Little Bee (18 page)

Sarah
shook her head. She was biting her nails.

“Everyone
in my village liked U2,” I said.
“Everyone in my country,
maybe.
Wouldn’t that be funny, if the oil rebels were playing U2 in
their jungle camps, and the government soldiers were playing U2 in their
trucks.
I think everyone was killing everyone else and
listening to the same music. Do you know what? The first week I was in the
detention center, U2 were number one here too. That is a good trick about this
world, Sarah. No one likes each other, but everyone likes U2.”

Sarah
twisted her hands together on the table. She looked at me.
Are
you all right to go on?
she
said.
Can you tell me how you got away?

I
sighed. “Okay,” I said. “The guards were tapping their boots to the music. They
rolled the body onto a sheet. They picked up the sheet by the corners and they
lifted it into the truck. I thought I should run out to them and ask them to
help me. But I was scared, so I stayed where I was. The soldiers drove back
down the beach, and then it was very quiet again. When it was sunset I decided
I did not want to go to the hotel compound. I was too scared of the soldiers,
so I walked the other way. There were fruit bats flying all around. I waited
till it was dark before I went past the place where they killed my sister. There
was no
moonlight,
there was only a blue glow from the
small creatures in the sea. Sometimes there was a freshwater stream that ran
down the beach where I could drink. I walked all night and when it got light I
went back into the jungle. I found a red fruit to eat. I did not know its name
but I was hungry. It was bitter and I was very sick. I was very scared the men
would come and find me again. When I had to go to the toilet I buried my
excrement so that I would not leave any traces. Every noise I heard, I thought
it was the men coming back. I said to myself,
Little Bee,
the
men are coming to tear your wings off. It was like this for two more nights and
on the last night I came to a port. There were red and green lights flashing
out in the sea, and there was a long concrete seawall. I walked all along the
top of the wall. There were waves crashing all over me, but there were no
guards. Near the end of the seawall, on the land side, there were two ships
tied up next to each other. The near one had an Italian flag. The other one was
British, so I climbed over the Italian ship to get to it. I went down into the
cargo hold. It was easy to find it because there were signs written in English.
And English, you know, it is the official language of my country.”

I
stopped talking then, and I looked down at the tablecloth. Sarah came around to
my side of the table and she sat on the chair beside me and she hugged me for a
long time. Then we sat there holding our cold cups of tea. I rested my head on
Sarah’s shoulder. Outside, the day grew a little brighter. We did not say
anything. After a short time I heard footsteps on the stairs, and then Charlie
came into the kitchen. Sarah wiped her eyes and took a deep breath and quickly
sat up straight. Charlie was wearing his Batman costume, but without the mask
and without the belt that he kept his Batman tools in. It did not look as if he
was expecting trouble, that morning. When he saw me he blinked. He was
surprised that I was still there, I think. He rubbed his eyes sleepily and
pressed the top of his head against his mother’s side.

“Itch
till sleep eat I’m,” he said.

“Excuse
me Batman?” said Sarah.

“I
said
,
it’s still sleepy time. Why is you awake?”

“Well,
Mummy and Little Bee woke up early this morning.”

“Mmm?”

“We
had a lot to catch up on.”

“Mmm?”

“Oh
god, Batman, is it that you don’t understand, or you don’t agree?”

“Mmm?”

“Oh,
I see, darling, you are like a little bat with its sonar. You’ll keep sending
out those
Mmms
until one of them bounces off
something solid, won’t you?”

“Mmm?”

Charlie
stared at his mother. She looked back at him for a while, and then she turned and
smiled at me. Her tears were starting to flow again.

“Charlie
has extraordinary eyes, doesn’t he? They’re like ecosystems in aspic.”

“No
they
isn’t
,” said Charlie.

Sarah
laughed. “Well darling, what I mean is, anyone can see there’s a lot going on
in there.”

She
tapped the side of Charlie’s head.

“Hmm,”
said Charlie.
“Why is you crying, Mummy?”

Sarah
gave one big sob and then waved it away. “It’s
why
are you
,
Charlie, not
why is you,
”
she said.

“Why are you crying, Mummy?”

Sarah
collapsed. It was as if all the strength went out of her bones. She sank down
so that her head rested on her arms on the tabletop and she wept.

“Oh,
Charlie,” she said. “Mummy is crying because Mummy drank four G and Ts last
night. Mummy is crying because of something Mummy has been trying not to think
about. I’m so sorry, Charlie. Mummy is too grown up to feel very much anymore,
and so when she does, it catches her by surprise.”

“Mmm?”
said Charlie.

“Oh
Charlie!” said Sarah.

She
opened her arms and Charlie climbed up onto her lap and they hugged. It was not
right for me to be there with them, so I went out into the garden and I sat
down beside the fishpond. I thought about my sister for a long time.

Later,
when the sun was higher in the sky and the noise of the traffic on the roads
had grown into a constant rumble, Sarah came out into the garden to find me.

“Sorry,”
she said. “I had to take Charlie to nursery.”

“It’s
okay.”

She
sat down next to me and she put her hand on my shoulder. “How are you feeling?”

I
shrugged. “Okay,” I said.

Sarah
smiled, but it was a sad smile. “I don’t know what to say,” she said.

“I
do not know either.”

We
sat there and we watched a cat rolling on the grass on the other side of the
garden, in a bright patch of sunshine.

“That
cat looks happy,” I said.

“Mmm,”
said Sarah. “It’s the neighbor’s.”

I
nodded. Sarah took a deep breath.

“Look,
do you want to stay here for a while?” she said.

