem Pocket English Dictionary out of my see-through bag and I looked up the word. I said to the first girl, You are a film of impurities or vegetation that can form on the surface of a liquid. She looked at me and I looked at her and we giggled because we did not understand what to do with the information. This was always my trouble when I was learning to speak your language. Every word can defend itself. Just when you go to grab it, it can split into two separate meanings so the understanding closes on empty air. I admire you people. You are like sorcerers and you have made your language as safe as your money.

So me and the first girl in the telephone queue, we were giggling at each other, and I was holding my see-through bag and she was holding her see-through bag. There was one black eyebrow pencil and one pair of tweezers and three rings of dried pineapple in hers. The first girl saw me looking at her bag and she stopped giggling. What you starin' at? she said. I said I did not know. She said, I know what you t'inking. You t'inking, Now the taxi no come for to pick me up, how far me going to get wid one eyebrow pencil an one tweezer an three pineapple slice? So I told her, Maybe you can use the eyebrow pencil to write a message that says HELP ME, and then you can give the pineapple slices to the first person who does. The girl looked at me like I was crazy in the head and she said to me: Okay darlin', one, I got no paper for to write no message on, two, I no' know how to write, I only know how to draw on me eyebrows, an t'ree, me intend to eat that pineapple meself. And she made her eyes wide and stared at me.

Copyright 2008 by Chris Cleave. Originally published as The Other Hand in Great Britain in 2008 by Sceptre, an imprint of Hodder & Stoughton.