Little Bee (19 page)

But
actually I discovered that it was much easier than this to use a mobile
telephone. Everything is so easy in your country. Next to the name, ANDREW,
there was a thing that said OPTIONS, and I pressed it. Option three was
DELETE
, so I pressed that, and Andrew O’Rourke was gone.

“Thank
you,” said Sarah. “I just couldn’t do it myself.”

She
looked down at her phone for a long time.

“I
feel so bloody frightened, Bee. There’s no one to call. Andrew was absolutely
unbearable sometimes but he was always so
sensible.
I
suppose it was crazy of me, to send Charlie straight back to the nursery, after
yesterday. But I thought it would be
good
for him,
to get back into the routine. There’s no one to ask anymore, Bee. Do you
understand? I don’t know if I can do this on my own. Make all the right
decisions for Charlie on my own. Years of it, do you see? The right behavior,
the right schools, the right friends, the right university, the right wife.
Oh god, poor old Charlie.”

I
put my hand on her hand.

“If
you want, I can come to the nursery with you,” I said.

Sarah
tilted her head and looked at me for a long time. Then she smiled.

“Not
dressed like that,” she said.

Ten
minutes later I left the house with Sarah. I was wearing a pink summer dress
she lent me. It was the prettiest thing I had ever worn. Around the neck it had
fine white flowers stitched in, very delicate and fancy. I felt like the Queen
of England. It was a sunny morning and there was a cool breeze and I skipped
along the pavement behind Sarah and every time we passed a cat or a postman or
a woman pushing a pram I smiled and I said,
How do you do?
All of them looked at me like I was a crazy girl, I do not know why. I was
thinking,
That
is no way to greet your monarch.

I
did not like the nursery. It was in a big house with tall windows, but the
windows were not open even though it was a fine day. Inside, the air was
stuffy. It smelled of toilets and poster paint, and this was exactly the smell
of the therapy room in the immigration detention center, so I was feeling sad
from the memory. In the detention center they did not open the windows because
the windows did not open. In the therapy room they gave us poster paints and
brushes and they told us we must express ourselves. I used a lot of red paint.
When the therapeutic assistant looked at what I painted, she said it would be
good for me to try to
move on.
I said, yes madam, it
will be my pleasure. If you will just open a little window for me, or even
better a door, I will be happy to move on right away. I smiled, but the therapeutic
assistant did not think it was a good joke.

In
Charlie’s nursery, the play leader did not think I was a good joke either. I
knew she was the play leader because she had a badge on her green apron that
said PLAY LEADER. She stared at me but she did not speak to me, she spoke to
Sarah. She said,
I’m sorry, we can’t have visitors,
it’s
policy. Is this the child’s carer?
Sarah looked
at me and then she turned back to the play leader. She said,
Look
, it’s complicated, okay?
The play leader frowned. Finally she let me stand by the door while Sarah went
into the room and tried to calm Charlie.

Poor Charlie.
They had made him take off his Batman
costume—that was what had started it. They had made him take it off because he
had urinated in it. They wanted him to be clean, but Charlie did not want to be
clean. He preferred to be stinking in his black mask and cape than to smell
fresh in the white cotton overall they had put him in. His face was red and
dirty with poster paint and tears. He was howling with rage. When anyone came
near him he hit at them, with his small fists banging into their knees. He bit
and he scratched and he screamed. He stood with his back pressed into the
corner. He faced out into the room and he screamed, NO NO NO NO NO!

Sarah
went up to him. She knelt down so her face was close to his. She said,
Oh darling.
Charlie stopped shouting. He looked at Sarah. His
bottom lip trembled. Then his jaw became firm again. He leaned toward his
mother, and he spat. He said, GO AWAY I WANT MY DADDY!

They
were making the other children sit cross-legged on the floor, in the far corner
of the room. They were having story time. The other children were facing away
from Charlie’s corner, but they kept wriggling around to look over their
shoulders with pale, scared faces. A woman was reading them the story. She wore
blue jeans and white trainers and a turquoise sweatshirt. She was saying,
and Max tamed them by the trick of TURN AROUND AND FACE FRONT,
CAITLIN by the trick of staring straight into their eyes and saying EMMA,
PLEASE CONCENTRATE, JAMES, STOP WHISPERING of staring straight into their eyes
and saying WILL YOU FACE FRONT, OLLIE, THERE’S NOTHING GOING ON BEHIND YOU.

Sarah
knelt on the floor and she wiped Charlie’s spit off her cheek. She was crying.
She was holding her arms out to Charlie. Charlie turned around and hid his face
in the corner. The woman reading the story was
saying,
be still.

I
went toward Sarah. The play leader gave me a look which meant,
I told you to stay by the door.
I gave her a look back
which meant,
How
dare you?
It was a very good look. I learned it from
Queen Elizabeth the Second, on the back of the British five-pound note. The
play leader took one step back and I went up to Sarah. I touched her on the
shoulder.

Sarah
looked up at me.

“Oh
god,” she said. “Poor Charlie, I don’t know what to do.”

“What
do you normally do when he is like this?”

“I
cope. I always cope. Oh god, Bee, I don’t know what’s happening to me. I’ve
forgotten how to cope.”

Sarah
covered her face with her hands. The play leader took her away and sat her
down.

I
went into the corner with Charlie. I stood next to him and I turned my face
into the corner too. I did not look at him, I looked at the bricks and I did
not say anything. I am good at looking at bricks and not saying anything. In
the immigration detention center I did it for two years, and that is my record.

