Little Bee

“And what if you had not been there, Sarah? If you and Andrew had not been there, then Nkiruka and me, we would both be dead.” I turned to Charlie. “Your mummy saved my life, did you know that? She saved me from the baddies.”

Charlie looked up at his mother. “Like Batman?” he said.

Sarah smiled, the way I was used to now, with the tears starting to come to her eyes again. “Like Batmum.”

“Is that why you isn’t got your one finger?”

“Why I haven’t got one finger. Yes, darling.”

“Did the baddies take it? The Penguin?”

“No, darling.”

“Was it the Puffin?”

Sarah laughed.

“Yes darling, it was that awful Puffin.”

Charlie grinned. Naughty naughty Puffin, he said, and he ran ahead of us down the pavement, shooting baddies with a gun that was not visible to my eyes. Sarah turned to me.

“Bless you,” she said.

I held tight to her arm and I placed the palm of her left hand on the back of my left hand. I arranged my fingers underneath hers so that the only one of my fingers you could see was the one that was missing from Sarah’s hand. I saw how it could be. I saw how we could make a life again. I know it was crazy to think it but my heart was pounding, pounding, pounding.

“I will help you,” I said. “If you want me to stay then this is how it will be between us. Maybe I will only be able to stay for one month, maybe only one week. Someday, the men will come. But while I am here I will be like your daughter. I will love you as if you were my mother and I will love Charlie as if he was my brother.”

Sarah stared at me. “Goodness,” she said.

“What is it?”

“Well, it’s just that on the way home from the nursery, with the other mothers, we usually talk about potty training and cakes.”

I dropped Sarah’s hand and I looked down at the ground.

“Oh Bee, I’m sorry,” she said. “This is all just a little bit sudden and a little bit serious, that’s all. I’m so confused. I need a bit more time to think.”

I looked up at Sarah again. In her eyes I saw that it was new for her, this feeling of not knowing straightaway what to do. Her eyes were the eyes of a creature who has only just been born. Before it is familiar with its world, there is only terror. I knew this expression very well. Once you have seen as many people as I have being pushed in through the doors of the immigration detention center, it is easy to recognize this look. It made me want to remove that pain from Sarah’s life as quickly as I could.

“I am sorry, Sarah. Please forget about it. I will leave. You see? The psychiatrist at the detention center was right, she could not do anything for me. I am still crazy.”

Sarah did not say anything. She just held on to my arm and we followed Charlie down the street. Charlie was racing along and knocking the heads off the roses in the front gardens. He knocked them off with karate chops. They fell, each one with a sudden fall and a silent explosion of petals. Like my story with Nkiruka, like my story with Yevette. My feet crushed the petals as we passed over them, and I realized that my story was only made of endings.

Back at the house, we sat in Sarah’s kitchen. We drank tea again and I wondered if it would be the last time. I closed my eyes. My village, my family, that disappearing taste. Everything vanishes and drains away into sand or mist. That is a good trick.

When I opened my eyes again, Sarah was watching me.

“You know, Bee, I was thinking about what you said, about you staying. About us helping each other. I think you’re right. Maybe it is time to be serious. Maybe these are serious times.”

six

SERIOUS TIMES BEGAN ON a gray, ominous day in London. I wasn’t looking for serious. If I’m honest, I suppose I was looking for a bit of the other. Charlie was nearly two years old and I was emerging from the introverted, chrysalid stage of early motherhood. I fitted back into my favorite skirts. I felt like showing off my wings.

I’d decided to spend a day in the field. The idea was to remind my editorial girls that it was possible to write a feature article all on one’s own. I hoped that by inspiring the staff to indulge in a little reportage, my commissioning budget would be spared. It was simply a question, I had told the office airily, of applying one’s pithy remarks sequentially to paper rather than scrawling them individually on sample boxes.