Little Bee (25 page)

“So
you must believe I am only staying here to help her.”

“I’m
not convinced you’re the kind of help she needs.”

“I
am the kind of help that will look after her child like he was my own brother. I
am the kind of help that will clean her house and wash her clothes and sing to
her when she is sad. What kind of help are you, Lawrence? Maybe you are the
kind of help that only arrives when it wants sexual intercourse.”

Lawrence
smiled again. “I’m not going to take offense at that,” he said. “You’re one of
those women who
has
a funny idea about men.”

“I
am one of those women who
has
seen men do things that
are not funny.”

“Oh
please. This is Europe. We’re a little more house-trained over here.”

“Different
from us, you think?”

“If you must put it that way.”

I
nodded.

“A wolf must be a wolf and a dog must be a
dog.”

“Is
that what they say in your country?”

I
smiled.

Lawrence
frowned. “I don’t get you,” he said. “If you understood how serious your
situation is, I don’t think you’d smile.”

I
shrugged.

“If
I could not smile, I think my situation would be even more serious.”

We
drank tea and he watched me and I watched him. He had green eyes, green as the
eyes of the girl in the yellow sari on the day they let us out of the detention
center. He watched me without blinking.

“What
will you do?” I said. “What will you do if I do not go to the police?”

“Will
I turn you in myself, you mean?”

I
nodded. Lawrence tapped his fingers on the sides of his tea mug.

“I’ll
do what’s best for Sarah,” he said.

The
fear raced right through me, right into my belly. I watched Lawrence’s fingers
tapping. His skin was white as a seabird’s
egg,
and
fragile like it too. He held his hands around his mug of tea. He had long,
smooth fingers and they were curled around the orange china mug as if it was a
baby animal that might do something foolish if it was allowed to escape.

“You
are frightening me, Lawrence.”

“I’m
reacting to the situation, that’s all. That’s what Andrew didn’t do. He was
like a stuck record. He stuck to his principles and he let this thing with you
overwhelm him and Sarah. That’s why he lost her.”

I
shook my head. “Don’t you have principles too?”

Lawrence
sat forward in his chair.

“My
principle is that I love Sarah. You can’t imagine what she means to me. Apart
from her, my life is utterly mundane. I’ll do anything to keep Sarah.
Anything,
do you understand?”

“You
are worried I will take Sarah away from you. That is why you do not want me
here. It is nothing to do with what is good for her.”

“I’m
worried Sarah’s going to do something silly to try to help you. Change her
focus,
change her life more than she needs to right at this
moment.”

“And
you are worried she will forget all about you in her new life.”

“Yes,
all right, yes. But you can’t imagine what would happen to me if I lost Sarah. I’d
fall apart. I’d hit the bottle.
Bam.
It’d be the end
of me. That terrifies me, even if you think it sounds pathetic.”

I
took a sip of tea. I tasted it very carefully. I shook my head. “It is not
pathetic. In my world death will come chasing. In your world it will start
whispering in your ear to destroy yourself. I know this because it started
whispering to me when I was in the detention center. Death is
death,
all of us are scared of it.”

Lawrence
turned his tea mug around and around in his hands.

“Is
it really death that you’re running from? I mean, honestly? A lot of the people
who come here, they’re after a comfortable life.”

“If
they deport me to Nigeria, I will be arrested. If they find out who I am, and
what I have seen, then the politicians will find a way to have me killed. Or if
I am lucky, they will put me in prison. A lot of people who have seen what the
oil companies do, they go to prison for a long time. Bad things happen in a
Nigerian prison. If people ever get out, they do not feel like talking.”

Lawrence
shook his head, slowly. “But whatever’s going to happen to you is going to
happen eventually, whether I do anything or not. This isn’t your country.
They’ll come for you, I promise you they will. They come for all of you in the
end.”

“You
could hide me.”

“Yeah
right, like they hid Anne Frank in the attic. Look how that worked out for
her.”

“Who
is Anne Frank?”

Lawrence
closed his eyes and folded his hands behind his neck, and sighed.

“Another
girl who wasn’t my problem,” he said.

I
felt a rage exploding inside me, so fierce that it made my eyeballs hurt. I
banged my hand down on the table and his eyes snapped open wide.

“Sarah
would hate you, if you told the police about me!”

“Sarah
wouldn’t know. I’ve seen how the immigration people work. They would come for
you in the night. You wouldn’t have time to tell Sarah. You wouldn’t get to say
a word.”

I
stood up. “I would find a way. I would find a way to tell her what you had
done. And I would find a way to tell your wife too. I would break both of your
lives, Lawrence.
Your family life and your secret life.”

Lawrence
looked surprised. He stood up and walked around the kitchen. He ran his hands
through his hair. “Yeah,” he said, “I really think you would.”

“I
would. Please do not imagine I would forgive you, Lawrence. I would make sure I
hurt you.”

Lawrence
looked out at the garden. “Oh,” he said.

I
waited. After a long time he said, “It’s funny. I’ve been lying awake all night
thinking what to do about you. I thought about what would be best for Sarah,
and what would be best for me. I honestly didn’t even think about what
you’d
do. I suppose I should have. I just assumed you
wouldn’t be so switched on. When Sarah talked about you I was imagining
,
I don’t know…not someone like you, anyway.”

“I
have been in your country two years. I learned your language and I learned your
rules. I am more like you than me now.”

Lawrence
laughed down his nose again. “I really don’t think you’re anything like me,” he
said.

He
sat down at the kitchen table again, and held his head in his hands. “I’m a
shit,” he said. “I’m a loser, and you’ve got me over a barrel.”

