Moxyland - Lauren Beukes [40]
'Emmie?'
Her door is wide open, casting a rectangle of light into the corridor, but just before I get there, the security gate clangs hastily shut and a fumble of keys locks it tight.
'Emmie. What are you doing? We spent hours looking for you. We had a meeting, remember? For Home Affairs?'
Her hands curl round the bars of the security gate, real Pollsmoor. I feel that familiar knot at how painfully young she is, how naïve and far out of her comfort zone. She doesn't look up at me, staring down at the bulge of her belly. 'Go away. I can't see you today.'
Behind her, there's nothing as obvious as a half-packed suitcase lying open on her bed, but something has changed in her room, with its scant possessions, the three beds barely a foot apart, with bedsheets hanging from the ceiling like dividers, the paraffin safestove, the brokendown Fifties kitchen cabinet that might be worth something restored, on which a small TV is balanced precariously among a clutter of cheap cosmetics. A piece of cardboard, an advert for a Sunlight Soap competition, is taped to the window to cover a broken pane, advertising a prize of one million clams, all those zeros clamouring for attention, insultingly unreachable, above the face of a grinning little white girl in pigtails.
We've drawn spectators: the snotty kid and the reader, whom I recognise now as one of Emmie's roommates, and door guy, who is plucking insistently at my arm. 'You must go.'
'Fuck off, bro! Emmie, listen to me. This is majorly important. I don't care what you did with the rent money from the stall. We'll get you another spot, more stock. Whatever. But you can't pull this disappearing act. If Home Affairs suspects this isn't makoya, you'll be deported.'
'I'm not staying.'
'Don't be mental. Where are you going to go?'
'You must leave, please.'
I shrug door guy's hand off my shoulder. 'Emmie. Be reasonable. You have a job here. You have a real possibility of a life. What about the baby?'
'You have to go. You must get out.' Door guy is trying to tug me away.
'Jesus Christ! Will you get off!' I shove him against the wall, Emmie gasps, and only then do I click the fucking obvious that's been staring me in the face all along. The bedsheet with its pathetically faded floral print has been pulled closed around her bed for privacy. And among the coconut butter and hand cream and mascara is a man's deodorant, a man's brand shaving cream.
'Ah, fuck, Emmie. Is this–?' But of course it is. Door guy blinks hard when I round on him, but then draws himself up, resilient, and why not? Compared to what he must have gone through getting here, who the fuck am I that he should be afraid of me?
'Emmie. Why didn't you just tell me? Do you realise–? Fuck! I could go to fucking jail, Emmie. They could disconnect me for this. Permanently.'
I shake the security gate, so hard that it judders, and Emmie cowers back, automatically putting one hand to the bump that has turned her bellybutton into a protruding jellytot. Babydaddy puts his hand over her fingers clutching the bars, reassuring. But where the fuck was he two months ago, when she was begging on the street corner, filthy and gaunt around the swell of her stomach?
'What about your baby, Emmie? What are you going to say to your baby when you're all fucking starving to death in some underresourced camp in Lilongwe? Huh, Emmie?'
'Tendeka.' Ashraf finally speaks.
'I don't fucking care. You still have to do the interview. You are not going to put me at risk. And you are not getting our child – your child – deported. It's three years, Emmie, three years that we have to stay married before your residency is safe. You're not going anywhere until then, Emmie. You hear me?'
'We need more money,' she says quietly, meeting my eyes for the first time, drawing strength from babydaddy, closing me out.
'Fine. Of course. Whatever you want. How much?'
'Eight thousand. Mr. Hartley only gave me half–'
'Yeah, you should have thought that one through.'
'C'mon, Tendeka.'
'Cut it out, Ashraf. She can have