Chris Cleave - Little Bee

“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.