“Here?
With you?”

“Yes.
With me and Charlie.”

I
rubbed my eyes. “I do not know. I am illegal, Sarah. The men can come any
minute to send me back to my country.”

“Why
did they let you out of the detention center, if you’re not allowed to stay?”

“They
made a mistake. If you look good or you talk good, sometimes they make mistakes
for you.”

“But
you’re free now. They couldn’t just
come for you,
Bee. This isn’t Nazi Germany. There must be some procedure we can go through. Some
appeal. I can
tell
them what happened to you over
there. What will happen to you if you go
back.
”

I
shook my head. “They will tell you Nigeria is a safe country, Sarah. People
like
me,
they can just come and drive us straight to
the airport.”

“I’m
sure we can work something out, Bee. I edit a magazine. I
know
people. We could kick up a stink.”

I
looked at the ground. Sarah smiled. She put her hand on my hand.

“You’re
young, Bee. You don’t know how the world works yet. All you’ve seen is trouble,
so you think trouble is all you’re going to get.”

“You
have seen trouble too, Sarah. You are making a mistake if you think it is
unusual. I am telling you, trouble is like the ocean. It covers two thirds of
the world.”

Sarah
flinched, as if something had struck her face.

“What
is it?” I said.

She
held her head in her hands. “It’s nothing,” she said. “It’s silly.”

I
could not think of anything to say. I looked all around her garden for
something to kill myself with, in case the men suddenly came. There was a shed
at the far end of the garden, with a large garden fork leaning against it.
That is a fine implement,
I thought.
If
the men suddenly come, I will run with that fork and I will throw myself onto
those sharp shining points.

I
dug my nails into the soil of the flower bed beside us, and I squeezed the
sticky soil between my fingers.

“What
are you thinking, Bee?”

“Mmm?”

“What
are you thinking about?”

“Oh.
Cassava.”

“Why cassava?”

“In
my village we grew cassava. We planted it and watered it and when it was
high—like this—we plucked its leaves so that the growing would go into the
root, and when it was ready we dug it up and peeled it and grated it and
pressed it and fermented it and fried it and mixed it with water and made paste
out of it and ate it and ate it and ate it. When I slept at night I dreamed of
it.”

“What
else did you do?”

“Sometimes
we played on a rope swing.”

Sarah
smiled. She looked away into the garden.

“There
isn’t much cassava round here,” she said.
“Tons of clematis.
Plenty of camellias.”

I
nodded. “Cassava would not grow in this soil.”

Sarah
smiled, but she was crying at the same time. I held her hand. There were tears
running down her face.

“Oh
Bee,” she said. “I feel so bloody guilty.”

“This
is not your fault, Sarah. I lost my parents and my sister. You have lost your
husband. Both of us have lost.”

“I
didn’t lose Andrew, Bee. I destroyed him. I cheated on him with another man. That’s
the only reason we were in bloody Nigeria in the first place. We thought we
needed a holiday.
To patch things up.
You see?”

I
just shrugged my shoulders. Sarah sighed.

“I
suppose you’re going to tell me you’ve never taken a holiday.”

I
looked down at my hands. “Actually, I have never taken a man.”

Sarah
blinked. “Yes.
Of course.
I forget you’re so young,
sometimes.”

We
sat still for a minute. Sarah’s mobile telephone rang. She talked. When the
call was finished she looked very tired.

“That
was the nursery. They want me to go and pick up Charlie. He’s been fighting
with the other children. They say he’s out of control.” She bit her lip. “He’s
never done that before.”

She
picked up her telephone again and pressed some buttons. She held the telephone
up to her ear while she looked over my shoulder, over the garden. She was still
chewing her lip. After a few seconds, there was the sound of another telephone
ringing. It was a small, distant sound, from inside the house. Sarah’s face
went still. Then, slowly, she took the telephone down from her ear and pressed
one of its buttons. From the house, the sound of the other telephone stopped.

“Oh
Jesus,” said Sarah.
“Oh no.”

“What?
What is it?”

Sarah
took a deep breath. Her whole body shuddered.

“I
called Andrew. I don’t know why. It was completely automatic, I didn’t even
think. You know…if there’s a problem with Charlie, I always call Andrew. I just
forgot he was…you know. Oh god. I’m really losing it. I thought I was ready,
you know, to hear what happened to you…and your sister. But I wasn’t. I wasn’t
ready for it.
Oh god.”

We
sat there and I held her hand while she cried. Afterward, she passed her
telephone to me. She pointed at the screen.

“He’s
still in my address book. Do you see?”

The
screen of her telephone said ANDREW, and then a number. Just ANDREW—there was
no surname.

“Will
you delete him for me, Bee? I can’t do it.”

I
held her telephone in my hands. I had seen people speaking on mobile phones,
but I always thought they would be very complicated. You will laugh at me—there
she goes again, that silly little girl with the smell of tea in her skin and
the stains of cassava tops still on her fingers—but I always thought there
would be a frequency to find. I thought you would have to turn some dial until
you found the signal of your friend, very small and faint, like tuning in to
the BBC World Service on a windup radio. I supposed that mobile telephones were
difficult like this. You would turn the dial through all the hissing and the
squeaking sounds, and first you would hear your friend’s voice very strange and
thin and nearly drowned out by howling—like your friend had been squashed as
flat as a biscuit and dropped into a metal box full of monkeys—but then you
would turn the dial just one tiny fraction more and suddenly your friend would
say something like,
God save the Queen!,
and tell
you all about the weather in the shipping areas around the offshore waters of
the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. After that, you could
talk.