Proof I was Here by Becky Blake

Author:Becky Blake
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wolsak and Wynn Publishers Ltd
Published: 2019-07-25T00:00:00+00:00

13

Even though Annika was a foreigner, a lot of people in the neighbourhood seemed to know her. The first place we went was a bakery that had set aside a cup of wayward sesame seeds for her. The next place was a tiny supermarket with a carton of expired eggs waiting behind the counter. I noticed Annika was speaking Catalan with some of the shopkeepers.

“People are a lot friendlier if you know some words and phrases,” she explained.

As we continued our rounds, she told me that she’d just turned twenty-eight, and that she’d been away from the Netherlands for almost a decade, travelling and living in different places. “I’ve actually never gone back.”

I knew there must be a reason, but I didn’t ask why. Annika and I both had places that we’d left behind for good. She probably didn’t want to talk about it either.

We dropped off our first load of groceries at the squat, then rode into the city centre on her bike. Even with the scarf wrapped around my ribs, every bump in the road caused my vision to blur for a second. By the time we stopped behind the Carrefour, I was feeling light-headed. Tylenol was one thing we weren’t going to find in the garbage.

Outside the back door of the store, a group of people were waiting: a mix of backpackers, vagrants and elderly locals. Annika knew a couple of the cleaner-looking people, and I knew one of the dirty ones – a junkie from the courtyard. Now that I was relatively clean from showering at the hospital, I noticed there was a difference between the smell of the backpackers and the smell of the people who lived on the street. The backpackers had a two- or three-day smell that could still be washed off; the street people’s smell seemed permanent, baked by the sun into their skin and their hair and their clothes.

“The security guards always try to put out the garbage just before the truck comes,” Annika told me. “They don’t want people picking through it, but sometimes we have a little time.” She pointed at the door where two security guards with garbage bags were emerging from the store. They tossed the bags into the dumpster, then one of them stood watch while the other disappeared. A moment later he returned with a large jug of bleach.

Annika sighed, and some of the other people shouted at him as he emptied the contents of the jug into the dumpster. An old woman standing beside us spat on the ground.

“Why did he do that?” I asked Annika.

“His boss probably told him to. They don’t want anyone eating the food because it’s a liability. So just to cover their asses” – her voice rose sharply so the security guards could hear her – “sometimes they destroy perfectly good food. Food that could feed hungry people.”

I was worried the guards might come over, but they ignored her. Annika shook her head. “It’s the same reason dumpster diving is illegal – everyone’s afraid of being sued.

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