I
was thinking what I would do in that nursery room, if the men came suddenly. It
was not an easy room, I am telling you. For example, there was nothing to cut
yourself
with. All the scissors were made of plastic and
their ends were round and soft. If I suddenly needed to kill myself in that
room, I did not know how I was going to do it.

After
a long time Charlie looked up at me. “What
is
you
doing?” he said.

I
shrugged my shoulders. “I am thinking how to escape from this place.”

Silence.
Charlie sighed.
“They tooked
mine Batman costume.”

“Why
did they do that?”

“Because of why I done a wee in my Batman
costume.”

I
knelt down and looked into Charlie’s eyes. “We are the same, you and me. I
spent two years in a place like this. They make us do the things we do not
want. Does it make you cross?”

Charlie
nodded.

I
said, “It makes me cross too.”

From
behind us I could hear that the rest of the nursery was going back to its own
business. Children were talking and shouting again, and the women were helping
and laughing and scolding. In our corner, Charlie looked at the ground.

“I
want mine daddy,” he said.

“Your
daddy is dead, Charlie. Do you know what this means?”

“Yes.
In heaven.”

“Yes.”

“Where’s
heaven?”

“It
is a place like this. Like a nursery, or a detention center, or a strange
country far away. He wants to come home to you, but he can’t. Your daddy is
like my daddy.”

“Oh.
Is yours daddy dead too?”

“Yes
Charlie. My daddy is dead and my mummy is dead and my sister is dead too. All
of them are dead.”

“Why?”

I
shrugged my shoulders. “The baddies got them, Charlie.”

Charlie
twisted his hands together and bent down to pick up a small scrap of red paper
from the floor. He tore at it, and he put it on his tongue to see how it
tasted, and then it got stuck on his fingers because of the dampness. He held
his tongue between his teeth so he could concentrate on peeling the paper off his
fingers. Then he looked up.

“Is
you sad like me?”

I
made my face go into a smile. “Do I look sad, Charlie?”

Charlie
looked at me. I tickled him under his arms and he started to laugh.

“Do
we look sad, Charlie? Hey?
You and me?
Are we sad
now?”

Charlie
was laughing and wriggling finally, so I pulled him close to me and I looked in
his eyes. “We are not going to be sad, Charlie. Not you and me.
Especially not you, Charlie, because you are the luckiest boy in
the world.
You know why this is?”

“Why?”

“Because
you have a mama, Charlie, and she loves you, and that is something, no?”

I
gave Charlie a little push toward his mother and he ran to her. He buried his
face against her dress and they hugged each other. Sarah was crying and smiling
at the same time. She was speaking into Charlie’s ear, saying
Charlie, Charlie,
Charlie
.
Then
Charlie’s voice came, and it was muffled against his mother’s dress. He said,
I’m NOT Charlie, Mummy, I’m Batman.

Sarah
looked at me over Charlie’s shoulder and she just said,
Thank
you,
not making any sound but just moving her lips.

We
walked home from the nursery with Charlie swinging between us. The day was
beautiful. The sun was hot and the air was buzzing with bees and the scent of
flowers was everywhere. Beside the pavement there were the front gardens of the
houses, full of soft colors. It was hard not to be full of hope.

“I
think I shall teach you the names of all of the English flowers,” said Sarah. “This
is fuchsia, and this is a rose, and this is honeysuckle. What? What are you
smiling about?”

“There
are no goats. That is why you have all these beautiful flowers.”

“There
were goats, in your village?”

“Yes,
and they ate all the flowers.”

“I’m
sorry.”

“Do
not be sorry. We ate all the goats.”

Sarah
frowned. “Still,” she said. “I think I’d rather have honeysuckle.”

“One
day I will take you where I come from and you will eat only cassava for a week
and then you will tell me if you would rather have honeysuckle or goat.”

Sarah
smiled and leaned over to smell the honeysuckle blossom. Now I saw that she was
crying again.

“Oh,
I’m sorry,” said Sarah. “I can’t seem to stop. Oh look at
me,
I’m all over the place.”

Charlie
looked up at his mother and I rubbed the top of his head to show him everything
was okay. We started to walk again. Sarah blew her nose on a tissue. She said,
“How long
am I
going to be like this, do you suppose?”

“It
was one year for me, after they killed my sister.”

“Before
you could think straight again?”

“Before I could think at all.
At first I was just running,
running, running—getting
away
from where it
happened, you know? Then there was the detention center. It was very bad. It is
not possible to think clearly in there. You have not committed a crime, so all
you can think of is,
When
will I be let out?
But they tell you nothing. After a
month, six months, you start to think,
Maybe I will grow
old in here. Maybe I will die here. Maybe I am already dead.
For the
first year all I could think about was killing
myself
.
When everyone else is dead, sometimes you think it would be easier to join
them, you know? But you have to move on.
Move
on,
move on,
they tell you. As if you are stubborn.
As if you are chewing on their flowers like a goat.
Move
on, move on.
At five P.M. they tell you to move on and at six P.M. they
lock you back in your cell.”

“Didn’t
they give you any help at all in that place?”

I
sighed.

“They
tried to help us, you know? There were some good people.
Psychiatrists,
volunteers.
But there was only so much they could do for us in there. One
of the psychiatrists, she said to me,
Psychiatry in this
place is like serving an in-flight meal in the middle of a plane crash. If I
wanted to make you well, as a doctor, I should be giving you a parachute, not a
cheese-and-pickle sandwich.
To be well in your mind you have first to be
free, you see?”