Where Women are Kings by Christie Watson Read Free Book Online Page B

brushed his hand back and forwards over the wooden bench and watched his breath explode in front of him. He couldn’t feel the tip of his nose but it was still better than being inside with Nargis.
    ‘She’s not well enough to see you this week, Elijah. But she is feeling a little bit better and we are trying to set up regular contact so that you can spend some time with her every week. Also, when she’s well enough, we’ll have someletterbox contact, which means she’ll be able to write you letters …’
    Elijah looked up at Nargis’ house. He saw a face at the window watching them. ‘Can I come and live with you?’ he asked Ricardo again.
    Ricardo shook his head too quickly and too certainly. Ricardo’s head definitely didn’t want Elijah to live with him. ‘It’s not going to be possible, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘But we are going to keep doing the therapeutic work with Chioma and we’ll move towards finding something more permanent. OK?’
    Ricardo looked up at Nargis’ house too, but Elijah couldn’t tell if he could see faces at windows or hear rooms scream or air trying to escape.
    *
    If he couldn’t live with Ricardo, Elijah wanted to live with Chioma. She was a Nigerian and she believed in God – she must know all about hell and damnation. But Chioma said he wasn’t allowed to live with her, either. Sometimes they played with the castle and sometimes they made shapes in the sand with tiny instruments: a small plastic knife, a bucket, a small scoop, a rake. Elijah liked the rake the best. No matter what they had been playing and what mess they had made, the rake smoothed the sand out completely until it was in neat flat rows. He liked touching the sand and holding it in his fist, then letting it fall slowly between his fingers until his hand was empty. Chioma let him play with water and make a big mess and she said it was good to make a mess sometimes. But Elijah didn’t like making a mess; he liked cleaning it up afterwards. When he held sand in his hand, he pictured the sea above it – deep, dark blue – and the smell of salt. Sometimes, at night, he’d fly over the oceans and swim right down to thebottom, until it got darker than midnight and tiny fish flashed like miniature stars.
    ‘Do you want to do some drawing today?’ Chioma asked. She wore a long patterned dress and a scarf tied up high on her head. Elijah loved her clothes and the tiny slices of fried plantain she brought him to snack on, wrapped in kitchen roll.
    ‘We’re not supposed to eat in here,’ she’d whisper, ‘but who wants to play without a snack?’
    Elijah looked out of the window. He felt closer to Mama when he was there. Chioma’s play room was on the same road as the contact centre. He always wanted to stay in Chioma’s play room in case Mama was searching for him, and he wouldn’t mind sleeping on the floor. Mama only went to the contact centre when there was contact and there hadn’t been contact for so long, since Mama was ill in the special hospital. Still, Mama had breathed the air in the contact room and her feet had walked on the path outside.
    ‘I wanted to talk to you today,’ said Chioma, ‘about something important.’
    Elijah flicked his eyes towards her.
    ‘It’s nothing bad,’ she said. ‘In fact, it’s quite a good thing.’ She smiled and shone and sparkled. It was impossible to not smile back. ‘I think you are doing so well with our sessions that I wonder if you’re ready to start thinking about a forever family. Have you heard of adoption?’
    Elijah shook his head. He looked out of the window, past the bars, at the patches of sun changing the colour of the grass outside. Then suddenly he remembered. A boy from Sue and Gary’s had been adopted and sent them letters every year and a photo of himself on a bike or on a skateboard or climbing a tree.
    ‘I’d like you to have a think about it, and a talk with Ricardo. And we can talk lots and lots. But I think you might be