He
looked up at me. “You won’t really tell Linda, will you?”

His
eyes were exhausted. I sighed and sat down opposite him.

“We
should be friends, Lawrence.”

He
laughed. “I’ve just admitted to you that I’d sell you down the river if I
could. You’re the brave little refugee girl, and I’m the selfish bastard. I
think our roles here are pretty clearly delineated, don’t you?”

I
shook my head. “I am selfish too, you know.”

“No,
you’re really not.”

“Now
you think I’m a sweet little girl, do you? In your mind you still don’t think I
really exist. It does not occur to you that I can be clever, like a white
person.
That I can be selfish, like a white person.”

I
realized I was so angry I was shouting. Lawrence just laughed at me.

“Selfish!
You?
Took the last biscuit out of the tin, did you? Left
the top off Sarah’s toothpaste?”

“I
left Sarah’s husband hanging in the air,” I said.

Lawrence
stared at me. “What?”

I
swallowed more tea, but it was too cold now and I put the mug down on the
table. The light in the kitchen was cooling too. I watched the glow fade from
all the objects in the room, and I felt the cold flow into my bones. All of the
anger went out of me.

“Lawrence?”

“Yes?”

“Maybe
it is better that I go somewhere else.”

“Stop.
Wait. What did you just tell me?”

“Maybe
you were right. Maybe it is better for Sarah and better for Charlie and better
for you if I am not here. I could just run away. I am good at running,
Lawrence.”

“Shut
up,” said Lawrence quietly. He gripped my wrist.

“Stop
it! That hurts!”

“Then
tell me what you’ve done.”

“I
do not want to tell you. I am frightened now.”

“Me too.
Talk.”

I
held on to the edge of the table and I breathed in and out against my fear. “Sarah
said it was strange that I came on the day of Andrew’s funeral.”

“Yes?”

“It
was not a coincidence.”

Lawrence
let go of my arm and he stood up quickly and he put his hands on the back of
his neck. He went to the kitchen window and stared out for a long time. Then he
turned back to me. “What
happened
?” he whispered.

“I
don’t think I should tell you. I shouldn’t have said anything. I was angry.”

“Tell
me.”

I
looked down at the backs of my hands. I realized that I did want to tell someone,
and I knew I could never tell Sarah. I looked up at him.

“I
telephoned Andrew on the morning they let me out of the immigration detention
center. I told him I was coming.”

“Is
that all?”

“Then
I walked here from the immigration detention center. I came in two days. I hid
in the garden.” I pointed through the window. “There,” I said, “behind that
bush where the cat is. Then I waited. I did not know what I wanted to do. I
think I wanted to say thank you to Sarah for saving me, but also I wanted to
punish Andrew for letting my sister be killed. And I did not know how to do
either of these things, so I waited. I waited for two days and two nights and I
did not have anything to eat, so I came out when it was dark and I ate the
seeds from the bird feeder and I drank the water from the tap on the outside of
the house. In the daytime I watched through the windows of the house, and I
listened when they came out into the garden. I saw how Andrew talked to Sarah
and Charlie. He was terrible. He was angry all the time. He would not play with
Charlie. When Sarah talked, he just shrugged his shoulders or he shouted at
her. But when he was alone, he did not stop shrugging or shouting. He would
stand all alone at the end of the garden and talk to himself, and sometimes he would
shout at himself, or hit himself on the head with the side of his fist, like
this. He cried a lot. Sometimes he would fall down to his knees in the garden
and weep for an hour. This is when I realized he was full of evil spirits.”

“He
was clinically depressed. It was very hard for Sarah.”

“I
think it was very hard for him too. I watched him for a long time. One time
when he was weeping I watched him too hard and I forgot to hide myself, and he
looked up and he saw me. I thought,
Oh no, now this is it,
Little Bee.
But Andrew did not come toward me. He stared at me and he
said,
Oh
Jesus, you are not real, you are not there, just get out of my
fucking head.
And then he closed his eyes tight and he rubbed them, and
while he was doing this I hid myself back behind the bush. When he opened his
eyes he looked again where I had just been, but he did not see me. Then he went
back to talking to himself.”

“He
thought he was
hallucinating
you?
Poor
bastard.”

“Yes,
but I did not feel sorry for him at first. It was only later. On the third day
he came out into the garden again, when Sarah was at work and Charlie was at
the nursery. He was drunk, I think. His words were coming out slow and
twisted.”

“That
would have been his medication,” said Lawrence. His face had gone very white
now, and he was still staring at me with his eyes very bright. “Go on,” he
said.

“It
was still early in the morning. Andrew started shouting. He said
,
Come out, come out, what do you want?
I did not say anything.
Please,
he said.
I know you are a ghost. What do you want to make you go away?
I stepped out from behind the laurel bush and he took one step back.
I am not a ghost,
I said. He started hitting himself on
the side of the head. He said,
You
are not real, you are in my head, you are not there.
He
closed his eyes and he shook his head. While he had his eyes closed I walked
right up to him, close enough to touch. When he opened his eyes and saw how
close I was, he screamed and he ran inside the house. I felt sorry for him
then. I followed him into the house.
Please listen,
I said.
I am not a ghost. I came because I do not know
anyone else.
Then he said,
Touch me. Prove you are
not a ghost.
So I moved closer and I put my hand on his hand. When he
felt my hand, he closed his eyes for a long time and then he opened them again.
I walked up the stairs and he walked in front of me. He walked up the stairs
backward. He was screaming.
Get out! Get out!
He ran
into his workroom, his study, and he closed the door. So I stood outside the
door and I shouted,
Do
not be afraid of me! I am only a human being!
There was a
very long silence, so I went away.”