Chris Cleave - Little Bee

If this policeman began to suspect me, he could call the immigration people. Then one of them would click a button on their computer and mark a check box on my file and I would be deported. I would be dead, but no one would have fired any bullets. I realized, this is why the police do not carry guns. In a civilized country, they kill you with a click. The killing is done far away, at the heart of the kingdom in a building full of computers and coffee cups.

I stared at the policeman. He did not have a cruel face. He did not have a kind face either. He was young and he was pale and there were no lines on his face. He was nothing yet. He looked like an egg. This policeman, if he opened the door of the police car and made me get inside, then to him it was only the inside of a car he was showing me. But I would see things he could not see in it. I would see the bright red dust on the seats. I would see the old dried cassava tops that had blown into the foot wells. I would see the white skull on the dashboard and the jungle plants growing through the rusted cracks in the floor and bursting through the broken windscreen. For me, that car door would swing open and I would step out of England and straight back into the troubles of my country. This is what they mean when they say, It is a small world these days.

The policeman looked at me with no expression.

“What is your relationship to the person who was reported as missing?”

“It is not important.”

“It’s procedure, madam.”

He took a step toward me and I stepped back, I could not help myself.

“You seem unusually nervous of me, madam.”

He said this very calmly, looking into my eyes all the time.

“Your name,” he said. “Now.”

I stood up as straight and tall as I could, and I closed my eyes for a moment, and when I opened them again I looked at the policeman very coldly and I spoke with the voice of Queen Elizabeth the Second.

“How dare you?” I said.

It almost, almost worked. The policeman took half a step back, as if I had hit him. He looked down at the ground and he blushed, just for one second. But then I saw the strength come back into his face.

That is when I ran.

My story is not like the movie I told you about, The Man Who Was in a Great Hurry. I did not have a motorbike to escape on, or a plane that I could fly upside down. In my mind I saw how I would escape through the crowds, with the policeman chasing after me and shouting, Stop that girl! I would run across the road and the brakes of the cars would scream and their horns would hoot and a fat man would shout, Whaddayathinkyadoin?, and then I would be running, running, and of course there would be a seller of brightly colored fruits, and his apples and his oranges would spill all over the road, and there would be two men carrying a big sheet of glass, and I would roll under it and the policemen would crash through it and then I would get away and think to myself, Phew! That was a close one.

That is how the story went in my head. But in my life, the chase was not so good. My legs started to run and the policeman reached out his hand and grabbed hold of my arm, and that was it. If my life was a movie, it did not have a good chase scene. The audience would grumble, and throw popcorn, and say to one another, That foolish African girl did not even make it to the edge of the screen.

The policeman opened the back door of the police car and he made me sit down. He left the door open while he talked into his radio. He was thin, with pale slim wrists and a little potbelly, like the detention officer who was on duty on the morning they released us. The police car smelled of nylon and cigarettes.

“If we could just start with your name.”

I felt very sad. I knew it was all over for me now. I could not give the policeman my real name, because then they would find out what I was. But I did not have a false name to give him either. Jennifer Smith, Alison Jones-none of these names are real when you have no documents to go with them. Nothing is true unless there is a screen that says it is, somewhere in that building full of computers and coffee cups, right at the exact center of the United Kingdom. I sat up very straight in the backseat of the police car, and I took a breath and I looked the policeman straight in the eye.

“My name is Little Bee.”

“Spell that for me please?”

“L-I-T-T-L-E-B-E-E.”

“And is that a first name or a surname, madam?”

“It is my whole name. That is who I am.”

The policeman sighed, then he turned away and spoke into his radio.

“Sierra Four to control,” he said, “send out a unit, will you? I’ve got one to bring in for fingerprints. Probably a nutter.”

He turned back to me, and he was not smiling anymore.

“Wait here,” he said.

He closed the car door. I sat for a long time. Without the breeze it was very hot in the back of the police car. I waited there until another set of policemen came and took me away. They put me into a van. I watched Sarah and Lawrence and Charlie disappearing in the back window, through a metal grille. Lawrence had his arm around Sarah, and she was leaning against him.

Sarah and Lawrence came to visit me that night. I was in a holding cell at the police station in Vauxhall. The police guard, he banged open the door without knocking and Sarah walked in. Sarah was carrying Charlie. He was asleep in her arms with his head resting on her shoulder. I was so happy to see Charlie safe, I cried. I kissed Charlie on the cheek. He twitched in his sleep, and he sighed. Through the holes in his bat mask, I could see that he was smiling in his sleep. That made me smile too.

Outside the cell, Lawrence was arguing with a police officer.

“This is a bit excessive, isn’t it? They shouldn’t deport her. She has a home to go to. She has a sponsor.”

“They’re not my rules, sir. The immigration people are a law unto themselves.”

“But surely you can give us a bit of time to make a case. I work for the Home Office, I can get an appeal together.”

“If you don’t mind my saying so, sir, if I worked for the Home Office and I knew all along this lady was illegal, I’d keep my mouth shut.”

And this, exactly, is what Lawrence did. I did not hear his voice after that.

The guard looked into the cell. “You’ve got five minutes, that’s all,” he said.

Sarah was crying. “I won’t let them do it,” she whispered. “I’ll find a way. I won’t let them send you back.”

I tried very hard to smile.

“Maybe you should not make a fuss. It would not be good for Lawrence, I think.”

Sarah pressed her face down to the top of Charlie’s head, and she breathed in his smell.

“Maybe Lawrence is going to have to look after himself,” she whispered.

I shook my head. “Sarah,” I said. “I do not deserve your help. You do not know everything about me.”

“I think I know enough.”

“Please listen, Sarah. I was there when Andrew killed himself.”

“What?”

“Yes. And, if I tried harder, I think I could have saved him.”

There was a long silence between us. The only sound was Charlie breathing in and out in his sleep.

The guard came into the cell. “Time’s up,” he said. “Come on please madam, we need to lock up for the night.”

On the concrete floor of the cell I saw a tear splash, and I looked up into Sarah’s face.

“You know what the worst thing is?” she said. “If I had tried harder, I suppose I could have saved Andrew too.”

When she went, the cell door closed behind her with a noise like the boom of thunder on the first day of the rainy season.

They came for me at four o’clock in the morning. There were three uniformed immigration officers, one woman and two men. I heard their shoes banging on the linoleum of the corridor. I had been awake all night, waiting for them. I was still wearing the summer dress that Sarah had given me, with the pretty lace around the neck. I stood up, so I was waiting for them when they banged open the door. We walked out of the cell. The door closed behind me. Boom, went the door, and that was it. Out in the street it was raining. They put me in the back of a van. The road was wet and the headlights pushed streaks of light along it. One of the back windows was half open. The back of the van had a smell of vomit, but the air that blew in smelled of London. All along the streets the windows of the apartments were silent and blind, with their curtains closed. I disappeared without anyone to see me go. The female officer handcuffed me to the back of the seat in front.